WASHINGTON (Army News Service) –
Just before dawn Sept. 8, 2009 and under a full moon, Capt. William
D. Swenson and a contingent of Afghan forces made their way slowly on
foot, crunching the gravel under their boots through a mountain valley
in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, not far from the Pakistan border.
With one tour in Iraq and on his second deployment to Afghanistan,
Swenson was serving as an embedded advisor for the Afghan Border Police.
He points out that as an advisor, he wasn't there to lead the Afghan
police or the Afghan National Army soldiers, known as the ANA.
"With the Afghans, one cannot overtly lead -- they are their own
military, independently run by their own leadership, but you can also
influence them with advice and your presence," Swenson said. "Show your
professionalism to them, then you exhibit leadership when they don't
even know it's there. They'll follow your example, your character, so
was I leading anyone?
No. Was I offering an example for them to follow, yes."
Swenson, in support of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), was
leading an Afghan Border Police, or ABP, Mentor Team, working directly
with just one other American Soldier, colleague and friend Sgt. 1st
Class Kenneth Westbrook. Together the two were mentoring along with a
U.S. Marine embedded training team, or ETT, under a different chain of
command. Even so, Swenson said the Soldiers and Marines worked very
closely together, harmonizing and collaborating on similar objectives.
This was a routine mission -- Operation Buri Booza II -- one like the
Afghan soldiers and police as well as the Americans had done dozens of
times before. The column of 106 troops moved from the Observational
Rally Point towards the village. The road they trekked melded into a
boulder-ridden, gravel-strewn washout which led directly to the hillside
village made up of thick-walled mud buildings with mud-thatched roofs.
Swenson recalled the village structures had the appearance of World War
II pillboxes with small, narrow, slit openings.
At the washout, about half the coalition and Afghan National Security
Forces, known as ANSF, split off to the north and south to establish
support positions. Swenson and Westbrook continued toward the valley
with the remaining troops.
At the front of the column approaching the village were four ETTs --
three Marines and a Navy Corpsman -- and their ANA counterpart. Behind
them was the command element, or Tactical Action Center, referred to as
the TAC, led by Maj. Kevin Williams and consisting of 1st Lt. Ademola D.
Fabayo, a Marine ETT operations officer; First Sgt. Christopher Garza,
ETT first sergeant; an ANA radio telephone operator, or RTO; and
Jonathan Landay, an embedded reporter with the Marine ETT. To the rear
of the TAC and their ANA counterparts were Swenson and Westbrook, with
their ABP counterparts.
The column of 65 men moved cautiously toward their objective, Ganjgal, a
village fixed on a mountainside situated on man-made farmland terraces
three and four meters tall. The village terraces extended all the way up
to where the trainers were expecting to have tea with the elders who
had invited them up to assess possible improvements to the village
mosque.
"We were not there to fight, we were there to have the Afghan forces
prove to an unreceptive audience that the government was fair,
professional, responsible, and most importantly, it was Afghan," he
said.
Though a large or heavily-armed enemy was thought to be unlikely and no
intelligence reports suggested any evidence of insurgents, historically
patrols would get hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades,
known as RPGs, but that usually happened as coalition units were moving
out of a village.
Slowly, methodically the column moved nearer the village, studying the
landscape that could be hiding improvised explosive devices. Then like a
switch, the village lights went out, the first clue that bad things
were about to happen.
"The valley is notorious for welcoming you in, and your farewell
present is always fire -- always," Swenson said. "This time they were
changing things up and greeted us with fire, but the seriousness of that
did not become immediately clear."
Just as the lead Marines moved within 100 meters of the village, an RPG
motor ignited from the front of the column, but before the round had
time to impact, the combined force was hit by crew-served machine guns,
RPGs and AK-47s from the valley to the east. Deadly, accurate fire hit
the formation on its way to the village.
An estimated 60 insurgents had infiltrated and maneuvered into Ganjgal
from the north and south through unseen trenches as heavy fire spewed
from houses and buildings. According to eye-witnesses, village women and
children could be seen shuttling ammunition and supplies to the Taliban
fighters.
As the Afghan forces scattered to take cover and return fire, command
and control via radio began to break down. Swenson and Westbrook pulled
alongside the Marine command element in their Afghan Police Vehicle (a
Ford Ranger truck) to find out the TAC was becoming untenable. The
decision was made to withdraw when it became apparent that ANSF and
coalition forces were losing the initiative.
"The enemy realized they were gaining the initiative and that our fires
were ineffective," Swenson said. "We called in artillery, but we
couldn't put it where we wanted to, and they saw that as a deficiency on
our part and exploited it. This was a maneuvering enemy, a thinking
enemy, an aggressive enemy, and a new enemy."
Coalition forces had been flanked and were taking rocket and artillery
fire on three sides from multiple angles and elevations by the advancing
Taliban. The TAC lost communication with the forward Marines, Sailor
and interpreter. Wounded Afghan soldiers and border police were calling
for help.
Swenson called repeatedly for white phosphorous smoke to shield the
coalition and allow them to withdraw. He was repeatedly denied the
incendiary rounds on the basis that the drop would be too close to a
populated civilian area. The closest obscuring effect of the shells was
placed 400 meters away, too distant to be effective as cover for the
withdrawal.
"A difficult decision was reached that we were no longer combat
effective. We were going to be overrun, so we started a controlled
withdrawal, but it was not the decision we wanted to make because we
still knew we had the Marines up ahead," Swenson said. "We didn't know
where and were hoping, just hoping they'd taken cover inside a building
and stayed there, thus the break in communication. We just didn't know,
but what we did know was that we'd be no good to them where we were, so
we began our withdrawal, with additional casualties."
The Marine leader, Williams, had been shot in the arm and his first
sergeant, Garza, had eardrums ruptured by an RPG. The wounded were
accumulating. Unable to physically evacuate the wounded down the steep
terraces and out of the kill zone, Swenson coordinated for combat
helicopter support, then learned his partner Westbrook had been isolated
and lay in the open, suffering a chest wound.
Negotiating 50 meters of open space, Swenson, Garza and Fabayo quickly
covered ground, zig-zagging and returning fire as they raced for
Westbrook. Despite the maelstrom of direct fire which had killed two ANA
soldiers and wounded three others, the team was holding their own in
the kill zone.
As Swenson administered first aid and kept in radio contact with the
helos he'd called for, Fabayo saw three insurgents moving from a house
to within 50 meters of the TAC. Fabayo made direct visual contact with
one insurgent wearing fatigues, body armor and a helmet who began waving
at him and demanding surrender. Fabayo called to Swenson about the
insurgent's demands. The captain calmly put down his radio, halted the
first aid and replied with a personal message by throwing a hand
grenade.
Having witnessed Swenson's example, the ANA soldiers and policemen of
the TAC rallied to push the insurgents back and beyond hand grenade
range. At about the same time, a team of OH-58D Kiowa Scout helicopters
carrying a combination of missiles, rockets and .50-caliber machine guns
came on scene.
"We did receive our aviation support, the Kiowas," Swenson recalled.
"They're aggressive, like little bees, they swarm all over the place,
quick, nimble. The enemy knows when helicopters show up, it's in their
best interests to find somewhere to hide. If the enemy is out in the
open, they'll be found and that will be a bad day for them."
The arrival of the Scouts gave the TAC the time it needed to move
Westbrook and other wounded down the steep terraces to the Afghan Border
Police trucks, which then carried the wounded to a landing zone where a
UH-60 Black Hawk medevac waited.
Swenson and Fabayo then manned one of the unarmored ABP Rangers and
re-entered the kill zone twice to evacuate wounded and bringing them to a
casualty collection point. Next Swenson and Fabayo went in search of
the missing Marines, while staying in constant contact with one of the
helicopters, which was also trying to locate them.
At the same time, Marines Staff Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez and Cpl.
Dakota Meyer were retrieving wounded in an up-armored Humvee. By 8 a.m.,
and still no contact with the forward element and their truck on its
last legs, Swenson called in a Combat Search and Rescue helicopter, but
it became clear the LZ was too close to enemy positions and RPG teams.
Ground recovery of all remaining casualties would be the only way to do
the job and it would mean moving into the kill zone again. Swenson
called a quick planning session at the casualty collection point and
made the decision that he, Fabayo, Rodriguez-Chavez and Meyer, with a
small contingent of ANSF following, would move toward the village to
search for the still-missing Marines and their corpsman.
Around noon, the CSAR helo spotted the location of the missing five men
who had all been killed in an open courtyard area, then stripped of
their armor and clothing. As the bird tried to land, it was forced out
by close RPG fire. Swenson called for smoke to mark the location of the
bodies and to provide cover for Swenson's up-armored Humvee to get in to
extract the fallen.
As their Humvee climbed to the top of the hill with Fabayo operating
the M240 machine gun and the vehicle coming under heavy fire, the Kiowa
helicopters continued to suppress known and suspected insurgent
strongholds. Coming to a stop adjacent to the forward group's position,
Swenson and Meyer, along with help from ANA soldiers and border police,
found and removed the bodies from a deep trench. The casualties were
placed in the back of an ANA Humvee as Fabayo and Rodriguez-Chavez
provided covering fire.
Recovery complete, the Humvees drove back down the wash and straight to
the rally point to verify accountability of all ANSF soldiers.
A mission that started as one of good will became a struggle for
survival. The immediate cost to the coalition was the loss of four
Americans and eight ANA soldiers. The battle would eventually cost one
more American life.
Westbrook was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., and seemed on the verge of recovery then complications
developed as the result of a blood transfusion in Afghanistan, which
initially saved his life. He passed away Oct. 7, a month following the
battle. His wife, Charlene, said she was grateful to Swenson for all he
did in giving her husband the extra time to spend with family. On April
19 of this year, his family was presented a posthumous Silver Star for
his gallantry during the battle.
The end of that long day in September four years ago was not the
conclusion of the Battle of Ganjgal, Swenson said, "that happened later
when U.S. and Afghan forces came together on a larger scale.
"Relief forces came from Jalalabad, from Asmar, from all over
Afghanistan," he said. "There was loss, terrible loss, but we brought
forces in to continue that mission, to finish that mission, to clear
that village, and to show what our resolve was and what our response
would be."
(Editor's note: Former Capt. William D. Swenson is scheduled to be
awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama, Oct. 15.)