By Gregory Glenn Niemuth, for the Chippewa Valley Post
This is the second of four stories that chronicle James Myren’s year of Army service in Afghanistan. The first story follows Myren from his June, 2005 Memorial High School graduation to his arrival in Afghanistan in early May, 2006 and the first combat situation encountered by his unit after that.
James Myren first encountered improvised explosive devices (IEDs) while returning from Helmand Province to Kandahar, less than a month after arriving in Afghanistan.
The trip took the convoy of “30-some” trucks two days while constantly “getting shot at” and hitting IEDs.
Note: the home page photo shows James Myren displaying his M16 rifle outfitted with an M201 40MM grenade launcher. The photo was taken in a rare “down” moment while Myren’s unit was on patrol in the rugged eastern Afghanistan mountains, near the Pakistan border.
After a week to unwind and regroup, the troops headed north to Jalalabad, where they got orders to go northwest and, eventually, to locate near a village named Urmul.
“That is where we hunkered down for the rest of our deployment,” Myren said.
The Combat Outpost
It was late August, 2006. The troops were engaged in near-constant firefights, including one on Sept. 11 when they were sent to build a Combat Outpost (COP).
According to Jake Tapper, writing in The Outpost, the new COP was intended to support a Provisional Reconstruction Team (PRT) – a collection of U.S. representatives working on development in areas where it was hoped this would counter insurgency. This was known as the “hearts and minds” approach.
There was only one “road” into the proposed location, and it quickly became apparent that the site was strategically poor.
“We were surrounded by three mountains alongside the Kunar River,” Myren said. “We didn’t have anything fortified where we could lay our heads [to sleep] – hats off,” according to the 2005 Eau Claire Memorial High School graduate.
HESCOs to the rescue
The troops began filling collapsible metal-mesh containers lined with heavy-duty fabric. When filled with earth, these HESCOs (named after the British firm that developed them in the 1980s – Hercules Engineering Solutions Consortium) were effective protection against sniper, AK-47 and other small arms fire.
Filling them shovelful by shovelful in the rocky terrain was hard work, especially when wearing body armor to guard against random sniper fire. At night they slept under trucks. Whenever possible, they napped on the hoods of trucks to stay warm. Slowly the outpost began to take shape.
Then, Myren said, “they began shelling us.”
Building with HESCOs was imperative at the bottom of the fishbowl they were in. According to Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, writing in Red Platoon, “…flaws [of the site selection] were so glaringly evident that the young specialist who was ordered to draw up the initial plans dubbed it ‘Custer.’”
Myren’s unit did not know that – the troops just followed orders to establish the COP.
Urmul
Urmul was a “small town – mud huts, no running water, no electricity,” Myren recalled. “The [river] water was so full of feces they wouldn’t let us use it to bathe…it was human waste.”
The first few days there, the troops began running humanitarian aid missions.
“I think we were trying to win the hearts and minds,” Myren said. That was back in ‘06 [when] they were trying to win the war on hearts and minds. It didn’t take long…to realize that wasn’t going to happen,” he added.
Defensive efforts took over
Humanitarian aid efforts quickly became defensive as rotating patrols went out every other day. According to Myren, men in the outpost, “listening to the radio [were] hearing TIC, “troops in contact,” every day. Everyone stopped breathing – waiting for them to come back.”
There was always a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) ready in case a patrol engaging in a firefight needed more men. When a firefight was “bad enough, we sent out the QR,” Myren said.
The unit also built an Observation Post (OP) about 5,000 feet above the COP. Platoons rotated every two weeks.
With elevations in the surrounding Hindu Kush Mountains reaching over 24,000 feet the air was already very thin, requiring quick acclimatization and making patrols demanding.
“. . . the least of our problems”
But “that was the least of our problems,” Myren said.
Supplies came from Forward Operating Base (FOB) Bostick in a cargo truck often called a deuce and a half because of its 2½-ton payload. As days became weeks it was increasingly obvious the one-lane supply route was a very dangerous one.
Myren said it was so bad, “We all nicknamed it Ambush Alley.” In addition to insurgent ambushes, IEDs laced the road. An alternative supply route was desperately needed but there was only a single, narrow road flanked by steep cliffs – one side dropping sharply down to the river and the other soaring upward.
Note: the third article in this four-part series will be published on Sunday (Mar. 3).
All photos accompanying this article were provided by James Myren.
Note: Gregory Glenn Niemuth taught English and journalism at Memorial High School until his retirement last year. Myren was a student in his English 12 class in 2004-05. Niemuth recalled that he sent a large box of paperback books to Myren while his former student was stationed at COP Keating, but “I’ve never asked him if he did much reading there. . . .”