My cover story

A few things.

1) Don’t say anything bad about my article or I will cry. Honestly, this may be the first article I have written that I am truly proud of. The picture of a picture of the cover here sucks, but I will get a better JPEG to share with you later.

2) If you are not a member of The American Legion, shame on you. Join now and you can get this magazine. And I will autograph it for free. Which should increase the value by exactly -$2.50. Seriously, the best place in the world to work, and they don’t just pay my salary, they work nonstop for you guys. Yes, I get the complaints about us from time to time, but just trust me, I’ve seen all that we do, and you should belong.

3) Without this blog, this never would have happened. Headhuntersix is the one that invited me, Parachute Cutie is the one who got me the Embed with 3-66, and Jonn is the one who constantly ridiculed and belittled me until I went.

4) Aside from HH6 and Parachute Cutie, I have to thank everyone from Able company. I only spent 2 weeks with them, but I felt like crying when I left. (Ditto the men and women of the 3rd ESC, who are also huge in the article, but I had to edit for this snippet.) Every guy mentioned in this article is mentioned specifically because they touched me in some way. I’ve had some great PSGs in my day (SFC Cunningham and Matthews in particular) but from top to bottom I’ve never seen a unit as good as Able Company. CPT Stewart is the shit, just an absolute man all around. (And single ladies! That’s him with the orange shades) And 1SG Jarvis may be the most entertaining man I ever listened to nonstop for hours. Part of that is not getting a word in edgewise, but he seriously can hold forth like no one I ever met. Thanks also specifically to SFC Spoors who gave me the Red Platoon “Reapers” tab that meant the world to me. It’ll stay on my computer bag until the bag falls apart.

5) Lastly, for the first time ever, someone edited my stuff and I thought it came out better. I can be territorial about my writing (a bad thing) but my editors TOTALLY squared me away on this one.

Anyway, a sneak preview. Again, join The Legion if you want the actual copy.

Capt. Michael Stewart, commander of Able Company, 3rd Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, 172nd Infantry Brigade leads his men during Operation Iron Mountain Goat II out of Combat Outpost (COP) Bad Pakh, Laghman Province, Afghanistan. Picture by 1SG Philip Stephen Jarvis

Three high-pitched pings rouse me from semiconsciousness. I’m in the back of a MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicle, having just pulled into a patrol base on the outskirts of Nani, a village about 15 kilometers south of Forward Operating Base Ghazni.

“What the hell was that?”

Nineteen-year-old Spc. Brandyn Lachance-Guyette of Vermont calmly replies to my startled question, craning his head to look through the window of the MRAP. “Sounded like machine-gun fire striking the rear of the vehicle.”
Spc. Thomas McIntire, a 20-year-old Californian, nods in agreement. His squadmates assess the situation through the window and try to determine the machine gun’s position. A cacophony of automatic-weapons fire suddenly erupts from the Afghan National Army (ANA) unit traveling with us. The enemy remains unseen. I want to dismount and survey the scene myself.

Now there is a lower register of fire, and I think about the sounds that can move people to tears. Operas and symphonies do this for some. Others will tell you that the first cry of their newborn child is the sound that means most to them. In my life, no sound will ever be so beautiful as that conducted by 22-year-old Spc. Jazz Nixon of Trenton, N.J., who on that warm morning in Afghanistan unleashed 15 rounds from his Mark 19 40-mm belt-fed automatic grenade launcher in the general direction of our adversaries. When he finished, there was silence from the enemy….

Among the Black Knights. Through a friend, I arranged to embed with another unit in Afghanistan that was taking the fight to the enemy even as the ESC was grappling with its task of shutting the war down. Able Company of the 3-66 Armor Battalion – the “Black Knights” – are attached to Task Force 1-2 of the 172nd Infantry Brigade.

Able Company is a composite unit: two platoons of armor, one of infantry and one of engineers. Because of the troop drawdown from Afghanistan, its full complement of 143 soldiers has been reduced to 83. Even before I make it out to Forward Operating Base Andar to meet Able Company 3-66 AR, a noncommissioned officer tells me how lucky I am to embed with that particular unit.

“Awesome unit, awesome leadership,” he says. “They love the CO (commanding officer), but they worship the first sergeant. Dude is a stud.”

I ask another NCO if this assessment is accurate. He smiles and says, “Well, that’s half right … we pretty much worship the CO, too.”

Something about these two leaders reminds me of the Bartles & Jaymes guys from the old TV commercials. First Sgt. Philip Jarvis, 38, of Atlanta, is an amiable man who could turn a simple question into a discourse on anything from his favorite TV show to how much he dislikes the monochromatic Afghan landscape. He is almost always congenial, but his voice has a harsh edge when he discusses the lengths to which he will go for his men.

“If I am going to retire as a first sergeant, so be it,” Jarvis says. “But I’m going to make sure my men are prepared for life in and out of the military when I leave. I owe them all I can give them.”

Able Company Commander Michael Stewart feels the same way, just not in so many words. In fact, he is a man of few words at all. Originally from Savannah, Tenn., the 33-year-old captain left Tennessee Tech to get his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Northern Alabama because “they had much better hunting and fishing down there.” Quick with a joke at the other’s expense, Stewart and Jarvis are quite close, and together they lead combat efforts out of FOB Andar, on the border of Ghazni and Paktika provinces. Stewart’s primary focus is simple: provide security to the local community, train the ANA to provide security when Able Company won’t be there to do so, and bring his men home safely.

“If you treat the locals respectfully by keeping the vehicles out of their farmlands, not staying too long in their qalats (walled compounds) and respecting their culture, they tend not to shoot at you as much,” he says.

Stewart and Able Company have had remarkable success. Last year, the Andar region had 136 significant acts of violence (IEDs, indirect and small-arms fire). This year, they’ve experienced only eight in the same amount of time.
A typical day for the men of Able Company includes mounted or dismounted patrols of the local villages. Because of the terrain, even small mounted movements can take a long time to reach their objectives, so most of the men prefer to walk where they are going. On one such patrol, I went out with the men of “Red Platoon,” led by Lt. Nick Hebblethwaite and Platoon Sgt. Sean Spoors of Jacksonville, Fla. We visited the nearby village of Sar Faraz Kala, with 17 ANA men in tow. The ANA would do the bulk of the searches.

Hebblethwaite and Spoors looked for a qalat that would provide sufficient fields of fire and visibility for the village. They moved their men into it, positioning many of them on rooftops. The lieutenant, platoon sergeant and interpreter – often accompanied by civil affairs personnel – then sat down with homeowners to talk over chai tea and “naan,” the flatbread that is a staple of the Afghan diet. The concerns of the locals follow a consistent pattern: the damage done to crops by the heavy vehicles, the schools closed by order of the Taliban, and the fear that the ANA cannot maintain the peace when the Americans pull out.
“I just want my children to be able to go to school,” one man tells the lieutenant through “Cletus,” our interpreter. “The Taliban have threatened all the schoolmasters, and now my children cannot learn.”

As we break fast and speak with this man, Staff Sgt. Bojared Horsey – the second squad leader – calls down from the roof to let us know that that the ANA is continuing its sweep through the village. Newly promoted Spc. David Sosa, later honored as the best fire support officer in the brigade, hands out bags of candy to the local children. He amuses and distracts them by trying to learn their language.
We move to two more qalats to provide security. The homeowners there confess the same fears and concerns about Afghanistan’s future.

The monotony is finally broken when Spc. Steve Mentzer of Michigan serenades the company executive officer, Capt. Alain Alexandre, with an on-the-spot ode with harmonica to the XO’s fine work this day. The men all chuckle, including Alexandre, a good-natured Bostonian. For a moment, fears expressed by the Afghans begin to fade.

Category: TSO Embedded in A'stan