Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War by Bing West, Dakota Meyer Read Free Book Online
Authors: Bing West, Dakota Meyer
moonlit forest—it’s beautiful up there—when the point man thrust up his right hand. We froze and looked every which way. There in the soft earth next to us were enormous paw prints. Not one of us breathed for the next five minutes. It was so quiet you could hear the moon moving overhead. Suddenly our point man leapt up and ran back to us, his hand clenched like a claw.
Bear!
We froze, looking at the shaggy, crouched monster about to tear us apart. I glanced around and concluded I’d never have time to climbthe nearest tree, plus bears climb trees as well and are a lot better than I am at it. We waited like mice for the bear to choose its first victim. After about fifteen seconds, we realized we were looking at a moss-covered stump.
The next day, we found the guerrilla camp and took one shot—a bull’s-eye.
When I rejoined my battalion in Hawaii in mid-2008, I was put in charge of my own six-man sniper team. We were tight. When others were around, my team called me Corporal and came to parade rest to report. When we were alone, I told them not to do any of that stuff. We were like the Army Special Forces. We knew our jobs and were relaxed with each other, using first names.
While my battalion was set to go back to Iraq, I figured they would be in a backbench situation. By late 2008, the American battalions in Iraq had pulled back to remote bases. They were no longer conducting combat patrols.
When headquarters asked for volunteers to serve as advisors in Afghanistan, I signed up. I knew that would mean action.
“The Afghans won’t have your back, Corporal,” my platoon commander warned me. Sergeants who had served in both countries told me the Afghan soldiers were worse than the Iraqis. They called the Afghans pogues, a slang term meaning unreliable and undisciplined.
Just the same, I was looking forward to the adventure. As a sniper with mountain training behind me, I was confident I could handle whatever came my way.
I flew to Okinawa, where I joined an advisor team. In Marine language, that’s Embedded Training Team 2-8. Four of the other nineteen team members on ETT 2-8 were infantrymen, and I wasthe only sniper. Because the infantry battalions were committed to Iraq, most advisors were non-infantry Marines stationed on Okinawa. Since World War II, the Marines had maintained a base on the Japanese island, a thousand miles south of Tokyo.
I flew to Okinawa, where our ETT spent a month concentrating on the basics of fire and maneuver. We didn’t know each other and I wasn’t impressed with our makeshift workup. We would soon be advising a veteran Afghan battalion fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but we didn’t follow a serious program of instruction for going to war.
From Okinawa, we flew to the mountain warfare camp in California’s High Sierras to acclimate. Since I knew the terrain from my previous deployment at the sniper course, I was usually placed at point on the patrols. During the day the instructors would harass us, shooting blanks from a distant hillside or a thickly wooded draw, and then withdrawing before we could engage them. That was solid training, exactly what was needed to simulate what we would encounter in the mountains of Afghanistan.
In the evening, though, we bedded down without security, as if every combat patrol ended at sundown. We set up lean-tos, spread out pine branches as mattresses, took off our boots, boiled our favorite noodles over bright campfires, and went comfortably asleep under the stars. All we lacked were marshmallows.
I couldn’t restrain myself from bitching. My previous sergeants would have kicked my ass down the mountain for camping out Boy Scout style.
Second Lt. Ademola Fabayo, a New Yorker whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, was the operations officer on our ETT, although he did not have infantry training. My focus upon tactics exasperated him.
“We’re not going there to fight, Meyer,” he said. “Our job is to train the
Bear!
We froze, looking at the shaggy, crouched monster about to tear us apart. I glanced around and concluded I’d never have time to climbthe nearest tree, plus bears climb trees as well and are a lot better than I am at it. We waited like mice for the bear to choose its first victim. After about fifteen seconds, we realized we were looking at a moss-covered stump.
The next day, we found the guerrilla camp and took one shot—a bull’s-eye.
When I rejoined my battalion in Hawaii in mid-2008, I was put in charge of my own six-man sniper team. We were tight. When others were around, my team called me Corporal and came to parade rest to report. When we were alone, I told them not to do any of that stuff. We were like the Army Special Forces. We knew our jobs and were relaxed with each other, using first names.
While my battalion was set to go back to Iraq, I figured they would be in a backbench situation. By late 2008, the American battalions in Iraq had pulled back to remote bases. They were no longer conducting combat patrols.
When headquarters asked for volunteers to serve as advisors in Afghanistan, I signed up. I knew that would mean action.
“The Afghans won’t have your back, Corporal,” my platoon commander warned me. Sergeants who had served in both countries told me the Afghan soldiers were worse than the Iraqis. They called the Afghans pogues, a slang term meaning unreliable and undisciplined.
Just the same, I was looking forward to the adventure. As a sniper with mountain training behind me, I was confident I could handle whatever came my way.
I flew to Okinawa, where I joined an advisor team. In Marine language, that’s Embedded Training Team 2-8. Four of the other nineteen team members on ETT 2-8 were infantrymen, and I wasthe only sniper. Because the infantry battalions were committed to Iraq, most advisors were non-infantry Marines stationed on Okinawa. Since World War II, the Marines had maintained a base on the Japanese island, a thousand miles south of Tokyo.
I flew to Okinawa, where our ETT spent a month concentrating on the basics of fire and maneuver. We didn’t know each other and I wasn’t impressed with our makeshift workup. We would soon be advising a veteran Afghan battalion fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but we didn’t follow a serious program of instruction for going to war.
From Okinawa, we flew to the mountain warfare camp in California’s High Sierras to acclimate. Since I knew the terrain from my previous deployment at the sniper course, I was usually placed at point on the patrols. During the day the instructors would harass us, shooting blanks from a distant hillside or a thickly wooded draw, and then withdrawing before we could engage them. That was solid training, exactly what was needed to simulate what we would encounter in the mountains of Afghanistan.
In the evening, though, we bedded down without security, as if every combat patrol ended at sundown. We set up lean-tos, spread out pine branches as mattresses, took off our boots, boiled our favorite noodles over bright campfires, and went comfortably asleep under the stars. All we lacked were marshmallows.
I couldn’t restrain myself from bitching. My previous sergeants would have kicked my ass down the mountain for camping out Boy Scout style.
Second Lt. Ademola Fabayo, a New Yorker whose parents immigrated from Nigeria, was the operations officer on our ETT, although he did not have infantry training. My focus upon tactics exasperated him.
“We’re not going there to fight, Meyer,” he said. “Our job is to train the
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