Frustration, pride in a year of danger

On a late September afternoon last year, Capt. James Pope climbed a hill that offered a sweeping view of the Arghandab Valley. He gazed on thousands of acres of irrigated farm fields and orchards that faded into a dusty, mountain-ringed desert.

Pope, a North Carolinian with a reputation as a hard charger, commanded a company of soldiers from the Western Washington-based 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment.

He took a certain pride in pointing out the formidable size of his area of operations, which stretched some 15 miles through some of the most hostile terrain of southern Afghanistan, a place the Taliban claimed as a staging ground for its growing insurgency in Kandahar province.

Two months into the deployment, Pope had yet to visit all of the villages in his sector. But he knew where to find a fight: amid the orchards that offered thick cover for insurgents.

"See that green zone, where it's very thick," Pope said. "That's where the Taliban like to hide."

It was from these orchards two decades ago that Afghan mujahedeen fought off the Soviet army as it tried to secure southern Afghanistan.

And it was from these orchards that the soldiers of the 1st Battalion waged some of their most turbulent battles as they sought to control the Arghandab during a pivotal time for American forces.

The 1st Battalion sustained one of the highest casualty counts of any similar-sized Army unit in the nearly nine-year conflict in Afghanistan. By the time the battalion headed home this summer, 22 soldiers had died there and more than 65 had been wounded.

This is the story of the battalion's year in Afghanistan, as soldiers struggled with their mission in the conservative Islamic region. These strains reflect broader tensions within the U.S. military and among civilian leaders about the conduct of the war: how to balance battling the Taliban with winning the trust of Afghans.

For the 1st Battalion, the discord over how to fight this war began higher up the command structure.

The battalion was part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord's 5th Brigade (recently renamed the 2nd Brigade), 2nd Infantry Division, which was led by Col. Harry Tunnell IV. He is a military historian who had studied U.S. tactics from the Indian Wars to Vietnam, and also served in Iraq, where he was seriously wounded.

Tunnell's academic and combat experiences had reinforced his conviction that an infantry brigade should always keep its sights on fighting.

"Destruction of the enemy forces must remain the most important step to defeating terrorists and insurgents — everything else supports this goal but is not a substitute for it," he wrote at the end of a military memoir of his service in Iraq.

That statement left Tunnell out of step with the counterinsurgency strategy that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who then commanded U.S. and NATO forces, had deemed essential for turning around the flagging war effort in Afghanistan.

McChrystal was convinced that Taliban body counts did not necessarily measure progress, and that the civilian casualties caused by ill-conceived air and artillery attacks generated more support for the insurgency. Troops, he said, must put their top priority on winning the confidence of civilians.

"Protecting the people is the mission. The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy," McChrystal wrote in a counterinsurgency directive.

Tunnell was openly skeptical of that doctrine, and expressed his concerns to his officers and others outside the brigade, according to retired Lt. Col. Rich Demaree, who was then with the brigade.

In an interview, Tunnell bristled at any second-guessing of his approach.

"As an experienced infantry brigade commander," Tunnell said, "I think I'm qualified to make an assessment about what doctrine is appropriate."

To reinforce the message with his troops, Tunnell picked the brigade's motto: "Strike and Destroy."

In the Arghandab Valley, the 1st Battalion — which included Bravo, Charlie and Alpha companies — was assigned to a region that had been reclaimed by the Taliban and used to organize a broader resistance. Each company was formed around fast-moving Stryker vehicles that were outfitted with a lethal array of weapons and high-tech communications.

Some of the battalion's 750 soldiers were heading off to combat for the first time, like 1st Lt. Dan Berschinski, a wiry young West Point graduate from Georgia with more than 30 men under his command.

He had read McChrystal's directive about civilians to his troops, and was throughly briefed on Tunnell's desire to root out Taliban from an area that historically had few international forces.

His own focus was on his soldiers.

"On a personal level, I didn't care about Afghanistan," Berschinski said. "I just wanted to take care of my men, and if we could help the men and women in the Arghandab, that was a plus."

Others were veterans of the military's long slog through Afghanistan and Iraq. Staff Sgt. James Knower, a squad leader from a small town in western New York, had served one tour in each country.

And some bore emotional and physical scars from previous duty. Staff. Sgt. Michael Blanchette, a Southern California soldier with an encyclopedic knowledge of Stryker vehicles, got tapped to command Capt. Pope's vehicle.

He had survived a hellish year of urban combat in Mosul, Iraq, including a bomb explosion that left shrapnel lodged in his head. He also anguished over firing at a car that failed to slow down at a traffic checkpoint. His shots killed a pregnant woman, he later told family members.

Several months before the Strykers' 2009 departure, Blanchette, at home, was acting erratically. He seemed reluctant to deploy and was physically abusive.

"I went down to the brigade office and told them my husband was out of control and he needed help," recalled his wife, Elizabeth Blanchette.

Blanchette was ordered to attend alcohol-treatment and parenting classes, and a gun was removed from his home.

In July 2009, along with the rest of the battalion, Blanchette headed to the Arghandab Valley.

In August, the battalion's first month in the Arghandab, the Afghan presidential election was the big event. Insurgents had vowed to disrupt the vote.

Berschinski's platoon was supposed to join with an Afghan army unit to protect a polling site. But a few days before the election, the Afghan soldiers who were supposed to act as partners fled.

To Berschinski's surprise, his platoon's mission then shifted. His company commander, Pope, directed the soldiers to scout for potential spots to set ambushes.

On Aug. 18, amid blistering heat, Berschinski and his soldiers entered the thick groves of pomegranate trees.

The day quickly turned deadly.

A bomb exploded, killing a radio operator from another platoon. A second blast detonated as one of Berschinski's men — Pfc. Jonathan Yanney — was crossing a bridge.

Berschinski's platoon stayed in the area and started to recover Yanney's scattered remains.

Then Pope radioed the platoon to push on to another area and meet with him. The search for more body parts would wait until the next day.

Berschinski was shaken by anger and grief. He had lost his first soldier. And why, he wondered, had the platoon even ventured into the orchards rather than sticking with the election-day mission?

After an evening meeting with Pope, Berschinski walked a 25-yard-long trail back to the hut where he would bed down for the night. Suddenly he felt a huge force hit his body. He realized he was lying upside-down in a bomb-blast crater. He reached to touch his legs. They were gone.

Berschinski remembers being dragged out of the hole. He heard soldiers yelling at him to keep his eyes open, followed by the rotor wash of a medevac helicopter. He lost consciousness.

For Berschinski, the war was over.

In September, the 1st Battalion pushed deeper into the orchards and fields along the Arghandab River, moving some soldiers out of fortified bases and into smaller outposts.

Some Bravo Company soldiers moved into an abandoned farm compound with more than a dozen rooms and an outdoor pump that offered refreshing blasts of water to cool off in the stifling afternoon heat. The soldiers nicknamed this place Combat Outpost Outlaw, and they fortified the thick outer wall with sandbags and machine-gun positions.

The surrounding fields and orchards were part of the economic lifeline of southern Afghanistan. From tough hardpan soils, which turned into muck when irrigated, farmers nurtured eggplants, tomatoes, okra, beans and marijuana. Their pomegranate trees produce a ruby-red fruit prized across Afghanistan — and among U.S. soldiers, who sometimes sucked the juice when they ran short of water.

The soldiers would go out on daily patrol, visiting villages and collecting intelligence. Occasionally, a team would venture out at night to set ambushes for the Taliban.

During a morning patrol Sept. 29, company soldiers came under fire. Then, a small group that had remained at the outpost was attacked by insurgents hiding in the orchards.

As the skirmish unfolded, Capt. Pope monitored radio communication from a command tent at a heavily fortified base several miles away. From there, he had the ability to launch long-range firepower — 120-millimeter shells fired from a mortar mounted on top of a Stryker.

McChrystal's directive called for officers to closely scrutinize the use of such indirect fire, weighing the possible gains against the cost of potential civilian casualties.

Pope and the other officers in the command tent wanted to strike the Taliban. Without a request for assistance from the soldiers under fire, or a fix on the enemy position, they shelled a part of the orchard that insurgents had frequented in the past. Then, after getting some coordinates from the field, they unleashed more volleys.

Within a half-hour, angry Afghan villagers brought half a dozen wounded and two dead — a man and a boy — to the outpost in a pickup truck. "They said 'why you are shooting at us? We are not Taliban,' " said an Army translator who interviewed the villagers, and requested anonymity to speak about the incident.

It was a long day for U.S. soldiers who tended to the wounded and believed the Stryker mortars had caused the casualties.

One teenager's side was ripped open, exposing his spleen, according to the soldiers. He was stabilized and evacuated by helicopter. Another's kneecap was blown off by shrapnel, but he acted more concerned about his dead father. Several soldiers, distraught over the injuries, said the American mortar fire should have waited for a call from them.

"If I wanted that fricking (mortar) round, I would have called for the fricking round," said Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Domico.

A distressed Pope initially assumed the injuries were due to the mortars.

He investigated, and by the end of the day came to a different conclusion. He said that the types of wounds were not consistent with the massive trauma normally caused by mortar shells. Instead, he said, the civilians had been hit by crossfire and grenades in a separate skirmish between Afghan army forces and the Taliban.

The day after the mortar incident, Pope attended a meeting at a village medical clinic, hoping to tout his gift of an electrical generator. Instead, he spent most of a morning trying to placate villagers upset about the mortar attack.

"This was not from mortars," Pope declared. "I am a man of honor. If I killed civilians, I would come here on my knees and apologize."

Through the fall, the 1st Battalion's casualties piled up. Road bombs fashioned from jugs of fertilizer upended Strykers, and bombs buried in trails killed and wounded soldiers on foot patrols.

By late November, 21 battalion soldiers had died and dozens were wounded. Tunnell said the casualties would have been even higher had he backed off from his focus on fighting the enemy.

In Bravo Company, many soldiers embraced Tunnell's Arghandab campaign. They believed the Taliban had to be subdued before the civilians would be brave enough to reopen schools or accept American aid.

As infantry soldiers who spent their careers preparing for battle, they took pride in the lethal force they brought to that mission. On a patrol, Bravo Company soldiers ambushed two Taliban who had buzzed through orchard trails on motorcycles. The killings were captured by a camera mounted on a soldier's helmet.

That night, a knot of men at Outpost Outlaw huddled around a computer screen watching a replay of the action. Over and over they freeze-framed an image of the Taliban fighters realizing their peril and making a futile effort to lift their weapons to shoot.

Others within 1st Battalion questioned Tunnell. When an Army Times reporter spent time with Charlie Company, he found some soldiers felt "intense frustration" with a disconnect between the brigade's leadership and McChrystal's approach to the war.

Charlie Company, stationed just across the Arghandab River from Bravo Company for most of the fall, had taken the heaviest casualties in the battalion, losing 12 men. Seven of those soldiers and an Afghan interpreter died in a huge blast that tore apart a Stryker.

Charlie Company's leader, Capt. Joel Kassulke, wanted to put more emphasis on gaining the trust of the civilian population. On the wall of his command post, Kassulke stuck up a quote from McChrystal: "Sporadically moving into an area for a few hours or even a few days solely to search for the enemy and then leave, does little good, and may do much harm."

A superior ordered that the message be taken down.

In a November meeting with Tunnell, Kassulke expressed his concerns about the scope of another big brigade operation against the Taliban.

"Col. Tunnell asked me what I thought, and I gave him an honest opinion," Kassulke told The Seattle Times.

Several days later, Kassulke was transferred out Charlie Company, a move Tunnell said was not due to the questions raised at the meeting.

In December, 1st Battalion soldiers got bitter news. The soldiers were ordered to leave their Arghandab positions and turn over Combat Outpost Outlaw and other outposts to a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division, a North Carolina-based unit.

The valley was hallowed ground, where their buddies had bled and died. Now, they were being shunted aside and transferred to a new, tamer area.

"It felt like getting punted from the first string to the sidelines," one Bravo Company soldier said.

Pope argued against the transfer, taking his case directly to a NATO general. "I thought we had turned the tide," Pope recalled. "I said, 'I know the enemy, and I know the terrain.' But nobody outside the brigade would listen to me."

But there were doubts about the battalion's performance. In an interview with The New York Times, Kevin Melton, a U.S. Agency for International Development official, recalled lecturing Stryker officers: "You guys are enemy-centric and that's not what this is about."

As 82nd Airborne troops moved into the Arghandab, several were openly dismissive of the 1st Battalion soldiers. They said they were undisciplined, failing to keep their hair cut short and properly fix their trousers in or around their boots, a practice known as blousing.

Some 82nd soldiers viewed the battalion's high number of casualties and wrecked Stryker vehicles as additional signs of a troubled unit.

"I actually had a sergeant from the 82nd tell one of my guys, 'I heard you guys couldn't handle it here. That's why we're here,' " a 1st Battalion soldier said.

Stryker soldiers were stung by the criticism. They were certain their battlefield sacrifices had yielded real gains.

When the Strykers had first arrived in the Arghandab, three villages deep in the orchards had been abandoned by farmers who feared the Taliban. By late fall, more than 20 families had returned. Farmers who once shied away from soldiers out on patrol would now openly wave.

And villagers shared more tips about Taliban threats.

In late November, a young boy came up to Outpost Outlaw with news of a buried bomb. Stick in hand, he took the soldiers to a trail a short distance away, but then seemed uncertain about just where to point. Finally, he gestured to a spot directly underneath the feet of Cpl. Wes Pfeil.

"Everybody kind of freaked out," Pfeil recalled.

The boy smiled and pulled a battery out of his pocket. He had already defused the bomb.

In the winter, 1st Battalion soldiers settled into a new routine of patrolling roads and aiding villagers. Most were in the quieter Shah Wali Kot district, just north of the Arghandab. Their work included painting a school, organizing a project to clean out and rebuild a canal, and holding a free medical clinic. They also trained Afghan army soldiers and police.

But for some soldiers, removed from their old terrain, morale plummeted along with the chilly night temperatures.

"We are infantry. We are trained to close and destroy the enemy," said Sgt. Ryan Sharp. "Regardless of what anyone says, that is our job. When we go out and paint the schools, in the back of our mind is 'where are the bad guys?' "

They were also frustrated by new restrictions on their conduct.

They were supposed to remove sunglasses when talking with an Afghan, keep their convoys from backing up local traffic, and take other steps to improve relations with villagers.

And NATO commanders preached the virtues of "courageous restraint," which meant sometimes refraining from firing a weapon even when soldiers believed their lives might be in danger and could justify shooting.

"It kind of got to the point of, 'What are we doing here?' " Pfeil said.

All year long, the battalion's soldiers trickled back to the United States for two weeks of precious home leave. In early April, that time had come for Michael Blanchette.

As commander of Capt. Pope's Stryker vehicle, Blanchette had developed a reputation as a quiet, reliable soldier.

After returning to base, he often preferred to curl up in the Stryker and sleep rather than retire to a tent.

"He just felt the Stryker was his home and that's where he should be. It was strange to the crew," Pope recalled. "But that's the way he liked it."

Occasionally, amid the chatter of the Stryker crew, Blanchette would talk about his daughter, a 2-year-old with dark hair and deep brown eyes.

Arriving back in Western Washington for leave, Blanchette initially seemed upbeat. But his mood soon turned dark. He drank too much vodka, according to Elizabeth, his wife. He also talked about the rigors and risks of duty in Afghanistan, and complained that his work didn't get enough respect.

On the evening of April 11, Blanchette reached for his pistol.

"I got one bullet; goodbye," he told his wife, who tried desperately to persuade him to put the weapon away.

Then the gun went off.

Back in Afghanistan, the unit gathered for a memorial service to honor Blanchette.

"I know that an Army life can take a toll," Pope said. "As we move forward ... I just hope that something can be learned from Sgt. Blanchette's death."

Commanders debated whether Blanchette could be put on the official list of battalion casualties. He was not.

In the spring of this year, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne — the Stryker Brigade's replacement — were keen to show success in the Arghandab. The brigade launched water-development projects and worked in close partnership with the charismatic district governor, Abdul Jabbar.

In May, an 82nd public-affairs team's video touted the Arghandab as a "working model of peace and stability."

Despite the hyperbole, the Arghandab remained a dangerous place filled with Taliban. Jabbar was assassinated in June, and many other government positions went unfilled because of death threats.

The 82nd Airborne lost 13 soldiers. Like its Stryker counterpart, most died from buried bombs.

As the Stryker soldiers neared the end of their tour of duty, they got one last chance to go after the Taliban in the Shah Wali Kot district.

In mid-June, Taliban fighters had chased residents out of some villages and appeared to be scouting a potential attack on Stryker patrol bases, or possibly trying to cut off an important roadway. According to intelligence reports, they were assembling an unusually large force of more than 100 fighters.

Tunnell approved a plan for Charlie Company soldiers to pursue the Taliban through a valley. The operation stretched for five days. The fighting was sometimes fierce and at close quarters as the Taliban initially tried to hold their ground.

Stryker soldiers pounded insurgent positions with artillery, mortars and other weaponry, and called in air attacks.

Water ran short as a convoy bringing relief was hit by a bomb. One soldier was evacuated with severe dehydration.

But the battalion took no serious casualties and killed some 25 Taliban, while Australian forces killed an additional 70. It was a significant setback for the insurgents.

The fight got scant notice back on the homefront, where headlines were dominated by news of a Rolling Stone magazine profile of McChrystal. The general soon resigned over the critical remarks he and his aides had made about Obama administration officials.

By mid-July, all the 1st Battalion soldiers were home.

Meanwhile, the Arghandab, with more than double the number of U.S. forces as a year earlier, remains a battleground.

"Whatever they decide to do with this war, let it be known that our guys died there, and shed their blood, sweat and tears," said Knower, the Bravo Company staff sergeant. "We set the tone there, and the biggest worry that my guys have is that what we did there will be forgotten.

"One thing is certain. If you ask the Taliban, they know who we are."

Postscript

• Capt. James Pope left the battalion in the spring to teach at West Point. "I relive what happened over there every day," Pope said.

He thinks about the bombing that left 1st Lt. Dan Berschinski in a wheelchair. Amid all the confusion that day, Pope said he had intended to order another platoon — not Berschinski's — to the evening rendezvous where the young lieutenant would lose his legs.

• Berschinski has decided to take a medical retirement and go to business school. This summer he flew back to Washington state and, walking on two artificial legs, reunited with his soldiers at a battalion ball.

• In a July ceremony where the brigade gathered at a Lewis-McChord parade field, Col. Harry Tunnell stepped down from his command and headed for a new assignment in Kentucky.

• Elizabeth Blanchette avoided the celebrations but did go to a Joint Base Lewis McChord gymnasium for a late-night gathering of families who awaited a plane full of returning soldiers. There were prayers and a country-music singer who sang a tribute to the troops, then joyful reunions.

"This is about them right now," Blanchette said. "This is about them, coming home."

Seattle Times researcher

David Turim contributed

to this report.