Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, U.S. Army, will receive the Medal of Honor today in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. He will be the first living solider to be awarded the medal since the Vietnam War.
Giunta showed "conspicuous gallantry" and "courageous actions during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan in October, 2007," the White House stated.
Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, photo by Tim Hetherington, Vanity Fair. |
What follows are abbreviated accounts set in roughly chronological order of what happened on "Honcho Hill" to Giunta and his fellow soldiers of Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. News stories from Stars and Stripes are embedded into accounts of the battles by Elizabeth Rubin of The New York Times and life at the Korengal Outpost (KOP) from writer Sebastian Junger and photographer Tim Hetherington of Vanity Fair as background.
Four accounts of Giunta's actions are in the section: The L-shaped Ambush.
Korengal Outpost, Afghanistan
Afghanistan's Korengal Valley is one of the deadliest parts of the world for American forces. With "Into the Valley of Death", Junger wrote:
The Korengal is widely considered to be the most dangerous valley in northeastern Afghanistan, and Second Platoon is considered the tip of the spear for the American forces there. Nearly one-fifth of all combat in Afghanistan occurs in this valley, and nearly three-quarters of all the bombs dropped by nato forces in Afghanistan are dropped in the surrounding area. The fighting is on foot and it is deadly, and the zone of American control moves hilltop by hilltop, ridge by ridge, a hundred yards at a time. There is literally no safe place in the Korengal Valley. Men have been shot while asleep in their barracks tents.
In "Battle Company Is Out There", Rubin described what the soldiers faced:
It was a windy, cold October evening. A half-moon illuminated the tall pines and peaks. Through night-vision goggles the soldiers and landscape glowed in a blurry green-and-white static. Just across the valley, lights flickered from a few homes nestled in the terraced farmlands of Yaka China, a notorious village in the Korengal River valley in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kunar. Yaka China was just a few villages south and around a bend in the river from the Americans’ small mountain outposts, but the area’s reputation among the soldiers was mythic. It was a known safe haven for insurgents. American troops have tended to avoid the place since a nasty fight a year or so earlier. And as Halloween approached, the soldiers I was with, under the command of 26-year-old Capt. Dan Kearney, were predicting their own Yaka China doom.
Knowing the Americans were monitoring their radio chatter, the Taliban were playing mind games with the soldiers. "On their hand-held radios, the old jihadis call the Americans 'monkeys,' 'infidels,' 'bastards' and 'the kids.'" For their part, the soldiers viewed "the insurgents are ghosts — so the soldiers’ tactics often come down to using themselves as bait."
Operation Rock Avalanche
Kearney and his men were ordered "to subdue the valley", Rubin wrote. "It’s a task the Marines had tried, and then the soldiers of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division — a task so bloody it seemed to drive the 10th Mountain’s soldiers to a kind of madness." On October 19, 2007 the the Pentagon sent Kearney and Battle Company on six day mission known as Operation Rock Avalanche. "One of its main targets was the village of Yaka China."
Waves of helicopters dropped off soldiers whiled gunships swarmed overhead looking for the opposition. A chaotic battle in the village ensued. "The night seemed incomprehensible and interminable", Rubin wrote. Kearney estimated about 20 people, some civilians had been killed in the night's battle.
On October 22, 2007, news from Stars and Stripes that 11 villagers were injured, including women and children, in the Pech district of Kunar province. Operation Rock Avalanche was a joint U.S.-Afghan military operation and according to one International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman, it was "unclear how noncombatants were injured". While another spokesman said the 'noncombatants' "were wounded in the cross-fire between Taliban and ISAF forces". Village elders, according to the spokesman, claimed the Taliban were using them as "human shields".
"Any insurgents, if they were killed, would be buried fast, and all that was left in their wake were wounded civilians... The tally was bad — 5 killed and 11 wounded, all of them women, girls and boys," Rubin wrote.
Kearney and some of his men visited the village after the battle to meet with the village elders and try to explain why American soldiers attacked their village. They were met with "hostile faces" and "bold indifference". After the Americans left, Rubin wrote:
We could hear someone who called himself Obeid saying he’d do whatever the Yaka China elders decided — whether to cooperate with the Americans or take revenge. By evening the elders had apparently reached their verdict. It was fight time.
Kearney, too, had reached a verdict. He would fool the insurgents, feigning a troop extraction when the helicopters came for resupply and pushing out his best guys in small “kill teams.”
Ambush of Sgt. Rougle
One of the 'kill teams' Kearney deployed was comprised of Sgt. Larry Rougle and his two scouts. Rougle was on his sixth combat deployment. Rubin was with Lt. Matt Piosa and his rear guard. Insurgent spotters had one of the two teams under observation for almost 24 hours while the waited for their opportunity.
The insurgents attacked as the soldiers were heating up Meals Ready to Eat. The ambush left Rougle dead and two other soldiers wounded. The insurgents retreated to the village of Landigal and had captured the soldiers' gear: "ammunition, communication equipment, night vision goggles, machine guns".
U.S. troops carry the body of Staff Sgt. Larry Rougle. Photo by Lynsey Addario for the NY Times. |
One NATO solider is killed in an offensive against the Taliban was how the Stars and Stripes reported Rougle's death. (The "IGTNT: Living to Fight" for October 26, 2007 was a remembrance for Rougle.)
Rougle was shot by Taliban fighters at "stunningly close range", wrote Rubin in the NY Times this past weekend. Rougle was "one of Battle Company’s best, toughest and coolest". The Taliban also wounded two other soldiers and "stolen night vision goggles and machine guns".
That’s why, on this night, Dan Kearney, the 27-year-old captain, had sent Second Platoon into Landigal — to demand their stuff back from the villagers, who played dumb.
For a day or two everyone had been in shock and mourning and out for blood. Now the fear was palpable. “If they can get Rougle, they can get any of us,” said Sgt. John Clinard.
Honcho Hill
Rubin was with Kearney and his command group at the KOP, while they waited for 1st and 2nd Platoons to return to the outpost. The 1st Platoon was caught on 'Honcho Hill' by the insurgents in a "devastating L-shaped ambush". She wrote:
Snippets of information hung in the air. “Urgent wounded Josh Brennan.” “Six exit wounds.” “Needs a ventilator.” Kearney cursed and threw down his radio. “Eckrode leg. Valles leg.” “Who is the K.I.A?” “I think it’s Mendoza.” Spec. Hugo Mendoza was a medic from El Paso and Arizona, Sgt. Joshua Brennan a quiet Gary Cooper type from Wisconsin. “We are in contact again. Enemy K.I.A. in custody. Over.”
Kearney radioed back: “Keep bringing it on them,” and “Slasher is coming.” Someone radioed they could see a man making off with Brennan’s rucksack and his M4. In came Slasher, the AC-130, and the rucksack guy was dead. Captain Kearney took a breath and told First Sgt. La Monta Caldwell: “Brennan’s probably going to die. I would go and hold his hand and pray with him.” Which is what Caldwell did.
As airpower took over, thunder and lightning lit up the sky while the two platoons forded the river and climbed up to the Korengal Outpost.
Then "around midnight, 1st Platoon filed into the KOP, eyes bulging, drenched in sweat, river water and blood. They were hauling the belongings of Mohammad Tali, a high-value target. Specialist Sal Giunta had killed him."
"Nearly everyone in 1st Platoon had a bullet hole in his vest or helmet." Sgt. Chris Shelton said the only reason they were not more casualties was because of Giunta and Sgt. Erick Gallardo.
Spc. Hugo Mendoza and Sgt. Joshua Brennan were killed in the ambush. Their deaths were reported by Stars and Stripes on October 30, 2007. (The IGTNT: He died making sure the Taliban didn’t take Josh for October 29, 2007 included a remembrance for Mendoza and Brennan.)
The memorial service for Rougle, Mendoza, and Brennan was described by a NPR segment, "U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Remember Comrades", on November 2, 2007.
Photo by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR. |
The service took place in a shady field at Camp Blessing, where scores of soldiers gathered to mourn three of their own from the 173rd Airborne Brigade combat team...
The men, who were in their 20s, are regaled as tough-as-nail warriors. But each is also remembered for his softer side: Staff Sgt. Larry Rougle as a doting father to his young daughter; Sgt. Joshua Brennan as a lover of music and the guitar that he played whenever he got the chance; and Spc. Hugo Mendoza as a caring medic.
The L-shaped Ambush
The morning after the ambush, Rubin spoke with Giunta and Gallardo. The two soldiers described what happened the night before. The squad had advanced barely 300 yards before they were attacked. (Note: Rubin wrote two separate accounts of that night, one in 2008, the other in 2010.)
From the 2008 account:
Giunta was fourth in the file when it happened, and he jumped into a ditch. He couldn’t figure out why they were getting hit from where Joshua Brennan and baby-faced Franklin Eckrode should have been leading up ahead. He knew it must be bad, but as he leapt up to check he got whacked with a bullet in his armored chest plate. It threw him down. They were taking fire from three sides. He grabbed some grenades: “I couldn’t throw as far as Sergeant Gallardo. We were looking like retards and I decided to run out in front of the grenades.” He found Eckrode with gunshot wounds. “He was down but moving and trying to fix his SAW” — a heavy machine gun — “so I just kept on running up the trail. It was cloudy. I was running and saw dudes. Plural.”
He couldn’t figure out who they were. Then he realized they were hauling Brennan off through the forest. “I started shooting,” he recalled. “I emptied that magazine. They dropped Brennan.” Giunta scrambled up to Brennan. He was a mess. His lower jaw was shot off. “He was still conscious. He was breathing. He was asking for morphine. I said, ‘You’ll get out and tell your hero stories,’ and he was like, ‘I will, I will.’ ”
They were still taking fire. No one was there to help. Hugo Mendoza, their platoon medic, was back in another ditch, calling: “I’m bleeding out. I’m dying.” Giunta saw Brennan’s eyes go back. His breathing was bad. Giunta got Brennan to squeeze his hand...
As Giunta said, “The richest, most-trained army got beat by dudes in manjammies and A.K.’s.” His voice cracked. He was not just hurting, he was in a rage. And there was nothing for him to do with it but hold back his tears, and bark — at the Afghans for betraying them, at the Army for betraying them. He didn’t run to the front because he was a hero. He ran up to get to Brennan, his friend. “But they” — he meant the military — “just keep asking for more from us.”
From the 2010 account:
Gallardo remembered running forward to get control of the fight, R.P.G.’s landing in front of him, bullets hitting the dirt, and then one finally whacked him.
“When I fell, Giunta thought I was hit. He tried to pull me back to cover and got shot and hit in the chest.” But body armor saved both of them. Gallardo got Giunta and two other men and said, “On 3 we are going to get Brennan and Eckrode.” They threw grenades, dropped down, prepped the second round, and Gallardo shouted, “Throw them as far as you can.” They found Spec. Franklin Eckrode wounded but trying to fix his weapon. Gallardo began dressing his leg and suddenly heard Giunta yelling back: “Sergeant G, they are taking Brennan away.”
Giunta told me: “I just kept on running up the trail,” he said. “It was cloudy. I was running and I saw dudes plural and I was, like, ‘Who the hell is up here?’ I saw two of them trying to carry Brennan away and I started shooting at them. They dropped him and when I looked at him, he was still conscious. He was missing the bottom part of his jaw. He was breathing and moving and I pulled him back in the ditch.”
...
And then Giunta said, “All my feelings are with my friends and they are getting smaller. I have sweat more, cried more, bled more in this country than my own.
“These people,” he said, meaning the Afghans, “won’t leave this valley. They have been here far before I could fathom an Afghanistan.”
“I ran to the front because that is where he was,” Giunta said, talking of Brennan. “I didn’t try to be a hero and save everyone.”
In his book, War, Sebastian Junger wrote in Chapter 2 of the ambush:
After months of fighting an enemy that stayed hundreds of yards away, the shock of facing them at a distance of twenty feet cannot be overstated. Giunta gets hit in his front plate and in his assault pack and he barely notices except that the rounds came from a strange direction. Sheets of tracers are coming from his left, but the rounds that hit him seemed to come from dead ahead. He’s down in a small washout along the trail where the lip of packed earth should have protected him, but it didn’t. “That’s when I kind of noticed something was wrong,” Giunta said. “The rounds came right down the draw and there are three people — all friends — in the same vicinity. It happened so fast, you don’t think too hard about it, but it’s something to keep in mind.”
...
Giunta estimates that not more than ten or fifteen seconds elapsed between the initial attack and his own counterattack. An untrained civilian would have experienced those ten or fifteen seconds as a disorienting barrage of light and noise and probably have spent most of it curled up on the ground. An entire platoon of men who react that way would undoubtedly die to the last man.
Giunta, on the other hand, used those fifteen seconds to assign rates and sectors of fire to his team, run to Gallardo’s assistance, assess the direction of a round that hit him in the chest, and then throw three hand grenades while assaulting an enemy position. Every man in the platoon — even the ones who were wounded — acted as purposefully and efficiently as Giunta did… “I did what I did because that’s what I was trained to do,” Giunta told me. “There was a task that had to be done, and the part that I was gonna do was to link alpha and bravo teams. I didn’t run through fire to save a buddy — I ran through fire to see what was going on with him and maybe we could hide behind the same rock and shoot together. I didn’t run through fire to do anything heroic or brave. I did what I believe anyone would have done.”
Hetherington, in the current issue of Vanity Fair has also an interview with Giunta where he recalls joining the Army after hearing an ad for free t-shirts being given away by reciters while working at a Subway in Iowa. And, of course, that fateful ambush that killed two of his fellow soldiers. Here's an excerpt where Giunta recalls Operation Rock Avalanche:
See, I try to forget a lot of this—it benefits me in the long run—and coming back and talking about it wrenches the gut. Rock Avalanche was a long, drawn-out deal. So we started walking back, and they set up a good ambush. They did what we would have done...
There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky. A wall of bullets at every one at the same time with one crack and then a million other cracks afterwards. They’re above you, in front of you, behind you, below you. They’re hitting in the dirt early. They’re going over your head. Just all over the place. They were close—as close as I’ve ever seen...
You do everything you can. You don’t think. You just react. Everyone knows...
I just kept on running up the trail trying to find Brennan and see what the fuck is up, why the fuck he was all the way up there. This shit sucks—I kept on running and I saw three guys. There was two guys carrying one guy and the one had his arms, and the other had his legs. I got my gun in my hand, just running at him. At that time, the thought was: Who the hell is up here and how did they get up here? How did they pass us?
All of a sudden, I only knew one of them, and it wasn’t the one that I wanted to know. It was Brennan—and he was the one being carried away. Just fucking running and shooting, running and shooting, trying to close the gap with them. I shot at both of them. I killed one, I guess. The other one I shot the shit out of… but didn’t see him, and by the time my magazine was already empty, I was at Brennan... I yelled for Sergeant Gallardo that, God, they’re fucking taking him.
And on being awarded the Medal of Honor:
It sounds really awesome in theory, but what’s it worth? Brennan? Mendoza? No…
I was one person being brave in a group of a whole bunch of people that were being just as brave. Everything had the same thing to lose: their friends and themselves. I guarantee, no one thought about that out there. Bravery gets thrown around a lot. I served in Battle Company Second of the 503rd with the bravest men I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I’m proud to say that...
I want to stress the fact that this is the nation’s highest honor. Awesome. And it’s given to me, but just as much as me, every single person that I’ve been with deserves to wear it—they are just as much of me as I am. This isn’t a one-man show. I’m here because someone picked me. I hope that everyone around me can share in whatever pride that comes from it. They deserve that pride.
Postscript
April of this year, the U.S. pulled out of the Korengal Valley. The "U.S. retreat from Afghan valley marks recognition of blunder", the Washington Post headline stated. "More than 40 U.S. troops have been killed, and scores more wounded, in helicopter crashes, machine-gun attacks and grenade blasts in the Korengal Valley".
"You can't force the local populace to accept you in their valley," Capt. Mark Moretti, the 28-year-old commander of American forces in the valley said. "You can't make them want to work with us."
The Taliban took over the valley within days after the American withdrawal, Al Jazeera reported.