Afghan mud season a Guard challenge

Soldiers Skype with family, hunt bombs

Monday, December 31, 2012

— As snow and ice pounded the state last week, blowing out lights and dimming holiday spirits, Arkansas National Guardsmen halfway around the world continued to brave a war where one day blends into the next hunting for roadside bombs high in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The 1039th Engineer Company of Jonesboro’s 875th Engineer Battalion has called Tarin Kowt home since the blush of early fall. Summer will be in full bloom when they return to meet new babies and resume civilian lives that have been on hold to patrol mountain roads and train Afghan army engineers to take over their mission.

For now, however, they stay connected to home through the distant bond of the Internet from their cramped three man rooms in metal buildings scattered across a forward operating base perched on crushed rock and mud. Water and electricity are not always working there, but they have become closer than family through the hardship of war, said Capt. Seth Jacobs, company commander, an Arkansas State University graduate who now lives in Collinsville, Ill.

His troops talked a bit about those challenges and the difficulty of running heavy armored vehicles on muddy mountain paths over a scratchy phone line last week. Jacobs punctuated the hardships with the belief that mission outweighs the hardships.

“It’s a challenge, but a rewarding experience. The rewarding aspect is when we find [roadside bombs] or do it the hard way and take a [detonation],” he said. “Whatever we can take off the route there, it saves someone’s life.”

Tarin Kowt, a small trading center and former Taliban stronghold, sits in a bowl high in the dark, rugged mountains.It boasts the only airfield in Oruzgan Province, in southern Afghanistan. Just three years ago the airfield was little more than a dirt strip without lights or a tower, just a guy on a hand-held radio calling planes in to land with vital supplies.

Those supplies still come by plane, but the area has grown into a multinational base of operations in the southern mountains. The roads have improved, too, but not much beyond local roads and pathways in a tug-of-war between tribal leaders and Taliban fighters.

Every day the men of the 1039th roll down the paved roads and dirt paths of the rugged region in armored trucks, clearing away improvised explosive devices targeting locals and troops alike. With them are soldiers with the Afghan National Army, who tag along in their own armored vehicles as they learn the mission.

Working with Afghans has become a deadly business,with more than 60 insider attacks this year against coalition forces by the Afghan troops they train. The men of the 1039th say the nervousness of the early days in the deployment faded as they got to know the troops better.

“We have a good relationship; we’ve been successful at that. At this point we’ve spent a lot of time with them and have a great working relationship that I would call a friendship at times,” Jacobs said. “It’s important to build that relationship because the goal is to get them independent, to take over this mission when we leave, and we’re continuing to go in that direction.”

Sgt. Tyler Fraysher joined the mission specifically to work as a trainer with Afghan forces.

“I don’t really know why,” he said of his decision.

The threat of attack from within the ranks is something that tickles his mind from time to time, like a quiet voice reminding him to stay alert.

“But we work really close with these guys and work with them every day,” he said. “I feel more comfortable with these guys than I thought I ever would. We’ve become friends. But I am cognizant of the possibilities, yes.”

His best day so far was on the shooting range with his Afghan partners, where they trained on shooting .50 caliber and 240B machine guns.

“Their faces lit up; they were really having a good time,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how much more they can do.”

In Tarin Kowt, the threat is aimed at the Afghan soldiers rather than their trainers. Last week, a Tarin Kowt police officer with Taliban ties led a raid on his own post after his fellow officers fell asleep. The attackers killed the policeman on watch, killed four other policemen and wounded eight. Such attacks are increasingly common, and aimed at destabilizing the Afghan forces to make some of them abandon the job out of fear.

Another Arkansas Guard unit, about 100 soldiers with the 39th Brigade Special Troops Battalion, is also deployed to Afghanistan on a mission called “Guardian Angels,” where they over watch U.S. troops training Afghans to prevent inside attacks. The soldiers are deployed to an undisclosed location. Because of the nature of their mission and their location with Special Forces, the unit was unable to provide a telephone interview.

Together, the two Arkansas units have more than 200 troops in Afghanistan. Little Rock Air Force Base has several hundred airmen and several planes deployed to Afghanistan as well. The airbase’s C-130s work to resupply remote bases like Tarin Kowt.

“There’s probably not a day that goes by that we’re not thinking about those troops and reminding everybody to keep them in their thoughts and prayers,” said Maj. Gen. Bill Wofford, Arkansas’ adjutant general. “We’re fortunate right now that we have a smaller number of troops at war than we have in the past. A little more than 200 is better than having 3,000 troops overseas. But it’s important to remember that we do have Arkansans in harm’s way.”

As of press time, neither unit had lost a soldier to combat or experienced serious injuries.

“It’s not a very sexy job,” Jacobs said, “but it’s a very essential one. IEDs [improvised explosive devices] are the most catastrophic thing for any maneuver company out there. It’s a very rewarding job.”

Explosions happen; it comes with the job, Jacobs explained in the matter-of fact way of many combat engineers. The heavy trucks the engineers drive are made to take blasts and combat engineers are trained to find bombs and disable them. It’s technical work to the experienced. And unthinkable work for most everyone else.

“If we can walk away from it, it’s always a good day,” Jacobs said. “We’ve found more than have found us. That’s a good thing.”

Afghanistan is a seasonal front, with attacks increasing dramatically during the “fighting season” in the spring and summer and diminishing in the winter. Lately, the difficulty of navigating muddy paths in multi-ton trucks is the big challenge.

“The terrain is extremely rough,” said Spc. Jordan Hillis of Jonesboro. “Our trucks, I want to say they’re built for it, but the terrain we have to go over, it beats them up.The day-to-day beatings they take, we have to keep them going.”

Sgt. Douglas Taggart of Jonesboro, a company mechanic who volunteered for the deployment, follows patrols in a tow truck to handle maintenance on the road. The terrain regularly tears up belts, hoses and steering columns.

Hillis said banging around inside of the trucks leaves a few bumps and bruises as well, “but we get through it.”

“All those hours together, you get close to the guys. It’s usually same crew in the trucks. We become family. Cut up when you can, get serious when you need to be, get it done.”

Getting it done required more than 28 hours in knee deep mud shoveling out a stuck truck on a mountain pass last week. It made for a most memorable night.

Christmas came and went for the 1039th with decorations and presents in camp, but without real notice on patrol.

“Out there it’s a different story,” Hillis said. “It’s not on our minds, it’s not what we’re thinking about when we’re out there rolling. We can’t think about it.”

It’s not what Spc. Jordan Phillips expected on his first deployment.

“Action-wise, it’s pretty slow this time of year,” he said. “You get bored sometimes.”

Phillips is a gunner who spends his days looking down the sight of a machine gun or maneuvering a remote-controlled gun from within the sealed cabin of an armored truck.

“There are a lot of steep slopes. Everything you see on the route is houses built of mud, small towns, small farms, a little bit of everything.”

The strangest thing he’s seen so far? After a bomb exploded on his truck in the middle of the night, a naked Afghan man came running up on the patrol, waving his arms and yelling.

“It was a little awkward,” Phillips said with a chuckle.

The Afghan translators who patrol with them helped translate for the man and calm him down before the patrol moved on.

The language barrier is a major obstacle for the soldiers working with the Afghan troops as well as communicating with the locals.

“We work closely with interpreters and there are some educated members of the [Afghan Army] who speak some English,” Fraysher said. “Going into it, we studied a lot on culture. We knew we couldn’t walk in high and mighty; we had to get down to their level and get to know them. We cut up when we can, drink tea and eat with them,” the foundation of socializing in the Afghan culture.

Just as the company has worked to bond with its Afghan partners and local neighbors, its soldiers have also worked to keep bonds tight with loved ones at home.

Sgt. Fraysher watched the birth of his first child over the Internet earlier this month, using Skype video calling service.

Makinslee Fraysher was born on Dec. 12 and named by her father.

“I’m not alone having a newborn over here,” he said. “And we’ve got more to come. We’re like a small baby farm over here.”

Spc. Josh Smothers of Gosnell became a father on Nov. 4. Like Fraysher, he watched the birth of his daughter, Allie, on Skype.

“It’s better than the alternative, not seeing her at all,” he said.

He and Fraysher will meet their daughters when they come home in the spring or summer next year.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Fraysher said. “I work on the road back home. But I’ve never been this homesick before. We’ve got a close unit here. We’re getting through it together.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/31/2012