The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 1

The Outpost An Untold Story of American Valor.

by Jake Tapper.

PROLOGUE

Focus

It was madness.

At Jalalabad Airfield, in eastern Afghanistan, a young intelligence a.n.a.lyst named Jacob Whittaker tried with great difficulty to understand exactly what he was hearing.

The 10th Mountain Division of the United States Army wanted to do what? what?

Whittaker had to choose his words carefully. He was just a low-ranking "specialist" with the Idaho National Guard, a very low man on a very tall totem pole. A round-faced twenty-six-year-old, Whittaker had simple tastes-Boise State football, comic books-and a reputation for mulishness belied by his innocent appearance.

Whittaker stared at his superior officer, Second Lieutenant Ryan Lockner, who was running this briefing for him and Sergeant Aaron Ives. Lockner headed intelligence for Task Force Talon, the Army's aviation component at Jalalabad Airfield, in Nangarhar Province, adjacent to the Pakistan border. Military leaders considered this area, officially designated Regional Command East, the most dangerous part of an increasingly dangerous country.

Lockner had an a.s.signment. Soldiers from the 10th Mountain-a light infantry division designed for quick deployment and fighting in harsh conditions-had recently come to this hot corner of Afghanistan and would soon be spreading throughout the region, setting up outposts and bases. More specifically, they would be establis.h.i.+ng a camp in Nuristan Province.

The members of the intelligence team led by Lockner didn't know much about Nuristan, as U.S. forces had generally been focusing their efforts on Kunar Province, which had become a haven for Taliban insurgents and foreign fighters sneaking in from Pakistan to oppose the American "infidels." During one operation in Kunar the previous summer, in 2005, nineteen U.S. troops-Special Forces-had been killed by such insurgents, and since then, the United States had increased its presence there. Helicopters flying in and out of Kunar Province were fired upon at least twice a week, every week, with small arms and/or rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Nuristan was farther north, a province so mythically untamed that one of the greatest writers of the English language, Rudyard Kipling, had chosen it as the setting for his 1888 novella "The Man Who Would Be King." One of Kipling's British adventurers, Daniel Dravot, describes Nuristan as a place where "no one has gone... and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King." "You'll be cut to pieces before you're fifty miles across the Border," warns Kipling's narrator. "The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything."

The region's previous brigade commander, Colonel Pat Donahue, hadn't thought Nuristan had much strategic value, so conventional forces hadn't been posted there, and no one had troubled to find out much about the native people, the Nuristanis, a distinct and outlying ethnic group within Afghanistan. In a departure from his predecessor's policy, Donahue's replacement-Colonel John "Mick" Nicholson, the commander of the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Brigade, known as the Spartan Brigade-ordered the establishment of small outposts throughout the area in the summer of 2006, in an attempt not only to stop the Taliban fighters who were streaming in from Pakistan, often with bushels of weapons, but also to win over the locals, who were predisposed to a suspicion of outsiders.

Lockner had just returned from Forward Operating Base Naray, in Kunar Province, where he'd met with officers of the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, or "3-71 Cav."1 They'd told him of their plan to set up an outpost in the Kamdesh District of Nuristan Province, for which he would be in charge of identifying suitable helicopter landing zones. The new base would sit adjacent to the Nuristan hamlet of Urmul. They'd told him of their plan to set up an outpost in the Kamdesh District of Nuristan Province, for which he would be in charge of identifying suitable helicopter landing zones. The new base would sit adjacent to the Nuristan hamlet of Urmul.2 A small settlement missing from most maps, Urmul was home to fewer than forty families of Nuristanis, or roughly two hundred people, who lived in houses made of wood and rock and mud sealant. The residents were primarily subsistence farmers trying to eke out a living through both crops and livestock, but the U.S. Army knew little more than that about them. Coalition forces likewise had next to no intelligence about the enemy in Nuristan-its numbers, its location, its intentions, or, most important, its capabilities-which was one of the reasons the bra.s.s was pus.h.i.+ng to build a base there. This was the essential difficulty of the task at hand: the higher-ups in the U.S. Army needed to know about the enemy in this unexplored province, so in order to learn as much as they could, they were going to stick a small group of troops in its midst. For all Lockner knew when he flew over Urmul to reconnoiter, the hamlet might have been Osama bin Laden's secret compound. A small settlement missing from most maps, Urmul was home to fewer than forty families of Nuristanis, or roughly two hundred people, who lived in houses made of wood and rock and mud sealant. The residents were primarily subsistence farmers trying to eke out a living through both crops and livestock, but the U.S. Army knew little more than that about them. Coalition forces likewise had next to no intelligence about the enemy in Nuristan-its numbers, its location, its intentions, or, most important, its capabilities-which was one of the reasons the bra.s.s was pus.h.i.+ng to build a base there. This was the essential difficulty of the task at hand: the higher-ups in the U.S. Army needed to know about the enemy in this unexplored province, so in order to learn as much as they could, they were going to stick a small group of troops in its midst. For all Lockner knew when he flew over Urmul to reconnoiter, the hamlet might have been Osama bin Laden's secret compound.

"They're going to build another outpost," Lockner told Whittaker and Ives back at Jalalabad Airfield. "So I need you to take this terrain a.n.a.lysis I started, finish it, and make it pretty so I can brief it in the morning." Many troops were far more proficient in PowerPoint than they were with firearms, so Whittaker understood just what Lockner meant by "make it pretty": the slides for the presentation needed to look crisp and to make a compelling case.

"Where are they going?" Whittaker asked.

Lockner gestured at the topographical map. "Right over here, northwest of Naray," he said. "Where the Darreh ye Kushtaz and Landay-Sin Rivers meet."

Whittaker looked at the spot, stunned. "Right there?" there?" he asked. he asked.

"Right there," confirmed Lockner. "Can you do it?"

"I can do it; I have all night," Whittaker said. "But sir... that is a really awful place for a base." This new camp in the Kamdesh District would, like the dangerous Korangal outpost that their pilots knew too well, be surrounded by higher ground. But whereas the base in the Korangal was situated about halfway up a mountainside, in a former lumberyard, the one in Kamdesh would sit in a cup within the valley's deepest cleft, ringed by three steep mountains that formed part of the six-hundred-mile-long Hindu Kush mountain range. Blocked off on its northern, western, and southern sides by rivers and mountains, it would moreover be a mere fifteen miles distant from the official Pakistan border-a porous boundary that meant little to the insurgents who regularly crossed it to kill Americans and Afghan government officials before taking refuge in caves or in the mountains or returning to their haven across the border. The camp would be one of the most remote outposts in this most remote part of a country that was itself cut off from much of the rest of the world, and the area all around it would be filled with people who wanted to kill those stationed there.

"So it's located at the base of a mountain peak?" Whittaker asked. It didn't take a Powell or a Schwarzkopf to know that as a matter of basic military strategy, it was better to be at the top of a hill than at the bottom of a valley.

"Yes."

"And it's flanked by a river on the west and another river to the north?" Whittaker continued.

"And there's no good road to get to it-they're still building that," Lockner volunteered.

The Army had been coordinating efforts to build up the vulnerable and narrow path from Naray to Kamdesh, but rain, rough terrain, insurgent threats, and high turnover rates among local construction workers had led to frequent delays. The road, often running along the edge of a cliff that spilled into the Landay-Sin River, was a mere thirteen feet wide at its widest, and in some spots only half that-narrower than many military vehicles. A soldier could be killed just driving on that road, without ever coming into contact with a single enemy fighter.

"And it's an eternity away by helicopter if something goes wrong," Whittaker said.

"Yup," agreed Lockner.

"Sir, this is a really bad idea," said Whittaker. "A. Really. Bad. Idea. Anyone we drop off there is going to die." As he said it, he thought he saw Lockner's eyes glaze over. Anyone we drop off there is going to die." As he said it, he thought he saw Lockner's eyes glaze over.

Whittaker was known for being inquisitive and sometimes downright melodramatic, but even for him, this was an outsized response to a mission briefing. Those who worked with him understood that he always believed he was the smartest person in the room. He knew it put people off and made them less likely to listen to him when he had something especially important to say, but he was still young and immature and had not yet learned how to check his behavior.

"What's the point of this base?" Whittaker asked. "It's on the low ground. It can't be supported in any meaningful way. The troops there will be horribly horribly outnumbered by potential bad guys in the town next door. They can't even really go out and do anything because the rivers, the town, and the mountains will block any patrol routes." outnumbered by potential bad guys in the town next door. They can't even really go out and do anything because the rivers, the town, and the mountains will block any patrol routes."

He couldn't stop himself.

"All they can do is die," he added.

Lockner, too, had been surprised to learn where the 3-71 Cav officers wanted to put the camp. He understood their logic, at least in theory: with so few air a.s.sets, they'd have to rely on the road as the main way to resupply the outpost. And anyway, the troops couldn't just sit on the mountaintops; they had to go to the towns and make friends with the locals. But Lockner himself wouldn't want even to visit there.

Still: it wasn't their job to question where the 3-71 Cav officers had decided to put their camp and their men.

"Noted, b.i.t.c.h," Lockner told Whittaker with a smile. "But do it anyway. We just need to find a place to land the helicopters."

"But sir-"

The lieutenant stopped smiling.

"Whittaker," he said, now angered. He mocked the other man's staccato: "f.u.c.king. Focus. I. Need you. To make me. Some. Slides. We need. A place. To land. The helicopters." "f.u.c.king. Focus. I. Need you. To make me. Some. Slides. We need. A place. To land. The helicopters."

Lockner had already spotted one location atop the mountain that seemed perfect for landing helicopters, a rarity in the jagged topography of Nuristan. The second landing zone would need to be down nearer to where the outpost itself would be constructed, close to the local headquarters of the Afghan National Police.

The specialist from Idaho spent that hot night carrying out Lockner's order. The task per se wasn't particularly difficult; it was just a PowerPoint presentation. But Whittaker kept staring at the map, hoping that the logic behind it would suddenly be revealed to him, as if it were one of those Magic Eye posters containing a hidden image. He thought about what he would do if he were a commander of one of the local insurgent groups. The hours pa.s.sed as Whittaker war-gamed attacks on the new outpost. His mind played a cinematic loop of the fate of the camp, one that always ended in disaster. In scenario after scenario, positing one defensive strategy after another, every single time he completed an exercise, everyone at the outpost died.

Ives arrived in the morning to relieve him. Even without the all-nighter, Whittaker hadn't slept well in months; he was the only day-sleeper in a tent that would hit 120 degrees before noon. He looked a mess: razor blades were scarce, and he didn't entirely trust the on-base Pakistani barber and his jerky technique. With all of that on top of the stress and the dust that coated everyone and everything in Jalalabad, he figured he must resemble a mentally ill homeless person.

Whittaker's fears about the new base were intensified by the memory of a previous scouting mission, Operation Tall Mountain, which he hadn't protested against as aggressively as he now thought he should have. Tipped off by an intelligence report suggesting that a high-value target was using a small trail east of a combat outpost named Ranch House, a team of scouts had gone to a nearby mountain peak to survey the area and try to spot insurgents. At fourteen thousand feet above sea level, the temperature on the peak was just above freezing. Because the helicopters were already overloaded with men, equipment, and supplies, the cold-weather gear and water were scheduled to follow on a second flight-which in fact never left Jalalabad, having been grounded by thunderstorms. The scouts were now trapped on a remote mountain peak without critical supplies. Everyone survived the three-day ordeal, but it was a mess. In the end, even though the scouts saw nothing of note, the mission was believed to have accomplished something-for some officer somewhere, at least. Whittaker-who had offered up a halfhearted argument that the plan didn't make sense-suspected that the operation had turned into a positive bullet on someone's officer evaluation report.

Now the whole idea of the Kamdesh outpost seemed to be propelled by the same shallow Army logic: Push forward! Move 'em on! Head 'em out! Achievement was what mattered, even if the achievement itself was worthless, whereas delays or a cancellation could be seen as a failure of leaders.h.i.+p, which would look bad on an officer's record during the next round of promotions. Whittaker told Ives that he felt he should have fought harder against Operation Tall Mountain; he would never be able to live with himself, he said, if they couldn't find a way to stop the construction of this new base. But by that point he'd learned that in the military mindset, it was usually preferable just to carry out orders and then investigate later, if necessary, rather than to raise questions beforehand about whether a plan might be flawed.

The aviation group named the helicopter pad at the future location of Camp Kamdesh Landing Zone Copenhagen, after the crew members' favorite brand of chewing tobacco. The one atop the southern mountain was christened Landing Zone Warheit, for Staff Sergeant Dana Warheit, an Air Force staff weather officer who happened to be sitting in the briefing room at that moment and whose surname sounded kind of cool.

Over the next few days, Whittaker would come to call Camp Kamdesh the Custer Combat Outpost. He figured people would ask him what the nickname meant, giving him an opportunity to carefully explain the problems to anyone who would listen; he intended to keep doing that until someone in command finally came around and canceled the mission. Eventually, Lockner had to tell him to knock it off.

Whittaker's fears would be realized more than three years later. Before dawn on October 3, 2009, hundreds of insurgents scattered throughout the village of Urmul and the mountains surrounding the American outpost. The U.S. base had been there since 2006, and insurgents had attacked it from day one. The newest company of U.S. troops had arrived less than five months before, and during that period, the enemy had increased his attacks threefold over the number launched against previous units. But this would be the big one.

The enemy fighters faced Mecca and conducted their morning prayers. Then they grabbed their guns and got into position to attack the Kamdesh outpost.

At 5:58 a.m., as the sun started to rise over the valley, the a.s.sault began. Five U.S. soldiers manned five guard stations, near the entrance of the camp and on four Humvees. Those spots were obvious targets for the enemy, as were the command center and the various barracks. Strategically, the Taliban fighters focused on the mortar pit, the location of the only guns at the outpost that could return fire with any effectiveness against their positions on the mountainside: one 60-millimeter and two 120-millimeter mortars, the big guns.

"Allahu Akbar!" the insurgents cried, seemingly with the blast of every rocket and the crash of each mortar fired into the air: "G.o.d is great." the insurgents cried, seemingly with the blast of every rocket and the crash of each mortar fired into the air: "G.o.d is great."3 After a short and intense a.s.sault, Taliban fighters began spilling down from the southern mountain, through the wire, past the mortar pit, and into the camp.

"Mujahideen have entered the base!" rejoiced one such "holy warrior."

"The Christianity center is under attack!" another of the Taliban cried.

"Long live the mujahideen!" yelled a third. "No helicopters are here yet! Let's just hit them!"

He was right about the aircraft. The Americans at the outpost had called for air support-they had little hope of surviving otherwise-but the Apache attack helicopters had not yet arrived, and they wouldn't get there for more than another hour.

The Americans fought. Over the past three years, U.S. troops had died on their way to construct the outpost; they had died clearing the path to establish the outpost; they had died patrolling the area that surrounded the outpost; they had died driving from the outpost; they had died commanding the outpost; and they had died pursuing the mission of the outpost. Now, as the enemy burst through into their camp, a small group of just over fifty American soldiers had no alternative but to do whatever they could to stay off that grim list. There was no more time for them to wonder why they were there. It was time to fight-and for some, it would be time to die.

BOOK ONE

"With Your s.h.i.+eld or on It"

ROLL CALL

Main Characters: Book One.

International Security a.s.sistance Force (ISAF)4 20062007 20062007 At Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province: Colonel John "Mick" Nicholson, Commander, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 10th Mountain Division Lieutenant Colonel Chris Cavoli, Commander, 1-32 Infantry Battalion, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division At Forward Operating Base Naray, Kunar Province: Lieutenant Colonel Joe Fenty, Squadron Commander, 3-71 Cavalry Squadron ("3-71 Cav"), 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division Lieutenant Colonel Mike Howard, Squadron Commander, 3-71 Cav Command Sergeant Major Del Byers, 3-71 Cav Command Sergeant Major Major Richard Timmons, 3-71 Cav Executive Officer Captain Ross Berkoff, 3-71 Cav Intelligence Officer Captain Pete Stambersky, Delta Company Commander, a.s.signed from the 710th Brigade Support Battalion Captain Dennis Sugrue, 3-71 Cav Headquarters Troop Commander Working throughout Kunar and Nuristan Provinces: Able Troop, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division Captain Matt Gooding, Troop Commander First Lieutenant Ben Keating, Troop Executive Officer First Sergeant Todd Yerger, First Sergeant First Lieutenant Vic Johnson, 1st Platoon Leader Sergeant Jeremy Larson, 1st Platoon Section Leader Sergeant First Cla.s.s Milton Yagel, 2nd Platoon Sergeant Staff Sergeant Adam Sears, 2nd Platoon Senior Scout Specialist Shawn Pa.s.sman, 2nd Platoon gunner for platoon sergeant Private First Cla.s.s Brian M. Moquin, Jr., 2nd Platoon scout Private Second Cla.s.s Nick Pilozzi, 2nd Platoon scout Specialist Moises Cerezo, medic attached to 2nd Platoon Staff Sergeant Matthew Netzel, Troop Headquarters Platoon Sergeant Sergeant Dennis Cline, M60 mortarman attached to Able Troop Barbarian Troop, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division Captain Frank Brooks, Troop Commander First Lieutenant Erik Jorgensen, Troop Fire Support Officer First Lieutenant Aaron Pearsall, 2nd Platoon Leader Cherokee Company, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division Captain Aaron Swain, Troop Commander Captain Michael Schmidt, Troop Commander Staff Sergeant Chris "Cricket" Cunningham, sniper and kill team leader Staff Sergeant Jared Monti, fire-support and targeting NCO attached to Cherokee Company Sergeant Patrick Lybert, recon team leader Private First Cla.s.s Brian Bradbury, fire-support specialist attached to Cherokee Company On the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mehtar Lam, Laghman Province: Lieutenant Colonel Tony Feagin, team head Trainers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) Troops at Camp Kamdesh, Nuristan Province: Master Sergeant Terry Best Sergeant Buddy Hughie On the Home Front: Kristen Fenty, wife of Lieutenant Colonel Joe Fenty Gretchen Timmons, wife of Major Richard Timmons Ken and Beth Keating, parents of Lieutenant Ben Keating Heather McDougal, girlfriend of Lieutenant Ben Keating

CHAPTER 1

Every Man an Alexander

The bad dreams began long before the troops of 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, or "3-71 Cav," pushed north in March 2006. The troops blamed the nightmares on the Mefloquine, the pills they were required to take each "Malaria Monday" to guard against that disease. Some Army doctors argued that the pills should stop being distributed, convinced they could cause far worse side effects than just restless nights, including depression, paranoia, hallucinations, and even mental breakdowns. Of course, such symptoms could be tough to detect in a place where depression and paranoia might just be the most appropriate reactions to the surrounding reality.

On March 12, 2006, hours before the first leg of the convoy pulled out and began its nearly four-hundred-mile trek north from Forward Operating Base Salerno, in southeastern Afghanistan, insurgents had already made their presence known. Enemy fighters detonated an improvised explosive device, or IED, in Kunar Province-where First Lieutenant Ben Keating and his men were heading-as another U.S. convoy drove through. The explosion destroyed a Humvee and killed four Army Reservists from an Engineer Battalion out of Asheville, North Carolina.5 But Kunar was hardly the only danger zone. Before Keating and the other men from 3-71 Cav could even get there, they would have to stop in Kabul, where, on that very day, two insurgents wearing explosive vests killed four civilians and severely wounded two more, one a young girl. (They missed their target, an Afghan politician who ran a government reconciliation commission.) On the same day, other insurgents attacked a convoy of Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers on the KabulKandahar Highway. n.o.body was killed in that attack, but not for the Taliban's lack of trying.

To help his men deal with these kinds of horror stories and with the fear they all felt about moving to an area widely reputed to be untamed and deadly, Keating tried to keep the mood light as the medium-sized convoy-eight Humvees and two trailers-headed toward possible danger. He joked that this, the lead Humvee, with a Mark 19 grenade launcher in its turret, was only the second brand-new vehicle he'd ever owned. As Able Troop6 pushed north, the lieutenant held the microphone of his MICH ranger headset up to the speaker of his CD player and provided his men with a soundtrack: pushed north, the lieutenant held the microphone of his MICH ranger headset up to the speaker of his CD player and provided his men with a soundtrack:

She was a fast machineShe kept her motor cleanShe was the best d.a.m.n woman that I ever seen...

"You Shook Me All Night Long," from AC/DC's alb.u.m Back in Black, Back in Black, was the sort of head-banging anthem that flicked a switch in the minds of young men and set them on a course toward conquest. Keating, at twenty-seven, may have looked the part of an Army stud, but what few knew about him was that he was deeply devout, disapproving if not sanctimonious on the subject of the hedonistic pursuits of the young. The drinking and carousing he'd witnessed as a student at the University of New Hamps.h.i.+re had disgusted him, and shortly after 9/11 he'd delivered a guest sermon at his parents' church, in a small town in Maine, in which he'd lambasted the vacuous immorality of his college peers. He'd mellowed since then, but he had remained chaste and was convinced he walked the path of righteousness. was the sort of head-banging anthem that flicked a switch in the minds of young men and set them on a course toward conquest. Keating, at twenty-seven, may have looked the part of an Army stud, but what few knew about him was that he was deeply devout, disapproving if not sanctimonious on the subject of the hedonistic pursuits of the young. The drinking and carousing he'd witnessed as a student at the University of New Hamps.h.i.+re had disgusted him, and shortly after 9/11 he'd delivered a guest sermon at his parents' church, in a small town in Maine, in which he'd lambasted the vacuous immorality of his college peers. He'd mellowed since then, but he had remained chaste and was convinced he walked the path of righteousness.

Neither Keating nor any of the other men of 3-71 Cav had much of an idea of what their mission would entail, or for that matter even where they were going, in anything but the vaguest sense. While prepping for the trip north from Forward Operating Base Salerno, they'd heard the whispers, the military gossip: "Oh, you're going up north," north," soldiers would say. "It's bad up there." soldiers would say. "It's bad up there."

Now off they went, 3-71 Cav, in four different convoys, with additional supplies to be ferried via helicopter. For Able Troop's journey, Keating-his Humvee in the lead-rode shotgun in the truck commander seat as his driver, Private Second Cla.s.s Nick Pilozzi, steered the vehicle over both paved highways and gritty gravel roads. Sergeant Darian Decker, their gunner, sat on a strap in the turret, holding his Mark 19 grenade launcher. Sergeant Vernon Tiller, Able Troop's chief mechanic, was in back.

A few Humvees behind them, in the command-and-control truck, sat Captain Matt Gooding, the leader of Able Troop. Gooding had planned every part of this trip, coordinating logistics and making sure the convoy would have enough fuel. En route, he would keep the mortarmen on the ground apprised of the convoy's position at all times and alert the pilots of the choppers and planes above whenever ground fire support was out of range.

Keating-the executive officer, or second in command, of Able Troop-took note as the convoy steered through the pa.s.s on the road between Khost and Gardez. As he wrote to his parents, the "weather wasn't great-rain in the foothills turned into snow in the mountains. The soil in most of Afghanistan is a heavy clay, rock-hard when dry, but slick as ice after rain or snow. The road has no guardrails or boulders to clearly define its edge, which falls off several hundred feet to the valley floor." The sight of a truck speeding by would make everyone's heart skip a beat. As they rolled through the pa.s.s, the temperature changed from a freezing chill to almost 90 degrees within a half hour. The bizarre weather change was just one of the road trip's surprises, in a journey full of nothing but-especially considering that before their deployment to Afghanistan two months earlier, in January, many 3-71 Cav troops had never been outside of the continental United States.

Keating made sure to take pictures all along the way to show to his beloved parents, his older sister, Jessica, and his new girlfriend, Heather McDougal. Although he had spent three years after high school working at her father's apple orchard, picking Macintoshes and Honey Crisps while trying to figure out what to do with his life, Keating hadn't actually known Heather all that well back then. She was just fourteen when they first met, almost a decade ago now, and they'd lost touch after he left the job at the orchard. But the previous fall, Keating and McDougal-now a college junior-had struck up a conversation online, and at Christmas they'd met up again at his parents' church in Maine. They were both surprised by how strong their feelings were for each other. They exchanged intense emails and instant messages whenever they could. It was an unusual way to fall in love, but it was their only option at the moment.

Ever a creature of the modern Army, Keating would later turn his snapshots into a PowerPoint presentation that he sent to McDougal and his family, t.i.tled "ROAD TRIP." One page read:

Wrote Keating to his family: "The route traversed two high mountain pa.s.ses of elevations above 2,000 meters ASL [above sea level] and followed the K[u]nar River on a treacherous road from the city of Jalalabad to the camp at Naray." (Photo courtesy of the Keating family) (Photo courtesy of the Keating family)

As they traveled, Keating and his men, wary of insurgents who might be hiding out among the locals, stopped to set up temporary defensive perimeters that would allow civilians to pa.s.s them. Herds of camels ran alongside the convoy where the road flattened out and the danger of slipping off an edge declined. When they reached a rocky plain, further evidence of civilization emerged.

"If you've ever wondered what a people do when they've lived in a place with nothing but rocks and sand for five thousand years," Keating wrote to his friends and family, "wonder no more. Walls, they build walls. There are rock walls everywhere, without rhyme or reason."

Afghan males, mostly boys and elders, would come to the edge of the road, smiling-even laughing-as if they were all in on some joke that the recent arrivals had yet to get. They wore hats, tunics, and loose-fitting trousers, which the U.S. troops referred to as "man-jams."

The gear worn by Keating and his men was more sophisticated: combat uniforms, pixelated grayish camouflage "go-to-work" suits; bulletproof vests; mesh vests with pouches and compartments for canteens, grenades, and ammunition; military combat helmets; and kneepads. This all amounted to no less than fifty pounds per man, and that was before adding a rifle, a supply of water, or an a.s.sault pack, not to mention the things they carried, the letters and photographs, the chewing tobacco, the cigarettes, the talismans.

The drivers slowly steered their Humvees and trucks as the flat, barren landscape gave way to densely forested mountains. With the exceptions of the enemy weapons and the cheap Toyota Hiluxes clanking along the roads, this part of Afghanistan did not look to Ben Keating to have changed much since the war with the USSR in the 1980s, or even since the British were felled there almost a century before. Not that his own pa.s.sport matched his scholars.h.i.+p: aside from a weekend trip to Montreal for a hockey tournament at around the age of ten and a family trip to the United Kingdom when he was twenty, Ben Keating hadn't been outside the United States until this deployment.

In December 2005, Keating had visited a Portland, Maine, bookstore and bought a Christmas present for his father. Sean Naylor's Not a Good Day to Die Not a Good Day to Die detailed Operation Anaconda, the b.l.o.o.d.y campaign undertaken by the United States in March 2002 to flush out an Al Qaeda stronghold in southeastern Afghanistan. In an inscription in the front of the book, Keating wrote that the contents would give his dad, Ken, "a pretty clear picture of what the enemy threat looks like." detailed Operation Anaconda, the b.l.o.o.d.y campaign undertaken by the United States in March 2002 to flush out an Al Qaeda stronghold in southeastern Afghanistan. In an inscription in the front of the book, Keating wrote that the contents would give his dad, Ken, "a pretty clear picture of what the enemy threat looks like."