“Coke, we are gonna go start a war and kill some Taliban.”
Everyone’s morale was extremely high, and we were all pissed off and wanted to get into the fight.
Order of Battle
TF Sword’s Order of Battle was the following: Delta-B Squadron, A Squadron (minus some Troops), 3/75 Rangers, 160th SOAR. SEAL Team 6 arrived later to provide support for emerging targets on the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean. We had put into motion reconnaissance assets and bombers to gain intel and set the conditions of our battlespace in Afghanistan.
The 5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG) was going to operate in the north, trading their helicopters for horses. Many of the 5th SFG guys were my friends, and we all shot together at Ft. Campbell; I knew they would crush the Taliban. We landed at Masirah Island off of Oman and began the process of setting up our command and continuing the planning. I thought it was ironic: 21 years ago, Colonel Beckwith and a team of Delta commandos took off from the same place to rescue hostages in Iran during Operation Desert One.
I would go running with my buddy Tony, and we coined the name “Tali-Cong.” It stuck, and I used it in my briefs. Brigadier General Dailey, our Task Force commander who was also the commanding officer of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), would just shake his head whenever he would hear it.
Day One
On the first day, we conducted 35 hours of planning without a break while others set up our operations center. Leon and I spent hours looking over photos and maps of the target area, Objective Gecko, and the Forward Air Refueling Point (FARP) site and staging base, Objective Rhino. We selected Target Reference Points (TRPs) and Named Areas of Interest (NAIs) along the helo route and OBJ Gecko.
I was looking at overhead photos of Gecko one day and noticed something peculiar. It was an odd-shaped shadow just southwest of the compound. I asked Leon and Lieutenant Colonel Blaber, a Delta officer, to take a look.
“Hmmm, what do ya think, Gravy,” they said, calling me by my nickname.
“It appears to be a large tunnel or pipe,” I responded.
They agreed, so I asked for a better picture and put the location on the target list. It made sense to me that it could be an escape passage (KEEP THIS IN MIND!).
Recon
After conducting a photo recce of Rhino, we suggested putting a Ranger Recce team on the ground at Rhino to get eyes on and ensure runway capability. The MC-130s would have to land there and provide fuel for the helos when they came off Gecko. We had photos of the OBJ and runway. One of the photos had a Boeing 707 sitting on the ramp. I thought, “Well, it is surely good to land an MC-130 there.” The mission was approved, and the Ranger Recce commander asked me if I could go with them: they wanted a fire support guy in case they got into trouble.
Jim Hosey, an AH-6 Little Bird pilot, was right! I was not too happy about getting tasked with the FSO job. I was gonna augment the AH-6 teams with us. I was an AH-6 attack helicopter pilot chomping at the bit to get in the fight and kill some terrorists. Jim had told me that I would probably find myself in the middle of this mission and getting into the fight before the Six Guns (the AH-6 crews). Boy, did he hit the nail on the head. The commander approved. I was going to conduct a High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) jump with the Ranger Recce team.
HOLY SHIT! I wasn’t even HALO qualified!
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To be continued…
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