Lethal Envoys |
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Story by
Bill Matthews; Photos Courtesy Company A
1-19th Special Forces - Posted Sep, 2003 |
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| It is no secret that special
operations forces from all branches of the US military have been
critical to the success of the Global War on Terrorism. The Army
Special Forces draw approximately 20% of their strength from the
Army National Guard. Recently, the men of Company A, 1-19th Special
Forces, headquartered in Buckley WA, were called upon to participate
in the largest special operations mission since World War II.
Part of his mission in downtown Kabul that afternoon was to buy light
bulbs and wall clocks for the barracks housing the Afghan army recruits
he was helping to organize and train. |
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Not exactly glamorous work for a soldier with a degree of specialized
training and almost 20 years experience in the Army, but Guard Special
Forces soldiers like Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Martin are expected to
excel at a wide range of assignments. When he arrived in Kabul in
mid-October 2002 fresh off 10 weeks of paramedic training at a Special
Operations Command school at St. Petersburg, Fla., for instance, Martin
taught basic military skills to a battalion of Afghan army trainees. |
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One of his chores was to
sign out stacks of U.S. dollars from the central task force
headquarters, then drive them through the crowded, lawless streets of
Kabul to the Afghani battalion commander so he could pay his troops.
For safety, U.S. troops were forbidden to travel alone in the city, so
Martin paired up that afternoon with Sgt. 1st Class Michael Lyons,
another member of the California Army Guard's A Company, 5th Battalion,
19th Special Forces (SF) Group. |
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With the pay task
completed, Martin and Lyons headed into downtown Kabul to do the
shopping. It was Dec. 17. Transportation was an old Russian-made
four-wheel drive jeep. Lyons was driving, Martin rode shotgun and an
interpreter crouched in the back. |
The jeep had slowed to a
crawl in streets clogged by traffic and pedestrians when the windshield
smashed and something landed in the space between Martin and Lyons. The
two soldiers glanced at each other and were moving to get out of the
jeep when the object exploded. It was a homemade grenade. "I
received shrapnel and burns all along my left side," said Martin, who in
civilian life is a Long Beach, Calif., police SWAT team member.
His right eardrum was shattered and bits of metal ripped into his arm,
leg and left eye. The blast broke bones in both feet and his left
leg. |
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Martin staggered out of
the jeep. Checking himself over quickly, he concluded that he still had
use of both hands and both feet. He called to Lyons, who was able
to respond, but said he couldn't walk. The blast had caught Lyons
along his right side, inflicting injuries that mirrored Martin's, except
that shrapnel had ripped through an artery in the back of his right leg.
"He was bleeding out pretty good," Martin said. "And there wasn't
going to be any police or fire department to whisk us to the nearest
hospital." |
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Martin ducked back inside
the Jeep to grab the M-4 rifles he and Lyons had been carrying.
Armed, he cased the street and began to assess his situation. "My
partner couldn't walk, and I could walk somewhat," Martin said. He knew
he had to get medical help for Lyons fast. There were two choices.
One was Kabul military hospital, "but I had no idea where that was."
The other was a German-run field hospital for International Security
Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan. It was about eight miles
away. |
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interpreter was bleeding from a head wound, but was still able to
function. They "commandeered a cab," Martin said, slid Lyons
into the back seat and drove to a walled compound nearby that had
once housed Kabul police. Now it was headquarters for German
ISAF troops. There they switched to a police minivan, and
with siren blaring and blue flashing lights, sped to the field
hospital.
Thus ended Sgt. Christopher Martin's tour as a National Guard SF
soldier in Afghanistan. But for hundreds of other Guardsmen
in SF units, the mission continues. |
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More SF troops - Guard and active duty - have been deployed in the past
two years than at any time in three decades, according to Marshall Billingslea, principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special
Operations and low-intensity conflict. |
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Of more than 700 Guard SF soldiers mobilized for
the war on terrorism, more than half have been sent to Afghanistan and
Iraq, according to the Army Special Forces Command.
They include troops from Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida,
Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia,
Washington and West Virginia. |
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So as Martin began his long journey home and an even longer passage
toward recovery, Maj. Andrew Franz was learning that his three-month-old
assignment in Kuwait was about to change. He was told to begin preparing
for war in Iraq. |
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In civilian life, Franz teaches military science at Seattle University. But last fall he headed to Kuwait instead of the classroom. And in
December, Franz was put in command of a SF liaison element made up of 23
members of the Washington Army Guard's A Company, 1st Battalion, 19th
Special Forces Group. |
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The liaison team's assignment was to enter Iraq with the Army's 3rd
Infantry Division, but then move out ahead of the invading American
division and link up with American SF teams that were already operating
secretly deep inside Iraq.
Their mission was to ensure that the advancing Army troops did not end
up in firefights with the U.S. SF teams already there. "We would deconflict the air space for close-air support and artillery support if
it was needed and exploit any intel gained by the Special Forces," Franz
said.
The first operation was to retrieve an SF team that had been conducting
reconnaissance at a bridge near Nasiriya about 100 miles inside Iraq.
"They had been there for two days," Franz said. "The idea was to
conduct a linkup at the bridge and then pass the 3rd ID through
them." But before the liaison element could reach the
reconnaissance team, "they ended up getting compromised on the
bridge," Franz said. The recon team had to beat a hasty
retreat. |
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"They conducted a running gun battle for several hours" and finally
eluded their Iraqi pursuers miles away in the desert, Franz said. Now,
instead of meeting at the bridge, the liaison team had to find the recon
team hiding somewhere on the vast dusty plain. |
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At that point, things weren't going altogether smoothly for the 3rd ID
either. The advancing Army forces began to receive reports of enemy
armor that wasn't supposed to be in the region. Their fear was that
somehow elements of the Iraqi Republican Guard had slipped undetected
into southern Iraq. |
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As he prepared to retrieve the reconnaissance team Franz asked the 3rd
ID for support. Normally, maneuver units would lend him some Abrams
tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles to beef up the liaison team, he said.
But now the liaison team was heading off into the desert instead of
toward the bridge, where the 3rd ID was going.
"We weren't moving in their desired direction," Franz said. And with
reports of Iraqi armor in the area, "the situation was looking pretty
tenuous." So the request for armor was denied. "The guy said, 'You're
crazy. We're not sending any of our guys out there to get killed.'" |
Franz waited until nightfall and his team set out across the sand in its
Humvees.
"Operating out ahead of everyone else was pretty scary," Franz said. But
the linkup went smoothly. "We were in contact through satellite radios. We got them in the dark." |
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The next linkup was at Samawa, about 60 miles farther upstream as you
follow the Euphrates River deeper into Iraq. It was basically a replay
of the first liaison mission - retrieve an SF reconnaissance team that
was gathering intelligence at a bridge.
This time the mission went off without a hitch. "It was just as we had
rehearsed it," Franz said.
And on they went, dashing ahead of the front to escort SF teams to
friendly territory all the way to the Karbala Gap, a strategic pass just
southwest of Baghdad. |
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Iraq provided "probably some of the harshest conditions I've ever been
in" in 11 years of SF service all over the world, Franz said. There was
sand and heat, rain and cold, "and they all degrade you differently but
significantly." Weapons had to be cleaned constantly; soldiers less
often.
"It's a tough environment to operate in," Franz said. "But on the flip
side, it's much easier for us to fight in those conditions than anyone
else." |
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"They're a different breed of soldier," said a Florida Guard captain who
accompanied Florida Guard Special Forces to Afghanistan. "When we got
there in January [2002] they were still knee-deep in combat operations."
The Florida contingent plunged into reconnaissance and unconventional
warfare operations. Trekking deep into the rugged Afghan mountains, they
would hide for days near the mud huts and caves used by Taliban
fighters, watching and gathering intelligence, the captain said.
And sometimes, "when the bad guys were in their hooch at night or in
their cave," the special operations soldiers would strike, obliterating
the enemy. "It's ugly warfare," but necessary and effective, said the
captain, who did not want to be identified. |
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While some National Guard SF teams like Franz's worked closely with
regular U.S. Army forces in Iraq, other Guard Special Forces soldiers
joined Shiite resistance forces to fight and seize control of several
Iraqi towns. |
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Carefully selected and intensely trained, SF troops are master
warfighters, but also skilled diplomats.
"It's better to talk your way out of a problem than shoot your way out,"
said Sgt. 1st Class Mark DeMartini of the A Company, 5th Battalion, 19th
Special Forces Group. "But if have to shoot your way out, you better
know how to do it." |
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Assigned, like Martin, to train recruits for the Afghan army, DeMartini
wound up in the Bamiyan region, which is famous for its two colossal
Buddha statues carved into a cliff. For more than 1,500 years, the
statues stood watch over a valley traversed by camel caravans, pilgrims
and other travelers. But in 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues.
Today it's a region of impoverished villages connected by roads that are
little more than earthen tracks, DeMartini said. |
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"The area we went into had not been visited before by Americans." As the
special forces soldiers and their Afghan allies advanced, the Taliban
"pretty much ran into the mountains," and the SF soldiers "brokered
peace" with most of the villagers, he said. "We were winning the hearts
and minds. It sounds like a cliche, but it's true. We came and we
provided medical care, we treated several thousand civilians and cattle,
we save a child's life, we built schools and wells. We got tremendous
support." |
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The war on terror is making particular use of the SF's "soldier
diplomat" training. As part of their training, they must learn the
languages of the regions they expect to operate in, and they are trained
to adapt to the local population, DeMartini said. As preparation for his
deployment, DeMartini said he read four books to better understand
Afghanistan and its culture. "The Afghan people generally like us. The
appreciate us being there - when we arrived, the killing stopped," he
said. |
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Even before the United States was officially at war in with the Taliban
and al-Qaeda, SF troops were in Afghanistan assisting the Northern
Alliance as it battled the Taliban, the captain from Florida said. Often
during that period, U.S. Special Forces wore civilian clothes and grew
beards to blend in better with the Afghanis, he said. Typically, they
wore khaki pants and long Afghan vests that hid their M-4 rifles. |
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In early 2002, as the war was winding down and rebuilding began,
DeMartini, Martin and scores of other National Guard SF soldiers were
deployed to begin standing up an Afghan national army.
"Our job was to take guys off the street and train them to be soldiers,"
Martin said. Not all of the recruits turned out to be eager volunteers,
however. In the early months, the attrition rate was as high as 40
percent.
But gradually the beginnings of a professional army emerged. This
summer, more than a year after training began, the Afghan force included
5,000 soldiers divided into 10 battalions - a fraction of the force of
70,000 considered necessary for Afghanistan's self defense, but a start. |
"Now you're seeing battalions trained by us that are out there doing
operations," Martin said proudly. In July, for example, elements of the
Afghan army conducted a combat sweep through a former Taliban stronghold
in the Zormat Valley in eastern Afghanistan.
By then, Martin and Lyons had been home in California for several
months. After spending a day at the German field hospital in Kabul, the
wounded pair was moved to military medical center at Baghram, where they
received Purple Hearts. Then they were evacuated to Landsthul, Germany,
and from there, Martin was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., for six weeks. |
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He returned to California in February to begin a long course of physical
reconditioning. On June 5, he and 37 other members of his unit were
awarded Bronze Stars. He hasn't returned to police work yet. "I can't
run, I still walk with a limp and I still have problems with my left
eye," he said. With a routine of physical therapy and fitness workouts,
Martin said he hopes to rejoin the police department and return to Guard
duty. |
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Franz and 82 other SF soldiers from Buckley, Wash., wrapped up their
tour in Iraq in late May and returned to Fort Lewis, Wash., where they
spent 30 days demobilizing.
"The company was very fortunate," Franz said summing up the nine-month
deployment. "There were no casualties and no injuries" - a remarkable
record considering that various members of A Company took part in
battles for Baghdad, Basra, the Karbala Gap, Kut and Najaf, Nasiriyah. |
DeMartini also returned home unscathed to and went back to work piloting
a skydiving plane. "Personally, I'm ready to go again if the country
calls us out," he said. But for the time being, at least, "I'm hoping
we're not called again soon." |
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