For GIs in Afghanistan, success comes slowly - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

For GIs in Afghanistan, success comes slowly

KUKARAN, Afghanistan — The soldiers of Bravo Company walk past windowless, mud-walled homes and mosques as children go by carrying cans filled with water.

Fat-tailed sheep roam the streets unescorted. Expressionless men in turbans and sandals walk past. Little girls in bright shawls hold toddlers in their arms and plead for a soldier’s pen or watch. A small boy, pantless with flies buzzing over his face, rides in a wheelbarrow.

But for a few strands of electrical wire strung from bamboo poles and the occasional tractor or motorcycle, the village appears as it may have a millennium ago.

In a war like Afghanistan, victory is often measured one village at a time in how many people you befriend, how few mines you run into, and whether people talk to you or shun you, the soldiers say.

On this day, they are doing what they must do most days: walking and sometimes running in 115-degree heat — carrying packs in excess of 50 pounds — to root out the Taliban and take out improvised explosive devices in a town filled with people who may want to help them, or hurt them — or are just waiting to see who wins.

“It’s not one of those fights where you get to see the results quickly,” said Sgt. Joe Benini of Aromas, Calif. “But when you look back at what’s been accomplished it wasn’t for nothing.”

In this war, in which the enemy blends in among civilians, the foot patrol is the primary way the Army gathers intelligence and secures its bases. This patrol will last 12 hours. The soldiers are clad in heavy armored vests and carry even heavier weapons along with gear through mile after mile of terrain.

They climb over mud walls as tall as 12 feet and cross river canals balancing along fallen trees. The water in their bottles tastes as if it’s close to boiling.

Men and boys gather hay in the fields, a small scythe in one of their hands. The harvest is tossed onto cloths, and the boys carry it off on their backs.

Afghan forces who are accompanying the Americans carry old and battered automatic weapons. Their radios date to the Vietnam era, Army Capt. Adam Armstrong said, yet seem to work more consistently than the smaller, modern radios the soldiers frequently complain about.

When they approach an intersection, the soldiers block it and peer around corners. Armstrong calls in heavy machinery to clear a long route through a potential minefield. Three of Bravo Company’s soldiers have lost their lives to IEDs; 15 of its men have lost limbs to them.

A golden retriever named Flyer and a Labrador retriever named Isaac, both trained in finding explosives, lead separate patrols. The patrols find two unexploded rockets in fields, which the soldiers detonate. Flyer leads the men to a rocket that appears to be from the 1980s Soviet conflict.

Dominating the landscape is a concrete grain tower rendered useless by Soviet and American bombs over past decades. Buildings are pocked by .50-caliber projectiles and small-arms fire.

Fifty years ago, the Americans were here to build irrigation canals for the villagers. Trees, orchards, grapes, tomato and pepper plants, and marijuana grow in abundance. Stacks of dried poppy plants have been laid down for a footbridge over a soggy patch — the stalks having already been cut to drain the opium resin that is refined into heroin. Everything appears to be the color of dust.

The patrol returns about 8 p.m. to a spot in the village that the 2nd Brigade of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment has made its base, an orchard of peach and pomegranate trees. Hours before Benini exchanged small-arms fire with an unseen enemy. His group may have startled Taliban insurgents attempting to plant bombs, he said.

Dinner will be an MRE, or maybe a rare dish of fresh lamb with peppers from an enterprising local. A shower will consist of smearing the body with baby wipes. Bed is the dirt ground; the tent, the undercarriage of an armored vehicle. Shade is a luxury found by stringing ponchos from poles.

Who is winning this war is a question troops don’t often discuss. But they can see a difference in the expanding territory now secured by their presence, their sweat and their lost colleagues.

“As far as the little bubble I am in, I think we’re winning,” Benini said. “We’ve pushed the Taliban out. Before we moved in, they had freedom of movement. We’ve pretty much gained control of a lot of villages.”