Soldier's horrific story: The tunnels hide more than just the enemies in the mountains of Afghanistan

taimur (42)in #story • 7 years ago (edited)

This is a story from a friend to whom I will give a made-up name Eric. Furthermore, I will use first person to refer to it just as he told me the story to make it a better reading/writing experience.

My names Eric and I did 4 tours overseas. I've seen thing's that would make a smart man go home and a brave man cry.

I won't say what branch i was in but we shared a name that also belongs to 1st battalion 9th marines. I can't give names or exact locations, ill be as detailed as i can in my vagueness. I deployed to Afghanistan in may 2004, I was young and the attacks of 9/11 gave most guys my age a anger they hadn't felt before and the military gave them a way to justify it. We shipped out not knowing exactly where we were going, when we landed we were in the mountains of the nuristan province, about 4 hours north of where C.O.P. Keating would be over run during the battle of Kamdesh some 5 years later. Officially C.O.P. Keating was the furthest north compound we had. Unofficially..... Well you know how it goes.

The first 4 months dragged by with the same old patrols, the same old briefings and the same old quiet. At one point we complained about it, but soon we came to fear it. 4 months 2 weeks 3 days into our all but boring routine we had contact, an RPG ripped through the silent sky and into the ground about 5 yards from the point man. All hell broke loose as we took fire from all directions. We had become complacent and started using the dry creek beds and minimal cover. About 45 minutes into the fighting there was a lull, we scrambled to better cover. Called in fire support and within minutes had a hail of mortar fire with the likes i had never seen before, be it the eagerness of the guys at base to get some action or the chance to kill more than boredom.

After the friendly fire died out we moved on to continue the patrol, and did so without incident. And just like that the boredom returned. 2 months without anymore contact, when orders came down to move into the system of caves about 3 miles from our base, search and destroy of what they believed to be a al-Qaeda network.

We geared up and moved out, some guys overjoyed to be on a actual mission, others bitching about it being "just another patrol"... God how i wish they were right. We made it to the cave system without any resistence, one guy commented that over the last mile the sounds of the world seemed to stop. Now i hadn't noticed it at first, over my internal thoughts and the beating of my heart in my ears. But now that he mentioned it i did, the birds, bugs and even the wind seemed to all but have disappeared. Not wanting us to get distracted our Ssgt. Moved us into the mouth of the cave. The entrance wasn't but the size of a small garage door and continued that way for a good 200 meters, then it opened up into a sprawling cavern littered with the remains of crates that had been there since well before the soviets.

The Ssgt sent 3 guys in to check things over, they made it about 300 meters from us and one of the guys picked up something in the crates looked it over and tossed it back then BOOM an explosion that shattered our eardrums and seemed to continue forever down the cavern. Dust and debris everywhere amoung the guys yelling and picking themselves up off the ground i heard something through the blood in my ears that made the hair on my neck stand on end, a scream that sounded like hell itself lost a new baby mixed with the roar that made my stomach turn and time seem to slow, if anyone else heard it they didn't acknowledge it.

The three guys that had gone in were mush, surroundings painted red with gore. We were ordered to move in, we did so begrudgingly.....cautiously. We pushed beyond that sprawling cavern and into the massive network of caves, caverns, and dead ends. After strategically wandering for what felt like an eternity we realized that the coms were down, so we hunkered down where we were and 2 guys were sent back to the front to get a signal and give a sitrep.

After about two hours with no word the Ssgt got us on our feet and moved us back to the mouth of the cave. What we came across is....something i will never forget, my friends were dead, eviscerated and bled dry, it looked like their heads had been caved in at some point. The strange thing was the surrounding dirt hadn't been disturbed at all. It was like what happened to them was spontaneous, the eeriest part of it all was that the radio was gone along with the crude map they had been clinging to. We bagged the bodies and moved back to the first cavern.

The shreds of what was once three good men were gone, as was their blood, it was as if i was the only one to notice. We could see the exit, it was dark and snowing, we set up camp and a fire, i was chosen for first watch. Staring out of the exit for hours left me exhausted and my mind screaming for sleep, as i did the unthinkable and let my heavy eyes close and my body slip off to sleep i heard that scream again.