I’d heard there had been a hasty investigation about Ganjigal that found some shortcomings and “poor battle management” by a captain in the TOC at Joyce. That was a whitewash by higher headquarters, called Joint Task Force 82. It was like saying Lincoln was assassinated because an usher left a theater door unlocked.
My boss, Maj. Williams, had put out the word not to talk to the press. That made sense. I had assumed headquarters would cover for themselves. And why should there be any medals when my team was dead? The hell with it all.
I was up at Monti, far from anybody or anything. My only thought was how to get three hours’ sleep so I could function the next day. In return for a forty-dollar chicken, I deserved to shoot somebody.
I walked into my hooch one October day to find a journalist chatting with the other advisors. He had just returned from an operation with Lt. Kerr, who had insisted that he talk with me. We had barely shaken hands when the base took some incoming and I left to check things out. Later that day, I bumped into the writer again.
“One question before I leave,” he said. “Any truth to those stories that you were left on your own at Ganjigal?”
“My team would be alive today if we’d gotten artillery,” I said.
“You’d tell that to the high command? You’d say that to a general?”
He was straight up about it. I knew that what I said next would be reported high up the chain of command. Maj. Williams—and probably a lot of others—would be furious that I spoke out as a corporal without informing them first. I understood what I was doing before I replied.
“I’d tell that to any general,” I said. “We were screwed.”
Once I said it, I felt relieved. I had told the truth, the way my dad and the Corps had taught me. Swenson and others had said the identical thing in their statements that were first hidden from public view and later heavily redacted. I knew there would be repercussions for speaking out publicly.
But I didn’t expect a few weeks later to be told the Marine general in charge of Afghanistan was flying in to have lunch with me. He was also scheduled to meet privately with Capt. Swenson. I didn’t need to be a genius to know that Ganjigal would be the subject.
Lt. Gen. Joseph Dunford was easy to talk with. He had a quiet presence and seemed to know everything about infantry tactics. He was interested in what I thought about dealing with the Askars. I told him that I thought that the American advisors should be infantrymen, and I told him that we were let down at Ganjigal. When we call for fire, we deserve to get it. He didn’t ask one word about the investigation and never expressed an opinion, one way or the other. He just listened and left.
I later learned that the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Conway, was furious about the superficial nature of the JTF-82 investigation. He believed his Marines had been let down, and he let his feelings be known. Joint Task Force 82 was the command above the advisors and Battalion 1-32. JTF-82’s commander, Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, ordered a second investigation, jointly conducted by a Marine and an Army colonel.
I wasn’t asked to testify. In late November, the two colonels submitted their findings that eventually were published on the Internet with all names blanked out. Gen. Scaparrotti said the lessons learned had been sent to his subordinate commands. Up at Monti, I never heard one lesson.
The fuzziness of the investigations angered me, but I was running on autopilot—training Askars, taking naps, and advising on a few missions outside the wire. My Afghan company—down to fifty-six men—was going through the motions with us advisors. They knew it and we knew it. I got along fine with the Askars, but they were mostly a different bunch. What with Ganjigal and the usual monthly turnover, less than a dozen were left from our high- spirited crew of last summer. It was a different atmosphere with a different group of Afghans. Those who survived Ganjigal were scattered, mostly gone from the army.
We advisors had lost clout because we couldn’t get fire support—that was obvious. After Ganjigal, our Afghan battalion commander insisted on joint patrols, with each Askar close enough to grip the belt buckle of an American soldier. My days of hopping behind a .50-cal and driving into a different village each day had come to an end. Except for an occasional foray, we abandoned Dangam.
I did enough chores to keep me busy during the day. At night, the mental barriers of being awake crashed down and the demons crept in. I didn’t want to sleep. The Army psychologist I had bumped into down at Joyce kept visiting Monti. She claimed the visits were routine; I knew better. She was talking to some of my friends about me. She had a quiet way that encouraged men to talk, and some felt I was tightly strung after Ganjigal. I didn’t want to discuss my feelings with her.
She sent me twice to a psychiatrist back in Jalalabad. There was this theory called ego depletion. As explained to me, the brain gets depleted after making too many hard decisions. In extreme cases, the mind shuts down and refuses to make decisions. That’s called shell shock. That wasn’t me. Or the brain takes shortcuts and acts impulsively. That’s called reckless behavior. Maybe that was me, a little.
I didn’t think my behavior was reckless at Ganjigal, just persistent. In the ambush at Dab Khar, I did curse a captain, and that was maybe reckless. As for blasting that hillside to get a sniper, I was pissed off, and what are you supposed to do when someone is shooting at you?
It’s true I didn’t feel connected with others. The Askars were smoking hash, jabbering on their cell phones, and wandering around in flip-flops. The American soldiers were playing video games, stuffing themselves at dinner, and laughing too loudly at nothing.
We weren’t fighting a war; we were holding a few acres of dirt while the war swirled around outside our barbed wire. There were dushmen in every valley. Drink tea with the villagers? Pay forty dollars for a chicken? We were in Kunar to fight. Let’s get it on.
That was my attitude. The psychologist insisted I go back to the States for treatment. No, thanks. As a captain, she had the rank to make her recommendation stick, but she wanted my agreement. So she challenged me: We would play a game of Ping-Pong. If I won, I could stay.
I lost by one point. She was very good, and she really was worried about me and cared about me. I knew that.
It was my turn to go home.
I flew out from Camp Joyce in December of 2009. Gen. Scaparrotti would tell the press several months later that his command had made progress in eastern Afghanistan, but I didn’t see it. Harassing attacks along the paved routes were more frequent. Dangam, where we had guarded the election, was now Taliban territory. The district chief had been killed and the dushmen were getting bolder, lobbing mortar shells and still sniping at Monti. As I was leaving, Battalion 1-32 made yet another effort to win over Ganjigal. Over one hundred American soldiers, supported by gun trucks and helicopter gunships, marched up the village. Declaring they had come in peace, the Americans handed out Korans and prayer rugs. I hope someone prayed for my team.
Chapter 17
OLD HAUNTS
When I got home in December, I felt like I had landed on the moon. Kentucky is pretty much what you think: cheerful bluegrass music like Bill Monroe, rolling countryside, good moonshine, great bourbon, and pretty girls. Greenery, lakes, the creeks and rolling hills, forests, birds, other critters, and all the farms. There’s that genuine friendliness that comes with small towns and close-knit families. You don’t want to act like an asshole because it will get back to your grandmother by supper.
Something like: “Well, Dakota, I hear you had some words today with that neighbor of Ellen’s sister’s boy.”
Dad, of course, was happy to see me, as were my grandparents, so that was a good feeling. Dad didn’t give me a hard time about Ganjigal, and neither did my leatherneck Grandpa. We just didn’t talk much about it. It was great seeing my family and friends, but they had their own lives. Everyone around me was excited about football, Christmas, and other normal things; I was looking at the clapboard houses and the cars and thinking,
