How close can we get to really knowing what it's like to succeed in combat? To fight, to survive"” even thrive"” while facing enemy fire every other day? What does it take to be a strong, decisive commander? Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell and John Bruning, is a vivid account of the U.S. Army's legendary 10th Mountain Division and its heroic stand in the mountains of Afghanistan, an action-packed and highly emotional true story about the extraordinary bonds forged in battle.
Author Brad Thor had this to say about it:
"Two of the grittiest, most intense tales of courage and camaraderie under fire that I own are Black Hawk Down and Lone Survivor. Now I have a third: Outlaw Platoon. It's the Black Hawk Down for the 21st Century."
"” Brad Thor, bestselling author of Full Black
Recently, Brad Thor talked to Sean Parnell about his personal experiences of war and events behind the book.
Brad Thor: What was your first day like on the ground in Afghanistan's eastern frontier?
Sean Parnell: We landed at Forward Operating Base Bermel by helicopter"”it was far too remote a place to be able to drive there. I had not even put my bags in my room when the insurgents attacked the base with rocket fire. They missed the FOB, but one of the rockets exploded inside a local village, killing and wounding a number of children. The villagers rushed their bleeding kids to our front gate, and I ran down to help. Our troops wanted to help all of the children at the same time, but the Afghan fathers argued with us and insisted that the boys be treated first. I grabbed a little girl and sprinted for the aid station. She bled out in my arms as I ran, drenching my uniform from her wound"”really the stump that was left of one of her legs. I walked her back to her parents, handed her body to them, and watched as they carried her limp form back out the front gate.
That was my introduction to combat. All I was, all I had been, changed in that horrifying instant.
BT: What surprised you about the enemy in Afghanistan?
SP: We found an enemy that wasn't a bunch of farmers with leftover weapons. We faced one of the finest light infantry forces in the world. These fighters were brilliantly led, seasoned warriors. Some of them had spent their entire lives in combat"”stretching back to the Soviet War in the 1980's. Others were the sons of Muj fighters and were resolute in their desire to live up to their fathers' reputations. They were elusive, heavily armed and extremely well equipped. They carried the latest armor-piercing bullets, anti-tank weapons, body armor, tactical radios and other gear essential to ground operations. They also learned from their mistakes and adapted to our tactics. They studied our weak points and struck at them ruthlessly. They were unusually intelligent in tactical terms as well.
They also had no mercy. None. Their objective was to overrun an American platoon, behead everyone and stick our heads on stakes. In battle, we heard them on the radio ordering their teams to do this, and we saw the huge knives they carried for the task. They did their best to overrun us three times. But we were better. Just barely.
BT: What's the most difficult part of learning to be a leader in war?
SP: Watching your men get wounded or killed is heart-wrenching. By the end of the deployment my men and I were family. Watching them suffer"”often because of my decisions"”was pretty tough. I still cope with the pain of that to this day. That's why, after we returned home, I made them a promise to always be there if they needed me. Any day of the week, any time, I promised to have their back. They gave me 110% in combat and I will never forget that. I will return the favor"”always.
BT: Describe the bond forged in battle"”the loyalty and bravery you saw and why you think that's vital to success.
SP: During my 16 months in combat I saw the most noble and beautiful aspects of the human spirit, thanks to the bond that developed among the men. What is that bond? It is a form of love that is more powerful than any love I'd ever experienced before. As others around us (outside the platoon) sometimes behaved with crass self-interest, we realized that the only way we could survive this crucible was to remain committed. There were many incidents that could have torn the platoon apart. Some guys fell out of the inner circle and broke their bond with the other men. But for the core that did the patrolling and the fighting, our faith in each other kept us alive. Not for ourselves, but to ensure that we would survive to see our loved ones back home again.
BT: How would you describe the men in your platoon?
SP: In a word: Unique. Our army mirrors the country it's sworn to protect, and I think the Outlaws reflected America's greatest strength: diversity. My men came from all walks of life. Many weren't even citizens of this country if you can believe that, but they went to battle because they loved this country. They believed in American exceptionalism with every fiber of their being. And if they were similar in any way, it was in this ideal. It united us and made us a cohesive fighting force. Ultimately, that dedication to country translated to devotion to each other and shone through brilliantly in every engagement.
BT: When you say this was an unusually intelligent enemy fighting force, what do you mean?
SP: They never made the same mistakes twice. They learned from battlefield experience and adapted their tactics to overcome those errors. When they found that standard 7.62mm bullets could not penetrate our body armor, they acquired armored piercing rounds. When they saw that our survival depended on our Humvee gunners and the heavy weapons they operated, the insurgents targeted them first. They used snipers and machine gunners for that task. A lot of my gunners were shot in the head as a result.
In June 2006, they hit us with a crossfire of six machine guns and mortar fire at the same time. The combined effect of that barrage wounded almost half my platoon. Then they assaulted us with about a hundred men. When that didn't work, they came back some months later with almost two hundred and fifty men.
Against an undermanned American platoon of between 24-30, those were very daunting odds.
BT: Was there a turning point for you as a commander? A make-or-break moment that you now recognize was defining?
SP: I think the defining moment was during our first contact with the enemy. Leadership in combat balances perilously on a razor's edge. When crap hits the fan, you only have seconds to react. After being trapped in the kill zone of an ambush on May 7th 2006 I had to make the right decision or lose my men"”both literally and figuratively. The thought of being thrown out of the inner circle of the platoon terrified me. I would have died before I would have done something to lose the respect of my men.
So during that first firefight, as we were in our Humvees getting hit by machine gun and rocket propelled grenade fire, I had a choice: either to play it safe, stay inside my armored rig (where I belonged) so I could work the situation over the radio, or to go tackle the situation with my boots on the ground. When I climbed out into the fight to go forward and clear a path for my men to get us out of the kill zone, it was a decisive moment. I did not let them down. Thank God.
BT: You talk about the plight of the local children caught up in war. What was that like?
SP: Heartbreaking. I had a young cousin at the time that I spent a lot of time with before going overseas. I love children and have two of my own now. But during one patrol, we saw the horrific effects the war had on the local Afghan children.
The insurgents went into a village that their leadership believed had gone over to our side. This was not the case"”no American unit had even visited this village before us"”but it did not matter. The Haqqani fighters rounded up the children, beat them and left them broken and bleeding. This was a warning to their parents: more will happen if you support the Coalition.
To underscore the point, they kidnapped the grandson of the village elder. When we encountered the boy weeks later, he had been tortured. He wasn't even six years old. We found him lost, blind, and terrified in the middle of a dusty goat track we were following during a patrol. We did our best for him, and in time, his grandfather returned the gesture"”at great risk to himself. Ultimately, that encounter and the mutual respect that blossomed between my men and those villagers saved my entire platoon.
BT: Did you get a sense of the enemy command? Were they just lucky or well-trained?
SP: Their leadership was part of the Haqqani Network"”second only to the Taliban in size and importance in Afghanistan. They are aligned with Al Qaida. The Al Qaida operatives and senior Haqqani leaders formed fighting units in Pakistan, trained there, recruited and used Pakistan as a safe haven to resupply and rest after launching attacks against us. Their leadership was extremely capable, experienced and cunning. They would build a core of veteran fighters around them, and then bring new Pakistani recruits into the units. Their leadership was so charismatic and their ability to articulate their jihad against us so effective at first that the Pakistani villages in the Tribal Area were largely on their side"”and offered their sons willingly to the cause.
BT: In what ways did you feel like you were fighting a forgotten war?
SP: We heard before deploying that soldiers and civilians alike called Afghanistan the "Forgotten War". Even so, I'm not sure any of us truly understood what that meant. Just prior to my departure, I remember my family saying "Sean, just thank God you're not going to Iraq." It's no secret that in 2005 America was heavily committed in Iraq. The politicians, military brass, the media"¦everyone seemed captivated by the growing insurgency there. People were constantly inundated with reports from the field about how deadly Iraq had become. Soldiers were dying every day over there.
Afghanistan, by contrast seemed to be under control. To the media, it was a success story. No more than a stability and support operation. To the American populace it was an afterthought. Even the military brass seemed entirely focused on Iraq and throughout our train up intelligence from the Afghan front was sparse to say the least.
By the time my men and I arrived in country, we realized very quickly that Afghanistan was spiraling out of control. We were attacked nearly every day. Without so much as a whisper from the media back home, my men began to feel isolated. When they went home on leave, Americans thanked them by welcoming them home from Iraq. Or, on the off chance that someone asked them where they were deployed, most Americans would reply by saying "Oh, Afghanistan, thank goodness"¦.that Iraq is just a mess". My men had been battered and wounded, shot, blown up, and studded with shrapnel and no one even realized their sacrifice.
Then, in January 2007, the Iraq surge happened. Units initially intended to deploy to Afghanistan were immediately diverted to Iraq in an attempt to stabilize the situation there. So the eyes of the nation and the media were again totally focused in Iraq. We felt totally forgotten again. I saw how it affected my men. They became disheartened and depressed. But to their credit, not a man refused his duty. We drove on for the same reason we always did"”for each other.
BT: How did the war experience change you?
SP: After I watched the towers fall on September 11th I wanted to drop out of college and enlist in the Army immediately. If it wasn't for my parents, I would have. As is typical with young college kids, I was full of piss and vinegar. I wanted revenge against the people who attacked us and I wholeheartedly believed that I alone, could accomplish it. This sort of youthful idealism defined me early in my military career. My first day in Afghanistan changed that forever. Combat has a way of doing that to someone. It steals bits of your humanity with every horrifying and traumatic moment. Eventually, it leaves you feeling gutted and hollow. For me, the insulated existence I had known in the States was gone forever. It was replaced by a more durable and mature sense of selflessness ultimately grounded in service to my men. By the time I came home, I lost the youthful idealism I started my career with, but not my honor, integrity and sense of service to my country.
BT: What's one of the hardest things you had to deal with during your time in Afghanistan?
SP: I had several. Realizing that the Pakistanis were not our allies, but were actively engaged in fighting against us (their Frontier Corps joined insurgent missions against my platoon)"”that was disillusioning. We'd already seen how the Afghan police and army functioned"”their leadership was selling their units' arms to the enemy among other things"”so we learned never to trust them fully. But the Pakistanis were supposed to be our partners on the War on Terror, and this flat out was not the case. They were our enemy's most vital ally. When that became clear, it was a profoundly troubling moment for us. It reinforced the fact that we were on our own, and how trust is a commodity you can't spend beyond the circle of our platoon.
But the worst moment of my deployment didn't happen in Afghanistan, but while I was home on leave. I received terrible news while vacationing with my family"”news that devastated my platoon. I was 13,000 miles away and could do nothing to help my brothers. I could not lead them. Could not set an example. All I could do was ache and grieve and grow desperate to get back to them. Such moments whipsaws your emotions like nothing else.
