Reporting from Afghanistan

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May 8, 2002
Special Forces Resupply in Southeast
Afghanistan

A massive two-prop American Chinook squats on the helipad at Bagram like a fat black bug. While the helo's pilots run through exhaustive preflight checks, the tailgunner blasts Nirvana's "Nevermind" from a boombox strapped to the red nylon webbing in the cargo hold. Now this is starting to feel like a war.

The press pool at Bagram, 80% British, has been worn down by weeks of waiting for a battle. Spring has sprung, young men in Afghanistan are said to be ready to kill one another, but coalition forces have spent the entire month of April picking through caves. A firefight here, a forward base shelled here. Without a body count, reporters are wondering if there is still a war on.

A new war bas begun to brew in the press tent: a South African TV journalist, Laura Logan, has appeared at Bagram for a two-week embed. Logan, said to be a former swimsuit model, with long brown hair, bronze skin, glittering eyes, and other noteworthy features, has sparked a Darwinian struggle for her attentions among the press corps males. This is normal behavior for a pack of sex-starved reporters suddenly confronting a young colleague with two x-chormosomes, but it was starting to feel like a slow-news war.

That was yesterday.

This morning, at seven a.m., Captain Tony Rivers told me I was going out. "We'll be announcing something significant at the standup; so all the wires are going to want to file, but we're going out on a special forces ressuply at 9:15. So you'll need your flak jacket and helmet, and a couple bottles of water." The pool would consist of Fox talent, the camera, USA Today and APTV and me.

I had time to gather up my kit and wolf down a mound of Army-issue reconstituted scrambled eggs, chased with scalding black coffee.

Waiting on the runway is Chinook #186, "The Queen Bitch" part of B Company, 159th Aviation Regiment out of Savannah, GA. The crew:

Chief Warrant Officer 2 John Ketcham, 31, Little Rock, Arkansas--Pilot

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kyle Evarts, 29, Meridian, Connecticut--Pilot

Sgt. Thomas E. Guin, 34, Tyler,
Texas--Crew Chief

Sgt. Jason Ballinger, 29, Texas--Crew Chief

Sgt. Stephen Roy, 25, Bennington, New Hampshire--Crew Chief

Pvt. 1st Class Lucas Ferguson, 20, of Nashville, Tennessee--Gunner

Kyle Evarts runs down the basics of Chinooks:

"If we crash, there are four exits, but all you have to do is run down the ramp. But wait until I tell you; we could crash in a hot LZ, and you don't want to be running into bullets. But if it's on fire, I'll tell you. This thing will burn down in 15 minutes."

"Also, in case you're sick, or you're gonna be sick, let us know. We'll give you a bag. Nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone gets sick sometimes."

Onboard, the five-man crew, a matching five-man crew of reporters, two PAOs, two soldiers, and a grubby-looking man with a bushy moustache, a week's worth of stubble, gym shorts and a T-shirt. His face is deeply creased and ruddy. He wears a soiled white baseball cap with the words NO FEAR emblazoned across in appliqué. He looks like he could be a truck driver. A very heavily armed truck driver; a Baretta 9mm pistol is strapped to his thigh, and he a holds a muddied M-4 rifle mounted with an M-203 grenade launcher between his knees. Special forces.

With a piercing whine, the back rotor kicks on. From the cockpit, the sounds of the radio running wildly across frequencies like a needle scratching back and forth across a record.

The craft takes off and gains altitude-50 feet--in seconds, and screams south toward Kabul. The pilot hugs the contours of the valley, banking radically in the rocky canyons, hopping small terrain features, catching updrafts over the razorback ridges of the mountains. A second Chinook trails the lead bird by a quarter mile.

From the way he flies--like he's winning a video game--the pilot seems to be enjoying himself immensely. Soon enough my stomach protests. A bump, a dip, and the morning's eggs expand in my gut. A vicious bank in a valley, pulling G-forces as we navigate, and I consider losing breakfast inside the Chinook. The plastic sack of the MRE will be my friend in case of need.

The first dusty stop on today's schedule: Kabul airport. I'm very glad to be on terra firma. We pick up several sling nets. Quickly, too quickly, the bird is off, headed east, in the direction of Pakistan.

We fly over Kabul, and children wave from courtyards; sheep and goats scatter at our presence. The pilot settles in to follow a dry riverbed, and the air suddenly becomes chilly and thin. The trackless countryside gives off a sense of desolation: rocky gulleys, steep canyons, and tufts of grass on the shoulders of the hills. The gunners test their Vietnam-vintage M-60 machine guns. A slow pop-pop-pop, then the smell of gunpowder.

The bird hits turbulence in the mountains. I can't take my mind off of puking. I should open the MRE bag, in case I need it. The thought of doing that nauseates me further. My hand shoots out and seizes the MRE; I tear it open, dump out the contents on the red canvas bench and empty my guts into the bag. A few minutes later, Cesar, the USA Today reporter, gives me the thumbs up. Later he tells me what a nice guy he was by not taking my photograph at the moment of spew.

The Chinook plops down smack in the middle of a broad sagebrush plain, within a barbed-wire oval a few hundred meters long, home to a secret U.S./Afghan military installation. The SF fighters wear black patches where a soldier's name and rank normally read, but there appears to be no attempt to hide the base at all--the American flag flies proudly from a flagpole, next to an Afghan flag, in the middle of the compound. Sandbags surround desert-camo, two-man tents. Two zinc-roofed, stone buildings sit in the center of the compound, next to the flags. Mountains loom kilometers away. Mud villages are perched in the foothills. Coils of concertina wire mark the perimeter. Inside the wire, U.S. forces. Outside the wire, Afghanistan.

As soon as the bird lands, a pair of soldiers run down the gangplank, carrying bright yellow mail bags. Wildmen with beards and pistols run up the ramp bearing armfuls of spent parachutes. The parachutes form a mound in the center of the cargo hold. The men work quickly, as though in a hot LZ.

A slingload team jumps off to prepare cargo to be hauled back to Kabul. The cargo is a stack of boxes of captured ammo. The mountains surrounding the base are dotted with arms caches.

A score of Rakkasans, members of the 187th regiment of the 101st Airborne division, lie in the grass on the perimeter with their guns trained on the outside world. The U.S. guys wear civilian clothes, Army uniforms and combinations of both. Dozens of Afghans sort through what looks like old Russian ammo.

The base is modest, but important. This is apparently the first time that reporters have been allowed to lay eyes on it. As the war shifts from conventional combat to an insurgency, bases like this, especially those in the southeast part of the country, by all accounts the locus of al Qaida activity, will be the staging areas for the coalition war against the former rulers of Afghanistan. I bury my trash under a rock, then back on the Queen B. The doorgunner calls me forward.

"Sit up front." He gestures to a seat just to the rear of the cockpit. This is the motion sickness seat. The stomach apparently prefers to be oriented forward, and the eyes like to see the terrain pass that way.

The Chinooks take off and head for FOB (forward operating base) Tyler, a British refueling depot. On the way, more canyons, scrubby fields, occasionally a patchwork quilt of wheat plots. The place looks as arid as the moon.

The doorgunner gestures to his weapon, offering to let me take his picture as he shoots. I fumble for my camera. But he's still gesturing, with his fists balled up and his fingers pulling triggers, that I should go ahead and fire the gun. The camera forgotten, I take hold of the weapon.

The gunner, Guin, points it at a hillside, and shows me how to pull both triggers at once. I step behind the belt-feed and fire off a few rounds. Pop, pop, pop. Little tufts of dust billow out of the hillside. I let loose a long string of automatic fire. Pop, pop, pop pop, pop, pop pop, pop, pop pop, pop, pop. The gunner doesn't seem to be stopping me; so I squeeze the trigger again. Pop, pop, pop. Guin karate chops my arm, lightly, but enough to clearly communicate, get off the gun. I'm all smiles the rest of the way. Stomach upset is a thing of the past.

The stopover at the British refueling depot is brief. Gassed up, the birds return to the US/Afghan military camp. The soldiers have more slings to load. The pilot turns off the engines. We'll be staying at the base for about an hour. The Chinook will be hauling out mortar rounds found in a weapons cache last week by coalition forces. The rounds will be given to the Afghan Army for training. While the cargo is being prepared, there is time to chat with the flight crew.

While making a drop during the fighting at Shah-i-Kot, Captain Ketcham's Chinook, the Queen Bitch, took a 7.62 round in a rotor.

"It gets your adrenalin rushing, especially when it's somewhat hot, with bullets flying everywhere. We got a hole in the blade during Anaconda. We were landing in a cold LZ. When we land in an LZ, they give us a code, whether it's cold or hot. We got the ice code, meaning the LZ was safe, and things went off the wall," says tailgunner Pvt. 1st Class Lucas Ferguson, of Nashville Tennesse. "People were shooting all over the place. It was dark. We couldn't see the rounds coming in; they were coming from too far away. No tracers. We went back to Pakistan, did a post-flight check, and the bullet had gone trhough the rotor and splintered off the end."

Chief Warrant Officer John Ketcham, a U.S. Army pilot from Little Rock, Arkansas, explains that the airframe of his Chinook, like the guns, is a relic of the Vietnam war. It was built in 1963 and refurbished in 1984. "The engines, and all the guts, are new."

Upper limit of the Chinnok's effectiveness, 14,000 feet (the crew lacks oxygen tanks). The rotor wash creates 100 mph winds. The Chinook isn't armor plated, but it can withstand small arms fire (i.e. 9mm) and the cockpit is wrapped in Kevlar sheets. Top speed, 180 mph, but usually cruises at around 120. It's the fastest helicpoter in the Army, thanks to two turbine engines on either side of the rear fin. Maximum takeoff weight is 32,000 pounds. Take away the weight of the aircraft, the fuel and the crew, the total cargo capacity is 18,000 pounds.

Ketchem says they run three to five flights per week, but that they've been doing more recently.

"Now it's more like every day," he says. "Lots of special forces resupply, moving troops."

Normally, Task Force 160 caters to the needs of special forces troops, and pilots like Ketcham stick to ferrying and resupplying conventional forces. The Task Force 160 Chinooks cost $100 million, as opposed to $18 mill for a conventional Chinook, and they are equipped with electric mini guns, instead of m-60s. They are also armored, have advanced avionics and carry extra large gas tanks (the Chinook gobbles 1,000 gallons of aviation fuel over the course of a three-hour flight). Task Force 160 birds also have O2 for the crew.

"Most of what we're doing is special forces. There's so much to do, they can't do it all themselves. So that's where we come in."

Ketcham says he sees people throwing rocks at the helicopter from the ground.

"I've seen it all. I've seen a guy throw his sheperd's staff at us. Kids throw rocks. Of course none of it hits us because we're flying 150 miles per hour.

"People shoot at us all the time. I shouldn't say all the time, but they shoot at us. It's difficult, because we don't know if it's al Qaida or Afghan military. We don't shoot until we're shot at."

"Two weeks ago, two guys with AKs shot at us, about 20 miles south of Kabul. We flew through," says Sgt Thomas Guin, of Tyler, Texas. "We're always briefed not to fire unless we're fired upon. But if they point their weapons at us, I'm shooting."

Guin says that working with special forces is different.

"Going into hot LZs, you can't really tell they're soldiers. They got the beard and moustache, and they dress like the local people. The only way to tell them apart is that they all have something the same, like their boots. I'd rather work with them than with the regular Army."

Guin tells me to look under the bird. On the bottom crew hatch is a painting of Mojo Jojo, a Powerpuff Girl cartoon character holding an M60. That's the view the Afghans get.

Ketcham, the pilot, recalls another incident.

"They were shooting at us from the side of a hill with AK-47s. The doorgunner opened up with the M-60. They didn't try to hide. Rounds were landing at their feet. They just stood there shooting."

Ketcham thinks one and possibly both of the shooters were killed.

"The second aircraft opened up on them as well. We don't know if they survived. Hopefully we took them out. But if they lived, hopefully they will think twice about firing at a military helicopter. They probably thought we were just a cargo bird with no defense. Problem around here is everybody has a gun. My greatest concern flying is the terrain and the elevation, especially when we're hauling real heavy loads.

"You want to fly fast toward the edges of the valleys, toward the towns. It's a lot of stick and rudder type flying." Ketcham says there have been "at least four or five Stingers fired on aircraft since Anaconda." The missiles all missed.

"RPGs are dumb bombs. The guidance is basically, 'I'm going to try to hit that helicopter, so I'll lead 'em.' That's about it.

"I've been training for this for six years. It's kind of nice being out here doing the thing I"ve been trained to do. The bullets, getting shot at, isn't so nice. Hopefully I'm making a difference."

Sgt. Guin doesn't have time to think about the danger. "I always have fun. Oh, yeah I love being out here in the front. They're sucking back in the rear. I was coming back from Anaconda; we were taking mortar rounds; the rounds were hitting around us. There was nothing you can do but tell the guys to get on the bird faster and get out of there."

A Pakistani lorry pulls into the field and disgorges a troop of men in traditional Afghan garb. A crowd forms on the side of one Chinook. Afghans and Americans, special forces men and reporters, mingle in a mob. Snapshots are taken. A special forces medic gives me motion-sickness pills for the ride back to Bagram. "Give one to Larry Flynt," he says.

Dozens of Afghans surround us and want their pictures taken. They all begin speaking at once. Sayed Abas translates: "They are saying, 'Thank you for saving our country. Thank you for saving us from the al Qaeda and the Taliban. Now all the al Qaeda and Taliban have run to another country.' "

Asked about the SF guys, Sayed hugs one and says "They are good people!"

An SF soldier says they are here to train the Afghan militias into an Afghan National Army. He says the Afghans are quick learners. The Afghans are astounded that the special forces soldiers include people of all races and ethnicities, including black, white, Puerto Rican. A special forces guy points out that the biggest hurdle to building an Afghan army is the tribal/ethnic differences. He says the Afghans must build a boot camp/basic training type course that will admit all Afghans regardless of ethnicity to teach them to work together.

After about 30 minutes of posing for photos with soldiers, we climb back into the bird. The pilots maneuver the helicopter so it hovers over the load of ammo. Old tin boxes with Russian script and cracked wooden crates with a few 81 mm mortar rounds are visible. PFC Ferguson tries to grab the ring at the top of the sling load with a long grappling hook. After several failed attempts, Sgt. Ballinger steps in. With one swift swoop, he grabs the ring and attaches it to the pulley system on the center of the helicopter. The center hatch, a/k/a "the hellhole" is opened. The world whizzes by. Destination: Kabul. After an hour-long stop in Kabul (a blown gasket on a hydraulic pump causes the delay) the plane returns to base. Six stops in seven hours. John Ketcham is a seasoned aviator; his job is to fly sorties in a warzone, but today, he seems more like a soccer dad.

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