The Hard Way Out of Afghanistan
By LUKE MOGELSON
NYT Magazine
Correction Appended
For years, in the village of Juz Ghoray, at the remote fringes of the Musa Qala District in northern Helmand Province, the Taliban enjoyed free rein, collecting taxes from local poppy farmers and staging attacks on any foreign patrol that moved within shooting range of an abrupt desert prominence called Ugly Hill. After a Marine unit found nine I.E.D.’s hidden beneath Ugly Hill’s scarred and caverned faces last year, coalition forces seldom ventured near it. Until one night this October, when members of Echo Company, from the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines — known since Vietnam as the Magnificent Bastards — quietly sneaked into Juz Ghoray and posted signs on people’s doors and windows. Their idea was to co-opt the infamous Taliban practice of intimidating government sympathizers with night letters threatening execution. The Marines’ signs were bordered with the nation’s colors, and in Pashto and Dari they announced: “The Afghan National Security Forces are coming.” Two weeks later, about 60 members of Echo Company, along with 30 Afghan National Army soldiers, traveled on foot through the night and took Ugly Hill without a shot. At dawn, as villagers emerged from their homes, they found laborers stacking bastions to fortify a new Afghan police post. And something else, which many residents of Juz Ghoray had never seen before: an Afghan flag raised on a wooden pole.
For the government, the new post represents a palpable extension of its reach, a triumph however modest. But not one without some cost. Before the Afghans could claim Ugly Hill, two marines had to sweep it for mines. Joshua Lee, a 26-year-old sergeant from Arkansas, located the first I.E.D. using a metal detector. As he set to work on the device, Lee identified a second bomb, and while readjusting he stepped on a third. The blast shattered his right leg, cocking it sideways below the knee and leaving mangled pieces of foot hanging loosely from flesh and bone.
In the morning, while searching a compound at the base of Ugly Hill, the marines discovered three more fully assembled I.E.D.’s, containing 100 pounds of explosives. When technicians set charges around the bombs, detonating them in place, a six-foot crater was left where one of the compound’s buildings had stood. The following evening Echo Company continued south, making camp on a plateau of hard-packed gravel; as the desert night grew frigid, a small convoy arrived to resupply the men with food and water. Turning to climb the steep escarpment, the lead vehicle hit yet another bomb. Its mine-roller — an extended axle of weighted wheels that tests the ground ahead — absorbed the brunt of the blast. Walking nearby, a young platoon sergeant, Jacob Maxwell, was knocked off his feet as rocks and wreckage from the obliterated roller struck his legs and back.
(More here.)
NYT Magazine
Correction Appended
For years, in the village of Juz Ghoray, at the remote fringes of the Musa Qala District in northern Helmand Province, the Taliban enjoyed free rein, collecting taxes from local poppy farmers and staging attacks on any foreign patrol that moved within shooting range of an abrupt desert prominence called Ugly Hill. After a Marine unit found nine I.E.D.’s hidden beneath Ugly Hill’s scarred and caverned faces last year, coalition forces seldom ventured near it. Until one night this October, when members of Echo Company, from the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines — known since Vietnam as the Magnificent Bastards — quietly sneaked into Juz Ghoray and posted signs on people’s doors and windows. Their idea was to co-opt the infamous Taliban practice of intimidating government sympathizers with night letters threatening execution. The Marines’ signs were bordered with the nation’s colors, and in Pashto and Dari they announced: “The Afghan National Security Forces are coming.” Two weeks later, about 60 members of Echo Company, along with 30 Afghan National Army soldiers, traveled on foot through the night and took Ugly Hill without a shot. At dawn, as villagers emerged from their homes, they found laborers stacking bastions to fortify a new Afghan police post. And something else, which many residents of Juz Ghoray had never seen before: an Afghan flag raised on a wooden pole.
For the government, the new post represents a palpable extension of its reach, a triumph however modest. But not one without some cost. Before the Afghans could claim Ugly Hill, two marines had to sweep it for mines. Joshua Lee, a 26-year-old sergeant from Arkansas, located the first I.E.D. using a metal detector. As he set to work on the device, Lee identified a second bomb, and while readjusting he stepped on a third. The blast shattered his right leg, cocking it sideways below the knee and leaving mangled pieces of foot hanging loosely from flesh and bone.
In the morning, while searching a compound at the base of Ugly Hill, the marines discovered three more fully assembled I.E.D.’s, containing 100 pounds of explosives. When technicians set charges around the bombs, detonating them in place, a six-foot crater was left where one of the compound’s buildings had stood. The following evening Echo Company continued south, making camp on a plateau of hard-packed gravel; as the desert night grew frigid, a small convoy arrived to resupply the men with food and water. Turning to climb the steep escarpment, the lead vehicle hit yet another bomb. Its mine-roller — an extended axle of weighted wheels that tests the ground ahead — absorbed the brunt of the blast. Walking nearby, a young platoon sergeant, Jacob Maxwell, was knocked off his feet as rocks and wreckage from the obliterated roller struck his legs and back.
(More here.)
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