Soldiers Describe Life in Paktika Province

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

FORWARD OPERATING BASE TILLMAN, Afghanistan, May 23, 2011 – Where and how you live as a soldier deployed to Afghanistan depends on the mission of the unit to which you’re assigned.

Large bases housing strategic-level headquarters offer wireless Internet, post, coffee and souvenir shops, barber shops and beauty salons.

But here and on Combat Outpost Munoz, where most of the soldiers live who are assigned to the 101st Airborne Division’s 4th “Currahee” Brigade Combat Team, ‘Dog” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, there’s not a shop to be found.

Army Sgt. Justin Payne, a team leader for 1st Platoon, said soldiers receive many of their needs through the mail, sent from family and friends at home. “Tobacco is a big thing,” he said. “Snacks, candy, … stuff like that. Magazines.”

Most soldiers at Tillman have personal computers they use to watch movies, Payne said, while seven public computers with Internet connections and two phones are available for the troops to keep in touch with their families and friends.

Barracks space is divided into small plywood cubicles, Payne said, so the soldiers who live at Tillman have some personal sleeping space.

“The living conditions here are pretty good,” he said. “Much better than I’ve had on previous deployments. You get a room and a shower and a chow hall, and that’s all you really need -- and the ability to call home now and then. It’s nice here.”

Army Staff Sgt. Harold B. Smith, Headquarters Platoon sergeant and mayor of Tillman, coordinates contracted services including trash removal and electrical, plumbing and carpentry support for the roughly 150 soldiers based here.

Life support at Tillman takes a combination of big contracting companies and local-national contracts, Smith said.

“We have one of the very few waste-water treatment plants here in Afghanistan,” he said. “That is a huge plus, because it allows us to have hot and cold running water, which many of the [forward operating bases] don’t.”

Contracts with Afghan companies provide heavy equipment to fill large barriers with rocks and dirt and to move supplies and equipment to and from the base’s helicopter landing zone, Smith said. Local workers also provide kitchen support, cleaning and trash removal services for Tillman, he added.

About 40 life-support contractors work at Tillman, with an additional 80 force-protection workers who man the entry control point, guard towers and one of the observation points in the hills overlooking the base, Smith said. Four new guard towers have improved security within and around the base, he added.

Soldiers at Tillman agree the base is in much better condition than it was when they arrived, but it’s the Munoz outpost, about five miles to the northwest, where Dog Company has created the most dramatic improvements.

Army Capt. Edwin Churchill, company commander, said Munoz was the unit’s base of operations for the first three months of their deployment, when the headquarters element moved to Tillman.

The previous unit at Munoz had only about 30 soldiers living there, Churchill said, and the force protection conditions were not good. Munoz sits in a bowl surrounded by hills, and the base regularly is attacked from those peaks by enemy rockets and machine-gun and small-arms fire.

Churchill manned the post with 75 to 90 soldiers at a time after his company moved in, and they set to work filling barriers and sandbags to protect against enemy fire. Soldiers also added fortified firing positions and mortar points to defend the outpost.

The labor was very physically demanding, with all of Munoz involved, Churchill said, noting that when the unit arrived, it had no heavy equipment to help with the work.

Churchill and his troops have added several large barriers throughout the Munoz compound to provide cover during attacks, and have built up the base defenses. “We added extra indirect systems. … The enemy can’t suppress all of them at once,” he said.

Churchill said through practice, the soldiers at Munoz have learned how to defend the outpost quickly and effectively.

“The nice thing about [the enemy] is they’re absolutely predictable; they use the same positions every time,” he said. “So we have a lot of the [targeting] information dialed in on them.”

Dog Company has suffered no serious injuries or deaths at Munoz, the commander said, though they’ve been attacked as many as four times in one week.

Churchill said the company has also worked to make the base more comfortable for soldiers.

“When we got here, … two soldiers lived in each 60-square-foot room. It was ridiculously tight -- very poor living conditions,” he said.

Dog Company added plywood buildings for storage, and built small cubicles inside brick-and-mortar structures to provide more privacy in soldier living space, Churchill said.

Dog Company is closing Munoz, as their year in Afghanistan comes to an end. Churchill said the outpost essentially is in a cul-de-sac in Paktika province’s Gayan district, and soldiers can be more effective in the counterinsurgency fight closer to more trafficked and populated areas.

Army Spc. Jonathan Lounds, a team leader for Dog Company’s 2nd Platoon, has lived at Munoz for eight months.

“You get used to it, and it becomes like home,” Lounds said. “We put up a shower the other day; that was nice.”

Munoz has no running water, so soldiers use bottled water for everything, Lounds said. Bathroom facilities consist of urinal tubes set into the ground, with small plastic “wag bags” provided for solid waste, which is burned.

Army Sgt. Brandon England is the signal support systems specialist for Dog Company, and has spent most of the deployment at Munoz. He said the company’s soldiers worked hard to make the outpost safer and more defensible.

“The guys, from sunup to sundown, just busted their butts,” England said. “The [company commander] put us to work.”

Dog Company added enough walls and barriers to make Munoz feel secure, England said.

“We’ve built it up quite a bit,” he said. “It’s not bad now – I actually like it more here [than at Tillman]. Something’s always going on, and it’s small, so you don’t have to go searching for people.

“We’ve had some pretty good fights out here,” he added. “It made time go by fast.”

‘Dog’ Company Takes Fight to the High Ground

By Karen Parrish

American Forces Press Service

GAYAN DISTRICT, Afghanistan, May 20, 2011 – “Dog” Company’s mission, here near the Pakistan border, is simple: “climb mountains and kill bad guys.”

Army Capt. Edwin Churchill commands the company, part of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment’s fighting force for the 4th Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.

“You’ve got to be willing to own the high grounds and stay out overnight,” Churchill said. “You need to go where you know [enemy forces] are, and have the confidence that you’ll push them out of the area.”

From Forward Operating Base Tillman here in the Paktika province, Churchill’s troops literally went to the high ground recently. The company spent five days, from May 14 to 18, marching into the mountains of the Gayan district, carrying tons of weapons and equipment, aided by Afghan army and border police partners and a small Army engineer detachment. Their mission: slow the flow of enemy fighters from the border region into the rest of Afghanistan.

On May 14, a Saturday, the company’s first and third platoons set up positions on three hilltops, with the first platoon split between two positions. The soldiers flew in by Chinook, then marched and climbed to their assigned positions before dawn.

Churchill said the overwatch positions covered an area roughly seven by three kilometers, centered on a road that provides an illegal crossing into Pakistan.

Local Afghans use the road to cross into Pakistan, where the nearest bazaar is located. But the road also provides a route for insurgents to move men and equipment into Afghanistan without passing through a checkpoint, Churchill said.

“We’ve been hitting that area hard, and it’s created quite a fight from [the enemy.] They very dearly want to hold on to that crossing point,” he said.

A primary objective of the operation was to disable that road, he added.

Engineers accomplished that Monday morning, setting off a series of explosive charges that left two craters in the road. One is 22 feet long by 8 feet deep, and the explosion rolled a 1,000-pound boulder into the pit, he said. The second crater is 15 feet wide and 6 feet deep.

“The enemy can bring heavy equipment out to try to fix it, but we’d instantly react … and find out who it was,” Churchill said.

Legitimate residents will detour through the traffic control checkpoint near FOB Tillman, and soldiers will be on the lookout for people who are suddenly deviating from their normal travel patterns and those who are using illegal crossings, he said.

In the wake of the explosions in the road, insurgents attacked the third platoon’s position early in the afternoon, and sustained the assault into Tuesday morning.

Later that day, the company’s other two elements converged on the third platoon’s position, and were in place the following day when the enemy attacked again.

“It was four to five different positions, machine gun and small arms fire coming from the same ridgeline,” Churchill said. “The insurgents initiated and … we had at that point four machine guns on the line plus five different squad automatic weapons [and] two 60mm mortar tubes.”

Within two minutes, Dog Company had fire superiority. The entire engagement lasted about 20 minutes.

“We had just started to break down … and get ready to leave,” Churchill said. “We called for [air weapons] and immediate suppression from the 105 howitzers at FOB Tillman. We have an unbelievably good gun crew here, and we’re very comfortable firing them ‘danger close.’”

The combination of indirect and direct fire quickly drove the enemy away, he said.

“We know they broke contact back into Pakistan,” he said. “At that point we sat at stand-to for a couple of hours waiting to see if they wanted to come back.”

Churchill said an estimated two squads’ worth of enemy fighters were “removed from the battlefield” during the two engagements.

His soldiers’ performance during the mission was highly professional, Churchill said. He noted that most of the company’s men have been involved in “more firefights than they can count” during their deployment, and have walked at least 700 miles of patrol through the mountainous border region.

“Every infantryman finds that point in his career … something like the other day, when those rounds were everywhere,” he said. “How did they not find anything? Nobody [from Dog Company] got hit.”