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compelled midlevel officers such as Brown to take on new roles: politician, diplomat, tribal an- thropologist. “My goal is to get people to stop shooting at my soldiers and sup- port government,” said Brown, a wiry, quick-talking officer whose three combat tours have imbued him with modesty, skepticism and a little self-doubt. After the Kamdesh battle, an
insurgent leader known as Mul- lah Sadiq sent word to Brown that he wanted to drive his more radical Taliban rivals from the area around the Keating outpost. Sadiq, who had been on U.S. kill- or-capture lists for five years, needed money and Brown’s help brokering a peace deal with Af- ghan government officials in Ka- bul. The offer was Brown’s chance to ensure his eight soldiers didn’t die in vain. “We don’t think Sadiq is a Jef- fersonian Democrat,” Brown wrote of Sadiq in a February e- mail from Forward Operating Base Bostick in Naray. “But he is rallying public support to the Af- ghan government and against the Taliban. . . . And frankly, that may be good enough.”
In the Dixie cup
Three months before the at- tack, Brown and his brigade com- mander, Col. Randy George, had petitioned Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, for permission to close the Keating base and with- draw from the surrounding Kam- desh district. The outpost, surrounded by soaring mountains on all sides, was isolated and hard to defend. “It felt like we were living in the bottom of a Dixie cup,” one of Brown’s soldiers said. Attacks on U.S. forces had in- creased every year since Keating was established in 2006, and by summer 2009 Brown concluded that the presence of U.S. troops was feeding the insurgency. His study of the local rebel fac- tions had led him to believe that a U.S. withdrawal from the area would split the insurgency. Most of the powerbrokers in Kamdesh were affiliated with Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, or HiG, an insurgent group that had formed decades earlier to repel the Soviets. Al- though HiG fiercely opposed the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, there were signs that its local leadership was willing to work with the Afghan government. The other branch of the in-
surgency was loyal to the Taliban and opposed any Afghan govern- ment presence. As long as U.S. troops re- mained, HiG commanders wouldn’t push out the Taliban leadership from the area. “The HiG and Taliban were competi- tors,” Brown said, “but they could agree to hate us.”
Brown was commissioned as an armor officer in 1991 just months after U.S. tanks sliced through Saddam Hussein’s Re- publican Guard in a demonstra- tion of the post-Vietnam Army’s raw power. Two Iraq tours in 2004 and 2007 opened Brown’s eyes to the limits of his Army and himself. He avoided “we can do the impos- sible” pep talks that other com- manders used to fire up their troops. His goal was to build the Afghan government and bring his soldiers back alive. The vast majority of his time was spent quizzing Afghan elders and officials on decades-old tribal disputes and intrigues. In the eve- nings he scoured the Internet for
GREG JAFFE/THE WASHINGTON POST
1st Lt. Andrew Bundermann was the senior officer at Outpost Keating when 300 insurgents attacked the base days before it was set to close.
information on the HiG and its history in Nurestan province dur- ing the Soviet era. “There is so much here that is opaque to us,” he said. Even before the Keating attack, Brown believed that he might be able to help broker a peace deal between local HiG leaders and the Afghan government. His hy- pothesis had led him to write to Sadiq in September, about three weeks before the Keating assault. In his letter, sent with the ap-
proval of his commander, Brown apologized to Sadiq for earlier NATO bombings that had killed civilians. Some of Sadiq’s rela- tives had been killed when U.S. troops fired a missile into the in- surgent leader’s house, local Af- ghans said.
Brown also asked for Sadiq’s “wisdom.” “We need assistance from leaders like you that are able to reach out and encourage the people of Kamdesh to cease the violence and oust the Taliban,” he wrote. He offered to meet with Sa- diq whenever it was convenient and promised him protection.
A closure delayed
On Sept. 27, McChrystal ap- proved the closing of Keating, which was set for Oct. 9. The gen- eral had taken longer than Brown and his immediate bosses had hoped to issue his final decision. Six days before the planned clo- sure, hundreds of local fighters launched a break-of-day fusillade of rocket-propelled grenades, ma- chine-gun fire and mortar shells at the tiny base. This account of the battle and the negotiations with Sadiq is based on interviews with Brown, Keating troops and U.S. and Afghan officials. Bundermann jumped out of bed and ran to call Brown’s head- quarters. Fire was burning through the outpost’s wood build- ings, and the Afghan soldiers had abandoned their posts en masse. Brown urged his lieutenant to
try to get the Afghans back into the fight. “Roger,” Bundermann replied
curtly, knowing from previous ex- perience that the Afghans were a lost cause.
Fighting in a Dixie Cup
Six days before a planned withdrawal from Combat Outpost Keating in northeastern Afghanistan, about 50 U.S. troops were ambushed out by 300 determined Afghan fighters. Just before 6 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2009, fighters began their assault on the base from the steep slopes of the surrounding mountains.
1
Taliban fighters
breach the perimeter just before 7 a.m.
2 Unable to hold the
base, 1st Lt. Andrew Bundermann, acting commander of the outpost, consolidates most of his troops around a cluster of buildings.
3 A dozen soldiers had
to fight on their own. Five of them make a stand in a Humvee. Spec. Stephan Mace was among the five.
By nightfall, U.S. troops regain control of the outpost with the support of aircraft and reinforce- ments.
SOURCE: U.S. Army
SOURCE: U.S. Army
Bundermann decided to focus on holding the base and saving as many of his troops as possible. About 200 yards north of Bunder- mann’s position, five soldiers were hunkered down in an ar- mored Humvee, fighting to keep the insurgents off the outpost. Rocket-propelled grenades were bouncing off the truck’s doors and roof. The troops con- cluded that it was only a matter of time before a round penetrated the Humvee’s armor. Three of the five soldiers sprinted for nearby cover, but were felled by an grenade blast and a burst of machine-gun fire. Only Mace, who was wounded in both legs, survived. He crawled to a hiding spot between a boulder and the base latrine. The two soldiers who remained by the battered Humvee — Spec. Ty Carter and Sgt. Bradley Larson —fired at two insurgents running across the outpost and then clam- bered back into the truck. Carter
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wanted to look for Mace, but Lar- son ordered him to stay put. “You are no good to him dead,” he said. Carter had always been a bit of an outsider within his platoon. After a stint in the Marine Corps in the late 1990s, he’d cycled through a half-dozen jobs — mov- ie theater manager, nursing assis- tant and hardware store clerk. He married, had a daughter and di- vorced. In 2008, he enlisted in the Army. “I joined for my daughter,” he said, “and because I suck as a civilian.” Twenty minutes passed before
Carter spotted Mace, who had crawled out from his hiding spot on his elbows. “Help me, please,” the wounded soldier mouthed. “Stay there,” Carter screamed.
“I’ll get to you when I can.” Over the radio, Brown was pressing Bundermann to deter- mine how many of his troops were missing. “We don’t know,” the lieutenant initially replied. A few minutes later, Bundermann reported that the unit was unsure of the whereabouts of nine sol- diers. “You need to get accountability for your men,” Brown told him. At the Humvee, Carter had per- suaded Larson to let him retrieve Mace. The attack helicopters had arrived and a blast from one of their guns gave Carter cover to sprint to the downed soldier. He tied a tourniquet around Mace’s leg, giving it two hard cranks, and stuffed gauze into his shrapnel wounds. He taped a pad over his stomach wound and splinted his fractured leg with a tree branch. With Mace clinging to his neck,
Carter sprinted back to the Hum- vee. Mace’s face was white and his lips were purple. The soldiers worried they were the only Amer- icans still alive in the valley. Carter volunteered to push back toward the outpost’s head- quarters to try to find anyone else who was still alive. About 20 yards from the Humvee, he spot- ted a radio on the ground and ran it back to Larson in the Humvee. They could hear Bundermann or- ganizing a counterattack to take back the outpost. “Can you get Mace . . . back to the aid station?” Bundermann said. Mace gripped the stretcher with both hands and groaned in
Original
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Humvee
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About 5 troops U.S. soldier killed
Building destroyed by fire
GENE THORP/THE WASHINGTON POST
pain as Carter and Larson ferried him to safety.
Battlefield transfusions
Capt. Christopher Cordova, the senior physician’s assistant in the Keating aid station, began search- ing Mace for signs of life. His fem- oral pulse was weak. There was no pulse in his wrist. Cordova had never seen a blood transfusion carried out in a field aid station in two years of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was reluctant to experiment on Mace.
“I didn’t want to cause more
harm,” Cordova recalled. “At the same time, I didn’t want to sit there and watch him die.” As Mace’s heartbeat grew
weaker and his skin paler, Cordo- va and two of his medics each do- nated a bag of A-positive blood, Mace’s type, which Cordova be- gan to pump slowly into one of Mace’s veins. He opened his eyes and asked for a cigarette and some morphine to kill the pain. “You’re not a real man anymore now that you’ve got Floyd’s blood in you,” said Cordova, referring to one of the medics. Mace chuckled faintly. The aid station floor was cov- ered with blood from three of the previous casualties. Body armor and Kevlar helmets, with bits of skull and brain matter, littered the floor. Grenade blasts had knocked most of the pictures off
on
washingtonpost.com
Combat Outpost Keating
Naray
Naray
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KLMNO
SUNDAY, MAY 16, 2010
‘Stop shooting at my soldiers and support government’
the wall. Over the next four hours, Cor-
dova pumped three more bags of blood into Mace. At 8:07 p.m. — about 13 hours after Mace was in- jured — the first medical evacua- tion helicopter touched down at Keating. Cordova and his medics had wrapped Mace in blankets for the trip and pulled a small cap over his head. He hooked up one last bag of blood, from Bunder- mann, to Mace’s arm. “Mace, you’ve made it man,”
Cordova told him when he heard the thump of the rotors. Mace nodded his head and grinned. Just minutes after Mace de-
parted, Brown arrived at the out- post. Night had fallen and from the helicopter he saw the smol- dering embers of Keating’s bar- racks, chow hall and command post.
Brown told Bundermann that
he’d done a good job holding off the attackers. He also asked about Mace. Throughout eastern Af- ghanistan, staff officers had fol- lowed his progress via radio re- ports from the outpost. “It was the one good thing that happened on an awful day,” Cor- dova said.
Around 1 a.m. word began to
filter through Keating that Mace had died on the operating table. Cordova learned the news from the outpost’s first sergeant. “Be- fore he even said a word, I knew it was not good,” Cordova said. Cordova couldn’t bear to tell his fellow medics. He retreated to a closet in the aid station where he could be alone.
Abandoning Keating
The next morning, Afghan vil-
lagers approached Keating’s main gate and asked for permission to collect their dead from the base and a nearby village. Brown gave the Afghans some body bags and told them to stay off the high ground where the U.S. forces were still dropping bombs to take out snipers. The next two days were spent packing up equipment and rig- ging the outpost’s remaining buildings with explosives. After nightfall on Oct. 6, a half dozen Chinook helicopters flew into Keating and hauled away the troops. Brown climbed on the last bird. As he was leaving, engineers triggered the delayed fuses on the explosives. Forty minutes later Keating was in flames. A B-1 bomber finished the job the next day.
Brown typed up an e-mail cata- loguing mistakes he made in fail- ing to build up the outpost’s de- fenses in the months before the planned withdrawal. He sent it to his boss, his fellow battalion com- manders and the two-star general assigned to conduct an investiga- tion of the attack. The letter of reprimand the general wrote to Brown closely tracked the e-mail. A short time later, Brown at- tended the memorial service for his eight dead soldiers. “These men faced their fears and fought for their brothers. In a desperate few hours, they did their best and gave everything,” he said, his dirty, green patrol cap pulled low on his forehead. “It is fitting we mourn what was lost. But I ask every person here to remember and celebrate what was saved by their sacrifice. Sitting among us are soldiers who will once again see their families, love their chil- dren and tell their grandchildren what it means to know a hero.” He returned to his seat and forced a smile as his troops, chok- ing back tears, recounted early- morning training runs and late- night bar crawls with friends who were now dead. Alone in his office a few weeks
after the attack Brown re-read the letter he had sent to Sadiq in Sep- tember. It made him cringe. “I was playing to his ego. But reading it over, it sounds like I was kissing his ass from a posi- tion of weakness,” Brown said months later. He paused and ex- haled. “We certainly weren’t oper- ating from a position of strength.”
jaffeg@washpost.com
Kabul Kabul
Kabulabul
JalalabadJalalabad
Mardan
Mardan
A decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq has forced battlefield commanders to accept that victory in today’s wars is less a matter
of destroying enemies than of knowing how and when to make them allies. To learn more, go to
washingtonpost.com/world.
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