Lethal Envoys
Story by Bill Matthews; Photos Courtesy Company A 1-19th Special Forces - Posted Sep, 2003
Other A/1-19th SF Links:
 |
It is no secret that special operations forces from all branches of the US military have been critical to the success of the Global War on Terrorism. The Army Special Forces draw approximately 20% of their strength from the Army National Guard. Recently, the men of Company A, 1-19th Special Forces, headquartered in Buckley WA, were called upon to participate in the largest special operations mission since World War II.
Part of his mission in downtown Kabul that afternoon was to buy light bulbs and wall clocks for the barracks housing the Afghan army recruits he was helping to organize and train.
Not exactly glamorous work for a soldier with a degree of specialized training and almost 20 years experience in the Army, but Guard Special Forces soldiers like Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Martin are expected to excel at a wide range of assignments. When he arrived in Kabul in mid-October 2002 fresh off 10 weeks of paramedic training at a Special Operations Command school at St. Petersburg, Fla., for instance, Martin taught basic military skills to a battalion of Afghan army trainees.
 |
One of his chores was to sign out stacks of U.S. dollars from the central task force headquarters, then drive them through the crowded, lawless streets of Kabul to the Afghani battalion commander so he could pay his troops. For safety, U.S. troops were forbidden to travel alone in the city, so Martin paired up that afternoon with Sgt. 1st Class Michael Lyons, another member of the California Army Guard's A Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces (SF) Group.
With the pay task completed, Martin and Lyons headed into downtown Kabul to do the shopping. It was Dec. 17. Transportation was an old Russian-made four-wheel drive jeep. Lyons was driving, Martin rode shotgun and an interpreter crouched in the back.
The jeep had slowed to a
crawl in streets clogged by traffic and pedestrians when the windshield
smashed and something landed in the space between Martin and Lyons. The
two soldiers glanced at each other and were moving to get out of the
jeep when the object exploded. It was a homemade grenade. "I
received shrapnel and burns all along my left side," said Martin, who in
civilian life is a Long Beach, Calif., police SWAT team member.
His right eardrum was shattered and bits of metal ripped into his arm,
leg and left eye. The blast broke bones in both feet and his left
leg.
Martin staggered out of the jeep. Checking himself over quickly, he concluded that he still had use of both hands and both feet. He called to Lyons, who was able to respond, but said he couldn't walk. The blast had caught Lyons along his right side, inflicting injuries that mirrored Martin's, except that shrapnel had ripped through an artery in the back of his right leg. "He was bleeding out pretty good," Martin said. "And there wasn't going to be any police or fire department to whisk us to the nearest hospital."
Martin ducked back inside the Jeep to grab the M-4 rifles he and Lyons had been carrying. Armed, he cased the street and began to assess his situation. "My partner couldn't walk, and I could walk somewhat," Martin said. He knew he had to get medical help for Lyons fast. There were two choices. One was Kabul military hospital, "but I had no idea where that was." The other was a German-run field hospital for International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan. It was about eight miles away.
The interpreter was bleeding from a head wound, but was still able to function. They "commandeered a cab," Martin said, slid Lyons into the back seat and drove to a walled compound nearby that had once housed Kabul police. Now it was headquarters for German ISAF troops. There they switched to a police minivan, and with siren blaring and blue flashing lights, sped to the field hospital.
Thus ended Sgt. Christopher Martin's tour as a National Guard SF soldier in Afghanistan. But for hundreds of other Guardsmen in SF units, the mission continues.
 |
More SF troops - Guard and active duty - have been deployed in the past two years than at any time in three decades, according to Marshall Billingslea, principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and low-intensity conflict.
Of more than 700 Guard SF soldiers mobilized for the war on terrorism, more than half have been sent to Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Army Special Forces Command. They include troops from Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
So as Martin began his long journey home and an even longer passage toward recovery, Maj. Andrew Franz was learning that his three-month-old assignment in Kuwait was about to change. He was told to begin preparing for war in Iraq.
In civilian life, Franz teaches military science at Seattle University. But last fall he headed to Kuwait instead of the classroom. And in December, Franz was put in command of a SF liaison element made up of 23 members of the Washington Army Guard's A Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group.
 |
The liaison team's assignment was to enter Iraq with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, but then move out ahead of the invading American division and link up with American SF teams that were already operating secretly deep inside Iraq. Their mission was to ensure that the advancing Army troops did not end up in firefights with the U.S. SF teams already there. "We would deconflict the air space for close-air support and artillery support if it was needed and exploit any intel gained by the Special Forces," Franz said.
The first operation was to retrieve an SF team that had been conducting reconnaissance at a bridge near Nasiriya about 100 miles inside Iraq. "They had been there for two days," Franz said. "The idea was to conduct a linkup at the bridge and then pass the 3rd ID through them." But before the liaison element could reach the reconnaissance team, "they ended up getting compromised on the bridge," Franz said. The recon team had to beat a hasty retreat.
"They conducted a running gun battle for several hours" and finally eluded their Iraqi pursuers miles away in the desert, Franz said. Now, instead of meeting at the bridge, the liaison team had to find the recon team hiding somewhere on the vast dusty plain.
At that point, things weren't going altogether smoothly for the 3rd ID either. The advancing Army forces began to receive reports of enemy armor that wasn't supposed to be in the region. Their fear was that somehow elements of the Iraqi Republican Guard had slipped undetected into southern Iraq.
As he prepared to retrieve the reconnaissance team Franz asked the 3rd ID for support. Normally, maneuver units would lend him some Abrams tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles to beef up the liaison team, he said. But now the liaison team was heading off into the desert instead of toward the bridge, where the 3rd ID was going. "We weren't moving in their desired direction," Franz said. And with reports of Iraqi armor in the area, "the situation was looking pretty tenuous." So the request for armor was denied. "The guy said, 'You're crazy. We're not sending any of our guys out there to get killed.'"
Franz waited until nightfall and his team set out across the sand in its
Humvees.
"Operating out ahead of everyone else was pretty scary," Franz said. But
the linkup went smoothly. "We were in contact through satellite radios. We got them in the dark."
The next linkup was at Samawa, about 60 miles farther upstream as you
follow the Euphrates River deeper into Iraq. It was basically a replay
of the first liaison mission - retrieve an SF reconnaissance team that
was gathering intelligence at a bridge.
This time the mission went off without a hitch. "It was just as we had
rehearsed it," Franz said.
And on they went, dashing ahead of the front to escort SF teams to
friendly territory all the way to the Karbala Gap, a strategic pass just
southwest of Baghdad.
 |
Iraq provided "probably some of the harshest conditions I've ever been in" in 11 years of SF service all over the world, Franz said. There was sand and heat, rain and cold, "and they all degrade you differently but significantly." Weapons had to be cleaned constantly; soldiers less often. "It's a tough environment to operate in," Franz said. "But on the flip side, it's much easier for us to fight in those conditions than anyone else."
"They're a different breed of soldier," said a Florida Guard captain who accompanied Florida Guard Special Forces to Afghanistan. "When we got there in January [2002] they were still knee-deep in combat operations." The Florida contingent plunged into reconnaissance and unconventional warfare operations. Trekking deep into the rugged Afghan mountains, they would hide for days near the mud huts and caves used by Taliban fighters, watching and gathering intelligence, the captain said. And sometimes, "when the bad guys were in their hooch at night or in their cave," the special operations soldiers would strike, obliterating the enemy. "It's ugly warfare," but necessary and effective, said the captain, who did not want to be identified.
While some National Guard SF teams like Franz's worked closely with regular U.S. Army forces in Iraq, other Guard Special Forces soldiers joined Shiite resistance forces to fight and seize control of several Iraqi towns.
Carefully selected and intensely trained, SF troops are master warfighters, but also skilled diplomats. "It's better to talk your way out of a problem than shoot your way out," said Sgt. 1st Class Mark DeMartini of the A Company, 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group. "But if have to shoot your way out, you better know how to do it."
 |
Assigned, like Martin, to train recruits for the Afghan army, DeMartini wound up in the Bamiyan region, which is famous for its two colossal Buddha statues carved into a cliff. For more than 1,500 years, the statues stood watch over a valley traversed by camel caravans, pilgrims and other travelers. But in 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues. Today it's a region of impoverished villages connected by roads that are little more than earthen tracks, DeMartini said.
"The area we went into had not been visited before by Americans." As the special forces soldiers and their Afghan allies advanced, the Taliban "pretty much ran into the mountains," and the SF soldiers "brokered peace" with most of the villagers, he said. "We were winning the hearts and minds. It sounds like a cliche, but it's true. We came and we provided medical care, we treated several thousand civilians and cattle, we save a child's life, we built schools and wells. We got tremendous support."
The war on terror is making particular use of the SF's "soldier diplomat" training. As part of their training, they must learn the languages of the regions they expect to operate in, and they are trained to adapt to the local population, DeMartini said. As preparation for his deployment, DeMartini said he read four books to better understand Afghanistan and its culture. "The Afghan people generally like us. The appreciate us being there - when we arrived, the killing stopped," he said.
Even before the United States was officially at war in with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, SF troops were in Afghanistan assisting the Northern Alliance as it battled the Taliban, the captain from Florida said. Often during that period, U.S. Special Forces wore civilian clothes and grew beards to blend in better with the Afghanis, he said. Typically, they wore khaki pants and long Afghan vests that hid their M-4 rifles.
In early 2002, as the war was winding down and rebuilding began, DeMartini, Martin and scores of other National Guard SF soldiers were deployed to begin standing up an Afghan national army. "Our job was to take guys off the street and train them to be soldiers," Martin said. Not all of the recruits turned out to be eager volunteers, however. In the early months, the attrition rate was as high as 40 percent. But gradually the beginnings of a professional army emerged. This summer, more than a year after training began, the Afghan force included 5,000 soldiers divided into 10 battalions - a fraction of the force of 70,000 considered necessary for Afghanistan's self defense, but a start.
"Now you're seeing battalions trained by us that are out there doing
operations," Martin said proudly. In July, for example, elements of the
Afghan army conducted a combat sweep through a former Taliban stronghold
in the Zormat Valley in eastern Afghanistan.
By then, Martin and Lyons had been home in California for several
months. After spending a day at the German field hospital in Kabul, the
wounded pair was moved to military medical center at Baghram, where they
received Purple Hearts. Then they were evacuated to Landsthul, Germany,
and from there, Martin was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., for six weeks.
 |
He returned to California in February to begin a long course of physical reconditioning. On June 5, he and 37 other members of his unit were awarded Bronze Stars. He hasn't returned to police work yet. "I can't run, I still walk with a limp and I still have problems with my left eye," he said. With a routine of physical therapy and fitness workouts, Martin said he hopes to rejoin the police department and return to Guard duty.
Franz and 82 other SF soldiers from Buckley, Wash., wrapped up their tour in Iraq in late May and returned to Fort Lewis, Wash., where they spent 30 days demobilizing. "The company was very fortunate," Franz said summing up the nine-month deployment. "There were no casualties and no injuries" - a remarkable record considering that various members of A Company took part in battles for Baghdad, Basra, the Karbala Gap, Kut and Najaf, Nasiriyah.
DeMartini also returned home unscathed to and went back to work piloting a skydiving plane. "Personally, I'm ready to go again if the country calls us out," he said. But for the time being, at least, "I'm hoping we're not called again soon."
Bill Matthews is a Springfield, Va., freelance writer who specializes in defense issues. This article appeared in the September 2003 issue of National Guard Magazine and was originally posted on their website at http://www.ngaus.org/ngmagazine/lethalenvoys903.asp.
 |
 |
Visit
the
official Army Special Forces Recruiting website for more
information
When you're ready to accept the challenge, visit our Recruiting website
 |
 |
|
|