[MilCom] Kansas unit's heavy lifting vital in Afghan operations

[GrayGhost]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/15101136.htm?source=yahoodist&content=ksc_news

Audio & video at above for those interested

CITIZEN SOLDIERS | Olathe-based reservists deliver expertise daily
Kansas unit's heavy lifting vital in Afghan operations
In the war on terror, neighbors and co-workers are filling essential roles
in forbidding locales.
By LEE HILL KAVANAUGH
The Kansas City Star


KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan | Every night when the moon's light is good,
at least two Chinook helicopters leave here on a mission.

Most are flown by Midwesterners, many of them from Kansas City - people
leading double lives. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, fathers and
mothers who a year ago worked as computer specialists or police officers or
bus drivers - and who hope to again, after their 365 days of "boots on the
ground" are done.

For now they're flying support missions in a hostile land, delivering food,
water, ammunition and medical supplies to soldiers at far-flung bases, and
sometimes plucking them out of deadly fire. In recent weeks, supplies and
flights have been moving faster because of an upsurge in fighting between
coalition forces and the Taliban, the heaviest action in four years.

Many of these soldiers - Army reservists assigned to Company B, 7th
Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, based in Olathe - volunteered to come
here, knowing their expertise and experience could save lives.

This war on terror is very much a war of citizen soldiers.

Reservists and National Guard troops are carrying a heavy load in
Afghanistan. The Army Reserve has provided more than 157,000 soldiers for
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The deployment of reservists is the
greatest since World War II.

Many of the 217 reservists in the 7/158th are Army veterans, with experience
ranging from Vietnam and Panama to Iraq and Afghanistan. They fly dozens of
missions each day, and they fly on the 20 or so nights each month when there
's enough moonlight to meet the task force safety standards. If soldiers are
in trouble somewhere, they'll fly even if the moonlight is dim.

Although the perception persists that reservists train one weekend a month,
with a two-week camp in the summer, these men and women are not weekend
warriors.

"All I can say about that is: 'One weekend a month, my ass!' " says Lt. Col.
Walter Bradley, the unit's commander, who back home is the U.S. marshal for
Kansas. A tall man who hunches his shoulders, Bradley is known to his troops
as a quick decision-maker and serious coffee drinker, his left hand usually
curled around a cup.

His comment makes his troops laugh, but it's one heard over and over from
reservists serving month after month in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The good thing (about reservists) is that there are people my age who have
been around," says Bradley, 55. "The bad thing is: If a bad thing happens, I
know all their families personally."

...

A pilot eases himself into the cockpit of a Chinook, settling into a seat
that vaguely resembles a La-Z-Boy recliner. His flak vest is cinched tight.
He flips down his night-vision goggles, glowing green. It's past midnight.

Two 7.62 mm machine guns poke out the front windows, manned by door gunners
also wearing green goggles. A belt above them holds cartridges the size of
lipsticks. In the tail section, two flight engineers load cargo.

The pilot, 34-year-old Maj. R. Jason "Tank" Sherman of Olathe, lifts a lever
with his left hand and the Chinook's twin rotors begin to churn faster,
fighting the air. Engines whine to a high pitch. Wind cuts through the
craft. Sand pelts faces. And with a deceptive ease this 14-ton CH-47D floats
upward and leaves Kandahar, accompanied by another Chinook, an Apache attack
helicopter and a Black Hawk, heading toward Afghanistan's mountains.

"You want to see what the middle of nothin' looks like?" Sherman asks. "Look
out to the left."

Below, illuminated in an eerie green by the binocular-like goggles, mud
walls outline acres of scratched-out farmland, plowed in rows and circles.
Dotting the land are irrigation blocks, mud-walled openings where someone
has dug down trying to find water. The holes, large enough to shelter or
hide people, are everywhere. Some are connected by elaborate systems of
tunnels, holdovers from when the Russians fought here years ago.

"Definitely not Kansas," Sherman says.

...

The camaraderie of the 7/158th was cemented months ago during the unit's
first deployment, a surprise assignment to Pakistan.

While the United States was focused on Hurricane Katrina last year, this
unit was flying aid missions to Pakistan earthquake victims. In February,
the 7/158th broke a United Nations world food program record by delivering
329 tons of food in one day.

Yet when the governor of Kansas visited Pakistan while the unit was
stationed there, she left a note that still stings: It thanked "the Kansas
National Guard" for its outstanding work.

"Yeah, that was a screwup by somebody on her staff," Bradley says. "But
then, few people in Kansas City know we even exist."

When the unit is home, flight crews practice night flying or instrument
training above Kansas City nearly every weekend, accumulating their 96 hours
of flight training for the year.

"Ninety-six hours of flying, the exact same number required by the active,
except we just have a few weekends a month to get it in," Bradley says.
"Still, we do it."

Lives depend on it.

...

Camels bolt into an awkward gallop as the four helicopters pass less than
300 feet overhead. At lower altitudes, the choppers make less of a target
for a rocket, because their exposure time is reduced.

The goggles transform pitch dark into a lighted moonscape. Plants become
tufts of white fuzz. Rocks are so crisply clear, pilots can count them.

In the blackness, a single bat flaps its wings.

Despite the early hour and the relative isolation, a human being appears,
standing in a field: a man in a long tunic, billowy pants, a beard . then
another. They raise their heads skyward as the helicopters pass with all
lights off. Perhaps the men are goat herders curious about the noise. Or
perhaps something more nefarious, men with cell phones alerting allies down
the line that the Americans are coming.

The Apache and Black Hawk are armed and ready to obliterate any attackers.
But even with their weaponry, they cannot stop a rocket.

This route into the Helmand Province, a lush area that provides the poppies
for 90 percent of the world's heroin, has recently grown hot with enemy
contact. In the two days before this flight last week, two American soldiers
from other units were killed in this area. The war in Afghanistan had been
won, the Taliban routed, a government formed, but still the fighting
continues.

"They're still shooting bullets and bombs at us," says Staff Sgt. Todd
Carter, 32, of Kansas City, Kan. "It's still a war for us."

...

The 7/158th has logged more than 6,000 hours since October. In all that time
the unit hasn't suffered a single accident, even while flying at altitudes
and through weather that tested the limits of pilot and machine. They have
flown through combat situations many times, but only one Chinook has been
hit by gunfire.

The Chinooks prove their value every day, Bradley says.

Unlike Iraq, where the land is relatively flat and close to sea level, much
of Afghanistan is more than 4,000 feet above sea level, with mountains that
rise above 16,000 feet. The altitude and the extreme heat make aircraft
engines run hot, Bradley says.

Yet the Chinook, workhorse that it is, can lug thousands of pounds of
supplies or troops over the terrain. A Black Hawk can carry only two troops
in the heat of summer.

"This place is tailor-made for Chinooks," Bradley says. "Chinooks take away
all the rollovers, the IEDs on convoys . all that crap that soldiers on the
ground have to go through.

" . This war belongs to the Chinook."

...

On this night, the mission is to fly to a forward operating base, or FOB,
known as Cream to pick up battle-weary troops, drop off fresh soldiers and
deliver a slingload of supplies.

Cream is 79.9 miles from Kandahar as the crow flies, but traveling in a
straight line invites enemy contact. The Chinooks take a circuitous route,
one that changes with each mission.

"Hey, have we ever figured out why we name these FOBs after food? There's
Cream and Peaches and Pear. . It's making me hungry," Sherman says in the
headset.

"I'd love some peaches and cream right now," says another crew member. The
banter slides effortlessly from one topic to the next. Crew members gossip
about one soldier who, it is said, resembles Winnie the Pooh. Then they
shift into a debate on the propriety of raising taxes to pay for Arrowhead
Stadium improvements.

After crossing a sea of sand, lights appear in the distance. It's Cream FOB.
Sixteen dust-covered infantrymen are waiting for a ride to Kandahar
Airfield, and a break.

They are young, 20, maybe 21. They do not smile. They look as if they've not
slept for days.

They sit jammed shoulder to shoulder, some falling asleep despite the
jostling of the engine. One soldier lets his weapon slip and it points
toward the person across the seat.

Door gunner Christian Wilkinson, of Pueblo West, Colo., quickly grabs the M4
from the young soldier's hands and directs it downward. For a second, the
young man's eyes flicker an apology.

The crew members talk through their headsets, but the troops can't hear
them. The rotors continually churn and thump the air.

"Man, did you see these guys?"

The troops, with the Army's 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 10th
Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y., have been enduring heavy fighting
and the primitive conditions of this FOB since June 10. One soldier has a
frayed toothbrush stuck on his helmet, for cleaning his teeth or his weapon.
Maybe both.

"Did you see that toothbrush? Man, he's hardcore."

The Chinooks swallow up the troops, three pallets of their stuff and a
broken-down generator.

"Phew! These guys have been out here awhile," Sherman says, watching his
fuel reserves. "I suppose it might be really humiliating if I sprayed them
with Lysol, huh?"

All the crew members laugh. Sherman is well known for his humor, but he's
nervous about sitting out here much longer.

"We've got to go now," he says.

Finally, the Chinooks and the other helicopters take off.

As they approach Kandahar, a pink sunrise streaks across the sky.

"I hate it, seeing sunrises in Afghanistan," says co-pilot Justin Lee, 25,
of Lindale, Texas. "It means I've been up all night."

He gets a thrashing of comebacks as the other crew members weigh in. Then
the lights of the airfield come into view.

The 7/158th is home.

Kandahar Airfield

.People: About 3,000 are assigned to the base, almost all of them soldiers,
with a few civilians.

.Area: About the size of the Jackson County Sports Complex, including the
parking lots.

.Facilities: Dozens of barracks (tents and trailer-like modular housing),
bunkers with concrete walls and roofs, three D-facs (dining facilities,
formerly known as mess halls) and a gravel airstrip, all surrounded by Hesco
baskets (wire mesh filled with rocks) and barbed wire.

.Weather: As hot as 118 in the shade. It gets down into the 80s at night.

.Repurposed ground: The airfield is just a mile from a place where Osama bin
Laden trained terrorists for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. U.S. troops use
the site for weapons practice, pummeling any remnant of its former existence
back into dust.

The 7/158th at Kandahar

.Youngest: 19

.Oldest: 59

.Men: 203

.Women: 14

.Kansas: 83

.Missouri: 21

.Other states (14): 113

Note: The number of soldiers fluctuates as members move between the 7/158th
and other units.

Foreign forces

.About 38,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan. Their mission: Flush out
Taliban fighters and extend the government's reach to allow reconstruction.

.The U.S.-led coalition consists of around 29,000 troops, primarily from the
U.S. (23,000), Britain (3,500) and Canada (2,300). Countries such as
Australia and the Netherlands also have sent troops.

.NATO's International Security Assistance Force numbers about 10,000 troops
and is to rise to about 18,500 by the end of this month. Among the NATO
forces are troops from Germany, 2,900; Italy, 1,200; Britain, 1,100; France,
900; and Spain, 600.

Source: Agence France-Presse

The series


Lee Hill Kavanaugh and Allison Long are embedded with the 7th Battalion,
158th Aviation Regiment, an Olathe Army Reserve unit. For the next few
weeks, they'll be telling stories of citizen soldiers who left families and
jobs to serve in Afghanistan.

.Kavanaugh, The Star's military life reporter, has been to Iraq twice,
embedded with Fort Riley's 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division. She has been
with The Star since 1997.

.Long, a photojournalist, worked in Iraq for three months in 2004 for Knight
Ridder, then The Star's parent company. She joined The Star in 2002.