Hell on an Afghan Mountainside

The Chad Hembree Story by Charlie Bosworth, Jet Aviation St. Louis

In November 2010, Army Specialist Chad Hembree had been at Combat Outpost (COP) Honaker-Miracle in northeastern for six months – long enough to be familiar with the almost daily firefights, ambushes, mortar rounds, and pot shots the Taliban Specialist Chad Hembree fighters would throw at the Americans patrolling the rocky mountains and green valleys. But he could never have been ready for what he and the rest of 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, would encounter over five days on a mountainside in Operation Bulldog Bite - when “hell came down on top of us.”

Chad, 19 and a soldier for just over two years serving as a gun-team leader, had heard repeatedly that there was no worse fighting anywhere in Afghanistan than in the eastern Pech River Valley in Kunar Province. COP Honaker-Miracle, named for the first two soldiers killed in action (KIA) there, was one of four bases in the valley assigned to find and destroy Taliban strongholds while protecting the local The Pech River Valley population of mostly farmers and herders. Photo by Staff Sgt. Mark Burrell Fighting during the daily patrols usually resulted in at least one KIA and a couple of wounded soldiers each month. Everyone in Kunar was on what might be called “the front lines” in the war in Afghanistan, although there was never anything that could be identified as a line when your enemy looked the same, dressed the same, and spoke the same as the people you were trying to protect.

When Alpha Company was assembled to begin a 24-to-72 hour mission on Nov. 11, 2010, after a quiet week off patrols, Chad knew something out of the ordinary was up. For the first time, platoon leaders gathered everyone together and delivered an unusual message: Our No. 1 goal on this mission is to bring everybody back.

“They had never said that before,” Chad recalled. “That was always our game plan, but we never had to say it. That really was not normal. It gave us an eerie feeling about this mission.” 2

That feeling intensified when Chad’s staff sergeant – a close friend despite the difference in ranks – pulled him aside and said, “I want you to be careful. Be on your guard. And take care of those guys.”

And then Chad’s team leader and good friend told him, “I’m looking to you to back me up out there.” Chad responded with a standard, “No problem,” but the warnings from experienced combat leaders were beginning to pile up: they clearly expected fierce Taliban resistance to Operation Bulldog Bite. After he packed his gear the next morning, Chad placed hurried phone calls to his parents and his best friend, Kate Gunn, with a thinly veiled alert. “They’re saying this is going to be rough,” he told them. “If I don’t call in 72 hours, there’s probably something wrong.”

Chad Hembree

Chad grew up in St. Charles, Mo. He left high school after his first year and was trying to find his way when he heard the call from the army. His father had been in the army, after all, and Chad – recently an unwed father at just 17 – saw enlisting as a way to help provide for his new daughter. He joined on Sept. 8, 2008, and took basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. On Jan. 23, 2009, he arrived for surprisingly more intense and hard-core infantry training at Fort Campbell, Ky.

On May 1, 2010, he arrived at COP Honaker-Miracle in Afghanistan and became one of 120 soldiers in three platoons at the outpost. By November, he was a veteran of numerous firefights and other combat actions.

Nov. 12, 2010

About 2 a.m., the 40 soldiers in Chad’s platoon boarded Chinook helicopters to “air assault in” to a mountaintop about six clicks away – some 3.75 miles. They would be the “spear tip” – the leading point of Operation Bulldog Bite. The action was designed to sweep the Taliban out of area villages and search for caches of weapons and explosives. The other companies at Honaker-Miracle would provide 30 more troops would move through the valley below and another 30 to track behind Alpha Company on a parallel route along the mountainside. They would be accompanied by troops from the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) – Afghan soldiers who generally were little trusted by the Americans when it came to real combat.

Landing in pitch-black night, Chad’s platoon set up a patrol base with 360-degree security while they mobilized for the hike to the village of Tsangar, about two clicks away. The sound of the helicopter gunships making continuing strafing runs through the night – a sure sign of substantial Taliban presence – was slightly disconcerting to the troops on the ground, even though they knew the helicopters were authorized to fire on the enemy with less provocation than ground troops. In most circumstances, the infantry had to be fired upon first before they could fire. 3

Another red flag for the platoon came with radio reports that several hundred local residents – mostly women, children, and older men – were evacuating the valley. Alpha Company had never heard of movement by that many locals and interpreted it as evidence that the villagers knew something dangerous was about to happen. In past experiences, perhaps 20 people would evacuate ahead of a sweep, leaving the small villages unoccupied when the Americans arrived. But several hundred people abandoning their villages ahead of a military action had to be an ominous sign.

The Bulldog Bite sweep began about dawn as Alpha Company moved into Tsangar to clear the village of Taliban or weapons in a house-by-house search. With the exception of one non- threatening man with two young children, Tsangar was empty.

The troops left the village and moved about 500 meters down the rocky slopes to find cover among some large boulders to reorganize. Chad was near the rear of the column with about 20 men and some of the Afghan soldiers when the sounds of “pot shots” at troops about 100 meters behind them broke out. Chad was directing his team and the Afghans to cover behind a 10-foot by 10-foot boulder when he heard the familiar “whoosh” of an incoming RPG (rocket propelled grenade). The round struck a tree barely four feet from Chad and the force of the explosion knocked him Troops negotiating a rocky Afghan mountainside unconscious for a few seconds. U.S. Army Photo When he came to, he realized that his team leader had been standing right by the tree – a thought that sent a shiver through Chad. He was amazed and then relieved to see that his team leader had escaped without major injuries. He was momentarily incapacitated and couldn’t hear, but he would be OK. A corpsman checked out the team leader and then wanted to examine Chad, but he waved him off. Chad moved the men some 40 feet away from the scene of the explosion, behind better cover and closer to the rest of the unit. But he then had to make a run back to recover bags left behind, including much of the ammunition for the heavy machine gun used by his team. With the ammo retrieved, the team leader told Chad to set up the gun at the most advantageous location in case the RPG was the opening salvo in a Taliban assault. The terrain was not the most strategic location for a defensive position: rocky terraces with ledges just two-to-three feet wide and then drop-offs sometimes 20 feet to the terrace below. There wasn’t much room to maneuver or stage an active defense. 4

Chad spent the next 90 minutes scanning the terrain, and then the Taliban opened fire. Most of the shooting was coming from a nearby mud hut that was so small that Chad was amazed it could hold enough men and weapons to generate so much offense. Alpha Company responded with such intense fire onto the hut that they soon began running low on ammo. Staying low behind the limited cover, Chad made a run to get more. As he was collecting the ammo, another RPG ripped through the lines and landed in the middle of three or four guys, sending up a huge cloud of smoke. Chad’s heart sunk with the fear that his buddies had been killed. When the smoke cleared, all of the men miraculously were unhurt. Chad stared in disbelief.

As the fire continued to rain down on the hut, Chad told his machine gunner to concentrate on a haystack next to the building. As Chad had hoped, the shooting set the hay on fire and the smoke enveloped the small hut. The shooting from inside soon stopped. Chad assumed the Taliban had fled out a back door, but he would never know exactly what had happened.

Alpha Company held its position for the next four and a half hours without incident, but they could hear an intense firefight under way with the unit in the valley below. They soon heard that their company medic, Specialist Shannon “Doc” Chihuahua, had been killed by an RPG while treating a wounded man. The massive explosion had also killed some ANSF troops. Bulldog Bite had claimed its first KIAs, and the loss of Chihuahua stung everyone in Alpha Company.

The unit moved out after dark, walking through the rugged terrain for what seemed to Chad like days. When they finally stopped and set up a patrol base, helicopters arrived to med-evac the wounded and to resupply the unit with ammo and food. Chad told his men to get some sleep; he took the guard position all night.

Nov. 13, 2010

The next morning, Chad and two others divided up the gear left behind by the wounded and put it in their own packs, increasing the weight on their shoulders by another 50 pounds. Chad also had assumed the additional weight of his first real leadership role amid some heavy combat. While he was a little nervous in the role, he was confident that his training had equipped him for the additional responsibility.

As Alpha Company moved out along the rocky mountainside, Chad recalls intensely, “Hell came down on us.”

“Gunfire. Grenades. RPGs. They were coming in from everywhere. I’d never been in something like that before. It was like some chaotic scene from a war movie. There was blood flying everywhere.” 5

Chad grabbed his machine gunner and guided him through heavy incoming fire to a protected position behind some trees. Chad began telling the gunner where to concentrate his fire to suppress the Taliban attack so the rest of Alpha Company could move into more effective and protected positions.

As the barrage continued, Alpha Company casualties began to mount up. One of the sergeants suffered severe wounds to both legs. Chad yelled for a medic to attend to the sergeant. While the medic and others went to Fitzgerald’s aid, another sergeant stepped up to lay down protective fire.

“He took a round that ripped his cheek wide open, and he kept firing like it was nothing,” Chad recalled. “The round ricocheted off his rifle stock, ripped through his right cheek and came out the side of his face. He kept fighting like nothing had happened.”

Chad told the 3rd Squad to fall back from its ineffective position. While he and his machine gunner continued to lay down intense cover fire, the gunner was hit in the right forearm. While the wound wasn’t life-threatening, the pain was terrible. Still under heavy incoming fire, Chad applied a tourniquet and bandage to the gunner's, sent him to the rear, and then took over the machine gun.

The platoon sergeant began yelling for the unit to fall back to better cover. Chad sent his men back while he continued to provide cover fire. “I had the unit’s biggest machine gun, so I stayed to cover them until they were clear.”

Once back to a safer position, the unit hunkered down to await the arrival of helicopters to evacuate the wounded. He was glad there had been no KIAs to evacuate from the 1st Platoon. But as the choppers left, Chad counted 20 men left – just half of the platoon. And he realized that with the squad leaders and NCOs (non-commissioned officers) among those evacuated, he was the now ranking soldier in the platoon. He had no radio, no map, and no compass - just more responsibility.

The sergeant from the 3rd Platoon told Chad to take his men 200 meters down the hillside to connect with the other unit. But they found no one at the site. They returned to the sergeant and learned they needed to go 100 meters up the hillside to locate the other unit. As the sun went down, the reunited unit set up camp and settled in for a third night on Operation Bulldog Bite. Again, Chad ordered his men to sleep while he stood guard. He was glad he had disregarded instructions not to bring cold-weather gear. The air had turned frigid and he distributed his warmer clothes to some of the men. Just hours after the most intense and bloodiest firefight of his life, Chad began a third night with no sleep. 6

Nov. 14, 2010

Shortly after sunrise, Chad moved 100 yards ahead of the company and set up the machine gun to cover a nearby ridge when the unit began the planned move laterally across the mountain, instead of up or down the hillside. Near his position, he heard a soldier shout the Afghan word for “stop,” and turned to see an Afghan man standing nearby. In what seemed almost like slow motion, the man pulled an AK-47 from his robes, turned and ran, and began firing at the soldiers over his shoulder as he fled. The machine gunner took aim, but the weapon jammed. Chad leveled his rifle and fired at the fleeing man, hitting him twice. The man dived behind a boulder. One of the men to light up that area with an RPG. There was no movement after the explosion, but Chad never checked to confirm the man’s fate.

Instead of moving the unit out, the command officers had begun arguing about the best course of action, all while the men stayed low behind minimal natural defenses and began to fume over the indecision that left them exposed. They were still there by late afternoon.

“That’s when hell came on us – again.”

Gunfire rained in on their positions from everywhere. The men returned fire the best they could, but were leery of spreading their shots too widely because they weren’t sure where the other platoon was located. It was nearby, they knew, but where?

Amid the battle, Chad heard a report that one of the men had suffered a bullet wound to the head. Under attack by what seemed like insurmountable odds, Chad took a moment, propped his weapon against the rocks, bowed is head, and had a quick conversation with his God. “Take care of my two kids. Take care of Kate. Take care of my family. And take care of my men,” he said softly. He had accepted the likelihood of his own death on this mountainside far from home. All he could do was ask for mercy for those he loved – and vow to take as many of the Taliban with him as he could. Like all of the other men, Chad planned to keep one grenade in his hand until the very end – one last strike if the Taliban fighters moved in to capture him.

Chad had resumed firing when an RPG round struck the low rock ledge that provided what little cover he and his men had, exploding almost literally in their faces. For the second time in three days, Chad was knocked unconscious. When he came to, he was lying in the lap of a platoon leader who was using the helmet on Chad’s head to steady his rifle as he fired at the Taliban. Chad wasn't surprised later when he could still hear the shots ringing in his ears. He found out the tactic was one of the guy’s favorite tricks with other men. 7

Chad returned to his machine-gun team and used nearly all of their ammunition to lay down cover fire as the men fell back into two small huts. Chad's team finally joined the others inside one of the little buildings. As they crowded in, Chad saw one of his buddies, Pfc. Christian Warriner, lying on the floor as other men tried to treat him for a bullet wound to his forehead. Chad couldn’t believe the bullet had found the small space between the bottom edge of Warriner’s helmet and the top of his glasses. Everyone in the hut was crying as they gathered around Warriner. Chad sat down next to him and put his hand on Warriner’s leg. Every time the soldier’s breathing slowed, the men would tell him that his wife was waiting for him. Warriner would then take more breaths. But it was no use. Warriner died within the hour. “I’d been in action when men were killed, but I’d never watched anyone die like that,” Chad remembered softly.

Alpha Company takes cover in a mud hut. A wounded soldier lies to the left and Chad is in the foreground to the right. 8

The fighting continued until sundown, almost as bloody as the day before. One of the sergeants had suffered a leg wound, but had wrapped a tourniquet around it, picked up a “saw” automatic rifle in one hand and a grenade launcher in the other, and kept fighting from an almost unprotected position. “He had a leg wound, but he kept fighting like a champ,” Chad said. When the fighting stopped, the men huddled together in the hut to listen to the first radio report on platoon casualties: 23 wounded and one “hero,” the soldiers’ description of a buddy killed in action. The choppers arrived soon to med-evac the wounded, and to take the body bag containing Warriner. The men got some food, but spent another night on the mountainside. At least, Chad thought during his fourth night without sleep, they had whatever protection this small mud hut could provide. Nov. 15, 2010

Sunrise. Chad was on guard when he heard someone approaching. He yelled out the code words and waited anxiously for the correct response. Finally, it came. He collapsed onto the ground and whispered, “Thank God.” The approaching unit contained Army Rangers, Special Forces, Navy Seals, and ANSF commandos – a unique unit backed up by potent gunships that battled through the valley and up the mountainside to rescue Alpha Company. No one had seen anything like that before.

Three More Days

Chad’s unit spent another three days in a nearby village – Katar Darya-ye or Qatar Darrayea – but there was no more fighting for Alpha Company. The combined unit that reinforced them saw more action and suffered more casualties. Alpha Company finally boarded Chinooks and returned to COP Honaker-Miracle: dirty, ragged, drained, bone tired, and “pissed.” They were angry about what they perceived as a lack of planning and coordination that had cost the lives of their buddies. 9

A photo taken of the 13 survivors after they arrived back at the base – the only men able to walk off the mountain out of the original 40 in the platoon – clearly shows the weary distress in their young faces through the grime of five days of combat. (Chad is in the back row, second from the right.

On Nov. 21, 2010, just days after Alpha Company returned to its base, the commander called the men together for a memorial service for the six unit members who died in the fighting. The soldiers gathered around the all-too- familiar memorials to each man – a pair of combat boots topped by a barrel- down M-16 with a helmet Alpha Company pays final tribute to the fallen resting on the raised stock. Photo by Staff Sgt. Mark Burrell Six of them were lined up with a photo of each man and sometimes a personal remembrance. The faded photo of Warriner’s wedding that he had carried in his pocket rested against his memorial. 10

The Final Assessment

To the brass, Operation Bulldog Bite was a success. Major General John F. Campbell told the Army Times, “There’s been a significant disruption to (the enemy) network in that area … This is a huge blow to the enemy.” The story said, “(Campbell) cited large weapons caches destroyed and a retreat by the insurgents, saying the operation had broken the morale of the Taliban.”

The final official tally for Operation Bulldog Bite was:

 7 American troops killed (six from Alpha Company and one Ranger)  More than 30 wounded  3 ANSF killed  Between 52 and 150 insurgents killed

Some of the soldiers questioned whether the human cost of the operation was worth the results. Pfc. Dustin Wade, who had held Warriner in his arms when he died, offered this perspective to the Washington Post in its story on the operation: “A lot of people ask, what was it all for? It’s an easy answer. He did it for us. He did it for his platoon. He did it so all of us could eventually make it back home to our families and friends.”

Chad

Chad Hembree remained at COP Honaker-Miracle for another six months and saw more combat in another operation on Jan. 1, 2011. It didn’t compare to Operation Bulldog Bite. He left COP Honaker-Miracle in May 2011 and subsequently completed his Army enlistment.

For his performance during Operation Bulldog Bite, Chad was awarded the Army Commendation Medal with Valor Device. The citation states that he “distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous conduct in performance of outstanding service to the United States as a Gun Team Leader … His actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, Alpha Company … the Combined Joint Task force – 101, and the United States Army.” 11

In standard and sparse military language, the citation provides the official record of Chad’s heroic actions under the most dangerous circumstances:

While conducting a security halt near an abandoned house, the lead squad for 1st Platoon came under heavy and effective small arms fire and rocket propelled grenade fire from the direction of travel. Upon initial contact Spc. Hembree maneuvered his MK-48 Gun Team through the enemy fields of fire to a position from which to support the squad in contact. Upon establishing their position, Spc. Hembree issued fire control orders and provided suppressive fire while the lead squad broke contact to more effective covered and concealed fighting positions. At this time, the lead squad took two casualties as (a sergeant) suffered a gunshot wound to the face and (a sergeant) suffered a gunshot wound to both legs. Spc. Hembree continued to provide accurate and effective suppressive fire to evacuate the immobile (sergeant) to a safe location to conduct treatment. Shortly after the evacuation of (the sergeant), the MK-48 gunner ... suffered a gunshot wound to the forearm. While still under heavy contact, Spc. Hembree quickly rendered first aid to the gunner, bandaging his wounds and continuing to direct fire against insurgents maneuvering on the platoon’s position.

* * *

Chad thinks often of the six buddies from Alpha Company who never made it off that mountainside. He honors their memories for everyone to see with a banner across the back window of his pickup truck bearing their names around the image of that memorial for a fallen soldier - a pair of boots, a rifle, and a helmet. They paid the ultimate price. But Chad continues to pay a price, as well. His personal tally:  Short-term memory loss from concussions  Lower lumbar back strain  Tinnitus  Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome that remains a difficult challenge to this day

Now married to Kate and working for a small company, Chad lives not far from St. Louis. While that Afghan mountainside is never far from his thoughts, he focuses on recovering from the residue of those five days – and on building a good life for the years ahead.