Where was the front line in comparison to where you thought the front line
was?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
They couldn't tell us where the front lines were. That was one of the
questions. We said, "OK, this is where we're landing? Where are the front
lines? Are we getting shot at as soon as we land, or is there some kind of a...
buffer between us?" It turns out it was about 40 miles away. ... So there was
plenty of room for us to maneuver without having to worry about getting shot at
until we actually went and wanted to go down and engage the Taliban. ...
So once you're on the ground, you link up with the commanders there. What
happens then? Does he move down towards the planes? How did that happen? What
happened?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
The first day we got in, they took us to a house. ... They fed us and we got a
bunch of information. Then the next night, we moved down closer, [where] we met
Ismail Khan at another house called "the eagle's nest," because it was on the
side of a mountain up a different valley. We stayed there for a day. From
there, we went down to the front lines to survey the front line. We said,
"Look, we need to move closer." So they found us another place closer, and
that's where we stayed the whole time until the offensive.
Why did you want to move closer?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
[There were too many] logistical problems getting to and from the battlefield.
I mean, they didn't want us on the battlefield because [Taliban and Al Qaeda]
were hunting us, and figured we'd be safer if they moved us some place where
his trusted guys could watch us. So we'd go from there, move up to a certain
part of the battlefield, do what we needed to do, and then we'd move back,
because it was the border. The front lines were too porous and they weren't
secure. ... They didn't feel ... that it was secure enough.
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
It wasn't rigid like an American or European war, with trench lines and machine
guns laid in with designated areas of fire and a no man's land. Heck, the fuel
that our host nation guys were burning in their vehicles came from Pakistan
through Kabul. They came through enemy-controlled territory up to us, so they
had their guys walking across the border, finding out information. I'm sure
that they were doing the same thing to us.
Give us a sense of the lay of the land there, and the porous front lines.
How long had that front line been there?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
They were entrenched. It's been there about three years. ... They went back and
forth, you know, Taliban one day, Northern Alliance the next day. They'd get
the information on each other. They just didn't have the means to do anything
about it. So it just sat there in a stalemate until we showed up.
Why did that make a difference?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
In order to do an offensive, you need to have superior numbers, especially if
the guys you're going against are dug in. Standard military is 3-to-1 odds. You
want 3-to-1 greater numbers. Well, neither side had that. Neither side could
attack, so they just sat there. When we showed up, we started taking out their
numbers. Yes, we started hitting their artillery and their tanks and started
hitting their trench lines until we dwindled them down to a number that they
felt was satisfactory that they could attack against. When we got to that
point, they attacked.
Why was that piece of territory so important in the big picture?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
To the big picture? I think it's more Kabul's stature than a tactical
significance. It was the capital of Afghanistan. The first one to get there
holds that status.
What do you remember the first time that you called in air strikes with
[Northern Alliance commander] General Babajan?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
General Babajan takes us up into the tower. We didn't go down there to call any
of our aircraft in, we were just going to survey the front lines.
and he starts pointing out all the enemy positions. [We were] like, "You mean
that's Al Qaeda right there, and that's Taliban?" He knew. "Yes, General
So-and-so lives in that house. This is where his lines are." So we said, "Wait
a minute," and got on the radio. "Hey, any aircraft coming this way?" "Yes,
it'll be there in two hours." So we'd call back up and have these guys bring
down some laser equipment and we started dropping bombs. ...
Who did you hit, and what was his reaction?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
We hit a Taliban commander and a C2 element, a command and control element that
was controlling the Bagram air field. [The Northern Alliance] owned three
quarters of it, but the southern eastern end of it was covered by the Taliban
and the Al Qaeda. They were all set up in what used to be a village, but they
had moved all the civilians out. They'd made it in to a military garrison, and
that's where they covered it.
They could shoot at us all day long from there, but they didn't actually have
troops on the air field. When we got up there, he just started pointing out the
targets where all the gun positions were, where all the commanders were, the
radios. We just started taking them out with the laser, one by one. [General
Babajan and his men] were giggling. They were all laughing and joking about it
and slapping each other on the back. They were happy as hell. The food got a
lot better that day.
Up until then, do you think they appreciated the kind of firepower that you
could bring them?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
No. General Sharif knew. He saw what the Russians did, so he knew the
potential. But they had been promised stuff before. The air campaign had
started -- I'm not sure how many weeks before that -- and they weren't really
hitting anything. They were up at 25,000 feet, just dropping area targets, and
he wasn't impressed with that. Then when we came down there and started hitting
pinpoint targets maybe only a kilometer in front of us, they were like, "All
right, this is for real."
Can you tell the story of when you were up in the tower and a bomb drops,
and you monitor the Al Qaeda radio?
Russell
Staff Sgt.
We were out in the west. Our western [observational post] had a large amount of
people that lived around it that were other soldiers. ... So when we decided to
go to that OP, a lot of soldiers would leave their fighting positions to come
watch the Americans do their magic -- bring the bombs in on the enemy targets.
They had these little walkie-talkies that worked basically on a repeater
system. They had all the same frequencies that the Taliban had.
I'm sure that they talked back and forth to each other, and probably cussed
each other out on the radio from time to time. But Northern Alliance guys had
guys that could speak and probably talked the same slang in Arabic and sound
just like a Talibani or an Arab soldier.
They did it, and they were able to talk to them and ask them questions when we
would drop a bomb, and it sounded like a fellow Talibani soldier. The Talibani
guy possibly sometimes was crying, or all the time they were saying, "That was
close. They missed us. Can you give us some help or support? They missed us to
our west or whatever by whatever distance." They would translate to us, and
tell us, and we would just adjust our fire, based on the information that they
gave us.
Then the next thing you know, that guy who was basically saying how far we
missed them by-- he would no longer was there. You'd hear people on the other
end of the radio complaining or [being] upset about a friend he'd lost on the
radio.
Of course, Northern Alliance guys didn't care. They were happy about it. By the
end of the conversation, they'd close it, and close it with a good cussing or
something. I was just amazed. I couldn't believe that they were able to do that
for us; helped us in a very big way. ...
When did you get a sense that the momentum was really with the Northern
Alliance, pushing in towards Kabul?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
I think most of us had it in our mind that we were going to be there until the
spring. We were going out and bombing every day, but being the first team on
the ground calling in aircraft, we had a monopoly. We had all the aircraft we
could possibly want. But as more teams came in, they only had a set number of
aircraft, and started getting pushed down in priorities, kind of revolving
around. We were like, "Wow, this could take a while," especially if something
doesn't happen. It was General Dostum up in Mazar-e-Sharif that kind of upped
the ante by taking Mazar-e-Sharif with one of our other
teams. It kind of forced some of the other units into action.
...
The pace of events changes, and then suddenly the Taliban leave Kabul. Then
the city's kind of wide open. There was a political debate over whether the
Northern Alliance take Kabul. What was going on? How [did] that happen from
where you guys [were]?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
I went up to talk to General Sharif. We had known there was an agreement
between Fahim Khan and General Franks, I believe, that he was going to
stop short of Kabul. I went up and I talked to General Sharif. General Sharif
was like, "Sure we'll stop," and he goes, "But you know, some of the local
commanders have family down there," and he kind of let it known that they
weren't going to stop. Politically, yes, you know we were going to stop. [But]
if a guy is trying to get back to his old home in Kabul, then who's going to
stop them? They're not going to stop them, and that's what ended up
[happening].
[Some people were asking], "[Were] there gangs running around Kabul?" Someone
had to go in there and secure it to make it safe for the people. So that's why
they went in.
Was that what was going on in Kabul?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
... When we rolled in, the city was in chaos. But they were definitely
celebrating, and there was no authority [that] had been associated with the
Taliban. The Taliban had fought up to the front line as those guys had pulled
back. They had just basically scared the heck out of the civilian apparatus
that was in place. I mean, the whole infrastructure -- police, fire, government
-- turned tail and took off.
Should they have gone in? I don't know. Did they need to be in there? Yes,
because they added stability to the city. When we got in there, they had
Northern Alliance squads, eight to 10 men, in each intersection. They weren't
doing anything. They weren't harassing the populace. They were just giving a
stabilizing effort to the whole area, letting them know, "OK, we're in here.
Now we're in charge."
[What happened when the Northern Alliance started their assault on
Kabul?]
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
... On that final day, they actually waited until we managed to talk them into
giving us more time to react. They finally started their attack right after a
B-52 strike that landed about a thousand meters to 1,200 meters south of us on
Taliban positions. In between us and the Taliban were [U.S.] regular troops and
some [Northern Alliance] militia that we'd saw march forward. Basically, that
opened the floodgates. It broke the Taliban's back. Their defenses were
brittle. They either broke and ran from there, or changed sides -- which
happened a lot. They were bought out, except for the Arabs. Quarter was given
to the Afghanis. If you were a Taliban Afghani, well, most important [is] that
you're Afghani. But if you were Arab or foreign of any kind, there was no
mercy. You were still a combatant. The option wasn't there to change sides.
What would happen to them?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
They would usually fight, because they had no place else to go. They were
exiled from their home countries into Afghanistan; this is their safe haven. I
mean, they had planned to hit on the World Trade Center from here. They had no
place else to go. All of a sudden, the Northern Alliance is rolling down the
road in trucks, tanks, jeeps, anything with wheels, with American bombs falling
in front of them. They had to stand and fight; they had no choice.
How soon after the B-52 attack did the Northern Alliance actually enter
Kabul?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
The B-52 strike was around two or three, and that night, the Northern Alliance
entered Kabul. But it was a mad rush. ... Something that we thought would take
a couple of weeks -- to fight our way down there -- happened in a matter of
hours. The next day, we rolled in with General Sharif and the staff and some
more troops. As they moved in to another part of the city, we didn't encounter
any resistance.
What was it like entering Kabul?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
It was surreal. I mean, heck, we'd gone into Afghanistan about a month after
the towers fell, and a month after that, we were in the capital city of what
had been an enemy country. People lined the streets. There we were in the
convoy. They didn't know we were Americans, but we were in the convoy with the
Northern Alliance, and people were just standing at the side of the road,
cheering and laughing.
Another thing I remember, driving through the city that day, they had these
buses full of people with guys dancing on top and trailers streaming off the
back of a taxi in front of it, because people just got married. They were
playing music, and everybody was playing music.
One thing I'll always remember are the kites, the children playing with the
kites, because the whole time, the Taliban didn't allow that. They didn't let
the children play with balls, play soccer or football or whatever they call it
or play with kites or anything like that. It was just like an immense weight
had been lifted off them. The future is still uncertain, but at least things
were better than they had been. ...
How long did you end up staying in Kabul?
Frank
Sgt. 1st Class
It was a little bit over a month. We got there right before Thanksgiving, and
left right after Christmas, I think. ...
What was it like when you when you left? Did you have a chance to say
goodbye to General Sharif and the people that you were with?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
Once it was over, it was kind of hard for us to stay in contact with them,
because now their fight was over, for the most part. They were trying to set up
civil government, and it was hard to stay in contact.
One day, though, Frank and I were standing outside the embassy. There was a
large crowd on the main street coming from Kabul International Airport into the
center of town to the presidential palace. But there was also a large group in
front of the American Embassy. By this time, the Marines had shown up. They had
secured the embassy and there was Department of State staff there. Well, we
decided that we're going to go down, and since we blended in so well, we're
just going to stand by the side of the road and make sure nothing silly
happens.
We're nonchalantly pulling it off, "OK, we're Afghani" until General Sharif
drives by. Of course, the outside of the embassy in most countries is secured
by the host nation, and the inside perimeter is secured by the Marines. General
Sharif stops by to say hello to his troops on the outside. He gets out, shakes
their hand has a few words with them.
I remember this for a fact -- Frank here was leaning up against this taxicab.
General Sharif is kind of short in stature; he has to climb up into the truck.
He looks right over the windshield and makes direct eye contact with us and
raises his hand, a big smile. So in the middle of this big parade, we're out
with hundreds of people lining the street, we end up in the middle of the road,
hugging. He ends up giving us the Afghani kisses on the cheek, and he ends up
whisking us away to his truck.
[We went] back and we ended up having some chai and talking about old times,
old army buddies. It was kind of funny. ...
Do you have any memories or stories that you know you're going to tell your
grandkids? What's the most enduring moment through this that you take
home?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
I think it's definitely going to be that day on that rooftop with all the
machine gun fire coming round us, [and] that B-52 strike hitting so close to
us. It's a sound and a sight and a feeling. It was like watching fireworks --
[that's] the only thing I could equate it to on the civilian side. You don't
see it. You hear it, but you feel it. You just don't feel it in your chest; you
feel it deep down in your guts, just this huge rumbling roar. It shakes the
very earth you're standing on or laying on at that time.
I thought for sure the roof was going to collapse -- and we were a thousand
meters away, six-tenths of a mile. But it's something I'm always going to
remember, and probably never want to be that near again.
And that's the one that was decisive?
Steve
Sgt. 1st Class
Yes, that was the one. That was the one -- the final blow that they were
looking for.
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