Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan

by Sean Parnell

They went out hard. Machine guns laced our battered Humvees. They had a few RPGs left and sent those our way as well.

The A-10 pilots were unleashed to do what they do best. With JDAMs and 30mm strafing runs, the Warthogs pulverized the enemy.

When Catamount Blitz ended, the battalion had killed a hundred and sixty men,

including the leader

This branch of the Haqqani Network had been to...

the enemy crept back across the border to rocket FOB Bermel

again.

We had to sweep the frontier a ...

This was out of place, and I immediately held my fist up as a signal to halt the entire platoon.

Lewis and Khanh led the way when I gave the order to advance. The trail had just gone hot.

reached the top of the rise and ran straight into the enemy. A complete Soviet 107mm rocket-launching system sat tucked away in a firing pit at the bottom of the reverse slope, shielded by another ridgeline opposite us.

it felt glorious to watch the enemy flee or die. The chase and the kill had been cathartic, payback for months of helpless moments on our base as rockets exploded around us.

We had less than sixty days before we were supposed to head home,

Instead of coasting through the final weeks of the deployment, he kept the battalion

operating at full speed.

based on the counterinsurgency model developed in Iraq. We started constructing remote combat outposts all across the frontier that were designed to coll...

Each outpost would be defended by a p...

Second Platoon smelled the attack coming and lit the vehicle up, and it exploded prematurely.

Five Humvees, less than thirty men—that’s what we had to hold the Margah Combat Outpost. We had two weeks left before we were scheduled to go home.

We

were hung out on a limb, and I knew that if the enemy came at us from across the border, it would be our last last stand.

they put together a force of more than two hundred and fifty men.

The elder told him that he had at least two hundred insurgents pass his village, bound on attacking the new base at Margah.

“There are two hundred plus men coming to attack you.”

Two hundred men or more? We had twenty-five.

Our tactical position could not have been worse. Second Platoon was hours away. So was Delta. We’d get no reinforcements anytime soon.

Two weeks left. Two weeks.

Tonight we’d need everything he could dredge up for us. Delta Platoon and a battery of 105s would not be enough.

“We’re gonna bring in A-10s for you. Working on more.”

When the screen refreshed, the enemy force was only two kilometers out.

we’ve got two Apaches on standby for you at Orgun-E. A Predator’s on its way.”

“You’ll have an AC-130 overhead any minute.”

“And a B-1.”

Lieutenant Colonel Toner has scored us a strategic bomber?

the staff worked feverishly to pull assets from all over Afghanistan

for

us.

checked the Blue Force Tracker. The enemy pincers had stopped about a kilometer and a half away.

“When you overrun the Americans, cut their heads off and mount them on stakes. Good luck, and I’ll see you on the objective.”

dropped from the strategic bomber, struck first. Before the smoke had even cleared, the A-10s rolled in and unleashed all their fearsome firepower.

The Predator launched its Hellfires, and the Apache batted clean up.

The strafing runs continued. Nothing that moved survived. Not a single enemy fighter got within a mile of Combat Outpost Margah that

night.

I

screamed for joy at our survival.

We dismounted and picked our way through hundreds of meters of arms and legs, ragged half torsos, severed heads with flat-brimmed hats still covering blood-encrusted hair. The stench of death hung in the

air.

Broken trees littered the landscape, their barren limbs decorated with ghastly pieces of human beings. From one, a web of intestines dangled from the branches, dripping gore onto the snow below.

most cynical and steeled among us, this charnel house had an effect. Nobody who walks among such things is ever the same again.

They