Holding Garmsir

After the Marines in Mustang Platoon routed the Taliban to capture a key stronghold in southern Afghanistan, they were faced with an even more difficult mission: defend against the heat, the boredom, the stress, the homesickness, and the weight of history in a place that had never been conquered—and held—by outsiders.

by John Spong

January 2009

(Page 7 of 7)

He switched to the clipped tone he’d used on the boot with the T-shirt. “Not if they rigged her body to explode as soon as we touch it. Not if they put a trip wire nearby or put a grenade underneath her that’ll blow as soon as one of our guys moves her. They’re probably watching right now to see what we do. They’ll see how we respond, then kill some other little girl, rig the body, and wait for us. It’s just stupid.”

He slammed his truck door and walked off to a little tomato garden Bravo used as a bathroom.

Two more hours passed without a radio report. We sat listening to an imaginary breeze, hoping not to hear any explosions. Finally Mustang rolled back in. They were slow to climb out of their trucks, and once they did, they looked dazed. Gallucci walked over.

“That was fucking awful,” he said. “We’re driving up there, and I’m on my gun with eyes on the road, and right here”—he pointed with his right hand—“I see three freshly dug holes covered over in the ground. That’s not supposed to be there. And a little ways up there are three rocks stacked together. Then ahead of that I see these two trailers on either side of the road, one with a big drum in the back and the other with this weird black mass in it. I looked through my scope and it’s a guy who sits up and looks at us. And then he lays back down. I’m like, ‘Dude, what the fuck?’ You know? Luckily nothing happened.

“So we get there, and this little girl, maybe six, is just lying there, at this weird angle, like she’s been shot. Her brother came out and started yelling at her, and none of the locals are doing anything. Then Hamza walked over to her to check for a pulse . . . and she sat up. I’m not kidding you, dude. She got up and went in her house.”

The whole platoon was affected. Gallucci kept seeing a man in Ramadi who had carried his daughter through the streets after she’d been hit, trying to hand her to Marines. Neumeyer said all he could think about was his own little girl, who was about the same age.

“I had a buddy who killed a kid in Iraq,” said Ray. “It was after curfew, and the kid was on the street. My buddy saw him out of the corner of his eye and opened up with his SAW. Killed him. My buddy’s response was, ‘I guess I’ll be dealing with that the rest of my life.’ ”

Only Hamza had a different response. “Everyone is giving their ideas of what happened. The kid was dehydrated and tired, and she passed out. Some Marines say it was some kind of trap, but it was not. If it was a trap, for what?”

“To see what y’all would do?” I asked.

“They already know that,” he said. “If we see a sick dog, we will go treat the dog. I was kind of pissed off at the mother. First question I asked was ‘How many kids do you have?’ She said four. I said, ‘If you cannot take care of them, why are you giving birth to them? First be responsible for one, then you can make a second one.’ She said she went to get water for the one who had fever. I said, ‘How long does that take? Five minutes? Ten minutes?’ They’ve got to know what is going on with their kids.” He trailed off and threw up his hands.

It didn’t feel like a happy ending.

Going Home

Only half of Mustang was on patrol when Rauch and Corporal Arnaldo Figueroa got hit. The platoon was two weeks into a new detail, having been called in from the desert to provide security for mine sweeps in town. A number of IED cells had moved into Garmsir, and Mustang’s new mission entailed two daily patrols with an explosive ordnance disposal team, or EOD, walking and driving one of the main strips, looking for mines. Like clockwork, new IEDs turned up every three days, either by inspection or, in less fortunate instances, by detonation. So far Mustang had been lucky. Just a couple concussions and no destroyed vehicles.

Rauch was back in the field and feeling particularly fortunate. His broken-down truck had finally been replaced, and on the afternoon of August 3, he and a handful of Marines were patrolling the town.

They encountered a group of men in front of some shops and dismounted. They spent a half hour on foot reading the locals, but mostly just being a presence. Then they remounted and left the strip on a side street. Rauch’s truck was in the lead position, and Corporal Joseph Donald was manning the .50-cal. He saw some kids gathered in front of a compound, then put his eyes back on the road. Nothing looked anything but ordinary.

Then the Humvee’s right front tire rolled over a pressure plate, triggering thirty pounds of high explosives buried just below the road. It ripped the engine block apart and sent fragments through the front of the cab, where Figueroa was driving and Rauch was riding shotgun. The IED had been packed with an accelerating agent that produced a huge ball of flame that engulfed the truck. Branson saw the explosion from three Humvees back and instantly assumed the crew was burning to death.

But they weren’t dead yet. Shaking off concussions, Donald and Corporal Timothy Wright, who had been in the backseat, dragged Figueroa from the truck. Then Wright ran to the other side, where a cameraman who had been riding with them helped free Rauch. A few short AK bursts came at Rauch’s truck, and the rest of the Marines readied for a fight.

“Somebody was firing at us to provoke a death blossom situation,” Branson said later, “to get us to open fire, just start killing everybody in the area. Sometimes when you’re afraid for your life, not using your gun is more important than using it.”

As Graves arrived with the rest of the platoon, Mustang held its fire, and the shooting stopped. A helicopter landed nearby, and Figueroa, whose right leg was badly broken, and Rauch, whose left leg no longer looked like one, were flown to the hospital at nearby Fort Bastion. Within days they were both at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in D.C., where Figueroa would have his leg bolted back together and Rauch would have his removed. Miraculously, no one in the truck suffered significant burns.

They were the only serious casualties the platoon would suffer. In mid-October, with the MEU’s deployment having been extended one month, Mustang returned to the States. Branson’s goal of bringing every one of his Marines home alive was realized.

The bigger picture was harder to assess. About the time the MEU returned, I talked with Seth Jones, a RAND Corporation analyst and military adviser who is one of the best-known names in the small circle of observers of the war in Afghanistan. “The MEU was successful in their mission: They cleared a significant part of the district,” he said. “But they were only there a short time. A regiment of Brits and a kandak of ANA replaced them in August, and it’s not clear whether they have the numbers to hold the territory. The Taliban had been closely monitoring Marine operations, and as soon as the Marines left, they conducted targeted assassinations of locals who had been cooperating with them. But the area has not entirely reverted.”

According to Jones, it’s not clear what these short-term gains—or losses— will mean. “It takes twelve to fifteen years to win a counterinsurgency, so it’s hard to put long-term gains into perspective,” he said. “It will be particularly important to continue to disrupt key supply lines, hold territory, and engage in reconstruction. Implementing this strategy will take several deployments spread out over a long period of time. It will take an international force—including the U.S.—fighting alongside Afghan national forces, local tribes, and clans. But most counterinsurgencies are won by local forces, not outside ones. And they have to clear and hold and build.”

The men of Mustang were thinking long-term as well, but now that they were finally home, the future had meaning in more-personal terms. Rauch received a prosthetic leg in November and at year’s end was relearning how to walk and wrestling with whether to remain in the Corps.

Branson left the Marines on December 4 and started studying in earnest for the LSAT in February. He’d been wait-listed for a position as a Marine liaison to Congress, but when no spot opened up, he began planning a career in government or Republican politics. Neumeyer, on the other hand, celebrated Obama’s election while the platoon was enjoying postdeployment leave. When Mustang returned to duty in mid-November, he got back to work at keeping them in line.

Ray spent his leave watching the Longhorns with Crystal in their new house near Camp Lejeune. He’d yet to propose; he said his ring wasn’t ready when he arrived. But the couple were talking about having kids and eloping to the Caribbean. They also discussed his leaving the Corps. Yet after receiving the Navy Achievement Medal for the Jugroom battle and then catching wind that he might be bumped up to staff sergeant, he decided to stay in.

Back in Afghanistan, 2008 became the deadliest year for Coalition Forces, with 268 troops killed as of December. The headlines drifting out through the rest of the year grew increasingly grim. Hamza was still somewhere in the middle of it. One of his co-workers said he was translating for Army brass in a much safer environment but declined to identify exactly where. He was still waiting to hear if his family had been granted visas to move to Dallas.

And at the Pentagon, the war’s architects were mapping out 2009. At the request of General David McKiernan, the commanding officer of NATO forces in Afghanistan, the Defense Department was planning to deploy four additional combat brigades. It was not yet clear if or when those troops would be sent to Garmsir to continue the work of the 24th MEU and Mustang Platoon.

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