MONDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2010


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A7 COMBAT GENERATION: ELUSIVE VICTORY A battle and a question: ‘Why are we still here?’ victory from A1


was a huge price,” said Maj. Gen. John F. Campbell, the senior com- mander for eastern Afghanistan. “What they did was very impor- tant.Thiswasasignificantdisrup- tionof the enemy’snetwork.” For Ryan’s soldiers, the out-


comewasn’tnearly as clear. In today’s wars in Afghanistan


and Iraq, victory is oftenamoving target. When U.S. troops surged into Iraq in 2007 after several years ofmissteps, U.S. command- ersdefinedwinningprimarily as a reduction in the sectarian killings that had brought the country to the brink of civilwar. In some parts of Afghanistan,


troops are fighting to build a gov- ernmentandAfghansecurityforc- es in themidst of an effective and deadlyinsurgency. Inotherplaces, like thePechValley,where there is little history of governance and a deep suspicion of outsiders, U.S. goalshavebeenscaledback.These troops are fighting so that Afghan officials can figure out a way to coexistwith a committed and ide- ological resistance. In the days after their battle in


themountains, someofRyan’s sol- diers questioned whether their commander—asteadyofficer car- rying out a thankless mission — had asked too much of them in pursuit of a fleeting victory. A few young soldiers struggled with a sense of betrayal.


Letters to loved ones “I reallywish Iwas never put in


a position where I had to write a letter like this,” 1st Lt. David Broyles wrote in a small leather- bound notebook hiswife had sent him. Itwas theeveningofNov. 11and


in a few hours Broyles’s platoon was going to board a Chinook helicopter bound for the village of Tsangar. Broyles’s platoon was based at Combat Outpost Hon- aker-Miracle, one of four Ameri- canbases inthePechValley. Tsangar sat in the mountains,


less than three miles north of Broyles’s outpost. The 31-year-old lieutenant was writing letters in casehedidn’tmake it back alive. He wrote first to his wife: “I


expect you to be happy.Whatever makes youhappy—gowithit.”He instructed his 4-year-old son to listen to his mother: “Everything she does is for you and your best interests.” Afew hours later Broyles spoke


tohis platoon: “We are going to go up there and take care of each other,”he said. “That is going tobe ournumber onepriority.” Broyles’s 40-soldier platoon —


one of three tapped to clear Tsan- gar — landed in the high ground surrounding the village inthepre- dawn hours of Nov. 12. This ac- count was assembled from sol- diers’ descriptions of the fighting andfrommilitary logs. The soldiers had just begun


moving into Tsangar when insur- gents struck with a blast of ma- chine-gun, mortar and rocket- propelled-grenade fire. The worst of the barrage was aimed at his sister platoon several hundred yards away. A 25-year-old Army medic was


killed while treating a wounded colleague. Two Afghan soldiers were blown to pieces by rocket- propelledgrenades. The insurgents then fled to a


cluster of villages higher in the mountains.Ryan,whowas follow- ing the battle on the radio from one of the American outposts in the valley, abandoned his plans to have his soldiers continue down themountainonfoot. He brought inmore troops and


ordered his Alpha Company, which included Broyles’s platoon, to reloadandclimb themountain. Ryanwanted his troops to pursue andkill the enemy.


Comrades and tattoos Before they could move,


Broyles’s soldiers waited for heli- copters to pull out the dead from the day’s fighting and ferry in ex- tra ammunition, foodandwater. Spec. Cory Petrosky, the pla-


toon’s primary radio operator, found a spot to rest about 10 yards fromthe three black bags holding the bodies of the medic and the Afghan soldiers. Petrosky, 19, had been through plenty of hit-and- run attacks in the PechValley. The fighters in the mountains were more numerous,more deadly and moredetermined. Petrosky was typically at


Broyles’s side. Despite different backgrounds, the twohadbecome friends. Broyles had graduated from


Ohio State University and then spent four years as an enlisted soldierbeforebecominganofficer. Hewas lanky, earnest andeager to connect with the Afghans. He struggled tomake small talk with


Troops play cricket with Afghan children while on patrol in the valley. SeniorU.S. officials still have not reached a final decision to leave the valley, though a significant reduction inU.S. forces seems likely.


the elders in the valley even after his interpreters had stopped translating, pressing ahead in English with compliments about the tea andhospitality. Petrosky, who has spiky brown


hair and sleepy eyes, said he dropped out of high school and enlisted at age 17 after police showedupathismother’soffice in a Dallas suburb with pictures of himsellingdrugs. A few weeks before he de-


ployed, Petrosky got the names of eightofhisfellowsoldiersfromhis platoon tattooed on his left fore- arm. “They are the ones who helpedmementally,”he said. Both Petrosky and Broyles had


the same thought when they looked at what was left of their sister platoon,which had suffered 10 wounded and one dead. “You can’thelpbut thinkthat isgoingto beus tomorrow,”Broyles said. Shortly before sunrise, the sol-


diers used thermite grenades to melt down the bloody body armor of the dead and injured. The ar- mor was too heavy to carry and they didn’twant the enemy to use it. Then they headed toward the village of Qatar Darrayea, a treacherous 1.5-mile uphill hike fromTsangar. On Nov. 13, the second day of


the mission, insurgents swarmed the platoon. As bullets snapped over Broyles’s head, he spotted a Taliban fighter about 50 yards away carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was the first time he had actually seen the face of one of the fighters trying to kill him.He fired his rifle at the insur- gent and was certain he had hit him. But after the battle Broyles and


his troops could find no body or bloodtrail. That evening helicopters ar-


rivedagainwithammunition.Air- borne medical evacuation crews pulledout theAmericanwounded andonedeadAfghan. On the morning of their third


day in the mountains, Broyles’s soldiers discovered a building full of combat medical supplies and Taliban weapons. Broyles’s pla- toon, dirty, filthy and tired, took cover in buildings that the Af- ghans used to keep their animals.


Goat andchickenmanure covered the floor. In the distance they could hear Air Force bombs level- ing the building that held the weapons cache and medical sup- plies. Pfc. Christian Warriner, 19, of


Mills River, N.C., sat just outside the building onguardduty. “After all the [expletive] I have


survived I’ll be pissed if I die to- day,” he drawled, according to Spec. David Jones, the platoon medic. “If you are dead you won’t be


pissed,” Jones said. “You’ll be [ex- pletive]dead.” A few hours later, as many as


150Talibanfighters struck back at theAmericans.Warrinerwas shot in the forehead. One of his fellow soldiers stuffed the wound with gauze andcalledforhelp. The fighting was too heavy to


bring in medical evacuation heli- copters, so Jones, the medic, pulled Warriner into the stone building and tried to stanch the bleeding fromhishead. His fellow soldiers took turns


holdingWarriner’s hand and talk- ing tohimabouthiswife, Shelby. “Youarenot justhereforus,”his


best friendintheplatoontoldhim. “You have Shelbywaiting at home for you.Youpromisedher that you wouldbe there forher.” After about 45 minutes,Warri-


ner died. On the radio, Petrosky and Broyles heard reports that their sister platoon had suffered four more dead. In three days of fighting, six Americans and three Afghansoldiershadbeenkilled. Night fell and Petrosky helped


carryWarriner’s body to the hov- eringhelicopters. “We’ll take good care of your friend,” one of the airmen from the medical evacua- tioncrewyelledover the soundsof the rotors. “Why the [expletive] are you


saying that?” Petrosky recalled thinking. “He’sdead.” Later that evening Petrosky


huddled under a blanketwith Pfc. Dustin Riedemann, who had stuffed gauze into Warriner’s wound. Riedemann kept talking about the look in Warriner’s eyes after he was shot. All Petrosky could think about was getting back to his outpost and his bunk,


which he had decorated with pic- tures of his girlfriend and theDal- las Starshockey team. He was angry at the Afghan


soldiers who had left most of the fighting on the mountain to the Americans, and he was furious at his commanders. No matter how manyTaliban his platoon killed, it wasn’t worth the life of any more of his friends. “Why are we still here?” he recalled saying. “We should have been off this moun- taintwodays ago.” Broyles and Capt. Bo Reynolds,


the seniorAmericanofficer onthe mountain, sat together in the building where Warriner had died. Broyles, like Petrosky, was furi-


ous and doubted that his men could keep fighting. “I felt like battalion wasn’t listening to us and didn’t understand what was happening to our guys physically andmentally,” Broyles said. “I felt ignoredandneglected.” Ryan, the battalion command-


er, sensed the U.S. troops were on the verge of victory. No helicopters were flying in


freshammunition, foodandwater to the Taliban fighters.His intelli- gence officer was reporting that the enemy had fled to Gambir, about one mile north of Broyles’s position. Beyond the tiny village there were onlymoremountains. TheTalibanhadnoplace to go. “We have got to go to Gambir,”


Ryantoldhisbrigadecommander. An elite force of Army Rangers,


backed by fearsome Spectre gun- ships, flewintoGambironNov. 15. About 100 Afghan commandos and U.S. Special Forces soldiers were dispatched to clear another cluster ofnearby villages. Broyles’s platoon continued to


press on toQatarDarrayea,which wasempty.Thesoldiers tookcover inasmallhouseinwhichsomeone had drawn a picture of an AK-47 riflefiringatanAmericanhelicop- ter on thewall in crayon. They fell asleep to the sound of AC-130 air- craft searching for Taliban fight- ers inGambir. Noone shotatBroyles’splatoon


for thenext twodays. After he returned to Combat


OutpostHonaker-Miracle, his an- ger faded.The attack inthemoun-


Staff Sgt. David Radzik, Staff Sgt. Jerod Burghardt and Capt. Scott Burch sit by a fire at Combat OutpostHonaker-Miracle, one of four U.S. bases in the valley, where there is little history of governance.


tainshadweakened the enemy,he concluded, and would make his platoon’s last five months in the valley safer. “No one decided that the lives of six guys are worth the lives of 60Taliban,”he said.


‘It callouses you’ Afewdaysafter thebattle,Ryan


called his wife to see how the families at Fort Campbell, Ky., werehandling thedeaths. His wife’s biggest concern was


that her husband would have no one to talk to about the emotional toll of the losses. Ryan told her he was fine. “I’ve been doing this for nine years. People assume that it wears you down,” he said of the battlefield deaths. “Really it cal- louses you.” Ryanhadbeenselectedtoleada


battalion in the Army’s Ranger Regiment after his Afghan tour, a signthat theArmyconsideredhim one of its best battlefield com- manders. He was proud of his soldiers’ resilience and the heavy losses they inflicted on the enemy. He also was quietly comfortable withhis decisionto press the fight inthemountains. On Nov. 21, Ryan’s troops gath-


ered atCombatOutpostHonaker- Miracle for a memorial service to honor the sixdeadfromthebattle. It was a warm, sunny afternoon. Apache helicopters circled over the outpost, scanning the ridge- lines for the enemy. A few minutes before the cere-


mony began, Campbell, the 101st Airborne Division commander and the commanding general for easternAfghanistan, flew into the base.HemotionedtoRyanandthe other soldiers who were speaking at the service to forma tight knot aroundhim. Campbell pulled out two stacks


of cards, each bearing the name, photo and hometown of a soldier killed under his command in Af- ghanistan. Therewere 88 fromthe 101st Airborne Division, each card numbered neatly in pen. Another stackof44cardsmemorializedsol- dierswhohadattachedtohisunit. “I carry these because I don’t


want to forget that there is a hu- mancost,”Campbell said. Ryan watched as the general


struggled to fit the cards into a smallplasticbag.Hecouldn’tget it to snap shut, and the two stacks spilledout of the top. The memorial ceremony was


dominated by the soldiers’ remem- brances of their friends. For these soldiers—mostofwhomareintheir


early 20s — victory in the valley is almost impossibletodiscern. “Alot of people ask,whatwas it


all for?” said Pfc. Dustin Wade, whohadheldWarriner inhisarms ashedied. “It’s aneasy answer.He did it for us. He did it for his platoon.Hedidit so all ofus could eventually make it back home to our families andfriends.” After the speeches the troops


filed up to a battlefield memorial that consisted of their deceased friends’ boots, helmets, rifles and dog tags. Large, framed photo- graphs of the dead rested on ea- sels. One of the soldiers placed a


snapshot takenatWarriner’swed- ding by his empty boots.Warriner had carried the picture in hiswal- let, and the sweat from his body hadcausedit to fray andtear. The U.S. Army established its


first foothold in the Pech Valley in 2006. InkeepingwithU.S.counter- insurgency doctrine, the soldiers fought to keep the enemy back so that they could build roads, open schoolsandextendthe reachof the Afghangovernment. Tens ofmillions of dollarswere


spent to pave the main road through the Pech Valley. Close to 100 American soldierswere killed inthe area.Ryanhadlost 15. Campbell’s new strategy for


eastern Afghanistan focused lim- ited American resources on those areas where governance, police and economic development ef- forts have shown promise in re- cent years. The Pech Valley wasn’t one of


thoseplaces.EventheAfghangov- ernment’s commitment to the val- ley seemed shaky. The policewere so poorly equipped that they begged the Americans for blan- kets. The Afghan army refused to patrolwithout theAmericans. Senior U.S. officials still have


not reached a final decision to leave the valley, though a signifi- cant reduction in U.S. forces seems likely. Ryan envisioned two possible


outcomes following aU.S.pullout. In the best-case scenario, army and police forceswould be able to hold off the recently bloodied in- surgents, retain their bases and figure out how to meld into the insular andtribal valley society. In the worst-case scenario, the Af- ghan forces would collapse, he said. “Icameinlookingforacounter-


insurgency victory,” Ryan said. “Buthere, there isno suchthing.” jaffeg@washpost.com


PHOTOS BY ANDREA BRUCE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division patrol the mountains above the PechValley, near where they had endured a six-day gun battle against insurgents a fewweeks before.


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