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NAD ALI, Afghanistan — With the sun dropping lower on the baked horizon, two squads of Marines pushed north into the countryside here, uncertain what dangers were ahead.
Stepping out May 24 from Combat Outpost Reilly, the Marines knew a firefight was possible. The night before, insurgents used 82mm mortars and accurate sniper fire to repel a 100-man force of British troops from a nearby village, the Marines said. Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., planned to patrol a few miles farther north than normal, an experiment to see how stiff resistance was in another part of Helmand province.
The answer came at 6:11 p.m., nearly two hours after the second of the two squads left the wire. Shots rang out at the first group — Kilo's 3rd Platoon, 2nd Squad — from about 250 yards to the northeast, as three or four insurgents unloaded a belt-fed 7.62mm PKM machine gun and AK47s. Single AK47 shots snapped by close enough that some of the Marines thought they were under attack by a sniper.
Nearby, members of the company's 3rd Platoon, 3rd Squad, rushed to help. About 350 yards to 2nd Squad's west, they scrambled from compound to compound, close enough that they could hear the staccato crackle of gunfire on the evening air.
"We've got to move one compound to the north!" Cpl. Shane Hume, a team leader with 3rd Squad, barked at his Marines. "They're pinned down and they need our help!"
No Marines were killed or wounded in the attack, but the incident highlights how tenuous the security situation is in and around Marjah, the former Taliban stronghold that Marines assaulted in February. Marjah used to be a part of Nad Ali but was made its own district after the assault. Tens of thousands of civilians live here.
Kilo Company Marines, operating on the eastern outskirts of Marjah, say they have made vast improvements in their primary mission — securing Route 608, the dirt highway that runs east from Marjah, serving as a major transit route for civilians and a military supply line. The improvements, however, have come at the expense of patrolling other parts of their area of operations as frequently as they otherwise could. Kilo is regularly attacked when patrolling south of the highway, and believes it may now be encountering well-trained foreign fighters to the north.
In one instance a few months ago, the Taliban stormed a small village several miles south of COP Reilly and forced several tribal leaders to flee the area, said Staff Sgt. Frank Pomrink, a civil affairs Marine assigned to Kilo Company. Through a translator, Pomrink told one of those leaders who came to the outpost on May 26 that it could take months for Marines to take control of the village.
"We're working on fixing that problem, but it takes time and manpower," Pomrink said. "There just isn't the manpower to do it right now."
Securing the road
COP Reilly — named for Lance Cpl. Thomas Reilly Jr., who died in Iraq in 2008 — was established in February by Lejeune's 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines. The battalion stormed an area east of Marjah known as Five Points, engaging dozens of Taliban fighters where several major roads meet. Chief among them was Route 608, stretching from Marjah to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.
Within weeks, Reilly was turned over to Kilo Company with instructions to secure a six-mile stretch of highway between Marjah and Five Points.
The mission hasn't been easy, but vast improvements have been made since then. The company has set up four fortified observation posts, or OPs, between Marjah and COP Reilly, searching the road daily for improvised explosive devices and the enemies who plant them. Dozens of IEDs have been found, and the road is now considered safe enough that Lt. Col. Brian Christmas, 3/6's battalion commander, recently invited tribal elders to travel it with him.
"Now that we have four OPs open, 608 is much more secure," said Capt. Josh Biggers, Kilo Company commander.
Those OPs have cut down on the Taliban's ability to move up and down the highway, and eliminated one of their favorite practices: Planting IEDs in several culverts below the highway that allow canal water to flow through.
"They did it all the time," said Lance Cpl. Matthew Polizzi, an assaultman with 3rd Platoon. "It's pretty vital that we protect against that, both for us and the civilians."
Kilo's platoons rotate manning the OPs, with a single platoon at a time staying back at Reilly to patrol the immediate area. Company leaders believe many of the fighters Marines tangled with in Marjah during the initial assault evacuated within a few days to Trek Nawa, an area south of Route 608. The company sends out two-squad elements every few days to patrol Trek Nawa, and gets in a firefight nearly every time.
"We could go out there every day, but we have bazaars and other areas of our AO that are good," said 1st Lt. Adam Franco, commander of Kilo's 3rd Platoon. "If we don't keep going [to the good parts], they're going to flip again."
An organized attack
Kilo's situation is further complicated by a likely new problem to the north: foreign fighters.
Marines on the May 24 patrol pushed back the insurgents without taking any casualties, but the attack gave the unit pause. The insurgents, fighting in at least one group of three or four, ambushed 2nd Squad with precision tactics and an organized team manning the PKM.
"When the Taliban has engaged us in the past, it's always been out at 500 meters," Franco said. "This was at 250 meters. That PKM team, it was a three-man team, and they seemed to fight too doctrinal to be your local Taliban, who's getting caught up in the moment and picking up an AK47."
A second group of insurgents opened fire on 3rd Squad as it responded, using AK47s to force the Marines and two Marine Corps Times journalists into a compound. Polizzi, taking point on part of the push to assist 3rd Squad, had a single 7.62mm round whiz by his right ear.
"They had us pinned down for a minute," he said. "It's not a good feeling when they can see you and you can't see them."
It's unclear where the fighters may be from originally.
The ambush occurred in an area that had been peaceful when the Marines first took over Five Points, Marines said. As the British have struggled to lock up their area of operations to the north, however, some of the fighters there have trickled into southern Nad Ali, terrain the British and Kilo Company share. To the north, several British troops had sniper rounds glance off their helmets, and a British sniper's rifle was hit in the bipod by an insurgent sniper nearby, Franco said.
The Marine patrol pushed off in sections, with 2nd Squad leaving COP Reilly at about 4 p.m. and 3rd Squad following a half-hour later. Second Squad swept ahead, establishing over-watch positions so 3rd Squad could safely patrol open land crisscrossed by canals that needed to be hurdled and boot-sucking fields that had been flooded by farmers earlier in the day. The temperature had cooled considerably from its 100-degree peak earlier in the day, but it was still hot enough that the Marines' shirts clung to their backs.
For more than an hour, the patrol passed uneventfully. Marines interviewed several neighbors along the way to collect census information, and continued to press north into territory they patrolled less frequently. In tandem, the squads worked north within a half-mile of each other, communicating frequently.
It was about 6 p.m. when things began to look sinister. Second Squad detected men running back and forth in a tree line several hundred yards to their north — a possible indicator of a coming ambush. Marines traveling with 3rd Squad observed another man 200 yards to the north in a green tunic, pointing them out to another man on a motorcycle, who sped away.
"That's always how it starts," said Hospitalman Novice Brandon Echols, 3/3's corpsman, watching the man in the green tunic. "One guy pointing."
Ten minutes later, the shooting began. Third Squad eventually engaged the enemy in a tree line to the east using gunfire and high-explosive 40mm rounds fired from an M203 launcher. At least one attacker was hit, the Marines said. The firefight tapered off at about 6:30, when two Cobra gunship helicopters roared in overhead.
The two squads of Marines fanned through the area looking for clues and the bodies of dead insurgents. Spent rounds from the PKM and AK47s were eventually found in a two-story building to the east where the attack was first initiated on 2nd Squad, the Marines said.
Third Squad regrouped in another compound after 7 p.m. They trudged home under cover of darkness, crossing fields and canals before walking the last mile home on Route 608.
