I remember the Rangers going to their superiors to try and get me removed from the mission. I assumed it was the pride of a bunch of self-secluded jarheads. I thought maybe it was jealousy for my degree, my education, my intelligence… maybe it was frustration about having to deal with an outsider.
I remember that it was black-and-white to me. As a reporter, it was my duty to my country to go and document what our soldiers were doing to the people of Afghanistan, no matter the personal sacrifice. I was twenty-two and fresh out of the Ivy League. I was an idealist.
I remember it was black-and-white to them too. They were fighting a war on behalf of the American people, and it was their duty to complete their mission. Their mission was in jeopardy if they had to drag around a self-righteous kid high on military transparency and liberal campaign speeches who had no idea where the hell he was or what he was getting into. To them, my presence was the mistake of some dumbass civilian bureaucrat in a DC office building who had never left the country or seen a decent war movie, much less seen the reality of combat or the soldiers who were just numbers on his computer screen.
I remember that I won. The bureaucracy didn’t reply; the base commander’s hands were tied. I was an embedded reporter with a platoon of the 67th Ranger Regiment for a night raid on some godforsaken village, and there wasn’t a damn thing, in their own words, they could do about it.
I remember the captain whose name I had forgotten taking me aside and telling me calmly, not kind and not bitter, about how I needed to act if we were all going to get out alive. Follow the soldier you’re posted to at all times, in all movements, in all situations. Do as he does. Stay completely silent. If fighting starts, take cover and don’t get up until we tell you to. I remember that I found the speech extremely melodramatic, and in my head I was already out there, adrenaline running, filming the action of the war close-up for the people at home.
I remember the helicopter ride that was a blur, and I remember the Rangers stepping out and blending into the darkness of night and the surrounding trees on the mountainside – disappearing completely into nature, watching, waiting, for the slightest sign of the enemy. I remember the helicopter disappeared over the foreboding mountain peaks sitting sternly above us. I remember learning the true meaning of silence as the Rangers moved in the shadows like wraiths, dead-silent. I remember following my assigned soldier, my feet brushing branches and leaves on the ground, making little scuffling noises that sounded deafening in the darkness with the ghostly soldiers under the cloud-layered moon. I remember my lungs inhaling and exhaling hard after walking only a few steps in the thin, icy mountain air. I was wearing a Kevlar vest, helmet, and carrying my camera. The Ranger ahead of me was wearing heavier body armor, ammunition, radio, grenades, and equipment, and as far as I could tell wasn’t breathing.
I remember the long trek down the rugged terrain, past sparse foliage, over fields, through valleys, the Rangers appearing and disappearing, always moving, always searching, nothing more than silent shadows in the darkness. I remember looking up when the clouds broke and seeing the stars – all of them, brighter than I had ever seen before, in the clear air unpolluted by smog and light and civilization. I remember the cold, clear rivers, whispering softly as the snowmelt from the mountains rushed down, down, as soft and quiet and purposeful as the ghosts around me. I remember my feet hurting, my legs burning, and the dizziness while I tried to keep my panting quiet.
I remember cresting a ridge and seeing the village below us. On American standards, it was nothing more than a large, squalid town, but for the Hindu Kush mountains it was a thriving metropolis. There were real buildings of stone and wood, as well as the mud huts on the perimeter where the poorer Pashtun tribesmen lived, going out before the sun rose and coming back after it set to graze their sheep on the sides of the mountains. I remember what one of the soldiers had told me about these men – they didn’t care for the Americans, they didn’t care for terrorists, and they didn’t care for the Afghan government either, and they fought against whoever they deemed their worst enemy at any particular time. This was their land and they would defend it to the bitter end; Alexander the Great had fallen here, as well as the crushing military might of the USSR, and now we were the occupiers. These were honorable, rugged, versatile people, he told me, who would fight to the death to defend you if they considered you a friend and who would lay down their lives to kill you if you were their enemy.
I remember seeing on the other side of the town the trucks and tents of the small Taliban army which had come to set up here for the past few months. I remember the Rangers appearing out of the brush, kneeling down on the hills, scanning the village with binoculars and scopes and laser range-finders. I remember when they told me the mission – we wanted one man, captured, not killed. A jihadist commander and expert bomb maker, who was responsible for shipments of Iranian explosives into Afghanistan which had killed and maimed hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Afghans. We wanted to take him and make him talk, so we could track down all of his contacts and plug all of his routes, in the hope that for a few weeks at least we could slow down the rate of body bags and amputees going home.
I remember that it had all seemed exciting, how my adrenaline had started pumping in the briefing tent. How I was going to see this action, film it, experience it. Now, seeing the trucks, and the huts and the buildings and the tents in the silence and pitch-black of the early AM hours, feeling the tiredness in my legs and feet and the heaving of my lungs, soaked in the fear of the hundreds of men with guns waiting to wake up and slaughter us, I wanted to be any place in the world but here.
I remember the descent. I remember the Rangers sweeping into the town, ghosts again, now blending into the mud streets and building corners, sprinting silently and covering each other with rifles raised. I remember the light spitting sounds of silenced weapons, the thumps of human lives ending, sentries who had been watchful and waiting all night and who were now going to Allah without knowing what had happened to them.
I remember the exact moment when the fourteen-year-old boy and his father stepped out, slowly, sleepily, from a doorway. I remember that I was right behind my assigned soldier, and he was right next to the Captain, and arrayed around us and behind us and ahead of us were thirteen other ghosts.
I remember the father seeing us first, his eyes calm. He grabbed his son’s arm and raised his hands. I remember my soldier barking something in another language and both of them dropping to their knees, the Rangers’ weapons aimed at their heads. The man stared at us, his face flat, his eyes holding centuries of absolute, piercing, calm hate. In a fraction of the second, I forgot the idealism, the hearts and minds, the hope of a human bond with an oppressed people. It all withered and died in the burning stare of a single Pashtun tribesman who hated me, hated the Rangers, hated the drones and the helicopters and all the outsiders in his land, the same stare as that of hundreds of generations of his ancestors who had lived in the mountains and herded their sheep and defeated the Macedonians, the Russians, anyone who invaded their mountains.
I remember two of the Rangers moving forward, pulling zip-ties and gags out of pockets. I remember the father calmly patting his son’s arm, and I remember the boy’s eyes widening, him turning and sprinting. I remember the man’s cold, calm stare, unchanged, unflinching. Challenging us to shoot his son. Challenging us to shoot him. I remember my soldier raising his weapon and aiming precisely, glancing at the captain.
I remember the captain, in a split-second that lasted an hour, whisper, “No.”
“Sir, he’s going right to the Taliban –”
I had been terrified that they would shoot the boy and now I was terrified that they wouldn’t, I didn’t know why he wasn’t firing, why he was allowing the boy to go and tell the enemy to sweep down on us –
“He’s a boy, he’s unarmed, we do not kill him.”
It was then that I realized my video camera was up, like it had been the whole time, and the soldier turned and stared at me with an absolute, intense loathing that I suddenly felt for myself.
The captain turned. “We’re abandoning the mission. Call in evac, we need to go.”
The Rangers didn’t question, didn’t hesitate, but immediately turned and began to sweep back in the direction we’d come. Behind us, the boy sprinted around a corner and out of sight.
I said to the captain, “What if he’s just scared and running home, he’s too young to be a member of the Taliban…”
The captain didn’t even go to the trouble of telling me how stupid a question it was.
I remember running with the soldiers. I remember the blast of the RPG that knocked my camera from my hands and the eruption of machine guns. I remember seeing a grenade land in front of me as I lay cowering in the half-shelter of a doorway, not able to move, only knowing that I was only twenty-two and I was just a kid and I was too young to die and I was too good for this and I had my whole life ahead of me –
I remember seeing a twenty-year-old Ranger who held his girlfriend’s picture to his lips before missions sprint by me, pick up the grenade and throw it back with half a second to spare. I saw him drop to his knee and start firing. I remember watching the bullet rip through his shoulder, I remember him not pausing, still shooting. I remember another going through his head.
I remember seeing a wave of armed men sweeping down the street. I remember seeing the same fourteen-year-old boy with an AK-47, spraying wildly. I remember seeing the Ranger captain and two of his ghosts appear on a rooftop. He threw something and they all fired. I remember watching the boy’s head explode. I remember seeing a dozen men and blinking and seeing a circle of shredded flesh.
I remember being dragged into a helicopter with the body of the man who had thrown back a grenade and whose girlfriend whose bloodstained picture was tucked into the lining of his helmet would collapse sobbing at his funeral. I remember other corpses. I remember bullets pinging off the side of the helicopter.
I remember visiting the captain in the Army hospital in Germany a month later. I remember the sterile stump under the knee where his right leg had been. I remember telling him I would tell about how his men had been heroes, how they had died for their country – and then I remember saying what had been haunting me all this time, having it flood out with me in tears.
I remember that he didn’t even turn to look at me. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice cold. Calm. Somewhere else. “He was an unarmed boy. We still wouldn’t have killed him if you hadn’t been there… you were just a convenient target for my soldiers to blame.”
He paused, and then he said quietly, “But be honest. If we had killed him… then what would have happened? We would have completed our mission. Every one of my men would have survived. And you would have reported that we killed a child. The footage would be released, we would be tried for war crimes. The country for which we would have died to defend would hate us. Hundreds of men in the Middle East would have volunteered to be martyrs, enraged by what we did.” Then he laughed, a cold, dead laugh. “And instead, we let him live. We failed our mission. Half of us came home in body bags. A man we would have taken is still alive, helping to kill our fellow soldiers. We were heroes.” He shook his head. “And I still killed that poor f*ing kid.”
I remember him turning to stare at me. “Don’t try to tell me how heroic my soldiers were. Do what I’m doing as soon as I get out of here. Go to their families and tell them. Try to comfort them. See how much it helps. See how well patriotism replaces a son.”
I remember us saying other things. I remember stepping out into the hallway. I remember a distracted orderly accidentally running a gurney into a doorframe, and it was an RPG explosion and I collapsed into the fetal position in the hallway.
I stand and try to walk away. And then I sit against the door to the captain’s hospital room, crying.