No Lack of Courage (9 page)

The following day, 2 September 2006, at 0530 hours, TF Kandahar manoeuvre elements deployed into their battle positions centered on enemy objectives in Panjwayi/Pashmul. “C” Coy, under command of Major Matthew Sprague, was responsible for seizing Ma'SÅ«m Ghar. Lavoie wanted to ensure he took possession of the high ground first,
namely the Ma'SÅ«m Ghar feature, from which he could dominate the area by both observation and fire. “C” Coy did so without incident, arriving on the objective at 0600 hours, which was the intended “H-Hour.”
¹⁴
Captain Rob Carey remembered, “When we rolled in there we caught the enemy completely by surprise.” He described how his platoon immediately took up fire positions and engaged the enemy across the river. “Our LAVs rolled in there and we probably killed about 10 guys right off the bat . . . They were building their defensive positions and those LAVs just chewed them right up.”
¹⁵

By 0615 hours, Sprague radioed his higher HQ and declared that there was “no pattern of life across the river.”
¹⁶
By 0630 hours air and artillery assets began to engage targets of opportunity. Inexplicably, Brigade HQ cancelled a planned air strike on a number of known or suspected Taliban command-and-control nodes. Nonetheless, “C” Coy Gp joined the shooting gallery and engaged Taliban defensive positions from their commanding position on the heights of Ma'SÅ«m Ghar.

As the operation began to unravel the initial impression was deceiving. Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie received reports that there were no Taliban in Panjwayi. In addition, civilian women and children, reassured by the ANSF/ISAF presence, remained in their compounds. In Pashmul, coalition situation reports (SITREPs) indicated that “23 of 25 TB [Taliban] in cemetery were KIA [killed in action].”
¹⁷
TF Kandahar HQ noted, “Since operations have commenced, 80 TB have been detained by ANSF forces and it is assessed that 250 insurgents in the Objective area have been killed or wounded.” Despite these reports, the CO held his manoeuvre elements firm in their current Battle Positions. According to the Brigade plan the enemy was to be pummelled for another 48 hours.

Although outnumbered, Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie was not concerned. “Even though they [Taliban] had a 6–1 manpower ratio over us,” revealed Lavoie, “they could never bring their superiority in numbers to bear or concentrate their force.” Quite simply, Lavoie exploited the electronic spectrum. Through his ISTAR capability he could often adjust to Taliban manoeuvres and react in such a way so as to disrupt their decision cycle. For instance, through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) he could watch them manoeuvre to form an ambush, “which
I could then counteract by firing hellfire missiles into that ambush site, followed by artillery.” Furthermore, through their situational dominance the coalition forces could detect the enemy massing on mountaintops, or moving to a specific road junction, and before the Taliban even reached their destination they would be bombarded with artillery. Consequently, they “were able to keep just ahead of their decision cycle and prevent them from getting within ours and as a result we could normally outmanoeuvre them.”
¹⁸

At this point, not surprisingly, the CO was confident with the progress of the operation. Having the enemy basically fixed within the coalition cordon, albeit with a thin, loose noose, ISAF and the ANSF could hammer the Taliban into submission. “Once that area was seized and the enemy was hemmed in from the north and the south, [the intent was] to continue to engage the enemy for the next three days with primarily offensive air support, as well as artillery and direct fire, in order to, from my perspective, determine where the enemy actually was, and to degrade the enemy's ability to fight before we actually committed the main force into the attack,” explained Lavoie.
¹⁹

Degrading the enemy with fires became the responsibility of Major Greg Ivey, the battery commander who was collocated with the BG CO. “The indirect fire mission for the Pashmul area was essentially to neutralize and destroy as much of the command and control and suspected strong points of the Taliban as possible,” explained Major Ivey. “So, we deployed the four M-777 155mm howitzers north of the Pashmul area along with the brigade assets, which included basically 24 and 7, around the clock, close air support for the first three or four days.” He elaborated, “We had approximately 10 hours of attack helicopters by day and five hours by night. We deployed three FOO parties in and around the Pashmul area to essentially conduct preparatory fires to basically set the conditions for the battle group to move onto the objective on foot or in LAVs . . . At 0600 hours on 2 September, we had two FOO parties south along the Ma'SÅ«m Ghar mountain range, one FOO party in the north, each affiliated with their respective rifle company in the area. And it was a shock and awe start.” Ivey described, “When we rolled on at H-hour the battery opened up on positions to the south and the FOO parties
were pushing close air support assets forward, just pounding away at whatever strong points we had identified.”
²⁰

The ground chosen for the initial move was prescient. “The BG commander and I were sitting up on the hill and we had a perfect view of the entire area, so between him and I we would identify what targets we wanted to actually hit and what effect we wanted to achieve,” recalled the battery commander. “We balanced that with what the manoeuvre commanders at the company level wanted to achieve in their little area . . . So between myself and my FOO parties that's basically what we did. And, it was a non-stop sound and light show. And it was amazing.” Major Ivey revealed, “We fired a quick stab and then we fired 1,600 rounds of 155mm from the battery alone. I can't even imagine or think of the last time that would have been done that as an army . . . We had over 150 CAS sorties just to support the opening phase. And, an equal number of attack aviation sorties.” Ivey assessed, “Between the three FOO parties, as well as my own party, it was around the clock. And the whole intent of it was, reminiscent of World War I/World War II tactics, simply to pound the crap out of the enemy on the north side of the river. It was for the most part bottom up driven fire planning. It was basically [hit] what you could see on the ground.”
²¹

The effects of the initial bombardment and direct-fire attack on the enemy positions were not lost on the soldiers. “The air campaign during Operation Medusa was awesome,” remembered one participant. “We had ringside seats on the ridge at Ma'SÅ«m Ghar and we would watch the aircraft come in and drop their ordnance and blow the shit out of the Taliban . . . it was great.” He added, “You would see five Taliban run into a grape-drying hut that was impervious to the direct fire weapons and we would call in an air strike and the aircraft would drop a 1,000 pound bomb that would take out the entire building.”
²²

Some described the events as a “shooting gallery.” Lavoie recalled, “You would just sit up there [on Ma'SÅ«m Ghar] and you'd be taking your turn in the turret with the 25mm cannon . . . In the first 48 hours of the engagement you never had more than one or two of my LAVs at a span that were not engaged with targets.”
²³

The plan was going better than expected. The battery commander acknowledged, “We were able to achieve some surprise because the
Taliban did not know where the next crump was going to go or at what time. So most missions opened up and fired for effect, three to 10 rounds per gun.” Concerns about the terrain and the robust mud compounds and buildings were mitigated by the fire plan. Major Ivey explained the heavy salvos were designed “obviously for surprise to catch these guys [enemy] up and about before they had a chance to get down into their trenches and their defensive works, but secondly because the mud walls and trenches are thick—anywhere from three to four feet wide at the bottom and they stand 15–20 feet tall. Therefore, you need a good weight of fire to actually crack through these buildings.” He added:

But the wild card remained—where exactly was the enemy? “We really did not have a good idea as to where each of the enemy positions were,” conceded Major Ivey. “In training it was very easy to see the
figure-11 targets and vehicles and you knew where the left of arc and right of arc were, but I'll tell you, out there [Panjwayi] you didn't see people moving around very much. And when they did, we got on them right away, either with 25mm cannon or with indirect fire.”
²⁵

Despite the provocation, or more probably as a direct result of the intimidating firepower, the Taliban chose not to show any reaction. The absence of any major enemy action or movement created an impression of weakness in the eyes of some coalition leadership. The question became: were the enemy already destroyed or effectively weakened? Or where the Taliban just refusing to take the bait, choosing instead to remain safely hunkered down in their prepared positions?

The MNB Commander, Brigadier-General Fraser, visited the forward Coy Gp in the early afternoon of 2 September, at Ma'SÅ«m Ghar, and decided that the TF would cross the Arghandab River without delay. “C” Coy Gp had already cleared two lanes from their battle positions on Ma'SÅ«m Ghar, down to the river. They had taken their bulldozers and ploughed two widely dispersed lanes through the grape fields directly to the river flood plain. With those preparations already in place, at 1400 hours the officer commanding (OC) “C” Coy, his engineer detachment, and a security platoon conducted a reconnaissance (recce) to map out possible crossing points.

“I drove up and down the river bed,” recalled Sprague, “still thinking we would have two and a half days of bombardment in accordance with the plan so we could do this [assault river crossing] in a deliberate fashion . . . No one had been down to the river yet—it was not an issue of getting across, but rather getting a foothold on the other side.” Sprague further explained, “The enemy side of the river was steep and heavily covered with brush.”
²⁶
It became evident that the only clear flat-crossing point was alongside the main road, directly in line with the famous white school complex in the village of Bayenzi that had caused so much grief for TF Orion a month prior, during the desperate combat of 3 August.
²⁷

“This was the ground the enemy had chosen to defend,” acknowledged Brigadier-General Fraser. “[Objective] Rugby [the approximate area around the school complex] was where we assessed that the Taliban wanted us to fight them. That was their main battleground.” The brigade commander elaborated, “Their whole defence was structured to have us
coming across the Arghandab River in the south and fight into Rugby . . . And the schoolhouse was the area in the centre, where there were big killing fields to the east and the north.”
²⁸
Surprisingly, that also became the ground ISAF agreed to fight on.

Fraser ordered Sprague to push the security platoon across the river and leave them on the far side. “I was unhappy with this,” acknowledged Sprague, since they would be isolated in terrain that the coalition neither controlled, nor fully understood exactly where or how large an enemy force was located there. The CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie, was successful in arguing that there was no tactical advantage to leaving a platoon exposed on the edge of enemy territory and they were withdrawn as darkness fell.

But the BG was not out of the woods yet. More surprises were in the offing.

M
AJOR
S
PRAGUE WAS RELIEVED
when he was given permission to pull his platoon back to the friendly side of the river. However, his relief was short-lived. During the middle of the night both the CO and OC were completely surprised by the ensuing orders from Brigadier-General Fraser. “At midnight I heard we had to cross the river,” recalled a perplexed Major Sprague.
¹
The brigade commander ordered the TF to conduct an assault river crossing at 0200 hours. Hard words were exchanged and Lavoie pushed back, concerned at the change in plan and lack of preparation. Despite an apparently successful day of bombardment and cursory reconnaissance of the river, there were just too many unknowns. The crossing point was not marked; they had no data on the flow rate or depth of the river; and, most importantly, they had little information on the enemy's disposition. Faced with those obstacles, Fraser relented and agreed to a first-light attack.

Despite the change in H-Hour the pressure to attack sooner than later was tangible. The MNB operations officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Shane Schreiber, explained, “On 2 September, which was D-day, we spent most of the day pounding known Taliban positions in Objective Rugby and Cricket, especially a big bunch of buildings that became known as the white school. We pounded them for a good 12 hours. I mean it was a fire power demonstration.”
²