In the Line of Fire
In Combat for The First Time, Mortarmen React Quickly
y Sean D. Naylor
Special to ABCNEWS.com
S E R K H A N K H E L,
Afghanistan, March 7 — Capt.
Kevin Butler and his soldiers were
just starting to wonder whether they
were missing all the action when,
with a whistle and an almighty boom,
the first al Qaeda mortar round hit
barely 50 feet from their position.
A second round exploded moments later, as
U.S. Alpha Company's soldiers scrambled to
find cover and to locate the enemy who had
them in his crosshairs.
It was two hours after sunrise on Sunday. Nine
hours earlier, Butler's troops had conducted a
midnight air assault onto this northern tip of the
Shah-e-Kot valley in three CH-47 Chinook
helicopters.
The troops, from the 101st Airborne Division's
2nd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, from
Fort Campbell, Ky., arrived ready to fight. They
lumbered off the huge twin-rotor helicopters as
quickly as their bulging rucksacks allowed.
The Chinooks lifted off, leaving the soldiers
bathed in moonlight, 8,000 feet up a mountain
in eastern Afghanistan.
But unlike their counterparts who had landed to
the south and east of the valley earlier in the
day and found themselves in combat almost
immediately, Butler's troops met no enemy fire
on their landing zone.
The only indication that U.S. troops were
heavily engaged in their largest set-piece battle
since the 1991 Gulf War were the explosions
illuminating mountainsides to the south,
courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
After his three platoons linked up, the captain
marched them a few hundred meters to a site
where they could bivouac for the night,
shivering in their sleeping bags under the open
sky.
The First Mortar Rounds
The next day dawned brightly. As the soldiers
emerged from their frost-encrusted sleeping
bags to boil water for cocoa, they wondered aloud whether the 200 al
Qaeda fighters that U.S. intelligence estimated were hiding in the valley
were concentrating all their attention on the troops to their south and east.
The first mortar rounds answered that question conclusively.
"Obviously that was the wrong assessment," said Butler, 30, from
Plainfield, N.J.
It took only moments for the Alpha Company troops to spot one of the
three positions that had them in its range.
"They're on the snow-covered mountain," shouted the lookouts posted on
the low hills around the command post, pointing towards the peak in
question.
Soon the soldiers realized they were being attacked from three different
positions simultaneously. One al Qaeda mortar was lobbing rounds at
them from a position about three miles to the south, while another was
shelling them from a peak about 2 miles to the west.
In between the mortar volleys, the enemy was raining fire from a 57mm
recoilless rifle, a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, rocket-propelled grenades
and Kalashnikov rifles on Alpha Company from a third position that no one
could pinpoint immediately.
Crucial Decisions
As his soldiers scrambled for cover, Butler faced a crucial moment in any
young officer's career: his first time under fire, with about 100 soldiers —
almost all of whom were equally new to combat — looking to him for
leadership.
What they may not have realized at the time was that Butler had already
made two decisions that would likely save some of their lives. One of
those was his decision, taken in the bitter cold in the early hours of that
morning, to locate his command post, and the bulk of his force, in a deep
wadi.
The dried stream bed was wide enough to allow soldiers to walk through it
and sleep in it, but so narrow that it would take an extraordinarily lucky —
or skillful — mortarman to land a shell inside its steep, rocky walls.
The other decision that would prove crucial over the next few hours was
Butler's determination that bringing his company's own two 60mm mortars
would be worth the hassle of lugging the bulky weapons through the thin
mountain air.
Some of the other companies committed to the battle had left theirs
behind — either because of the weight, or because the company
commanders felt they weren't needed.
Intelligence briefings in the days prior to the battle had not mentioned
mortars as a significant threat that U.S. commanders needed to be aware
of. But Butler decided to go ahead lug in his mortar section nevertheless.
His decision was vindicated even before his troops had launched into
battle from the Bagram airbase 40 miles north of Kabul.
First Four Casualties
Butler's men were part of the "second lift" of troops into the battle, and
had been told to be ready to go the moment the helicopters that carried
the first wave of troops into combat arrived back at the airstrip.
As it turned out, commanders did not decide to commit them to the battle
until late in the day, but they arrived on the tarmac early enough to see a
Chinook fly at high speed onto the airfield as several Humvees raced to
meet it.
The helicopter was carrying the first four casualties: one Special Forces
soldier and three Afghan militia allies. The battle was less than one hour
old, and all had already fallen victim to al Qaeda mortars.
As rumors started to fly on the tarmac, Butler was confident in his own
troops' ability to deal with the mortar threat.
"We're bringing our own, so we're good," he said. "I'm willing to bet our
guys are better than their guys."
He would have the opportunity to prove that, but not before two of his
snipers had a lucky escape they are unlikely to forget.
Snipers in Precarious Position
Specialists Justin Musella and Justin Celano were 600 meters south of the
command post, and had one of the al Qaeda mortar positions in their
sights. But it was well beyond the 800-meter effective range of their
Remington 700 sniper rifle.
Three hours after the first mortar round hit, the snipers realized their
position was becoming increasingly precarious.
"They kept getting closer," Celano said. "We weren't sure if they were
walking them in on us, and we decided we were going to move."
But before they had a chance to make good their escape, they heard the
distinctive whistle of another incoming shell.
Looking down as they flattened themselves against the dirt, they saw a
terrifying sight: the shadow of the mortar round looming ever larger as it
hurtled down on their position.
‘We Got the Hell Out of There’
As they braced themselves for the explosion, the snipers heard nothing
but a metallic "ting" as the round hit a rock four feet from them — easily
close enough to kill both soldiers — and bounced away. It was a dud.
Musella and Celano didn't need any further prompting.
"We got the hell out of there," Celano said. They sprinted back toward the
squad manning a hilltop above the command post.
As they got to the bottom of the hill between the two positions, another
mortar round landed 50 to 100 meters to their left. And as soon as they
reached their fallback position, a third round landed on the hiding place
they had vacated barely a minute previously.
This one wasn't a dud, and the explosion destroyed the position.
A few hours after the incident, Musella appeared at a loss for words to
describe his good fortune. But Celano was not quite as reticent: "I'm a
pretty lucky guy."
Butler quickly brought his two-mortar section into the fight, and from a
protected position in the wadi, they started returning fire on the two enemy
positions within their range. Their first shots brought a wry comment from
Butler.
"It's all fun and games until the other guy has a mortar too," said Butler,
whose radio call sign is "Black Hawk 6."
But even Butler's skilled mortar section needed help. The mortar position
to the south was beyond their range. Only air power could destroy it.
Calling In the Fighter Jets
Sgt. Corey Daniel, the company's fire support NCO — whose job it is to
help coordinate all the mortar, artillery and close air support fires for his
unit — called in F-16 and F-15E attack jets.
At 10:21 a.m., a series of loud explosions from the direction of the
southern al Qaeda positions announced the arrival of the close air
support, and was met with cheers from the Alpha Company troops.
A combination of airstrikes and Alpha Company's mortars put paid to the
other, closer position where the recoilless rifle lay. But there still remained
the mortar on the western ridge.
It was inside of the Alpha mortars' range, but the four al Qaeda troops
knew their business.
Quick Thinking
As soon as they heard the drone of incoming aircraft, or the distinctive
bang of the Alpha Company mortars firing, they would run from the ridge
to take cover, reappearing after the U.S. ordnance had landed to wave
defiantly and send another shell Alpha Company's way.
Knowing that if any of the al Qaeda rounds found their target, he could
lose several soldiers, Butler thought quickly.
"I was trying to come up with a way of sneaking the round in quietly," he
said. He settled on a novel approach.
The captain ordered Daniel to call in another air strike, and had his
mortarmen calculate how long their rounds spent in the air on their way to
the ridgeline.
The answer was 32 seconds, long enough for the enemy mortar crew to
run for cover, wait for an explosion, and reappear.
Butler directed his mortar crews to fire several rounds at the moment they
heard the explosion from the close air support.
"I thought maybe we could mask the sound of the 60mm mortars firing with
the sound of the close air support," he said. As the booms from the Air
Force bombing echoed across the valley, Butler's crews went to work.
"The boys were just hanging rounds like nobody's business," he said.
Seven rounds flew out of the tubes toward the ridgeline.
Watching through his binoculars, Daniel saw the four al Qaeda troops
reappear on the ridge. As they taunted the American troops, all seven
rounds came down on them, blowing them off the ridgeline and killing
them.
"We've got the best mortarmen in the battalion," one soldier could be
overheard telling a buddy after the fight.
"And the best company commander," the other soldier replied.
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