Ashley's War Read online

  Dedication

  To all the unsung warriors. That you may never be forgotten.

  To Rhoda Spielman Tzemach and Frances Spielman.

  And to JL, who believed from the start.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Acronyms

  Preface: Kandahar

  I: The Call to Serve 1. Uncle Sam Needs You

  2. Hearing the Call to Serve

  3. The Landmark Inn

  4. 100 Hours of Hell

  5. Making the Cut

  6. Training Days

  7. Diamonds Among Diamonds

  II: Deployment 8. Arrival, Afghanistan

  9. Operation “Fit In”

  10. The “Terp”

  11. Climbing Mountains in the Night

  12. Making a Difference

  13. The Lies of War

  III: Last Roll Call 14. The First Death

  15. A Grief Observed

  16. The Man in the Arena

  17. Kandahar

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Select Bibliography

  How to Get Involved with Veterans’ Issues

  About the Author

  Also by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  This book is the product of twenty months of travel, hundreds of hours of interviews conducted in a dozen states across America, a review of primary research and documents, and an illuminating set of conversations with some of America’s most seasoned military leaders.

  It also has been a puzzle to assemble, a privilege to tell, and a humbling responsibility to bring to life.

  What follows is a ground-level view of the women who answered the call to serve with Special Operations Forces, soldiers who raised their hands right away when they heard of the chance to volunteer with the best in battle. Readers seeking to learn more about military tactics, decision making, and the formulation of military strategy will find several suggestions in the select bibliography that follows these pages.

  Most names have been changed to protect those involved and those still connected to the special operations community. Some details have been omitted for the sake of security.

  I had the privilege of meeting many men and women not mentioned in these pages. Each one had a story worth telling.

  The soldiers who spoke with me shared their war stories not because they wish to be known—they do not—but because they want their friend and teammate to be remembered.

  The stories are theirs. Any errors are mine.

  At a time when the divide between those who volunteer to fight America’s wars and those who never served is wide and growing, it is more important than ever to know who these soldiers are and why they sign up to fight for the sake of the rest of us.

  Whatever any of these soldiers do in the future, this past year has convinced me that nothing, ever, will come close to the year they spent serving on the battlefield alongside the men of America’s Special Operations Forces.

  And no passage of years will lessen their sense of belonging to CST-2.

  Acronyms

  DFAC Dining facility

  JOC Joint Operations Center

  JSOC Joint Special Operations Command, based in Fayetteville, North Carolina

  KAF Kandahar Airfield

  MP Military Police

  MREs Meals, Ready to Eat

  SF Special Forces: the Green Berets

  SOCOM Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Florida

  SOF Special Operations Forces, this includes Delta Force, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, 75th Ranger Regiment, Air Force Special Operations Command, Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command

  TOC Tactical Operations Center

  XO Executive officer, the second in command in certain military units

  Preface: Kandahar

  Second Lieutenant White entered the “ready room” and began preparing for the night of battle.

  Kandahar, August 2011, 2200 hours: a narrow room just off a main hallway, lined with plywood shelves and plastic drawers stuffed with rolls of Velcro, electrical cables, and heavy-duty packing tape. The smell of gun oil clung to the air. White had written down the long list of gear, and now calmly grabbed items the mission required:

  Helmet and night vision goggles. Check.

  Headset for communicating with platoon leader. Check.

  M4 rifle. Check.

  M9 pistol. Check.

  Ammunition for both. Check, check.

  Eye protection to keep dust and dirt from causing sudden blindness. Check.

  Notecards and pens to document everything that was said and found. Check.

  Clif Bars in case the mission went long. Check.

  Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls for village kids. Check.

  Tourniquets to stop the bleeding of a fellow soldier. Check.

  Medical gloves.

  Zip ties.

  Water.

  Check. Check. Check.

  White felt the fear rising, but more seasoned soldiers had provided plenty of advice for the special brand of trepidation that accompanies a soldier on their first night mission. “It gets easier after the first time,” they assured the newbies during training. “Don’t indulge it, just pass through it.”

  Ready now, White stepped into the briefing room and took in the scene. Dozens of battle-hardened men from one of the Army’s fittest and finest teams, the elite special operations 75th Ranger Regiment, crowded in to watch a PowerPoint presentation in a large conference room. Many had Purple Hearts and deployments that reached into the double digits. Around them was the staff that supports soldiers in the field with intelligence, communications, and explosives disposal capabilities. Everyone was studying a diagram of the target compound as the commanders ticked through the mission plan in their own vernacular, a mix of Army shorthand and abbreviations that, to the uninitiated, sounded like a foreign language. But every person in the room knew precisely where they needed to be, what their role was, and how they would help accomplish the night’s mission.

  White had the feeling of being in a Hollywood war movie. Standing nearby was a noncommissioned officer (NCO) and Iraq War veteran whom the second lieutenant had trained with.

  “Are we supposed to say something?” White asked

  Staff Sergeant Mason, also out for the first time, scooted closer and whispered back. Neither new arrival wanted to stand out any more than they already did.

  “No, I don’t think so, not tonight. The last group will speak for us.”

  That was a relief. White had no desire to draw attention in a room filled with soldiers who clearly felt at home in combat. Like a cast of actors who had performed the same play for a decade, they knew each other’s lines and moves, and offstage they knew each other’s backstories. It was an unexpected revelation for White, gleaned during a fifteen-minute mission review in a makeshift conference room in the middle of one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces: this was a family unit. A brotherhood.

  The briefing ended, the commanding officer approached the front of the room and the soldiers suddenly shouted as one:

  “Rangers Lead the Way!”

  They saluted in a finely choreographed sweep and filed out.

  The rookie second lieutenant did the same, hoping the gesture didn’t look too awkward for a first-timer, then followed the others, trailed by Sergeant Mason. They stepped into their office—a broom closet, actually—and exhaled for the first time.

  “Whew,” White allowed.

  “That shit is serious,” Mason said. “This is the real deal.”

  Then, without another word, they began a systems check, test
ing the frequency of their radios to make sure they operated properly. This would be their lifeline while on mission. They triple-checked their night-vision goggles, which clipped onto the top of their helmets, and made sure they had batteries for all the electronics they carried: headsets, radios, and a red laser that allowed them to silently point things out to one another. By the time they exited the barracks each was carrying close to fifty pounds of gear.

  In one of the many Velcroed pockets of White’s uniform was information about the insurgent they were after and a list of crimes he was suspected of committing. In another pocket was a medal of St. Joseph and a prayer card. White stepped out of the barracks and worked to conceal any trace of the intense emotions this moment conjured up: pride in being part of a team hunting a terrorist who was killing American soldiers and his own countrymen; trepidation at the thought that after a short ride on the bird they would all end up in his living room. But it was exactly what White had wanted and trained for: to serve with fellow soldiers in this long war and do something that mattered.

  The fighters lined up by last name and marched into the yawning darkness of the Kandahar night. Unlike the American cities they came from, whose skies were often clouded by the pollution of industry, traffic, and the millions of lights that power a modern, twenty-four-hour-a-day society, Kandahar’s blackness stretched on forever with constellations you only read about at home. The sky was glorious, and for just an instant White slowed and wondered at the sparkling celestial recital that was on display up above. But then a powerful stench yanked the young officer back into the moment. As heavenly as the skies were, just so earthly was the smell of human excrement that hovered over and seemed to surround the Kandahar camp. In a city whose sewage system had been all but destroyed by war, the smell of feces attacked with ferocity anytime a soldier was downwind.

  But White was focused on something even more mundane: staying upright while marching along the unpaved, rock-strewn tarmac for the first time in total darkness. “Focus on the next step,” White silently commanded. “No mistakes. Do your job. Don’t mess up.”

  Here and there came the sound of fellow soldiers ribbing one another, swapping jokes and gallows humor. But White also detected, in the orange ember of one Ranger’s dying cigarette, hints of the stress they all shared. They wore their exhaustion well, but it was there.

  White and Mason fell in alongside their fellow special operations “enablers,” a group that included the explosive ordnance disposal guys who became famous in the Hollywood blockbuster The Hurt Locker. (Even if all the guys didn’t love the movie, every one of them could appreciate the scene at the end in the grocery store where a soldier who has just returned stateside scans the cereal aisle in all its overfed glory and wonders why any country needs so many choices.) Close behind was their interpreter, an Afghan-American now entering year four in Afghanistan. Language expertise notwithstanding, the interpreter’s gear looked like it came from the Eisenhower era. They all guessed some soldier had worn that helmet back in Vietnam; it barely held the clips for night-vision goggles and was seriously dinged.

  Entering the cramped helicopter, White and Mason were determined not to make a beginner mistake by taking the wrong seat, so they fell in behind a first sergeant, who had taken the new arrivals under his wing. After he sat, they followed his example, snapping a bungee cord that hung from a metal hook on their belt into hooks beneath a narrow metal bench. In theory, these cords would keep them from flying across—or out of—the helicopter while it was airborne. The soldiers took root, and with a sudden whirr the bird was off. The only thing Lieutenant White could see through the green haze of the night-vision goggles was a flash from the helicopter’s lights as it left the ground.

  Here we go, White thought. Outwardly the picture of calm, inside the young officer felt a rush of adrenaline and fear. Everything—the selection process, the training, the deployment—had happened so quickly. Now, suddenly, it was real. For the next nine months this is what every night would look like.

  But enough nightdreaming.

  Focus, White commanded. Get back to the work at hand. What is the protocol for next steps?

  Brace for landing.

  Unhook.

  Evacuate the bird.

  Run like hell.

  Take a knee.

  Over the booming engine noise the first sergeant barked out the time stamp in hand signals.

  “Six minutes.”

  “Three minutes.”

  White turned to Mason and gave the thumbs-up with a smile that was full of unfelt confidence.

  “One minute.”

  Showtime.

  The bird landed and the door flew open, like the maw of some huge, wild reptile that had descended from the sky. White followed the others and ran a short distance before taking a knee, managing to avoid the worst of the brownout, that swirling mix of dust, stones, and God-only-knows what else that flies upward in the wake of a departing helicopter.

  Choking on a batter of dirt and mud, White mumbled inaudibly, Welcome to Afghanistan, before rising up to adjust the awkward night-vision goggles that now provided the only lens to the outside world. With barely a word exchanged, the Rangers fell in line and began marching toward the target compound.

  The ground crunched beneath their feet as they pressed forward through vineyards and wadis, southern Afghanistan’s ubiquitous ditches and dry riverbeds. They marched quickly, and even though the night goggles made depth perception a nearly impossible challenge White managed not to trip over the many vines that snaked along and across the rutted landscape. No one made a sound. Even a muffled cough could ricochet across the silence and bring unwanted noise into the operation. Every soldier on target knows that surprise is the key to staying alive. And silence is the key to surprise.

  Fifteen minutes on they reached their objective, though to White it felt like only a minute had passed. An interpreter’s voice could be heard addressing the men of the house in Pashto, urging them to come outside. A few minutes later the American and Afghan soldiers entered the compound to search for the insurgent and any explosives or weapons he might have hidden inside.

  And then Second Lieutenant Ashley White heard the summons that had led her from the warmth of her North Carolina home to one of the world’s most remote—and dangerous—pockets.

  “CST, get up here,” called a voice on the radio.

  The Rangers were ready for White and her team to get to work.

  The trio of female soldiers—White, Mason, and their civilian interpreter, Nadia—strode toward the compound that was bathed in the green haze of their goggles. It was dead in the middle of the night, but for White, the day was just beginning.

  Her war story had just begun. It was time for the women to go to work.

  I

  The Call to Serve

  1

  Uncle Sam Needs You

  * * *

  Two years before Ashley White ran off the helicopter in Kandahar, Afghanistan, U.S. Special Operations Commander Eric Olson had an idea.

  Working from a second-floor office in the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, Admiral Olson had spent years studying the ever-changing battlefield in what had become the longest war in American history. Twenty-first-century technology, advanced weaponry, and instant communications radically altered the modern battleground, offering fighters more real-time information than ever before. But specific pockets of what Olson called “micro-knowledge”—meaningful, detailed intelligence about a region’s people, culture, language, and social mores—remained out of reach to American forces. He wanted to change that.

  Olson was a groundbreaker in his own right. The first Navy SEAL to be appointed a three-star, then a four-star admiral, he was also the first Navy officer to lead the Special Operations Command. It was a position widely considered to be among the most important—and least-known—jobs in America’s fight against terrorism.

  SOCOM’s cre
ation in 1987 ended a bruising Washington brawl that pitted special ops supporters in Congress and the special operations community against senior military and civilian Pentagon leaders. The military leadership viewed the command as a needless drain of resources from America’s armed forces, of which special ops formed just a very small part, less than 5 percent of America’s military men and women. As a distinct culture that favors small units over large forces and independent problem solving over the formal, traditional military hierarchy, they were viewed with deep suspicion by much of the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force. America’s first special operations teams were created in World War II for missions that rely on the kind of nimble, secret, surgical actions for which large-scale, conventional forces are ill-suited. Their portfolio was always intended to be utterly different from that of traditional ground forces. In his 1962 speech to West Point’s graduates, President John F. Kennedy reflected on the new geopolitical landscape that gave rise to special operations forces:

  This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origins—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of combat; by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It requires—in those situations where we must encounter it—a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore, a new and wholly different kind of military training.

  Over the years, special ops forces were subject to boom-and-bust cycles as conflicts escalated and ended. They played a heroic and prominent role in World War II, when special operations teams parachuted into German strongholds, scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy to destroy enemy gun positions, and dropped behind enemy lines to liberate American prisoners of war from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. In Korea special ops units ran raids and ambushes, but soon afterward saw their budgets and their numbers shrink. They once again bulked up to join the fight in Vietnam, running small-unit reconnaissance missions far behind enemy lines and working with and training local South Vietnamese fighters, but by the late 1970s, the force had again been whittled down to near extinction. In the era of Cold War confrontations, their style of fighting was seen as a mismatch against the Soviets, who were rapidly building up conventional forces.