Alamo Part 3

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. – William Tecumseh Sherman

I took a minute to observe my surroundings and saw what the other Marines wore compared to Thumper and me. They were dressed for battle, not us. At one point, I looked to the back of the building and caught a glimpse of the Army PSY-OP (Psychological Operations) guys that lived below us, and they were dressed to impress: glasses, backward ball cap, gloves, and the works.

“They live below me. How the fuck did they get dressed that well so quickly?” – I thought.

I had a green skivvy shirt, trousers, and untied boots that almost killed me as many times as bullets did.

Barlow leaned over to me and yelled, “Hey Mack, now’s probably a good time to put on some body armor.”

“Yeah, good call, man!” – I replied, a little embarrassed.

I ducked back into our room and headed for my cot, a few feet from where my gear was stowed. I tossed my Kevlar on my head and threw my plate carrier on. The first thing that went through my mind was, “Fuck, did I take my side-sapi plates out?”

Our plate carriers had a front, back, and two side plates. The plates were made of steel ceramics and protected your body mass or sternum fore and aft. The side plates protected your flank from hip to armpit. They were heavy and a nuisance to my 135 lb. ass, so sometimes, inside the wire, I removed the side plates to increase maneuverability. To make my life a little easier.  It’s an interesting, if not stupid, trade-off, ballistic protection versus maneuverability. 

Our room in the White House.

I threw my NVGs, a bottle of water, a can of Grizzly, 40mm grenades, and extra ammo into my dump pouch attached to my right hip, just in case this was an all-nighter. I couldn’t remember the last time I drank water. My mouth was parched,  and I was having a hard time breathing or speaking clearly.

Barlow was yelling back and forth with Marines positioned at the back corner of our building, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was drowned out by the steady stream of gunfire from the roof and gun truck, tearing into the jail compound wall and windows. The sound of all the weapons systems formed a thunderous sound of fury. 

Once suited up, I moved back to the doorway, stacking up against our now broken piece-of-shit plywood door. Barlow didn’t take his eyes off his sight, searching for targets from the catwalk.

He yelled over to me, “XO says it’s time to get the fuck out of here.”

“Sounds good to me, man.” I said.

Barlow yelled to the Marines at the back corner of our building.

“YO! MARINES COMING OUT, DON’T FUCKING SHOOT US!”

“Roger that, we got you covered, come on!” – someone yelled from behind.

Instead of a flat-out sprint to the back of the building, we bounded – each man moving back in turns while the other covered him. Barlow got his Marines together and started sending them downstairs while we raked the jail with small arms fire from the catwalk.

I took one last look at the jail before turning right and hauling ass downstairs. Again, I tripped on my bootlaces, which I still hadn’t tied, and almost fell, head over heels down the stairs.

“When will this end…”– I thought to myself.

The Marines in the back covered us as we ran down the narrow alleyway between the wall of hescos on our left and the White House on our right. Once we hit the end of the hescos, we took a sharp right turn and followed the wall south until we got to the back corner, where we paused to take in the situation.

As I rounded the back of the White House, I was greeted by the XO (Executive Officer), still in his PT clothes, wielding a 9mm, blasting off rounds like Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral. Alright, now I’ve seen it all. Afghan soldiers and police were stacked along the wall. They looked at us like we were mad. 

I lost Barlow and his boys in the chaos behind the White House. There were too many people, too many chiefs, too many languages going off simultaneously. We followed the wall past the Governor’s compound and the White House, hooked a sharp right, and squeezed behind the gun truck in the middle of the street. We hugged the walls and stacked on the back of the Afghan compound. Many different uniforms were running around: Afghan army/police, American/Brits. I felt leary of anyone not wearing an American or British uniform. 

The rotors of an inbound helicopter could be heard in the distance. From our position, the medevac dropped in from behind us, approaching the DC from the south. The UH-60 Blackhawk landed on the LZ (Landing Zone) adjacent to the White House, covering its surroundings with moon dust and rocks, so much so that we had to stop moving. 

There was a huge exchange of gunfire inside the jail enclave. The Afghan Army and Police attempted an assault on the south side of the jail through the breach made by our gun truck.

Around five pm, we stacked at the east end of the Afghan Police compound, meters from the jail entrance, prepared for the final assault. The firefight had raged for two hours now, and three of our Marines were dead, with another half dozen wounded. We were getting angry.

We held our position for what seemed like forever.  Finally, the momentum shifted, and our stack began pushing forward. It dawned on me that I had traveled in a circle. I kept my rifle pointed at the bunker I lit up earlier in the day.

“MOVING!” – the point man yelled.

We moved through the jail’s main entrance, prepared to shoot anything we encountered. It was quick, no time to absorb the carnage of the scene. I hooked left through the entrance and heard shouting. I almost tripped over a body sprawled a couple feet inside the jail entrance. His eyes were wide open like he was searching for something in the waning Afghan sky.  I wonder what his last thoughts were. I peer through the haze and spot an Afghan Security guard, one of many who abandoned his position during the fight and was now being lined up against the hesco. 

Danny, our DEA attaché’, broke my trance with the sound of his powerful, angry voice. He yelled and questioned the cops lined up. One of them was a cop who was found in the ground-level sandbag bunker. It was the same guy I was trying to kill from my firing position on the second-floor catwalk. We ziptied the cops and turned them over to the Counter Intel guys for questioning. 

“We need guys on the roof, secure it!” – barked Staff Sgt Green.

The jail enclosure was filling up, and we were closest to the stairs, so I mounted my NVGs and began heading up. We cleared the roof and took an overwatch position while Marines on ground level cleared the rest of the cells and rooms of the compound. From the roof, I had an unobstructed view of the entire south side of the camp and the north side of the city. I threw in a dip and watched the sky. It seemed to be alive with red, blue/purple, and orange swirling together as the darkness of dusk approached. I was lucky to be alive, and I wondered how beauty and violence can coexist in one place. A switch was thrown inside me.

Spent ammunition outside the White House.

We spent a short time on the roof, and after a couple hours fresh Marines replaced us. Thumper and I walked downstairs and headed back to the White House across the street. We now took in the scene of earlier fighting. Spent ammunition everywhere, bloody pressure dressings strewn across the street. The Afghan Police compound was fucked. I was in awe of the damage.

“Hey dude, I gotta go down to the COC and send in my SITREP to Gunny. I’m already late, he’s definitely going to be angry. You good?” – I asked.

Fuck me. – I thought.

The sky was dark when I made it to the COC. Luckily without incident. It was an eerie, long and lonely walk. I kept a leary eye on the hesco walls. My rifle stayed at the ready the whole way. The inside of the COC was chaos, not surprising. Section heads were scrambling to get accountability of their Marines… who was alive, who was dead, wounded, where was everyone. I tried to keep a low profile as I made a beeline past the Watch Officer to the S-2 office, where my computer was located. Judging from the looks I received, I looked like shit.

Outer Perimeter of District Center.

Hoping to avoid a confrontation, I ducked into the S-2 office and encountered a full house. All the Intel guys were stuffed inside the small room, trying to piece together the afternoon events. They were preparing a brief for the Skipper. All eyes shot to me as I breached the doorway. Captain McSween’s eyes widened as he looked me up and down.

“Corporal Vogel, you’re alive. You look like shit, are your boys up?” – Captain McSween.

“Yes, Sir, we’re up. Is there any word on Dease? He was in bad shape when I saw him last….” – I continued.

Captain McSween stopped me and said, “He’s gone, bro. He passed away on the way to Bastion.  Wilson and Vittori didn’t make it…”

The rest of his words didn’t register. I was flustered, felt sick…, and wanted to throw up, but I didn’t have anything in my stomach. I looked down at my boots, and there was blood. Not sure whose it was. I leaned back against the wall and slid down to where I was squatting, where I stayed for some time. Sometimes, I feel like I never got off that floor. 

Everything hit me at once, the look on Dease’s face, Vittori, Wilson, FUCK, the bunker, the cop in the bunker, this entire deployment, did I really do enough, fucking RPGs… What the fuck happened, dude. I took a breath and pulled myself together. Patrol tomorrow 0630. 15 more days.

VogelMike