One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War by Bing West Read Free Book Online Page A

Taliban and a dead farmer. Nearby another farmer lay moaning with bullets in his leg. The Marines attached a tourniquet and the wounded man was taken by tractor to the district market.
    This pattern of fighting—two enemy fighters dead at a cost of one innocent farmer and another badly wounded, plus repeated bombing runs to the north—deeply disturbed the high command. In fact, no army in history ever fought with more restraint than did the Americans, Danes, Dutch, and British in Afghanistan.Seven out of ten civilian casualties were caused by the Taliban, who insisted that every Pashtun sacrifice for jihad. President Hamid Karzai never complained about Pashtun Taliban killing fellow Pashtuns. But he railed about every casualty caused by the foreigners.Karzai had pointed an accusing finger at civilian casualties in Sangin just a few months before 3rd Platoon arrived. The high command was determined to increase restrictions until almost no civilian was killed by coalition fire.
    Shortly after taking command in mid-2009, Gen. McChrystal had issued an extraordinarily specific order, called a “Tactical Directive,” all the way down to the platoon and squad level.
    “The ground commander,” the Tactical Directive read, “will notemploy indirect weapons against a compound that may be occupied by civilians, unless the commander is in a life-threatening position and cannot withdraw.”
    The high command, civilian and military, was preaching a theory of benevolent war. The standing order was to ensure PID, Positive Identification, which meant identifying a clear, hostile target before returning fire. But most firefights were exchanges of burning lead and explosives between two tree lines, or between Taliban inside a compound and a coalition patrol in an open field. In 3rd Platoon’s case, within a day of arriving in Sangin, they had seen their friends blown apart, and they carried the bloodstains of their comrades on their cammies.
    Each day, a patrol took fire from somewhere out in the corn and bush. How do you convince them
not to shoot back
? What strategic rationale, what spiritual commandment, what sorcery would convince these young men to reject what their drill instructors had drummed into them
—kill before you are killed
? With the enemy wearing civilian clothes and hiding among compliant villagers in flat fields where bullets traveled far distances, the moral choice confronting the grunt—shoot back or hold your fire?—was never clear-cut.
    Third Platoon could not advance a kilometer in any direction without receiving fire from a compound. Since no one can see through walls, civilians may have occupied every compound. The odds were heavily against it, but odds are never perfect. In every battalion operations center, a lawyer monitored all calls for artillery or air support, constantly weighing who might face court-martial or be relieved of command for making a wrong call. General George Marshall, the top commander in World War II, believed two qualities were common to every battlefield victor: energy and optimism. Having to check with lawyers before employing indirect fire hindered both energy and optimism.
    One night at a remote outpost, I sat opposite a visiting Marinebrigadier general. I asked him about the Tactical Directive. He looked at the candle flickering between us and said not one word.
    The following day, it was more of the same for 3rd Platoon—a running gunfight in sector Q1E for six hours. Nothing much to report in the logbook—a few bursts of AK or PKM fire each hour forcing the Marines to flop down and peer at green corn rows, green tree lines, and green grass fields, all shimmering in sweltering, humid heat. No wisps of dust, no tiny red flickers as bullets left the muzzles, no shouts, and definitely no PID. In a day of desultory sniping under the oppressive sun, four enemy were seen, each for only one or two seconds.
    Three IEDs were uncovered and blown up without damage. At least that was a