Staff Sgt. Michael Davis of Altoona takes a breather with his helmet off shortly after Bravo Company of the Iowa National Guard's 1-113th Cavalry Squadron engaged in an intense firefight with insurgents in Afghanistan.
ALYSSA SCHUKAR/THE WORLD-HERALD
Published Friday April 8, 2011Chaos of war: All bullets and dust
ONLY IN THE WORLD-HERALDBAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — The bad guys had escaped once again.
At least, that's the way it looked Thursday afternoon to the Iowa Guardsmen scouring a series of ravines for more than an hour without finding two suspected insurgents they had seen earlier toting AK-47s.
Then, suddenly, Spc. Mark Otte of Atlantic, Iowa, saw them, about 40 feet below him on the floor of a ravine.
Otte stared into one man's face and pointed his gun at him, waiting to see whether he would surrender.
Instead, the man opened fire with his assault rifle, forcing Otte back from the edge of the ravine.
About the same time, other soldiers from Bravo Troop who were searching the ravine floor came upon the men.
The man shooting at Otte quickly redirected his fire at the soldiers in the ravine. Staff Sgt. Michael Davis of Altoona, Iowa, was the closest — less than 10 feet away.
Davis stumbled backwards from the oncoming bullets and got tangled with Spc. Jeremy Henrich of Hinton, Iowa. They fell over, returning fire as they went down. They rolled over and kept firing.
Henrich positioned his rifle on top of Davis' helmet to make sure he didn't accidentally shoot his buddy in the tight space.
Atop the ravine, on the opposite side from Otte, Sgt. Cody Johnson of Ankeny tried firing down at the pair of fighters with a squad automatic weapon, but the gun jammed.
Other Iowa soldiers on top of the ravine unloaded their M-4 rifles and tossed three grenades, one by one, at the enemy.
By now, Otte was firing on the pair, too, but he soon stopped — as the bullets slammed into the dry ravine walls, they stirred up a cloud of dust, making it difficult to see who was where.
Down below, the gunfire was thick, the ravine narrow.
As the enemy's bullets tore past him, Henrich just kept shooting into the dust. He moved his rifle high, low, left and right as he shot.
He just hoped he was hitting something.
***
It had been a relatively quiet deployment for Bravo Troop of the Iowa Army National Guard's 1-113th Cavalry Squadron since arriving in Afghanistan in November, with the rest of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division.
The troop's main task — providing security in the areas just south of the sprawling Bagram Air Field, a major base and a nexus of coalition activity in eastern Afghanistan— has produced little enemy engagement.
But the troop is also responsible for a remote section of Parwan province, which lies just north of the capital city of Kabul and includes the village of Pacha Khak. When they visited the area in December, they noticed several men watching from afar, hidden under a blanket and possibly holding a weapon.
The troop hadn't had the opportunity to detain the watchers then but resolved that things would be different this time around.
The plan: Have 1st Platoon enter the village from the west, 2nd Platoon from the east. The two groups would meet in the middle, look around and discuss a few matters with the village elder.
Anyone spying on them would be captured. Anyone attacking them would be annihilated.
“We are out there looking for a fight today,” 1st Lt. Andy Zaidi of Oakland, Calif., told 2nd Platoon during his pre-mission briefing.
He cautioned the soldiers to show “tactical restraint” and wait for targets to demonstrate “hostile intent,” per their rules of engagement.
His platoon's eight-vehicle convoy soon left Bagram behind and began the slow climb through the treacherous mountain switchbacks leading to Pacha Khak.
The difficult terrain has made the village and the area beyond it a safe haven for insurgents. Beyond this point, U.S. forces must leave their heavily armored trucks, traveling instead in pickup trucks or helicopters.
***
Shortly after 8:30 a.m., Spc. Cody Bunkers of Ankeny nosed the lead MATV around a large boulder, trying not to rub against the rock and topple the truck down the side of the mountain.
Boom.
At first Bunkers thought he'd hit the rock after all and blown a tire, but the billowing black smoke told him otherwise. The radios went crazy.
“Contact: IED.”
“We've got a trigger man running towards the valley.”
“You want me to drop this (guy) if I see him?” one gunner asked.
“Only if he has hostile intent.”
The truck's front half was blown to pieces, with parts strewn across the landscape. But everyone inside was safe.
After securing the area, the soldiers headed out on foot, more determined than ever to find the enemy. They walked nearly a mile over the rocky ground, picking their way among the prickly scrub brush.
When 2nd Platoon arrived, 1st Platoon had already found some rusty old firearms and a few land mines in a couple of caves. The soldiers decided to search a nearby building and found a new RPG — a rocket-propelled grenade launcher — and rounds.
Excited by the find, a team of soldiers headed north to search among dozens of small caves littering the hillside among the village's mud dwellings. They questioned villagers about the weapons they had found and about specific insurgents they were seeking.
They used a device to check villagers' hands for explosives residue.
The conversations tended to go in circles, with the villagers professing confusion and no knowledge of any weapons, explosives, Taliban fighters or even the identity of their neighbors.
The Iowa soldiers muttered profanity-laced skepticism but shook hands politely and moved on.
***
About midday, Henrich and Bravo's commander, Capt. Randall Stanford of Clive, Iowa, were searching a large cave when one of the unit's snipers alerted them to the two men with AK-47s, moving toward the soldiers along a creek bed.
When they realized they had been seen, the two took off running.
The call went out. Other Bravo troop soldiers abandoned their search for weapon stashes and took up the hunt.
About 2 p.m., after more than an hour spent examining the creek bed, they reached the last dead end in the ravine — and saw the two men.
Trapped, the pair decided to fight it out.
And everything turned into bullets and dust.
The firefight lasted only a few minutes. Then the Iowans pulled their soldiers back, dropped smoke to mark the enemy's location and called in two Kiowa OH-58D helicopters that had been circling overhead. The Kiowas roared in, blasting the ravine with a series of rockets.
The Bravo soldiers returned to the ravine. One enemy fighter was dead, the other still moving. The soldiers said he appeared to be wounded but going for his pistol.
A single shot rang out, and the all-clear was called.
The only injury to the U.S. soldiers was a small scratch to Henrich. His uniform was torn on the shoulder. A red mark showed where a bullet had grazed his skin.
He didn't even notice it until someone else pointed it out.
The soldiers' mood was a mixture of exultation and relief that none of them had been hurt.
“I don't know how they didn't get shot,” Stanford said of the soldiers on the ravine floor.
Henrich seemed baffled by it, as well.
“As many … rounds as were going off…” he said, his voice still a bit shaky.
Many in the unit have served in combat zones before, but this was the first time they had seen an eyeball-to-eyeball shootout.
“That was as close as it gets,” said Sgt. Josh Davenport of Ames, Iowa, who was behind Henrich on the ravine floor.
Said Davis: “We're lucky to be alive.”
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