Paktika's Ambush Alley

More than 100 meters outside the village, you were definitely getting in a fire.

My first patrol I took, we had a fire ambush, and then it was just a huge explosion.

The primary threat was arcade G3 grenades. Like machine guns and AK-47s, that kind of thing. Small arms, fire, RPG fire. Explosively form penetrators. This was side bombs.

And then that's about the time that the third IED went off. And that's when another grenade comes spinning over the side of the wall. And it's at that point, the IED train detonates.

There was enemy in the wire, there was always Humvees out fire.

It was truly bullets flying from every angle that you could see. I opened the door and looked outside, and all I see is Muzzle Flashes. There's a guy on top with a 240 in the rail's path right past his head. At that point, our instincts kicked in. One pilot on the controls, the other pilot was using his M4 to engage single man targets on the ground.

You're shooting at everything. It was a fight. Welcome back to the spear MWS podcast on the combat experience. My guest on this episode is Lieutenant Colonel Dave Rickers Dave. Thanks so much for taking some time so we could chat and you could share a story.

Thanks for having me. So you have a really interesting military background.

“I think, and it's one of the things that I like to do when we started an episode is sort of highlight that background.”

Can you tell listeners what your job is now? Currently, I'm the Special Victim Prosecutor here at the United States Military Academy. I've been year four of doing that job in it for two years. Previously at Fort Benning, Georgia and now two years here. It's a subset of the Army's prosecutors in handling primarily sexual assault domestic violence and crimes against children.

Prosecutions in court's martial. The story you're going to tell is from 2003 when you were a special forces officer with third group, third special forces group. How do you kind of make that transition? Maybe you can just talk a little bit about how you got in first of all.

“What brought you into special forces and then how you ultimately ended up with the job as a lawyer?”

So I always wanted to be a green beret and I first commissioned out of RTC in 1997.

I spent a couple of years in Korea as an infantry officer and then I went to the selection and acute course. Actually, the first day of my SF selection was 9/11. We actually didn't know that it had happened until probably a week or 10 days later because you'd hear everything in media isolation. When you walk in a childhood, they turn off the CNN TV in the quarter and you just don't know what's going on on the outside world. And so the cadre don't give anything away.

That's amazing to me that you could even be kept isolated like that. Yeah, so they asked the class, does anybody have relatives that work in Manhattan? We're going to twin towers and I think there is a handful of folks who raise their hand and they talk to those people. And then they actually brought us in a satisfying auditorium and had like a PowerPoint set of pictures and they briefed us and said, you know, this happened. You know, the country is going to war so good luck in selection.

Wow, wow.

“So you become a special forces officer and when did you, I guess when did you report to third group?”

So I actually reported a third group in 2002 in July of 2002 and we were deployed. And so I reported to my unit, second battalion, third special forces group while we were in Candahar and so my first tour in 2002. I was a fire support officer, which at the time was not artillery, it was coordinating aircraft. So I spent my first tour, you know, on the radio and using Merc Chat to talk to aircraft carriers and the combined air center to resource aircraft for missions. So you said you found out about 9/11 kind of while you were while you were there. How much do that change? I mean, you said you always wanted to be a green beret being a green beret sort of pre 9/11 versus post 9/11 is a little bit different, at least in terms of where you expect to spend a lot of your time.

How much do that, you know, how aware of that were you that, hey, I'm probably going to be spending a lot of time over the next, you know, however long I stay in Afghanistan.

We were Afghan summer warriors and we just went every summer and rotated with 7th group and then the National Guard of Special Forces groups 20th group.

“You know, bounce back and forth at them, but we were there every other tour was, you know, in the same same country and actually my team went for rotations to the same fire base in Oregon, which was very effective.”

It's not something that was replicated, you know, very widely. And it, it only happened because my team sergeant and I made it happen because we were actually passing through that area and based on the past relationships that the team had with, you know, local leaders and intelligence sources from the 2002 tour. We lobbied to get the team put back at the same fire base, it was very effective. And so that's the area that I believe, you know, we're going to talk about the place where the story they're going to share took place, but I also want to ask you before we get to that.

At what point did you decide, hey, I want to go to law school and maybe, you know, be an army lawyer. So I had two things I just wanted to do, I was wanted to be a green parade and I thought maybe I wanted to go to law school. And so after my time as an ODA commander, I got out in 2005 and I went to law school and I ended up working in the civilian sector for several years, and I was also an army reserve judge advocate. And then they mobilized my reserve unit to Fort Bragg, which is where I had spent all my special forces time and I knew a bunch of people there.

And I put a packet in to go back full time as a judge advocate and here we are, you know, many years later.

“So 2003, this is your second deployment, second deployment to Afghanistan, but is it the first one in Oregon?”

This is the first one in Oregon in the first one where I'm, where I'm the ODA commander. And to do so, what is the sort of up temple look like, you know,

Mendelistiners will be familiar with patch charts and all the backers planning for, for pre-deployment stuff, how different does that for NSF unit? It's not really so we, our tempo was we would deploy in April or May, stay there for about six, seven months, and then come home around Thanksgiving or so. Take leave through the holidays and then starting in January, we would do a bunch of ranges, we would go out to the desert, we would train in Nevada mostly. And, and then we would just get ready for another deployment and that's, you know, rinse and repeat until we did.

Okay, so April May 2003, you get in country and you go to Oregon the ODA commander right now. What was sort of, you know, this is still only less than a year and a half since, you know, we kind of had people on the ground in Afghanistan.

“What was your sense of what your ODA's mission was?”

So our mission changed a lot. We were a special reconnaissance team, which meant that, you know, we would go and conduct reconnaissance with big telephoto lenses and, you know, take pictures of an objective that was supposed to get rated and transmit it, you know, back to the direct action teams that we're going to conduct the raid. So we did do some special reconnaissance upfront and then we did some long-range reconnaissance, which was driving in completely unarmored humvies, the up armored humvies didn't exist at that point and, you know, in the numbers that they, you know, that they were needed.

So we had, we didn't even have wind shields in our humvies, they were just basically overgrown dune buggies.

And so we did a lot of that. And then we ended up moving to Oregonie later on in the tour. We had another mission. There were a lot of ambushes at this particular base to close to Oregonie. And so the idea was that we were going to take a small UAV and our company had some. We took these two small UAVs and they wanted us to fly the UAVs out in advance of units from the 82nd airborne to detect ambush, guys lying in ambush lines. And so we drove across the country. We were in a different base. We drove across the country to, to cart these these UAVs down there.

So UAVs were broken within a week and a half. And, but we passed through this area where we have these great relationships. And so we lobbied our bosses in the battalion to let us stay down in Oregonie.

And, and they, and so, you know, gathering intelligence, we had a pretty good idea of what was going on with the rocket attacks. That the guys who are conducting the rocket attacks actually drove down from mountains and into the bizarre, the little town in Oregonie right outside our base.

And so they would come in to do their resupply and refit, basically right outside our front door.

And they were able to do that because, you know, the, the folks that base didn't have good intelligence. And so, and so we ended up going on a mission towards the border. And we went into effectively was ambush alley.

“And how, can you kind of describe this like the battle space? How far from the border is Oregonie situated?”

There are going to be about 40 kilometers from the border with Pakistan, but it wasn't really Pakistan. It was north was zero stand. And so that's, you know, something that a lot of people would appreciate that it wasn't until after 9/11 that the Pakistanis actually really exercised any control over. The, uh, federally autonomous tribal areas, which north of, uh, was Eurostana South, was Eurostana or hot beds, you know, for Taliban support. And so we were really essentially 40 kilometers from enemy territory.

And the train is mountainous? Yes, it's mountainous. And so Oregonie is in a big valley, it's in a, uh, it's a, it had been a Russian base because of its utility for, uh,

landing helicopters there. It had been a Taliban base, and then it was an American base.

“And so actually funny story. So the, uh, the Russians laid mines around the base so that they couldn't get assaulted by the Majahidine.”

And the locals had land disputes because they're, they wanted to have the land, uh, that, that it was right next to the base.

Because their theory was that, uh, was that if we had land next to the base when this all gets privatized and it becomes a private here,

field or whatever will own it. If our tribe has land next to it. And so the, uh, the folks to the, there was two sub tribes and these are all, uh, the security post-tune and so the, the beliefs, the North and the Caracel of the South. And so the Caracel of the South had a whole bunch of houses right up against the, the southern part of the base and they felt they had a good claim. And the police, he wanted to have better claim. So, uh, there is a sentence where they built this house that no one was going to live in in the middle of the minefield.

And when I say the minefield, it was largely depleted, but, you know, like once or twice a year, some shepherd walk is, you know, goats through there, whatever, and boom and go to a guy would get blown up. But so they built this house right next to the base to claim the land. And it wasn't even, it was like a rock igloo. It was a pile of, it was like the Flintstone's house. And, uh, and then, uh, the Caracel from the South came up and they, they were, they had a, they were trying to push the, the Belishi, uh, out out of the area there. And, uh, and so we went out to go referee it.

And unfortunately, my security forces, the local higher militia guys that I had were split between the Belishi and the Caracel. And so my head interpreter and the front gate guard squad leader, we're on opposite sides of this sub tribal divide.

“And so we're running out to go break it up. And my other interpreter, who was not from either of those tribes, um, uh, iub, um, he, uh, he was leading me out there. And I said, I said iub, running into a minefield, how do I not step on a mine?”

And he said, oh, we'll step on the plants because the little scrub brush plants step on the plants because if you step on the plants, there's roots under it. So there's no mine. It's a good tip because I was stepping to where I could see clear ground because I could see clear ground, but that doesn't mean anything with a mine. And so we had to go referee this, uh, this, you know, fist fight, uh, that, you know, kind of blew up later in the day, we chased them off. And, uh, and then they came back and they were jousting in the field with station wagons in AK-47s. And they were driving these station wagons past each other and guys on the inside of the lane were leaning up the windows AK-47s and they were jousting with AK-47s in the minefield.

Uh, and, uh, yeah. It's also sort of a very localized and tactical level manifestation of essentially the political strategic problem that has has kind of laid over the US presence in Afghanistan for almost two decades now trying to manage all of these sort of, you know,

So, ambush alley that you mentioned, is that essentially, are you talking about one stretcher road or are you talking about essentially this entire area stretching all the way to the border?

“Uh, it was a particular area that was, that was, uh, the site of many ambushes. And so we would had to go, um, about 15 kilometers north to get into the valley entrance.”

And then, and then the valley end, the puricate valley went north the south probably 10 12 kilometers. And then you would, you would mount this big ridge and you would go down in Manachandau, which means apple ridge.

Um, and, um, or apple orchard. So, uh, you would go down this big hill and ambush alley was useful for two reasons. The first is that when you're driving, uh, there's a steep drop off.

And so, on the left side of my vehicle, there's a cliff that goes up above me. And then I'm on a road and on the right side of the vehicle, it just drops off and it drops down, you know, whatever, a hundred, a couple hundred feet down into the bottom of the valley. And so, you're, you're sitting ducks. There's no way to maneuver. And then on the far side, looking out the right of my vehicle, you know, there was a, there was another ridge that had a good firing positions that could shoot at us.

“There were probably about 300 yards meters away. Uh, but even more importantly, it is that it would had an easy, uh,”

exfiltration route to get off the back of that, the ambush site, uh, position and get into Pakistan or more properly north, was here, stand in about 20 minutes. And so one of the things that we discovered in the course of our deployments was that, while air power was very useful in the early part of the war. Uh, the problem with not having it with the enemy, uh, you know, not driving fleets of technicals and pickup trucks towards the, you know, the fifth group guys that went in in the very beginning and then just dropping bombs on them.

That created an over reliance on air power. And so later on war, as we were in, you know, an increasing, you know, counter insurgency, increasing intensity and counter insurgency air power is great if it's on station. Uh, but an insurgeon is going to pick their ambush site differently than an American's will. They're not trying to try to kill everybody in the kill zone.

They're trying to strike and get away. And so that route to get away was was even more important than the, you know, the how useful the ambush position itself was.

Okay.

“So, and the particular story that you're going to share, it sounds like you probably have a number from this deployment, uh, and probably more from others, but the particular story you're going to tell is of an ambush in this site, is that correct?”

Yes. So how long did you've been in the aO until or before then? Were you familiar with this, you know, how dangerous this particular area was? Uh, we had a pretty good idea. We actually said we're going to go get shot at when we went on this mission. Oh well. So, yeah. So, so we didn't know exactly how good that ambush position was and, and then in the subsequent tour in 2004, we actually moved. Uh, we occupied a base, uh, four kilometers from North Uzuristan that was, uh, in a place called Moora, that was a really unfriendly neighborhood.

Uh, and we were actually on the other side of ambush alley. And so all of our supply trucks had to go through there. Uh, and so that, you know, that created a whole different set of problems of its own.

Yeah. I bet. So tell me the story of the ambush. Yeah. So, so my, my first, uh, you know, my first gunfight, direct fire gunfight was this ambush.

Uh, and so there's, uh, you know, there's nine Americans in, uh, three trucks. And, uh, and so we're, we're driving with our, um, you know, a platoon or so of local higher Afghan militia guys that we had with us. And, uh, we're, we're driving. I'm in the middle vehicle. Uh, my team sergeant is in the rear. My assistant team sergeant is in the lead. We're going down ambush alley down this down this hill. And, you know, once again, I have a cliff on the left. I'm on a road and a cliff drop off on the right.

Uh, RPG goes right past the lead vehicle, uh, and then they exit the kill zone and then some pretty accurate machine gunfire, uh, hit the unarmed Afghan truck right in front of, uh, my vehicle. And so I was in the center vehicle and then that Afghan, uh, that truck with some Afghan fighters, uh, in it, uh, ended up lurking to the left and the front tire rolled into a ditch and kind of up against, uh, the, you know, the cliff on the left hand side of the vehicle.

Um, but so, uh, so I had a pinl mounted, uh, uh, medium machine gun and M240, uh, sticking out the side of my vehicle. I didn't have doors. I didn't have a windshield. There was no, you know, as I said, there were no up armored humvies to not enough to go around at that point. So what do you do? The two, so the two American vehicles that are stuck now behind here obviously have to stop. Um, do you just get out, try to make the best use of the, this vehicle, which doesn't have great cover, you know, start returning fire across this valley.

“Yeah, so I, uh, drained my machine gun up at the ambush line, uh, and, uh, got out of the vehicle, um, got my helmet on and, uh, got behind the engine block and, you know, just traded shots with the enemy for a while.”

And then I looked up and the, uh, the Afghan vehicle in front of us, um, just as the ambush was, you know, was really going, uh, one of the soldiers that was sitting in the back of the truck.

He stood up and I actually heard the machine gun around hit him in the back of his torso. I could hear kind of like a wet smack when, you know, hit him and I heard him cry and then he, you know, he kind of fell over. And then that vehicle just got saturated with machine gun fire. And so we had that guy wounded. And, uh, his name was, uh, was Ibrahim. And so he, uh, you know, so Ibrahim got shot in the back and we were stuck in the kill zone. So the guy's on my truck, I had George was my driver.

“And then, uh, the guy, uh, manning the, uh, the medium, or the machine grenade launcher, the, um, Mark 19 in the turret was, uh, at the time was technical sergeant Kevin Whalen.”

And he, so he was, uh, an, uh, an Air Force guy who was, you know, attached to us and he was there to, uh, to provide, uh, close air support guidance.

And then on the back of the truck there was a pinnome out of the machine gun, uh, and my senior weapon sergeant, uh, Ben Jones, sergeant first class Ben Jones at the time, uh, was back there.

And so, uh, so I got out and I dismounted. I saw that Ibrahim had been shot in front of us, um, uh, Kevin was running the, the Mark 19, uh, for a little bit. But the Mark 19 was designed for the Brownwater Navy and Vietnam. It doesn't handle sand very well. And so they jam pretty easily. Uh, Ben was on the back. He fired his, uh, 240 for a bit, uh, at the, the ambush line, uh, and, um, and then he actually was hit, uh, a, uh, Soviet media machine gun, pkm around, uh, actually hit Ben and it passed through his calf, uh, it lodged in his rucksack.

We actually found the bullet later when we were out in reconnaissance mission. Uh, but so, so Ben got shot in the leg. Uh, I was, you know, shooting from behind the vehicle and then Ben said, come and over and rolled off the back of the vehicle and took a position to cover, uh, and so, um, so we had, you know, wounded guys. We didn't have, uh, my radio hand mics were all on the far side of the vehicle on the, the commander side, uh, and we needed to, you know, we needed to get comms, uh, to, to get up on, to get some air support.

We needed to get communication with our higher headquarters. So you, you described earlier, sort of the TTPs of an enemy ambushing force in, in this site.

“How much of that were you aware of at the time? Did you know that they had a really convenient expo route?”

So, so I guess my question is, was your objective just to send so much fire back at them that they would disengage? Or were you just trying to kind of keep the fight even until you could get radio comms and get air support in? We were just trying to get, to get to, we're trying to suppress them to get some air support in because the intervening terrain. There's no way we could, could get up and, you know, salt that position because you'd have to go, you know,

down a cliff basically and then climb a hill, uh, you know, there was several hundred yards of, of,

bad terrain in between, that wasn't really, you know, realistic to, to trying, you know, to kind of counter assault because of the distance involved. Um, and so, uh, you know, so we needed to get, uh, our casualties, uh, looked at and, you know, and at the time we did not really have a good appreciation for the importance of the expo route as to, you know, ambush site selection. Um, so, uh, so I'm, so I'm shooting at the enemy, benefiting at the enemy, um, and, um, and, um, and I needed to get the radio hand sense, which were on the far side of the vehicle.

Um, and so, uh, so one of my Afghan, uh, militia guy comes to me and he, he looks at me and he, he hasn't,

he's got his AK 47 held up, he's got an empty magazine and he's saying something to me, it was beyond the scope of my, posh to understand what you're saying, but it's pretty clear who's out of ammunition. Um, and so I need to get, I need to do some leader tasks. So I gave him my M4, I put it on, uh, semi, and I said, hey, I gotta go get some hand mics, shoot at the enemy. And, uh, and so, you know, sort of like, um, you know, we need to get some covering fire to like, for me to go crawl around in the vehicle.

Yeah. It was kind of like, uh, you know, saving private Ryan on the beach where he's like, he's like, hey, everybody get ready, get a magazine and covering fire and we did that and, you know, fired back and I crawled across and got the hand mics and then we ended up getting comms

“and getting your support moving. Um, I should have asked this before, but what time of day is this?”

Uh, this is midday. This is probably like two in the afternoon. So could you see the, you know, the point of origin? Could you see where the fire was coming from? It was pretty tough to pick out exactly where the, you know, on the ridge line that it was coming from, you know, it was, it was really just kind of, you know, we were just trying to pinpoint them. Now, as we'll become important in the story later, um, uh, Ben Jones, the, my weapon sergeant, uh,

he had a good, good view. He, he had picked it out better than I did, um, exactly where it was. And he actually, could see, uh, one of the guys shooting at him who had a really distinctive kind of streak and his beard, uh, like a white streak and his beard and he could, I mean, you could see the guys face through the, the four power, um, a cog, uh, sight that he was using. Uh, uh, uh, so, um, but yeah, so so I got the hand mics, uh, and I, you know, we were calling for support. Um, and then this, like,

wave of machine gunfire, just sweeps over the vehicle. Um, and, uh, and then I heard, uh, Kevin, I wasn't, I wasn't looking directly at him when it happened, but he made this, like, kind of sickly

“funny, like, oh, it's like, I don't, so I don't, uh, I don't think I'm okay. I think I've been hit.”

Um, and, uh, and the machine gunfire from, you know, the Taliban position was, was really effective, um, uh, Kevin got hit, uh, in several places. Um, he had a, uh, a bullet that, uh, that, uh, that actually hit the bottom of his body armor and it missed the trauma plate, uh, and, but hit the Kevalar and then slowed down and stopped and his, like, his belt buckle. Uh, so you really lucky there. He had one that, that, that, like, hit the side of his hip and blue as Lotherman,

that was on his hip, like, blue at a part on the inside of the vehicle. And then he, um, and then, uh, bullets hit the Mark 19 that he was shooting back at them. One of them was a golden BB and went into, um, uh, went into the internals of the Mark 19, uh, grenade launcher, uh, and,

uh, and just basically destroyed the internals, like, where, where the, the, the grenade's fed into,

it was, they had to just, like, melt it down. It was worthless, at the after that. Uh, uh, and then he had bullet fragments that blew all over the machine, the, the grenade launcher and lodged in his arm. Um, and so he said, hey, I'm not feeling so good and I had this horrible image that I was going to turn around and he was, you know, in pieces, but, uh, he wasn't he was kind of slouched down after all the machine and kind of, you know, fire just sort of

washed through the truck and hit him. Uh, so, uh, we didn't have doors on the Humvee, so we just pulled them out the side, um, you know, pulling up the side of the Humvee, uh, and then, you know, George tried to get an IV started on Kevin, uh, and we did get, you know, in contact with Samir's

“important, so two, uh, carriers actually came in and, and ended up doing a gun run on the, um, on the,”

uh, with the enemy position. And then so, uh, Kevin, um, was the first, uh, uh, uh,

tactical air control, uh, you know, airmen to control fire while we were in an action in a really long time. Uh, so, uh, so he was, you know, successfully did, you know, to really well, but the, uh, we needed to be, um, and, um, and so, uh, so at that point, you know, we're, you know, we're, you know, we're trying to get out of the kilzone, and we had this truck that was in front of us that was, that was stuck. Um, and so, uh, um, um, I did, at this point, I still didn't

have my M4, I was, you know, give a magazine or two to the, to the afghan, uh, firey was, you know, was with us. And so I had my pistol out and I fired a few rounds, that's where running out into the kilzone, 'cause Ben and I had to go get the truck out, and so, um, so I brought a pistol to a machine gun fight, uh, and uh, it was, it was, it was really, it was just for my morale. I don't think that had any effect, but so we went to go get the, um, to go get the truck out, and, uh, and so Ben, um, and I should note,

so Ben was, Ben was 46 years old at the, the point that this happened, uh, and, um, and he'd been shot through the, the calf, uh, by a media machine gun around. Um, and so, uh, you know, Ben was, at the time,

blue. And so we, we called Ben Blue, because he was the oldest guy on the team, um, but, um, but Ben,

“uh, uh, uh, you know, got, uh, up to the truck with me. Um, I, I grabbed, uh, the, uh, the driver,”

Golbedeen, uh, got back into the truck, uh, and was trying to, you know, to rock it a little bit, uh, but it wasn't coming out. The front wheel front left wheel wasn't coming out of the ditch by itself. So, I grabbed the inside of the door, uh, frame the open window, and I was trying to push it out, and then Ben actually got in front of the truck and he put his back against the grill and then his feet against the cliff that was, you know, right next to the road. And, uh, and he, you know,

squatting out like leg pressing a truck, uh, with a, with a bullet hole in his calf. Yeah, with a bullet hole in his leg. And so, uh, yeah. Um, so he, he did it. Uh, we, we got the truck out, uh, you know, we, um, winded up getting out of the kill zone, uh, ebering the guy that got shot, um, uh, the SF medics. And for those who don't know, the special forces, uh, uh, medic courses is,

“is phenomenal, uh, and, you know, in terms of a trauma, you know, gunshot wound that there's just about”

nobody better to have. Um, and so, um, you know, our medic Sean took this large gauge, uh,

catheter and, and, and, you know, stuck it up basically in the base of, uh, uh, uh, eberheams, uh,

torso and, you know, a whole bunch of blood just like slew stop from the sucking chest wound that was, you know, compressing his torso and, and peeding his ability to breathe. Uh, so, I mean, save his life on the spot. And so, you know, we evacuated casualties, um, and, uh, uh, uh, you know, had a, um, you know, rough day at the office. And, and how many was that that you've mentioned a few casualties, uh, at this stage, air support has come on station, the ambushing force has,

it seems like disengaged to your, your attention now turns to the Casivac mission. How many how many casualties were there? So, after the conclusion of that, that mission, um, you know,

“not only did, uh, did Kevin, uh, and then get wounded, but my junior weapon sergeant also had,”

pressed in he had some bullet fragments in his nose, um, um, and so he also got a purple heart. So in addition, the purple hearts, uh, you know, for their, uh, valorous action, both then and Kevin ended up getting silver stars, um, for, uh, you know, for, for just for absolutely, you know, doing their job on her fire in some pretty pretty tough conditions. Um, and, uh, um, you know,

Kevin is never tired, uh, Ben's retired, and he's actually now, uh, he's a, he teaches, uh,

Robin Sage, uh, which is the, uh, the final exam for this, of course. So he's actually outstill mentoring, uh, you know, new green braze going into the field. Good. Good. So that sort of wraps up the story of the ambush itself, but, um, there's, there's sort of an addendum to, uh, to the stories that right? Yeah. So we, um, yeah, we ended up about wrapping up that operation, and, uh, and then we, and then both Ben and Kevin were returned to duty. They came back, um, and, uh, you know, we had

more, um, attacks on the base with the rockets, uh, and, um, and so then we had, um, an increasing stream of intelligence on the guys that were firing the rockets at us, um, and that they were, you know, likely the same guys that were on the ambush line that shot at us on, you know, 19 July 2003, it's when that took place. Um, and, uh, and so the intelligence reports said that they would come down every few weeks out of the mountains. They would buy a bunch of food, watermelons, and, you know,

kind of, their field of rations, whatever you want to call them. Uh, and then they would buy the, the supplies to, uh, to set off the rockets, uh, some were on timer, some were not, so they would buy motorcycle batteries, uh, and then they would buy, um, fluorescent light bulbs, and they would strip out the wiring and those to connect them to the, uh, to the, uh, to the, uh, to the, uh, to the batteries, so they can, you can, uh, actually the, hundreds of a millimeter, uh, Soviet rockets,

a marvel of engineering. Um, you can stick them in a, uh, a big rack, uh, uh, on the back of a truck, and you can volley fire them, and you can level a village, or you can take one of the tubes off of the rack, and you can, uh, put it on a tripod, uh, with what's called a circular level, and it just tells you what distance it's going to shoot at, based on how you angle the tube,

uh, and so you can basically precision fire with the one rocket, or you can sit them, you know,

on a rock, and you can, uh, connect them to a wristwatch and a motorcycle battery, and you can dig and just go off on a timer. Uh, uh, uh, so, you know, really useful weapon, uh, to an surgeon, um,

batteries, and the watches, and the everything that they were doing, um, they, you know, they would

come into the village and get those, uh, and so the intelligence was so good and so specific, that we had it, you know, uh, on, uh, an, uh, an on-order mission that we were just going to launch, and we were going to go get him if they were in the village. And so our intelligence, you know, contact said, hey, these guys are coming in. They're here. They're in the bizarre right now. And so we went out the back door of the base and got on the road going north out of Oregon. He,

work at the town was kind of the north of the base. And so we went around the backside. And then and then the truck, this truck comes out of the the the bizarre and and the contact fingers, it says, hey, that's the guys. So we stopped the truck, we get everybody out of the truck,

“and there's a couple of older guys and then some young kids that, you know, I think they were”

using these kids as basically covered right. So it just looks like a, you know, like these young

kids were not part of the the actual ambush line or the insert and sell. And so get them out and and we're looking at these guys and and Ben looks at one of them. And this is guys got this distinctive, you know, streak and his beard. And he says to the interpreter, he says, hey, you tell this guy that I remember looking at him shooting at him on the ambush line on the 19th of July. And this is like two weeks later. And the interpreter translates to the guy, the guy says something

back to the interpreter and the interpreter shakes his head. He says, oh, no. And it said, what do you say? And he said, well, the guy says he remembers shooting back at Ben too. So yeah, just an onsite admission like, yep, yep, I am that guy. And so, you know, we capture these guys and we take them

“back to the base and we, you know, pack them up and then all of the wiring and batteries and everything”

and we ship them off to Bogram to go get detained and and so as luck would have it and as bureaucracies have a tendency to mix things up. None of the, these guys showed up to the detention center and all of their, the evidence, the wiring and everything got lost. And we got this note sent to us and they said, hey, who were these two, who were these people that you sent to us? And, you know, we're going to let them go, you got 72 hours to justify why we should keep them. And so I went back

through all of my intelligence reporting and I, you know, I picked out, I picked out, you know, on this date, this context says this, they're coming into the bizarre, they're buying their, you know, they're wiring and their supplies or batteries. So they're going to be back on a certain day, probably we were ready to go. This guy makes this onsite admission that he was in an ambush against us and then so they actually, we actually did a photo line up where, you know, Ben, they email out a

photo line up with some other folks who weren't the guys and, you know, Ben Pixie's a he's like, yeah, this is the guy, these are the guys. And so they kept the two older guys who, you know, we really felt were part of it, you know, they ended up getting detained because of that. And so I guess the, the lesson that I would give to, you know, junior leaders is that,

“you know, it's, it's important to document what you do when you're, you know, you're taking”

someone into custody. When I was trained in ROTC in the 90s, you know, they talked about the five S's for enemy prisoners of war and you would search silent, segregate, safeguard and speed to the rear and then when we went forward and, you know, 2001 and later, they added the five S's and the T, the T for tag to document getting someone into custody. And I, I would submit to you know, any young leader who's getting ready to go out there, you know, just because you're the,

the platoon leader, you know, doesn't mean that you just get to do the missions that the, you know, that the, the documenting of that, the, the paper work in those missions can be, you know,

can be the critical factor in making the mission succeed. So, you know, doing the home drum paper

work is, is really important. And so, you know, what I ended up putting together was kind of a foreshadow of going into, you know, the practice of law that when I ended up putting together was kind of like an affidavit for an arrest warrant that, you know, some law enforcement officer would fill out. And, you know, the battlefield continued to get legally complex, you know, by the, the late days and Iraq, you know, when the Iraqis had gotten their sovereignty, we were, you know, doing missions based

on Iraqi judges signing off on warrants. It wasn't just follow the intel and conduct a raid.

requirement to, you know, show your work and document things, that's something that is not going

to go away and is going to continue to be a factor on the battlefield going forward.

“What I think is really important about that is that you are here in 2003 with what is,”

you know, arguably, you know, one of the cool guy jobs in the army, you're an ODA commander, special forces officer, but there is still this administrative sort of burden, this, this workload that

doesn't, you know, the takes-based behind the scenes that doesn't, isn't always a part of the,

you know, the recruiting materials, let's say, but it's important in whatever job anybody has.

“It doesn't matter if you're a special forces officer, you're an infantry officer, combat arms,”

non-combat arms, logistics officer, that that's always, you know, we are at the end of the day,

a huge bureaucracy, and that you said a bureaucratic slip-up might mean that, hey, these bad guys are

trying to kill Americans, if we want to keep my battlefield, we have to do, we got to put in the work and that doesn't just mean, you know, returning fire during the ambush, it means we need to obtain somebody, like you said, the, the, the T added on to the 5S as you got to take everything. So, um, we'll Dave, I really appreciate you making some time. I will also say, you know, kind of a peak for listeners that peak behind the editorial and production curtain,

“uh, we talked before this and you have several stories that you could have shared, I think that all”

would have been really interesting. So, um, you know, if you, if you have time in your, and you're interested, we'd, we'd love to have you back on at some point. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the army, or the US government. Be sure you're

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