Chapter 20

Early December 2001 3pm local time

Toba Achakzai mountains near Khojak pass

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

‘Goddammit Corporal Smythe, I’m not asking- get your sorry shot ass onto that bird now!”

“Sorry sir, no can do. Ain’t no one else dumb enough around to carry your radio. Besides, you got more holes in you than I do!” Smitty said with fire in his tone.

“Fuckit then fine. But I swear to god you get yourself killed and I’m gonna dig up your broke ass and kick it to hell and gone.” Ben said as he limped off through the falling snow back to the CP (Command Post).

Ben should have known, he’d never met an Okie who couldn’t outstubborn a mule. Smitty had been his RTO for over a year and was way too senior a Marine for the job but he just wouldn’t let the First Sergeant assign any one else to carry Ben’s radio. Smitty was young and as tough as an old boot but he had taken an AK round in the meaty part of his waist over his hip bone. While providing cover fire for Ben as he retrieved a wounded PFC from 1st platoon. It was through and through and a little quick clot and a tampon had stopped the bleeding but Ben knew it likely still hurt like a motherfucker. At least they weren’t going to be doing much moving around for a while. They were stuck on this goddamn hill until the weather cleared or until the Taliban succeeded in wiping them out.

Ben still couldn’t believe that some Marine Corp Reserve Warrant Officer with more balls than brains had managed to land his Ch-53 in the tiny LZ to the rear of his position through the 50mph winds and blowing snow. Not to mention the potshots and RPG’s that were still coming up from the pass below them. All other flights of any kind were grounded but somehow this beautiful moron and his copilot had decided to ignore the grounding and re-route midflight to answer a desperate call for a dustoff. Luckily the large helo wasn’t heavily loaded and they were able to jettison what cargo there was because they needed every foot of space for his wounded Marines.

Out of the 84 Marines he had with him on the ridge almost quarter were badly wounded. Most of the rest were wounded to some extent as well but refused to be evacuated. Both of his lieutenants were KIA as were 4 of his grunts. Ben himself had taken a round through the left upper shoulder and another graze in the meaty part of his right calf. But he wasn’t going to let these goat fuckers drive him off this hill. Besides if they bugged out the UN civilians were going to get slammed in the rear by the remainder of the Taliban that were currently occupied with him. Not to mention what they might do to the villagers in retaliation for their cooperation. Ben had sent the civilians off in convoy an hour ago with his 2nd platoon squeezing into the UN trucks to protect them. The slow moving cargo vehicles needed time to clear the area and get back to Forward Operating Base Rhino.

Ben couldn’t believe that this shit show had started only 2 hours ago with another sitrep from Gunny Stillwell and the Scout Sniper detachment. This time Gunny had seen an entire convoy of Taliban leaving the Tribal Areas in Pakistan. Estimated numbers of fighters had been from 300 to 500 traveling in everything from buses and flat bed trucks to fucking bicycles. They only had about 10 miles to travel giving Ben about 30 minutes to request air support and give a frag order to his platoons in preparation.

Of course since the Gods of War had decided it was Bravo Company’s turn in the barrel, the Weather Gods had opted to join in the fun and sent this fucking storm just as Ben had tried to get air support. At least visibility had been good enough for his mortar teams to get a dozen rounds off on the massed fighters as they assembled along the road below them. That had put a damper on the Taliban party but it hadn’t stopped that first assault wave entirely. By the time the Muj’s had started moving up the ridge the snow had really started coming down.

It quickly became a classic defense problem since the Taliban knew where Bravo Company was but Ben’s grunts had to guess where the Taliban were coming from.

The dozen or so claymore mines they had set up in the obvious approaches had broken the first wave of the assault. But not before they had gotten close enough to fire rpg’s into Ben’s outer perimeter and cause Bravo Company’s first casualties. The worst though was about 30 minutes later when the Muj’s had somehow managed to get a couple of heavy machine guns up the near vertical wall on the opposite side of the canyon. From that elevated position they had been able to strafe Ben’s entire perimeter with poorly aimed, but still effective heavy caliber fire. If they had been able to coordinate better with the second wave of fighters moving up the ridge it would have been all over for Bravo Company. Luckily, his most experienced NCO, Gunny Keane, was leading the weapons platoon and had immediately recognized what needed to be done. Even through the snow his mortar and machine gun teams were able to locate the enemy machine guns well enough to silence them.

Ben had picked up his shoulder wound pulling a badly wounded PFC back from the PFC’s fighting position after he had nearly been overrun. Smitty had burned through 6 magazines behind him providing covering fire and had gotten dinged himself for his trouble.

Shortly after that Ben had picked up his second wound working his way between 1st and 3rd platoon’s positions after they had lost their respective platoon commanders. That time Smitty was the one doing the dragging as he hauled Ben’s ass back to the Company CP. Ben was just thankful that these enemy assholes couldn’t have outshot his blind grandma. The sheer volume of fire that had been coming uphill at them was enough to worry him though. There had to be at least a couple of hundred of them left. To paraphrase Ron White, he didn’t know how many Taliban it was going to take to completely kick Bravo Company’s ass, but it looked like the fuckers were going to use them all.

Finally after an intense hour, they had been able to run the second wave off back down the hill. For the first time today the timing had been perfect as they had received a reply to their repeated calls for a dustoff just as there was a lull in the fighting.

Now as the medevac bird was lifting off Ben had to figure out how best to deploy his remaining 55 Marines.

“Smitty, send out our sitrep to Battalion if you would please.”

“Already tried skipper. Radio’s fucked though. I just checked with 1st and 3rd and we can hear each other but no one can hear anything on the Battalion net.”

“Well fuck me to tears. I suppose they will figure out that we are still deep in the shit when the bird with our wounded gets back to the ship. Pass the word to 1st, 3rd and weapons to pull back into our secondary positions and to arm the last of our claymores.”

“Aye aye sir.”

“Any word from the Scout Snipers?”

“Nothing Skipper. They’ve been radio silent since that last sitrep.”

“Well shit, I hope they made it back out of the canyon.” replied Ben

Ben turned to his senior Hospital Corpsman, HMC Comiskey. “Doc, how are all your Pecker Checkers doing? I notice that none of them took the evac.” Ben had seen that every one of the 4 Corpsmen the senior Corpsman had working for him had been wounded. A couple of them looked like they were barely going to make it themselves.