The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (38 page)

When he met with his new commander, Newsom had a makeshift cast around his right hand, which he had fractured but not told anyone about. He was supposed to inform Bostick about such things, it was true, but in this instance there was good reason for his reticence: he’d broken his hand on the head of Habibullah, an ANA soldier, with whom he’d gotten into a scuffle one evening when the Afghan was stoned out of his mind and became confrontational. Now, however, Newsom had even worse news to impart: he had heard from the Kamu elders that the school the Americans had built for the kids of Kamu and Mirdesh was a nonstarter, since the parents from each village refused to allow their children to be in class with the children from the other village. The residents of Kamu and Mirdesh had each wanted their own school, and they all felt the Americans hadn’t delivered. Moreover, in spite of the poverty of the region, the United States hadn’t hired locals to build the new facility. In what might have been the only example of coordinated activity between the two villages in decades, insurgents from Kamu and Mirdesh had been taking turns vandalizing and attacking the building. And this was far from the only evidence of local displeasure with Americans in general. The officers of 3-71 Cav had done their best to make sure their replacements knew what promises they’d made, but the Nuristanis invented many additional ones. These allegedly broken promises fueled a mounting sense of insult and inspired additional threats of revenge.

So Newsom’s broken hand was nothing, really—the other breaks were bigger.

The Americans had many names for the insurgents. Officers called them ACMs, short for “anticoalition militias,” but that was just the latest acronym circulating on memos from the Pentagon, soon to be replaced by “AAFs,” for “anti-Afghan forces.” Some officers blandly spoke of them as just “the enemy” or “fighters.” Another word sometimes used was
dushman,
a noun of Persian origin meaning, again, “enemy.” “Bad guys” was often the shorthand translation; there was almost a comic quality to that term, implying a return to a simpler, childlike, black-and-white view of a world that didn’t bear much resemblance to the Americans’ new home in Nuristan. The Cavalry officers instructed their troops to avoid using religious nicknames, forbidding them from calling the enemy
hajis,
which in Islam is a term of reverence for those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Also prohibited were
muj,
short for
mujahideen,
and
jihadi,
from the same root. In Afghanistan, those words were used to refer to the revered mujahideen who had fought the Soviets (and who at the time had been funded by the United States). Calling the insurgents mujahideen would also imply that they had some religious justification for their attacks. It cannot be said that no one ever used these names, or worse, but such language was officially not permitted.

Many soldiers just called them fuckers.

Bostick had intended to return to Combat Outpost Keating after his visit, taking Newsom’s platoon back with him and leaving the platoon from Legion Company (to which the late Jacob Lowell had belonged) at Kamu in its place, but a flurry of new intelligence reports suggesting that the enemy was planning to overrun Combat Outpost Kamu put an end to that plan. The captain needed to stay.

On June 6, the lone local worker at the Kamu outpost failed to show up for work. Bostick radioed Kolenda in Naray, and they discussed the need to prepare for an attack; they planned to send out two platoons. Bostick then briefed his men and listened as Newsom and his platoon sergeant, Rodney O’Dell, both eager to get in the fight, spent half an hour bickering like brothers about which one of them would lead 3rd Platoon into the mountains. Ultimately, O’Dell won out. Newsom would help command from the base with half of the platoon, which would be at the ready as a reserve force.

O’Dell and his half platoon left for the mountain, with orders both to watch over the area and to find a mountain path from Combat Outpost Kamu to Camp Keating so they and the rest of 3rd Platoon could avoid the dangerous road if need be. The platoon from Legion Company moved to take the lower ground. Newsom and Bostick sat on the rooftop of the hunting lodge with their interpreter and other officers, monitoring enemy traffic on the radio. The insurgents were speaking in Nuristani and Pashto and a third language that none of them could discern. For a time, the chatter was fairly vague. Then, in an instant, it got specific.

“We see them in position,” an insurgent announced.

Newsom radioed O’Dell and passed on the translation.

“When the Americans get here, we will attack them, and they will fall off this cliff,” another insurgent said.

Bostick ordered Sergeant Mark Speight, in charge of the mortars at Combat Outpost Kamu, to have his men fire their 120-millimeter mortars into the hills, targeting the suspected general area where the enemy fighters might be, partly in hopes of learning more about their position: the incoming fire would cause the insurgents to talk, Bostick reasoned, and possibly to reveal some information about their location. (They didn’t seem to realize that the Americans could listen in to their radio transmissions.)

The mortarmen fired, and Legion Platoon, on the low ground, assessed where the ordnance had landed. O’Dell and his troops, on the high ground, fired with their M4 carbine rifles in the general direction of where the mortars had landed. Enemy gunfire erupted as a large element of forty or so fighters began conducting a complex maneuver that brought the whole force down the hill toward O’Dell’s patrol, with smaller groups providing cover for one another. O’Dell and his troops took cover, returning fire with their M4 carbines. One enemy shot found its mark, hitting a rifleman, Sergeant Wayne Baird; the bullet entered Baird’s forearm, traveled through his arm, and blew out his tricep as it exited his body.

O’Dell radioed in the WIA—the soldier “wounded in action.” The bullet had hit an artery, and Baird was bleeding out; he would need a medevac. Other of O’Dell’s troops stabilized the injured sergeant, trying to calm him down and prepare him for the move down the hill. In a valley—a disorienting, vulnerable, echoing space,—it can be hard to tell where enemy fire is coming from, but it seemed clear that the enemy was firing upon the patrol from the hillsides to the south and southwest of the base. “We need to reinforce the platoon element up in the hills,” Bostick told Newsom.

The enemy fire abated a bit after mortars began raining upon the area where the Americans now knew the insurgents were, allowing some of Baird’s fellow troops to help him back toward Combat Outpost Kamu. Newsom and his half of 3rd Platoon grabbed medical supplies and started running up the hill to meet them. Newsom wasn’t planning to go far; Bostick and the others back at the hunting lodge would be able to see his and his men’s general position.

Up on the hill, Newsom spotted two insurgents some distance away, hiding behind rocks and getting into sniper positions. Just at that moment, two A-10 Warthogs arrived at the outpost.

“I got aircraft here,” Bostick radioed up to Newsom. “I’m gonna give ’em to you. Whaddaya got?”

“I got targets,” Newsom told Bostick, then provided the relevant coordinates. The A-10s fired and hit their marks. Nothing was left of the insurgents who had been there but a second before.

Bostick also called in an emergency resupply, since 3rd Platoon was getting dangerously low on ammo. Within thirty minutes, a Black Hawk and two Apaches had flown in from Naray. As the Black Hawk passed by him, Newsom saw a mass of muzzle flashes from the
northern
side of the mountain. This was a shock. He and Bostick knew the enemy was to the south, but they’d had no idea a whole mess of insurgents were on the northern side as well. Shit, Newsom thought. Because their guns weren’t powerful enough in and of themselves to bring down a bird, the insurgents were trying a tactic that Newsom had read about but never before seen, called volley fire: by amassing the fire of many small arms, the shooters hoped to replicate the effect of a larger weapon. It was another clear sign of discipline and training, if not of the presence of other, more sophisticated enemy fighters.

The Black Hawk landed under fire. The ordnance—mainly a critical supply of 120-millimeter mortars—was quickly offloaded, and the helicopter flew away. But the insurgents didn’t stop there; now they started firing at Combat Outpost Kamu, where Bostick was still trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

“Break, break, Bulldog-Six,” Newsom said, interrupting the radio chatter, “we see them. What are your recs?”

“I’m going to give you the hundred-and-five-millimeter, and you call it in,” Bostick replied.

The 105-millimeter was a long-range howitzer located at Combat Outpost Lybert, approximately ten miles to the east of Kamu. Newsom, O’Dell, and forward observer Specialist Brett Johnson started working up coordinates to call in, using a hundred-thousand-meter grid square for the area. When they were ready, they radioed the six-digit grid coordinates, but the first rounds ended up being wildly inaccurate, landing about eight hundred yards too far to the left. Newsom called Bostick and relayed the bad news. The men at Combat Outpost Lybert fired again; these rounds hit eight hundred yards too far to the right.

“What the fuck is going on?” Newsom snapped.

Bostick wanted to know the same, and he started hounding Newsom over the radio.

“What the hell are you calling in?” he asked.

“I know what the hell I’m doing,” Newsom said. “This is not
me
.”

With the 105-millimeter not functioning properly—it would later be discovered that there was a technical problem with the weapon—the return of the A-10 Warthog jets was a welcome sight. It was getting dark now, and the Warthogs fired white-phosphorous marking rounds at enemy positions.

The chatter picked up on the insurgents’ radio frequency; Newsom listened with his interpreter.

“You okay?” one insurgent asked another, presumably one of the targets.

“Yes, I’m all right, they’re shooting below me,” came the answer.

The A-10 circled around. Newsom told the pilot, “Try fifty yards higher.”

The Warthog fired.

A minute later, the enemy chatter started again:

“You all right?”

“Yes, but they’re getting closer.”

Newsom told the pilot to aim fifty yards higher again.

Fire.

A minute passed.

“You all right?”

“Yes, but they’re getting closer. Pray for me.”

Newsom advised the pilot, “Aim up just five more yards.” He did so.

The first insurgent’s voice came again:

“You all right?”

This time the inquiry was met with only static.

By midnight, it seemed to Bostick that the enemy threat had been eliminated. Just in case, though, he ordered 3rd Platoon to stay in the hills until morning. At around 2:00 a.m., O’Dell was on guard duty when, through his night-vision goggles, he saw some insurgents regrouping on the northern mountainside. He radioed Speight, the mortarman, and gave him the grids. Then he gently nudged Newsom awake.

Are you serious? Newsom thought to himself. They’re coming
back?
We just hammered that whole area for half the day.

Speight fired the 120-millimeter mortars at the insurgents, pummeling them. That seemed to put an end to that.

Through the morning, 3rd Platoon stayed on the hill. At one point, Afghan Security Guards—local contractors—brought up Pepsis and cookies, but by then two of Newsom’s soldiers had already fainted from heat exhaustion. At 11:00 a.m., Bostick finally told Newsom that he and his men could head back to the camp.

Any impulse Newsom may have felt to be celebratory, to slap some backs and pump his fist in the air, was negated by Bostick’s clear concern that there would be another attack. He told Newsom to meet him at the operations center so they could make plans for the next two days. It was only later that night, at a barbecue where the men grilled some steaks and took a breath, that Newsom pulled Bostick aside.

“Hey, sir, I had a lot of fun,” he told his commander.

“Yeah, I know.” Bostick smiled. “It was a good TIC”—meaning “troops in contact,” a firefight.

The clash had reminded Newsom of stories he’d read about Special Forces early on in the war—sitting up on an observation post, calling in close air support and mortars. If this is combat, then count me in, Newsom thought to himself, because that shit is fun. “Are they all like that?” he asked.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Bostick said. “It’s fun stuff.”

“I want more!” Newsom exclaimed. Bostick laughed. Newsom thanked the captain for trusting him in the field, for staying calm, for being a great commander. Bostick shrugged.

Staff Sergeant Ryan Fritsche
³⁶
was late in getting to Forward Operating Base Naray. His leave back home in Indiana had been extended so he could say good-bye to his father, Bill, who was dying of cancer.

Ryan had scheduled a lot around his father’s illness—he and his wife, Brandi, had gotten married the previous September because they weren’t certain his dad would make it this long. On May 16, 2007, fifty-two-year-old Bill Fritsche, surrounded by his family, succumbed to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.