The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 12

The troops up the mountain had already ordered a medevac. Keating was still breathing, but it would be a race to get him to the operating room at Forward Operating Base Naray before it was too late.

Cunningham and Garner hooked up two 150-foot ropes to a Humvee and began rappelling down the cliff face. They didn't know how strong the ropes were, but they figured they'd find out soon enough. Less than ten minutes later, the snipers were with Keating, Snell, Cerezo, and Mendez. They put Keating on the Skedco stretcher they'd brought with them. Keating was cold and soaking wet. Every so often he would start to moan a little, and the men would try to talk him up.

"You're gonna make it home to see your girlfriend," Garner said.

The medevac finally arrived, but there was no safe place for it to land, so it began lowering a hoist with a medic. The rotation of the chopper's blades in that tight corridor created a considerable draft, however, and the medic oscillated wildly under the helicopter as he descended. Deciding that the situation was too hazardous, he signaled for the crewman to stop and lift him back into the medevac. The medevac extraction was called off, and the bird flew on to Combat Outpost Kamdesh.

Cerezo had been lying on top of Keating to try to warm him up and s.h.i.+eld him from the chopper's wind. As soon as the helicopter was called away, he noticed that there was something much more serious going on with Keating than just a loss of consciousness.

"I don't think he's breathing anymore," Cerezo said.

"You've got four minutes to get him breathing again," Cunningham told him. After that, they would need to carry the lieutenant up the steep slope.

Cerezo and Garner, a former emergency medical technician, opened up the Skedco to which Keating had been fastened so they could begin CPR. As they were attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Keating started vomiting in their mouths: green and black crud burped up from inside him. This caused Garner to vomit in turn, and Cerezo to dry-heave. But they wouldn't give up.

They could feel his life slipping away. They gave Keating as much air as they could from their lungs, trading off over and over. They counted chest compressions-1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14-screaming out the numbers so that the mountains echoed with their desperate cries. Cerezo inserted a King LT tube in Keating's mouth in an effort to help air get into his lungs more easily. It worked: he started breathing again. They snapped him back into the Skedco, and Cunningham wrapped the stretcher around his waist. They all carried Keating the thirty feet up the hill to the bottom of the rope, which Cunningham then secured to both the stretcher and his own belt.

"We're good to go!" Cunningham yelled up the hill. "Start pulling!"

Troops on the road began hauling the rope, and Cunningham started clawing his way up the cliff. Garner and Cerezo continued to breathe for Keating, who wasn't able to do so on his own. The pull rope, rubbing against a rock's sharp edge, snapped. Pushed back suddenly by gravity and Keating's weight, Cunningham dug his feet into the ground while Garner pushed Keating up. Cunningham yelled for Townsend to lower the rope back down so he could fix it, then he hastily refastened it, tying a square knot with two half hitches.

Vehicle parts and MRE boxes were strewn about the slope. Rocks kept falling on the soldiers as they made their way up. When they were halfway up the cliff, Cerezo noted that Keating no longer had a pulse.

They kept pus.h.i.+ng.

Cerezo saw that Keating's pupils were fixed and dilated. He was showing no signs of life.

Other troops now began scaling down the cliff toward them, inadvertently knocking loose rocks that hit Garner, Cunningham, and Cerezo. For the most part, Cunningham's helmet protected him, but Garner's head and Cerezo's hand started to bleed from cuts caused by the gravel. As the stretcher pa.s.sed the other troops, the medic and the EMT, both bleeding, continued to push on Keating's chest and offer him their breaths.

Roughly two hours after the accident, Ben Keating at last reached the top of the cliff. Everyone helped the team get him past the ledge. Cory Townsend a.s.sisted with the mouth-to-mouth, taking over for Garner. Cerezo told the surgeon that Keating had no pulse, was not breathing on his own, and was cold.

"He's not cold and dead until he's warm and dead," Martin replied.

Martin was quoting an old emergency-room saying, meaning that sometimes when a person's body is cold due to hypothermia, a pulse may be present but not detectable. He was trying to say, in other words, that Keating might still be alive. Cerezo had no idea what the h.e.l.l he was talking about.

Martin attached a respiratory bag over Keating's nose and mouth and covered him with blankets to combat the hypothermia. Troops put him in the Hilux truck and rushed him back to the landing zone at the outpost, where the surgeon gave him a shot of epinephrine before the bird took him to Forward Operating Base Naray, a twenty-minute chopper ride away.

Back on the road, above the wreck of the LMTV, Yagel and Cerezo embraced.

"I don't think he's going to make it," the medic said.

"I know," said Yagel. "I know."

Tiller was still at the bottom of the cliff.

"We gotta go back down there," Cunningham told Cerezo, who seemed preoccupied with Keating's fate. "C'mon, man, do your job, we gotta go down there."

"Get your f.u.c.king a.s.s up here, dude!" Cerezo yelled down to the mechanic, mistakenly thinking he wasn't that badly hurt.

Cunningham climbed back down using the same rope. When he got to the bottom, he lay on top of Tiller, offering him his body heat, while waiting for the stretcher to be lowered to them. Once it reached them, Cunningham strapped Tiller into it with the belts of the other troops who had joined them down there, and then they hauled him up the hill. His condition seemed stable.

In the operating room at Forward Operating Base Naray, Keating's body temperature was only 92 degrees. He had no pulse or heart rhythm.

The doctors spent forty minutes aggressively attempting to resuscitate him with an open cardiac ma.s.sage.

He had bled out.

His heart was empty.

His abdomen became distended with blood.

The open-heart ma.s.sage didn't work. Keating had suffered too much damage, and it had taken too long to get him from the bottom of that cliff to the operating table.

Lieutenant Ben Keating was declared dead at 12:20 a.m. ET on Sunday, November 26, 2006.

Ken and Beth Keating had just returned from a trip to Delaware to visit Ken's brother and his family. Their son had called them there and spoken with each relative in turn. It had been a difficult phone call for both Ken and his son, with lots of pauses. Neither wanted to hang up the phone, but eventually there was nothing left for them to say.

On Sunday morning, at church, Beth saw Heather McDougal, whose dad had usher duty that month. McDougal told her that for the first time, she and Ben had used Instant Messenger to talk to each other. Their conversation had taken place the day before he left on his mission to drive the LMTV from Kamdesh to Naray: bkeating6: sorry i missed you earlier sorry i missed you earlierapplegirl15: hi! hi!bkeating6: morning gorgeous morning gorgeousapplegirl15: hey there... hey there...applegirl15: so how much longer are you in kamdesh for so how much longer are you in kamdesh forbkeating6: about 24 hours about 24 hoursbkeating6: [till] tomorrow night... they're pretty much done with operations out here, so the danger isn't too great [till] tomorrow night... they're pretty much done with operations out here, so the danger isn't too greatapplegirl15: ok okbkeating6: just a really boring truck drive just a really boring truck driveapplegirl15: is the weather too bad to fly is the weather too bad to flybkeating6: don't worry... i'm coming back to you,... don't worry... i'm coming back to you,...

The LMTV in the Landay-Sin River. (Photo from the accident report, U.S. Army) (Photo from the accident report, U.S. Army)

That afternoon, Ken Keating watched the Chicago Bears lose to his beloved New England Patriots-a game that his son had said he was hoping to catch at Forward Operating Base Naray. Just in case Ben wasn't able to see it, Ken typed up a synopsis of the Patriots' win and emailed it to his son.

Ken headed to bed at around nine that night. Beth was already under the covers when they heard a car door slam, followed by a knock at the door. Ben Keating's father put his jeans back on, went downstairs, and turned on the porch light. Two soldiers were standing there in their Cla.s.s A uniforms.

"Beth!" Ken Keating called upstairs. "I think you'd better come down here."

CHAPTER 13

The 7-31

Fittingly, a brutal winter descended over Camp Kamdesh. Gooding had made sure the outpost was prepared, and with firewood burning in potbelly stoves that a local man had purchased in Pakistan and hauled across the border, the troops tried to stay warm. By December, three stone barracks had been constructed at the camp, and two more up at Observation Post Warheit.

The different platoons would rotate onto OP Warheit for two weeks at a time. Not long after Keating died, Able Troop's 2nd Platoon was a.s.signed to the observation post. There, a stray dog made her way into the good graces of Moises Cerezo, the medic who had tried to save Ben Keating and whose hungry soul was grateful for the companions.h.i.+p.

"Dude, we need to give her a bath," Cerezo said to Sergeant Michael Hendy. "She has fleas."

"You're going to freeze her," Hendy cautioned. It was winter, after all, and the only available water was bone-chilling cold. Nonetheless, the two men gave the puppy a bath in a frigid stream that ran nearby. She whimpered and shook. She looked as if she might die at any moment.

Cerezo had his fleece on, and he picked her up and drew her to his body. He held her tightly like that for more than an hour. Her shakes eventually lessened into s.h.i.+vers, which soon calmed to nothing. She began playing with Cerezo. He named her Kelly, but everyone else called her Cali. Cerezo slept the first few nights with her in his bunk, zipped in behind the safety of the mosquito netting that kept out the freaky insects that were always dropping on soldiers at night-immense spiders, glow-in-the-dark centipedes, creatures seemingly from another, horrifying dimension.

Then one night Cerezo saw a flea on his fleece, and that was it for his bunkmate. It was too late, however: fleas had infested the barracks at Observation Post Warheit, leaving some soldiers, including Adam Sears, so badly bitten that they looked as if they had chicken pox. There simply weren't enough flea collars to go around.

Amid subzero temperatures, punis.h.i.+ng mountaintop winds, and three feet of snow, Cali's bugs had ruined the only warm and comfortable spot in Cerezo's world: his sleeping bag, which, needless to say, he couldn't wash anywhere. Cali would come in to the barracks in the middle of the night, pus.h.i.+ng the door open and causing an already cold room to turn into a meat locker.

One morning, Sears awoke to find that the fire in the furnace had gone out. As he grabbed the ax to split some of the chopped firewood, his hand landed in a pile of feces that Cali had deposited on the ax handle. It was the final straw; he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his M16 rifle and chased Cali all over the post. He fired at her, grazing her neck, but she got away, and finally Sears gave up. "I guess it learned its lesson," he said to himself. Sears felt better, at any rate. Cali soon rejoined her new "owners," acting as if nothing had happened, as if Sears hadn't just tried to kill her.

They tried to pa.s.s the time constructively. Sergeant Michael Hendy had received some pepperoni in a care package, and he had the bright idea of trying to make pizzas at the observation post, using locally baked flatbread and some tomato sauce the men had bought from the ANA. An interpreter helped the sergeant acquire onions, peppers, and two softball-sized wheels of cheese. Eating dairy up there seemed like a questionable call to some-too many of their fellow troops had sampled the local cheese or milk and ended up suffering a flulike reaction that wrung out their insides-but Hendy was convinced it was worth the risk. Pizza needed cheese, he insisted. Ultimately the question became moot when the wheels were opened and found to be teeming with maggots. Hendy went ahead with the rest of it anyway-the bread, onions, peppers, pepperoni, and tomato sauce. Nick Anderson thought it tasted funny; he looked at the tomato sauce jar and discovered it was two years past its sell-by date. Hendy kept eating.

The winter isolated the men at Combat Outpost Kamdesh and Observation Post Warheit not only from the U.S. Army writ large, but from one another. Anderson bought a goat for a hundred U.S. dollars and asked the ANA cook to prepare it for 2nd Platoon; the result was a c.r.a.ppy stew made of joints and tendons, while the Afghan soldiers kept the good stuff for themselves.

Anderson didn't make that mistake again. He used his own hunting knife to slaughter the next goat, then butchered it himself, dressing it like a deer. Hendy cooked it up after other troops fetched firewood and prepped the meat. This exercise would be enjoyably repeated, both for the sake of dinner and to kill time. In the late afternoon, Anderson would buy a goat from some locals; each one cost between sixty and a hundred U.S. dollars, depending on the seller, which interpreter Anderson had with him, and whether or not the purchase had been arranged ahead of time. They would name each goat-one was Spicoli, after the stoner surfer in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and another was Baba Ga.n.u.sh, the derisive nickname given to a particular insurgent whom Special Forces had targeted-and then take pictures of themselves with their pending dinner. Tied up at the observation post, each goat got one night-and only one-to bleat. and another was Baba Ga.n.u.sh, the derisive nickname given to a particular insurgent whom Special Forces had targeted-and then take pictures of themselves with their pending dinner. Tied up at the observation post, each goat got one night-and only one-to bleat.

Scene 1: Spicoli and Staff Sergeant Nick Anderson. (Photo courtesy of Nick Anderson) (Photo courtesy of Nick Anderson)

Scene 2: Staff Sergeants Nick Anderson and Adam Sears and, on the makes.h.i.+ft grill made from a HEs...o...b..sket, Spicoli. Troops melted the fat in the canteen cup to pour over the meat. (Photo courtesy of Nick Anderson) (Photo courtesy of Nick Anderson)

The enemy had all but disappeared, a seasonal occurrence due to the unforgiving elements. It was a.s.sumed that the insurgents had gone to Pakistan, but no one really knew. On December 16, Army Master Sergeant Terry Best, forty-nine, arrived at the Kamdesh outpost by helicopter with the platoon of Afghan National Army soldiers he was in charge of training. The Afghan troops hailed from Kabul, the theory being that sending ANA troops into regions other than their own would discourage the formation of militias with local elders or fighters of a common heritage, ensuring a certain remove that would, it was hoped, allow for a greater sense of objectivity in their military operations. The drawback was that the newcomers would generally be unfamiliar with the local environment and local powerbrokers, as well as lacking, often, in any linguistic and tribal affinity with the local populace.

In this instance, things went sour immediately. The ANA's Afghan commander started regularly smoking has.h.i.+sh. He also availed himself of pharmaceuticals provided by the ANA medic, as evidenced by the used syringes that Best would find during his periodic walkthroughs of the ANA barracks, which were often redolent with the sweet, skunky stench of hash. When Best told Gooding about the problem, the Able Troop leader couldn't have been less surprised. His own experience with ANA soldiers so far was that whenever they joined Americans on missions, at the first sign of danger, they would turn and flee. To Gooding, the idea of Best's foot-patrolling local villages along with eight such Afghan troops-even with the a.s.sistance of his staff, Sergeants Buddy Hughie and Chris Henderson of the Oklahoma Army National Guard-seemed downright nuts. Many U.S. soldiers viewed the a.s.signment to serve as an embedded tactical trainer, or ETT, as a sort of punishment, and few wanted to embed with the ANA and become such a naked target for the enemy.

Best contacted the office of the Afghan minister of defense to report the ANA commander's drug use, and officials at the ministry advised him to inventory the unit's medical kit to establish proof. Best did so with the support of First Sergeant Qadar, a competent ANA soldier. His investigation was hardly cheered by some of the ANA troops, two of whom came forward to make a not-so-veiled threat: "Don't f.u.c.k with our commander, or you won't be protected," one told Best. Afghanistan was already a haze of switching allegiances and uncertain allies; now two Afghan soldiers whom Best was training were telling him that not only might they not be there in the field for him if he needed them, but they might even willingly allow him to be harmed by others. Qadar had the two yanked out of the company and sent back to ANA headquarters. Confronted with evidence of the ANA commander's drug use, the Afghan Ministry of Defense quickly made the decision to pull both him and the medic who'd been supplying him out of Combat Outpost Kamdesh.

Best had a much more positive impression of the next ANA commander, Shamsullah Khan, who made it clear that he believed his troops needed to be out in the field, protecting their country. Best also liked most of his Afghan trainees; he had cause to be grateful to First Sergeant Qadar yet again after Qadar saved his life by apprehending some insurgents who were planning an attack on him. But his favorite of all was a soldier named Adel, who was an expert at clearing caves and scaling mountains-and a good cook, too.

Among his own men, Best was closest to Buddy Hughie. Hughie had just returned from leave in South Carolina, where his wife, Alexis, had given birth to their first child, a son named Cooper. A smiling and energetic presence, Hughie hailed from Poteau, Oklahoma, where he was active in his local Baptist church. Before he turned two, Buddy, along with his baby sister, Jenny, had been adopted by their grandparents, Mema and Papa, who raised them. With no more than fleeting memories of their absent mother, Buddy Hughie had always protected his sister as if the same unknown evil forces might at any moment s.n.a.t.c.h her away, too.

Helping people seemed to come naturally to Buddy Hughie, first as an Oklahoma National Guardsman, then as a medic, then as a trainer of Afghan soldiers. He was officially Best's gunner, but for all intents and purposes, he'd a.s.sumed the role of his second in command, a de facto opening ever since Best's actual actual second in command had started refusing to partic.i.p.ate in combat missions-once even unilaterally calling for a ceasefire in the middle of a firefight. (He attributed his pacifism to his adherence to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; why, in that case, he'd joined the military in the first place remained a bit of a mystery.) The reluctant officer also rebuffed a request from Gooding to join Able Troop on a mission, then later complained to Gooding about the living quarters' not being up to snuff. Gooding asked his higher-ups if that officer could be relieved. He was, but when no replacement was offered, Hughie ended up doing the work instead. second in command had started refusing to partic.i.p.ate in combat missions-once even unilaterally calling for a ceasefire in the middle of a firefight. (He attributed his pacifism to his adherence to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; why, in that case, he'd joined the military in the first place remained a bit of a mystery.) The reluctant officer also rebuffed a request from Gooding to join Able Troop on a mission, then later complained to Gooding about the living quarters' not being up to snuff. Gooding asked his higher-ups if that officer could be relieved. He was, but when no replacement was offered, Hughie ended up doing the work instead.

On December 15, at Bagram, Governor Nuristani met with the commander of the 10th Mountain Division, Major General Benjamin Freakley, to tell him about the establishment of the Eastern Nuristan Security Shura. Its members, forty-five elders from villages scattered throughout Kamdesh District and Barg-e-Matal District to its north, were to meet regularly and confer on how to keep the region safe. The elders would be paid and considered an official body, in charge of development projects and the like. Nuristani wanted the Security Shura sessions, rather than the Kamdesh outpost, to be the place where locals would take their social, political, and security problems and concerns.

The governor had previously raised some eyebrows among American officers by publicly calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nuristani explained to Freakley that he needed to establish credibility so he could initiate direct discussions with some of the more radical elements within Nuristan Province. If the Security Shura was a success, it would demonstrate that the Nuristani people supported Karzai's government, and that the region was capable of providing its own security-and once those conditions were met, then the United States would be able to leave. Wasn't that what they all wanted?

Freakley got it, as did Colonel Nicholson. Some of Nicholson's troops with 1-32 Infantry had just scored a victory in an area of Nuristan that had been harboring insurgents-and they had done it without firing a single shot. The villagers had invited the Americans in for a shura. After conferring with Nicholson, Lieutenant Colonel Cavoli and his men had accepted. The Americans made their case, and the villagers debated among themselves and ultimately voted to expel the insurgents. Ideally, the shura could work as a way of separating the enemy from the people, through social pressure and argument, not bullets.

Governor Nuristani had brought in a controversial local mullah named Fazal Ahad to help guide the Security Shura. When 3-71 Cav first deployed to the region, ten months before, Ahad was on Captain Ross Berkoff's "kill/capture" list. Until recently, he had been the deputy to Mawlawi Afzal, the man who'd once headed the Dawlat, or Islamic Revolutionary State of Afghanistan, which was recognized only by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Afzal was thought to have some unsavory connections, and Fazal Ahad was his protege. Nuristani's idea was that Ahad could work on both sides of the fence. He certainly had sway with the locals.

If the Security Shura was Governor Nuristani's baby, 3-71 Cav helped with child support. The squadron funded gas and supplies so the shura members did not have to pay out of pocket to travel to the meetings, which were held in the community mosques of villages and hamlets throughout the province. The Americans also promoted the Security Shura through Radio Naray and other information operations. Beyond that, however, 3-71 Cav did not get involved. If the locals ever started thinking that the shura was an American creation, its credibility among them would be contaminated.

On Christmas Day, the Kamdesh Valley was judged to be secure enough that senior officers could drop in on Black Hawks with "Christmas chow" to boost the troops' morale. At Combat Outpost Kamdesh, the repast consisted of two military coolers full of cold, holiday-themed foodstuffs: frozen and tasteless canned turkey, pulpy mashed potatoes, coagulated gravy, and the like. The men of 2nd Platoon laughed at the idea of that menu and dug in to hot steaks, onions, and mashed potatoes they'd purchased and prepared on their own. For this special occasion, Anderson had gotten far more ambitious than usual: instead of a goat, 2nd Platoon had bought a cow. He and his fellow happy warriors butchered the beast, packed the meat in bags, and stored their food in a wheelbarrow that they covered with snow.

With the shura process begun, 3-71 Cav turned to overtly pus.h.i.+ng an Afghan government program called PTS, which stood for "Programme Tahkim Sulh"29 in Dari and "Peace Through Strength" in English. President Karzai had established PTS in May 2005, under the auspices of the lofty-sounding Afghanistan National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission, in an attempt first to get insurgents to renounce their opposition and then to reintegrate them peacefully by giving them some material benefits-in other words, to co-opt them. in Dari and "Peace Through Strength" in English. President Karzai had established PTS in May 2005, under the auspices of the lofty-sounding Afghanistan National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission, in an attempt first to get insurgents to renounce their opposition and then to reintegrate them peacefully by giving them some material benefits-in other words, to co-opt them.30 This proved tough going throughout the rest of the country as well as in Nuristan. In December, Governor Nuristani fired Gul Mohammed Khan, the popular district administrator for Kamdesh, and replaced him with a man named Anayatullah. On December 28, Anayatullah met with the Americans and gave them the bad news: village elders throughout Kamdesh were skeptical about the outreach program. Nuristanis found it difficult to believe that anyone whom the Americans believed to be under enemy influence would be either welcomed at an Army base or, more significantly, permitted to leave it again.

Skepticism was far from exclusive to the locals. Many American experts were uncomfortable about the fact that so much of the effort to bring peace to the region now rested on the shoulders of Fazal Ahad, who they believed was motivated only by the desire to get his hands on development dollars. Adam Boulio in particular viewed him as a shady character: Ahad simply isn't our friend, he thought. His speeches in the shura meetings often seemed to contradict and counter American aims, and Boulio believed that Ahad's influence actually turned some neutral elders against the United States and the Afghan government.

The soldiers of Able Troop spent the winter months trying to make inroads among the villagers of Kamdesh, distributing bags of rice, beans, and flour as well as teacher and student kits. Officers at Combat Outpost Kamdesh were even asked to help facilitate a visit by Kushtozi elders to Kamdesh Village, to help broker peace between the warring communities of the Kushtozis and the Kom.

By now, 3-71 Cav had been in Afghanistan for just over a year. The troops were spent and demoralized and still in mourning for their lost comrades. But at least they could console themselves with the knowledge that their deployment was almost over. To prepare for the redeployment back to Fort Drum, several hundred soldiers from across the 3rd Brigade-including a couple of dozen from 3-71 Cav-had already started moving back to the United States via Kuwait and Kyrgyzstan. A few had even spent a couple of nights back home with their families.

Gooding, for his part, had been called to Forward Operating Base Naray for a commanders' huddle to plan for postdeployment training at Fort Drum. It was the first time all of the commanders had been together since they pushed out of Forward Operating Base Salerno in March 2006, and their reunion had a celebratory air.

And why not? They were getting the h.e.l.l out of Dodge. Berkoff had purchased a plane ticket and booked a week's vacation in Cancun with some college friends. He'd given his counterpart in the 82nd Airborne-which was supposed to replace 3-71 Cav at Naray-his DVDs, his books, and even his bunk. (Berkoff had moved from his little hooch to a tent near the landing zone.) In the middle of the night on January 22, 2007, the staff and commanders were told to report to Howard's office. As he watched Captain Frank Brooks get up from his cot and head to the lieutenant colonel's office, Erik Jorgensen worried that they must have had a KIA. But no artillery was firing, Jorgensen noticed. And no one was out. Maybe there was an urgent mission of some sort? What was going on?

This was what was going on: the political dominoes had fallen, and as always, the joes in the field were the ones knocked facedown on the floor by the last game tile.

Two and a half months before, back in the United States, the Republicans had taken what President Bush referred to as "a thumpin' " in the November 2006 elections, with the downward trajectory of the war in Iraq's being seen as one of the major contributing factors in the Democrats' recapturing of the House and Senate. A head had to roll, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld offered his up. The brand-new secretary of defense would be Robert Gates, the president of Texas A&M University and former deputy national security adviser and director of the CIA for Bush's father, President George H. W. Bush.

A few days before the leaders of 3-71 Cav were summoned in the middle of the night to meet with Lieutenant Colonel Howard, Gates had visited Afghanistan and met with commanders on the ground. Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Combined Forces Command Afghanistan,31 requested that the tours of thirty-two hundred soldiers from the 3rd Brigade-including all four hundred troops from 3-71 Cav-be extended for up to 120 additional days in preparation for an antic.i.p.ated Taliban spring terror offensive in the southern and eastern parts of the country. It wasn't easy for Eikenberry to ask for the extension, but it was his only option, as the war in Iraq remained the Bush administration's main effort. Gates agreed. requested that the tours of thirty-two hundred soldiers from the 3rd Brigade-including all four hundred troops from 3-71 Cav-be extended for up to 120 additional days in preparation for an antic.i.p.ated Taliban spring terror offensive in the southern and eastern parts of the country. It wasn't easy for Eikenberry to ask for the extension, but it was his only option, as the war in Iraq remained the Bush administration's main effort. Gates agreed.

"Although it is going to be a violent spring and we're going to have violence into the summer, I'm absolutely confident that we will be able to dominate," Eikenberry declared.

So there they all were, in Howard's office: Gooding, Brooks, Schmidt, Stambersky, Berkoff, Sutton, and others. Howard got to it quickly.

"Our deployment has been extended four months," Howard told them. "The new secretary of defense wants and needs more troops here, and there are no others-we're the only combat brigade that's ready, and all the other units are committed to Iraq."

Gooding began trembling. It was the same feeling he had when he lost a soldier. He was certain that this decision would mean at least one of his men would die.

Berkoff later wrote to his friends and family:

No words can describe how I felt when I was shaken out of a cold sleep, only to be told that we've been extended another four months. I should have realized something was up when we just received a new s.h.i.+pment of uniforms that were long overdue. I'm sure the Defense Sec. Gates, who's been in his office for all of two weeks and came out here to visit, listened to some NATO general say that we needed more troops in Afghanistan-and that's it. The entire 3rd Brigade, and the 10th Mountain HQ, all ordered to remain. We are now calling back hundreds of soldiers who already went home to return to their posts out here. All our equipment that we sent away, it's coming back, or so we hope. It's just unreal. G.o.d help the man who made this decision when we lose another soldier.... All I can say is that I'm sorry for what we're putting you through. I'll be home one day, and if no one else is hiring in the market, I know a few guys here who would make outstanding Bush Administration Protesters for a living.

Captain Brooks returned to his tent with a grim look on his face. He sighed and said, "Someone get all the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants."

Five minutes later, sleep-deprived and dazed, the Barbarians' platoon leaders and sergeants heard the news from their commander.

"Listen, guys, there's no easy way to say this: we've been extended another four months," Brooks told them.

No one spoke; everyone was dumbstruck. Jorgensen was supposed to get married in two months' time, and Brooks himself two months after that. Neither would be able to make his own ceremony.