Victory Point - Ed Darack [93]
“No, there’s nothing going on up in Nuristan,” the intel officer confidently replied. “There’s no reason for any of our forces to get up there.” Having finished his comprehensive historical overview of Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman, and Nangarhar provinces, Donnellan instantly put himself in the enemy’s shoes—and knew just where he’d go were he on the run from coalition forces (other than the tribal areas of Pakistan). To Nuristan. Neither Afghan nor foreign units were present in the province that abuts both Kunar and Laghman.
Donnellan, who like Cooling with 3/3, would lead the Island Warriors through a successful seven-month tour in Iraq’s Anbar province following his tour in Afghanistan, was fully prepared for the rigors of the Afghan fight, but had been placed in the difficult position of taking over the command of a battalion that was already in-country without having trained with, or even having met, the vast majority of ⅔’s officer and enlisted ranks. But the six-foot-six, focused yet personable Donnellan had spent time with Tom Wood and Rob Scott prior to ⅔’s departure for Afghanistan, and given the instant confidence both majors inspired in everyone they met, the lieutenant colonel knew that his transition into the Afghan fight would be smooth and quick.
The Red Wings debacle weighed heavily on the command levels above ⅔, however, creating operational obstacles both in planning and battle that would challenge and stress the Marines to the limit. Using Turner’s latest intel, which Westerfield and his staff immediately dove headlong into, Tom Wood and Rob Scott began piecing together a new mission, the foundation of which they’d conceived even before the dust of the Red Wings disaster had settled, an operation that would have the Marines continue the fight for stabilization of the region with redoubled efforts.
By the time Colonel Gary Cheek and the 25th Infantry Division departed Afghanistan in the spring of 2005, Afghanistan’s top Army commanders (bolstered in large measure by the successes of 3/3’s Operation Spurs) took the position that organized, violent resistance in RC-East was finished, and only small pockets of terrorists remained—tiny (albeit deadly and possibly al-Qaeda-linked) cells that possessed neither the means nor the desire to become organized movements like the Taliban. The Red Wings tragedy had shocked CJTF-76’s command, proving that elements remained in eastern Afghanistan that actively sought a broad resurgence of the Taliban or a Taliban-like regime, however unrealistic such a goal may have been.
With so much worldwide attention focused on the Kunar after the Red Wings tragedy, CJTF-76 Command assumed a decidedly risk-averse stance for ops on or around Sawtalo Sar, leading to their virtual grounding of what Marines know as assault support—helicopters for the insertion of troops (although they’d still allow, on a very restrictive basis, Air Ambulance support). Whatever scheme of maneuver the battalion would undertake, the grunts themselves could move only by land, and because Shah based his operations far above and beyond routes navigable by any means other than feet and hooves, ⅔’s Marines would spend much more time pounding their boots up and down steep ground than bracing their backs against the jolts of rutted roads. However, as this new op began to take form, Wood and other senior battalion staff realized that the logistical constraints were actually an advantage, moving the plan away from a reliance on a covert direct-action team to pure conventional-maneuver warfare.
As his first order of business, Donnellan set out to visit every