No Lack of Courage (16 page)
Read No Lack of Courage Online
Authors: Colonel Bernd Horn
The BG had developed the winning template for destroying the Talibanâoverwhelming firepower followed up with infantry clearing the ground in a very systematic fashion. Major Mike Wright, OC “A” Coy noted, “It was just a matter of leapfrogging companies through a deliberate sort of advance to contact and/or search to the last and final objective.”
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And the deliberate advance continued as “B” Coy pushed through TF Mohawk and “A” Coy. Despite the noticeable decrease in resistance the advance was still difficult and extremely dangerous. One of the major reasons was the complex terrain. “You can only see down one furrow lane at a time,” explained Lieutenant Bell, “and that's if the vines weren't very thick. Therefore, you had to walk every single one of them to call it clear because you can't just look down a row because there could be something stuffed under the vines or at the bottom of an irrigation canal.”
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Sergeant
Normand Godin stated, “In the vine fields a man could sneak up onto you and be within 10 feet of you before you'd have any idea that he was there.” He recalled, “One night a guy snuck up and stole the trip flares and left with them. They were about 15 metres from our position.”
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Equally daunting was the maze of thick-walled mud compounds that resembled impregnable mini-fortresses. “They have compound upon compound upon compound and then there's another compound,” stated Lieutenant Hiltz in exasperation. “And there's no significant plan to it, like we do back in North America, where someone comes in and plans a straight road where you could sit down and have a nice firing lane and a cut off . . . You may get 100 metres and then there's a turn and another compound kind of offset that would cover it . . . And then to continue to further complicate things, you have the pot fields, which at this time of year were higher than our vehicles, and still very green.” Hiltz grumbled:
We were unable to burn them and we tried using a lot of different methods, from diesel to white phosphorous dropped down on it from mortars and 203 (grenade) rounds. Then you have the vineyards where they grow their grapes. These are, essentially the easiest way for me to describe it is, picture a speed bump and then add about a metre at a minimum to the height of the speed bump and then put about two feet in between them, and they have 100 of them. You have to move through them and clear them because the enemy has the tendency to sit down inside and burrow back into them and then once you push past them they would come out behind you. That was some of their TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures]. And then there is the natural foliage. It's very thick, very good cover, and very difficult to see into. And then to top it all off, unfortunately marijuana has a very good heat holding capability, which further exacerbates our thermal capabilities of the LAV. So it's very difficult terrain. To us there doesn't seem to be a set pattern to it at all, but the enemy definitely has a very
good knowledge of the ground and so they're able to move very well in it. It's the most complex terrain I've ever seen. To make it even worse, at any point in time when you start to make routes you kick up dust that is like talcum powder. It's moon dust. It's about a foot deep and it's very easy for someone to throw something in and to hide it quite easily without the ground looking disturbed. It causes a lot of visibility issues and it clogs up a lot of your weapon systems and equipment.
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Lieutenant Bell concurred with his peer about the complexity of the terrain.
You had to make sure that you were in your own compound because all the compounds were inter-joined, so what we would determine as being one compound in planning could, in actuality, have a door that goes into another compound that is the objective of another platoon . . . But it's hard because the guys just keep goingâpush, push, push and all of a sudden we've gone too far and we're in someone else's AO [area of operation] and we have to pull back out . . . So that was the hardest thing, just keeping everybody on track, on line and on target with regard to which objectives to go to and which ones to hold back. It was very easy to get sucked in and to just keep going.
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There were other problems as well. “The doors were a lot smaller than we were use to,” recalled Bell. “A guy with full kit, especially me with the radio, fitting through some of the doors was a bit of a gong show . . . We would make our own doors whenever possible because of the booby-trap threat. And even then, using the engineers it would take a couple of blocks of C4 explosives.”
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The Canadians eventually developed a system and began to cut through the Taliban defensive network. However, they did meet their
match in one building: The soldiers conducted their drills and launched into the interior. Within seconds they all came running out in disarray, screaming. The grenades had disrupted a large hornet's nest and they had all been stung. “The Taliban couldn't touch them,” laughed Pappin, “but the hornets, or âTalibees,' were a different matter.”
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The effect of the systematic BG approach, particularly the incessant pounding by CAS and artillery, was clearly being felt by the Taliban. Casualties were mounting. “There were 80 guys killed in one day,” professed Major Lussier, the OC of the ISTAR Coy. “We saw it. We watched it. So, this isn't speculation here.” He explained it was a function of “people [Taliban] making mistakes because they're exhausted and stressed.” He noted, “We killed a lot of people, you know, we killed a lot of Taliban. And they're just not set up to take a couple of hundred casualties. They're not set up to evacuate them. They're not set up to look after those kind of wounded.” As a result, “they just fell apart. And so that was part of the disruption task.”
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And so, from 6â10 September, the brigade just kept squeezing the Taliban in Pashmul with the BG pushing from north to south, TF Grizzly pounding the enemy from the south, and TF-31 pressuring the enemy from the south west. On 10 September 2006, “B” Coy Gp seized the northern half of Objective Cricket, setting the conditions for Mohawk 6 to move through and capture the southern portion of Objective Cricket the following day. Throughout, TF Grizzly conducted feints to the south to fix the enemy on Objective Rugby. “TF Grizzly was doing a great job keeping the enemy preoccupied in the south while TF 3-06 just cleared down from the north,” lauded the Brigade Commander. “Intelligence was telling us, despite the attack and heavy bombardments we were actually seeing fighters who were risking staying in place,” revealed Fraser. Nonetheless, he conceded, “The [enemy] command and control was still very effective and still pressing very hard for the fighters to keep on going, even though they were taking a pounding.”
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Meanwhile, as the operation unfolded, TF-31 remained heavily engaged in Sperwan Ghar in a fight that lasted over three days. Despite severe opposition, TF-31 was prevailing. “The enemy was just dumping on them,” described Fraser, adding that “the Taliban [in this location] were coming across the intervening ground in convoys of trucks, dumping off five to 10 guys from each truck, all who just unloaded and attacked TF-31's position . . . It became a turkey shoot. In one night, I think they killed between 100 to 200 Taliban, it was a phenomenal shoot.”
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Map by Chris Johnson.
At the same time, TF Grizzly was also meeting with success. Because of the changing dynamic on the battlefield, “we made the decision to press really hard,” explained Fraser. He added:
I mean, it's a feeling in a battleâyou can feel the battle when you got the enemy. It's something you cannot teach, you just got to know when to push. Our forces got to that stage. You read the intelligence; you read what the soldiers were doing on the field; and then you just realize itâokay, it's time to push. And we went out there and we pushed because the enemy was starting to pull back, even though we were not in any great strength there.
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On 11 September 2006, with Objective Cricket captured and the engineers beginning to improve the routes for better manoeuvre, Brigadier-General Fraser pushed TF Grizzly, with the remainder of “C” Coy, north across the across Arghandab River. “So I said, okay, we got something really big in Siah Choy and in Sperwan Ghar, and there is little pressure coming out of the main stronghold, so I pushed TF 3-06 to get down and take our main objective, which we called Rugby,” he explained. “At the same time I told TF Grizzly to get across the Arghandab River get into the eastern side of Rugby and roll up the Taliban position from the flank, realizing that the Taliban would then collapse.”
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As always, the plan did not unravel quite so easily. TF Grizzly struggled to get across the river. Reinforced with ANP they finally managed to gain a foothold. The MNB Commander then pressed the TF commander to get “Charles” Company (minus), supported by elements of ISTAR [intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance] squadron, across the river. That too was done against “medium” enemy resistance. Once TF Grizzly gained lodgement into the enemy trench line, Fraser ordered, “TF 3-06 to push hard and link up with TF Grizzly because once we had the momentum going and the Taliban started to fall back, I just wanted to keep the pressure on.”
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By 12 September, Mohawk 6 had pushed onto Objective Lacrosse. Concurrently, “A” Coy, 1 RCR BG, was preparing to move onto the eastern portion of Objective Rugby. The enemy seemed to be dissipating. The troops found well-constructed entrenchments but they were abandoned. “It looked like they were prepared for a fight,” explained Major Geoff Abthorpe, “B” Coy Commander, “but I think over the last few days they lost their gumption to fight and they pulled out before we showed up.”
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By 13 September NATO estimated that they controlled 65 percent of the objective territory.
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Coalition intelligence assessed that the insurgents in the Panjwayi/Zhari area had withdrawn west or had stored their weapons and remained in the region. Those fighters not from the area had exfiltrated west along the Arghandab River valley or through Arghandab District to the north. The following day, 14 September, at first light, Mohawk 6 seized Objective Rugby West. They met no enemy resistance.
Brigadier-General Fraser explained, “At that stage of the game, we had great pressure on the enemyâwe were coming from the north, from the south and from the southeast.” He elaborated:
We had three task forces that moved in with significant pressure. Lieutenant-Colonel Lavoie and his 1RCR BG linked up with TF Grizzly, which was pushing towards them from the southeast to the northwest. Meanwhile, the moment Sperwan Ghar was secured by Task Force 31, I ordered them to push to Siah Choy. We thought we were going to have a huge fight in Siah Choy based on our experience and the Taliban tenacity at Sperwan Ghar, which was just staggering. As a result, I told the other two Task Forces to just stand by because the main effort that morning was going to be Task Force 31 and their push to Siah Choy. I allotted them priority on artillery, aviation, and everything else.
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Remarkably, TF-31 seized Siah Choy without firing a shot. The Taliban had fled. At that point, Fraser pushed his brigade to exploitâhe ordered all to move into Phase 3 of Operation Medusa.
“I received word that morning that we took the town without a shot,” recalled Fraser. “Nobody was there, therefore, at that point we moved into exploitation . . . Amazingly, it's hard to exploit, it's hard to get troops to take more risk. Once you get soldiers going at a certain speed, to get them to change that speed and exploit is difficult.” He added, “You read about it in the books and you think, how hard can that be? But it is. I went out and I talked to the commander of TF 3-06 and said now is the time to get all your forces and exploitâthat means you take more risks but you don't take more chances or become reckless about the risks you accept.” Fraser concluded, “Now you have the enemy on the run and now is the time to take the ground.”
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And TF 3-06 did exactly that. They seized the ground from the Taliban. “The village of Bayenzi, the home of the infamous white school
complex, was the final objective, called Rugby,” explained Lieutenant-Colonel Omer Lavoie. He divided it up into company sized components assigned as follows: Rugby Centre [“B” Coy], Rugby East [“A” Coy] and Rugby West [Mohawk 6]. “So when we did the final assault, we just came down the new road and cut off to the east,” he described. “Recce Platoon went in the night before to clear and secure the line of departure for âA' Coy because they were the first company to be passed through.” He revealed, “Unknowingly, they had actually secured the enemy objective because the maps were a bit off. So we linked up with Recce Platoon in the morning and found we were actually on the eastern part of objective rugby and I had âA' Coy start to clear through it.” Lavoie recalled: