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

by Sean Parnell

toothy skull bursting from the “O” of “Outlaws.”

“Emerick, this is perfect. We’ll put it on every truck. That way, the enemy’ll always know who they’re dealing with.”

I wanted us to have our own unique persona. We’d settled on calling ourselves the Outlaws, and I’d paid out of pocket to have T-shirts made for everyone.

the

Outlaw platoon throughout the brigade.

“What’s that, Lieutenant?” “Why do you do this job?”

“Then, Lieutenant, you must listen to me. Yusef is not to be trusted. He is a bad man.”

Yusef was one

of the other ’terps a...

THREE

After that first night, we’d never seen Major

Ghul

a...

was just deliberately avoiding us. His men continued to slog through their days, their leth...

fifty

miles

Ba...

to those villages drained our fuel supply to danger...

We sat around their shit-strewn outpost, watched these slovenly, dispirited cops, and wondered how on earth such a group could ever be molded into an effective force.

I

think all of us were relieved to head back north to FOB Bermel, where mail, showers, and hot chow awaited us.

Abdul’s mom had received a night letter.

this was the first time his family had been threatened directly.

This

time we would be out beyond the wire for another six days,

tasked with setting up snap checkpoints and observation posts all over o...

Abdul had not yet shown up.

This was highly unusual.

We discovered he could not speak the local dialect, which made him almost useless when visiting villages.

His translations frequently made no sense, and the ones that did made us wonder if he was telling the truth.

I got a radio call from the base operations center telling us to turn around and come home. There was no explanation.

When I asked what was going on, he said, “Delta found the body of a local national.”

All I could think about was Waverly’s refusals to help Abdul.

As he’d lain crippled in the dirt, the enemy had reached him, flung him onto his belly, and executed him with that single shot to the back of the head.

PART

II

THE

SPRING

OFFE...

FOUR

ONLY DO, OR DO NOT

May 7, 2006

With the good spring weather had come increased enemy activity.

has

traditionally been seasonal. Winter is the time to heal, train, and prepare. The spring sunshine draws the enemy from their lairs. It has b...

In the past week, they had heard a lot of talk on the enemy radio net. Something was afoot.

set up outposts on a couple of hills overlooking key intersections in the road leading out of

Pakistan.

through the village of Malakshay. Not a soul greeted us. Windows were shuttered, doors closed. The bazaar was empty. The place looked like a ghost

town.