Combat is not like people think. It’s much slower, more deliberate. I didn’t understand that at first, not even after the first couple times in combat, back when I was with Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan. The adrenaline, the confusion, the newness of it all made it seem like a wild chaotic ride. I did not know what was going on, all I knew was my blood pounding through my veins, and the knowledge of death being present, and then, slowly, the knowledge that I was okay with that. I think if there was a time I could have done something really worthy of a medal for valor it would have been then, before Natalia, before I started valuing my life and my future over the experiences of the moment. I would have rushed out stupidly under fire then.
Now I know too much. Not just that I have a wife and child at home, who depend on me and love me, but also, I know the battlefield in a different way. Every movie, every video game, is about the hero rushing forward, killing the enemy, saving the day. The lone, individual hero.
On an actual battlefield, victories generally don’t come from one man killing a dramatic number of enemy. Killing doesn’t always mean strategic or even tactical success, as anybody who has studied Vietnam or Algeria or the Philippines or any goddamn war in history can tell you. What you want is not corpses but dominance over the battlefield. In that regard, combat is less like Call of Duty and more like chess. Jefe was moving us pieces into position.
Rounds from the U-shaped building were spitting up bits of dust into the air. Diego crept the truck forward, cresting the berm just enough so that Carlos, in the turret on the 50 cal, could fire back, sending heavy rounds exploding through the walls.
I ran toward a group of ANA, grabbed one of their PKMs, crawled uphill, found a spot with just the right angle on the building, and set it in its bipod. Think a bishop, pinning a piece so it can’t move without risk. I fired a burst, showing the Afghan behind me where to shoot. “In an arc,” I shouted, stupidly in English, and then motioned to him how I needed it.
As we fired, another ODA team set up in the defilade. I looked up at the building. Painted on the side was a message: “This school was donated to the people of Afghanistan by UNICEF.”
The assault force stormed forward under the roar of machine-gun fire. Dust rose from the hard-packed ground behind them, and the bullets crackling through the air burrowed through the dust, carving whisps in the air. Something about the sight made everything seem like it was happening at a quarter speed, and it was beautiful.
One Afghan went down, then got up and hopped forward. Spurts of blood came from one leg. Arterial, potentially deadly. An Afghan medic pulled him to a depression and began treating the wound. They were learning.
“Raven thirty, this is Raven thirty-one, where the fuck is our air support,” Jefe was screaming over the radio.
Up ahead was an explosion. I saw an Afghan soldier screaming, his legs a mess. At the medics course they say you’ve got to let the wounded come to you. An SF trained medic is too valuable to risk. But I took an ANA truck to him and applied a tourniquet. The straps clamped down, viselike, on his arteries, crushing them shut, and he screamed. Up ahead, I saw an Afghan soldier scrambling up the hill, firing from the shoulder, careful, intermittent shots, professional. He threw a hand grenade and crested.
I hauled my Afghan back to the CCP, where Ocho was grinning madly among the wounded, blood spatter all over his sleeves. I got in to help while Carlos up in the gun truck defended our position, firing away as return fire came in from irrigation ditches, grape huts, and compounds up on the hills.
Jefe pointed to a compound where I could see Taliban flitting through the windows. It offered solid lines of fire to split our force. He grabbed me and Diego and some Afghans, leaving Carlos and Benjy to defend Ocho and the wounded. We were the support fire team, we only had machine guns, which aren’t exactly ideal for room clearing.
“Hamla!” Jefe shouted to the ANA.
We sprinted forward. The Taliban in the hills opened up.
“Za! Za! Za!” Jefe was shouting. We reached the entrance and Jefe set up two Afghan machine gunners to fire back at the positions in the hills. Azad Khan pulled the pin off a hand grenade, tossed it in, and rolled back away from the entrance. The building vibrated with the boom, and a machine gunner stepped into the entryway and fired his PKM down the hall, shooting from the hip.
Jefe pushed the PKM gunner inside, and while he fired down the hallway we cleared the rooms. From a window I saw an RPG fly toward Carlos in the gun truck. Carlos shifted fire and reduced a grape hut to rubble. We moved to another building, cleared
