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In the „Kill Zone"

For hours, Bundeswehr troops fought in an ambush of the Taleban on Good Friday. The stern researched the chronicle of the longest battle in which German soldiers have been involved since World War II, and in which three of them lost their lives

By Christoph Reuter

Good Friday 2010 begins as a beautiful day in Kunduz. The fruit trees are blooming, the sun is shining spring-warm like in Germany in May. At the Bundeswehr camp, as every Friday it is „base day", off duty before noon for most.

Surgeon Major Jens B. is up early as always, has done sports first. His company sergeant Severin S. takes his laundry to the reception point of Ecolog, the laundry contractor, at noon.

For Captain Jan S. Friday starts quietly, too. From his forward position he can observe the road at the village of Isa Khel, were everything goes according to plan.

Until everything changes.

On Wednesday already, 1st Infantry Company under the command of Captain Jan S. had moved out from the Bundeswehr camp at Kunduz to stay for several days at the police headquarters of Chahar Dara and at two outposts. On „Hill 431" and, a little further down the road, „Hill 432", the men sleep in trenches, protected from the rain by tarpaulins. An environment „about like I imagine World War One", Jan S. bundles it: „We're holding a hill, living in trenches and trying to expand our territory against the enemy towards the South."

The company with its 125 men has three platoons deployed: G or Golf Platoon, to which minesweepers have been attached, F as in Foxtrott Platoon and H as in Hotel Platoon, equipped with Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles. At night, drones are flying over the area, fitted with thermal imaging cameras. They spot nothing suspicious, except for a man who is obviously burying something besides the road called „Little Pluto" between the police headquarters and Hill 431. He vanishes when the drone goes lower, but resurfaces after an hour.

Good Friday, April 2nd, 8 o'clock To clear up what the man has buried, Golf Platoon sets out and investigates the place. After an hour comes the all-clear, Golf drives up to Hill 432, Hotel follows.

0915 hours Both platoons meet at Hill 432, follow Little Pluto to the South until the turn-off towards Isa Khel.

1130 hours First of all they are clearing the road 150, 200 meters South of the intersection so they can place the two Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles with their 20 mm guns there. They are to secure the actual IED sweep, the detection and disarming of Improvised Explosive Devices. The minesweepers find nothing.

Captain Jan S. sits down into the shade of a ditch, warms himself an EPA, one of the unloved food packets. Everything is quiet, „really, it was a nice, sunny day." Men are working in the fields. A couple hundred meters East, villagers have congregated for a celebration.

All the time, drones are circling above the scenery. On Hill 432, the air control officer can see the images of the drones on his „Rover" screen and would in case of an emergency be responsible for the coordination of American close air support, CAS, pronounced as „kess".

1230 hours The two Marders have been brought into position, the others have returned to the intersection, the actual sweep of the road to Isa Khel can begin. A scout team of four has walked along a small bypass road and through the hamlet of Sar-e-Asa to keep an eye on the road from the other end. They have talked to some villagers, the atmosphere seems relaxed.

But the area is delicate, a patchwork carpet of ethnic allegiances and fragile loyalities: Isa Khel is inhabited by Pashtuns and controlled by Taleban, in the suburb again Usbeks are living who are not openly resisting the Taleban, but do not want to support them openly either. Rather have moved away in many cases.

On various positions, the vehicles of Golf Platoon have pulled up: four Dingos, a Fuchs Armored Personnel Carrier with the minesweepers, a Fuchs with the radio signal jammer to prevent remote detonations of explosive charges. There is also a Dingo with Belgian minesweepers. About 20, 25 men have dismounted, have left the protection of the vehicles.

The minesweepers ahead, who are cautiously walking the road and shoulders with their probes, the column is moving ahead.

In the camp, the commander, the civilian head from the Foreign Office and the responsible officers have congregated for the morning situation briefing, which starts around noon on Fridays. Each of them speaks, nobody reports any special occurrences. Everything quiet.

Shortly before 1300 hours In Isa Khel, a man with a shovel walks past the compound inside which the celebration takes place. A signal, as the German soon notice: The guests begin to leave. In the fields, the men are vanishing, too.

Still everything is quiet.

Circa 1302 hours From the East, suddenly the four men of the scout team are shot at.

Seconds later, shots are following from the South and West. Over a length of 700, 800 meters, the Bundeswehr soldiers are attacked, with Kalashnikovs, PK machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Within the first moments already, one of the four scouts gets it, Marc P., who is hit thrice in the leg, „feeling something hot", pain, the pounding of the blood.

He is lying in a field, none of his comrades can get to him. For from the irrigation ditches partially fallen dry, from scrub and fortress-like walled compunds, they are fired at. From 70 to several hundred meters distance, without much pause and targeted. Maybe 30, 40, maybe more Taleban are attacking.

1305 hours At the „Tactical Operations Center" of the camp, simply called the TOC by everybody, the first emergency call comes in: „Lightning Strike", an attack on the troops. The situation briefing dissolves immediately, commander Reinhardt Zudrop orders the deployment of the „Immediate Reaction Force", IRF, a platoon of 30 men.

Surgeon Major Jens B. hurries to the rescue center, to coordinate the recovery and treatment of the injured from there. Captain Jan S. has leaped from the intersection into the cover of the ditch, knowing about the events only from his radio at first. Until he manages to get back to his Dingo.

The attackers are hardly visible, diving away, changing position. At the other end of the road, the soldiers are trying to fight their way to the wounded when Specialist Robert Hartert is hit by a bullet. At first it is not at all obvious how severely he is injured. But soon he becomes pale, loses pulse and consciousness. Surgeon Major Jens B. dispatches a „9-line-report", requests a Medevac, one of the American Blackhawk helicopters which have medics and equipment on board and can recover injured even from combat zones. In parallel, the personnel of the rescue center is alerted to prepare for shock room treatment.

1315 hours At the camp in Kunduz the report comes in that the police headquarters of Chahar Dara really the safest place of retreat in proximity to the combat zone is also under heavy fire by 30, 40 insurgents. Elements of the security company are moving out of the camp to reinforce.

1320 hours The second wounded is reported to the TOC.

At the same time, the Immediate Reaction Force sets out for Chahar Dara. In the combat zone, Golf Platoon cannot advance directly over the road, of which nobody knows whether there are still IEDs hidden. Instead, the platoon has to come over the bypass road. The first injured, Marc P., is still lying in the field, 30 meters off the path. Nobody can get close to him, the firing from the Taleban is keeping up, and Jan S. puzzles „that they don't run out of ammunition."

Private First Class Martin Augustyniak, one of the first arriving with the reinforcements, all of a sudden feels a terrible blow. A shot has cleanly penetrated his helmet, but by that lost so much hitting power that not more than the shock and a grazing wound remain. He is treated by the medics and emergency medical technicians in the platoon, can fight on after a few minutes. „Today's my lucky day", he says. At that point, he has one hour and fourty minutes to live.

1330 hours Specialist and radioman of Golf Platoon Patrick P. is standing far forward, sees how the heaviest fire is coming out of three walled compounds to the East, feels how bullets from several directions are impacting a clay wall above him.

1350 hours A Medevac and the armed helicopter always accompanying it are lifting off from the camp. Almost at the same time the „Mobile Surgeon Team" arrives from Hill 432, can first of all recover heavily injured Robert Hartert and take him to the preliminary heli landing zone: a field at the start of the access road.

Then the team has to go several hundred meters under fire along the road again, back where the first injured is still lying. They are leaping from the protection of one car into the cover of the next, until they have recovered und taken him to the landing zone, too.

As the emergency medical technician, a sergeant in her early 20s, will relate later: „I was worried about my doc, who is a family father after all. As commander of the vehicle I made the decision that I would dismount then, because I have no family. I exchanged a handshake with my driver yet, since I was aware into what a danger I'm running." She runs twice.

Besides and above her, bullets impact. A comrade helps her to bring the injured more than a hundred meters through the fire, pulling and carrying them on a recovery blanket.

1428 hours The crew of the Medevac helicopter reports: „We're shot at!" Staff Sergeant Travis Brown, the medic, and the two pilots offer to land in the zone of fire anyway. Brown: „We always say we're getting everybody out, no matter how but it was really not the best situation."

1435 hours Brown lands with the first Medevac at the camp, they have Robert Hartert on board whom they have ceaselessly tried to resuscitate.

Circa 1445 hours From three sides, the soldiers are under fire. Impoossible to get to the injured. Platoon leader Mario K. on the radio: „Golf to all: fire concentration on compound." With everything they still got, his men are firing into the direction of the attackers to win the one and a half minute of breathing space for the recovery of the wounded.

Circa 1448 hours Two heavily injured have been recovered. Slowly, the men of Golf Platoon are running out of ammunition. They want to „evade", meaning: out of the „kill zone". Backwards, the column is pushing through the winding clay road, the men besides the vehicles, shooting. Better than being in the Dingo, which rather resembles „a rolling aquarium in which you can sit and hope that nothing happens to you", per radioman Patrick P. A Fuchs and a Dingo yet make it across the intersection when Patrick P. feels a terrible blow, sees a smoke pillar rising before him and debris raining down.

Except for the driver and the gunner, the crews have been running alongside the trucks to „bring the fire at the enemy in the protection of their armor, as Patrick P. says. Several vehicles had been driving across that intersection and retour in the two hours before without anything that would have happened.

But now a massive explosive charge has detonated under the Dingo that had been driving 50 meters in front of Patrick P.'s truck, remotely ignited by wire or radio signal. It had probably long been lying there, Captain S. later assumes, to secure the access to the village in which some of the local Taleban leaders are supposed to live. „And now they saw the chance to blow it."

The proximity to the vehicle offered protection from shots. Also, the machine gun on its rooftop had already broken down from overheating. But in the explosion, the proximity became a deadly trap. Five men had been running besides the Dingo, among them Martin Augustyniak: the Private First Class who in the middle of the fire had tried to help the first injured. Who had had such good luck, that yet lasted only so short.

Martin Augustyniak is not going to survive, Sergeant First Class Nils Bruns is also killed by the detonation.

The three others are heavily injured. Inside the Dingo, the driver comes away with a light head injury, the gunner gets it in the spinal column.

Patrick P. and the others tend to the injured with dressings and morphine auto-injectors that every soldiers has on him to inject himself too, if need be. But the men are not getting off that spot. They are shot at from three sides again, the heaviest out of the compounds from the East.

Other platoons have given them Panzerfausts and special „Bunkerfausts", of which 15 or 16 are shot off in those hours, as are two Milan anti-tank missiles to breach the meter-thick clay walls. After a while the three compounds are on fire, but still there is shooting out of them. The tough as much as flexible clay „practically sucks up the shots, per Patrick P.: „My platoon leader ever more desperately called on the radio: 'What else must hapen before we're getting CAS?'", „Close Air Support", bombs from the air by the circling F-15 jets. The first men are breaking into tears. „It was just too much for one day." Who still can, fights: the remaining men of both platoons, the reinforcements from Hill 432 and the IRF, which mostly takes wounded to the landing zone.

On his screen on Hill 432, the air control officer sees women and probably children within the compounds and eventually decides against a bombing.

1457 hours The rescue center reports that Robert Hartert has succumbed to his injuries.

1500 hours At the intersection near Isa Khel, the follow-on Dingos are stuck, the wreck is blocking the way. But the shots have suddenly stopped. For a couple minutes it remains calm. Why that is so, about that the men can only puzzle: „Maybe the enemies didn't see anything for dust anymore, maybe they thought we were all dead. Or they wanted to observe what precisely we were going to do now." Jan S. shrugs his shoulders.

After a few minutes the shooting begins anew but so heavily as it has hardly been at any point in the past two hours. „That was clearly aimed at eradication", platoon leader Maro K. later says matter-of-factly. Again the medics have to jump from cover to cover to retrieve the wounded.

Eventually they succeed in ramming the wreck of the Dingo aside. Captain S. requests its demolition. For endless minutes, the men remove the radios and other equipment. The minesweepers have three kilos of plastic explosives with them, spread it inside the interior.

1523 hours Two Medevacs and the escort helicopter take off again. Sergeant Tony Gattis hears „such a pop pop pop. I turned around, who's shooting there. But it came from below."

1537 hours Inside 15 minutes, the three helicopter crews have managed to take on two of the injured and one dead and come back to the camp. Sergeant Tony Gattis salutes before the dead: „I knew the men too, after all, we're living here together. The Germans cared absolutely professional for the wounded!" At the same time, the security company reports from the police headquarters some kilometers away: „Engaged in firefight!"

1546 hours The rescue center reports that Nils Bruns, too, has fallen.

1548 hours From Camp Marmal at Mazar-e-Sharif, the logistical center of the German contingent, the two requested CH-53 helicopters and a Transall take off to receive wounded in Kunduz.

1600 hours A sandstorm is coming up from the West. If more soldiers were wounded now the helicopters could not fly anymore. At the rescue center, company sergeant Severin J., the surgeons and medics are standing before the men of whom they have known many for years and do not recognize some at first view.

„I thought to myself, that can't be true", Severin J. remembers, „I delayed the 'outbound' reports because we had to be absolutely sure after all, compared pictures until we had certainty."

1629 hours Captain S. reports to the TOC that the destroyed Dingo has been blown up and Golf Platoon and his Foxtrott Platoon are retreating to the hills. The totally exhausted Golf Platoon and the IRF roll ahead to the somewhat farther Hill 431, Foxtrott with Captain S. takes position on 432. A third of the men from Golf Platoon is dead or wounded. In the end the machineguns and automatic grenade launchers had run out of ammunition, „we only had what the rifleman got on him anymore", radioman Patrick F. will say later. Golf platoon is first to be ordered back into the camp at Kunduz. They have lost three men, but „if I hadn't had such a damn well-trained platoon, even more of us would have fallen", platoon leader Mario K. is sure.

1709 hours Three more injured are airlifted from Kunduz to Mazar.

1731 hours The rescue center passes the new status: Three fallen, four heavily injured.

The lightly wounded are not even included. Later, Bundeswehr surgeons in Mazar and Germany will establish that none of the three dead could have been saved even if they had landed directly on the operating table of the best emergency hospital in Germany. Of the four heavily injured, three probably would not have survived if they had not been tended to so quickly, first in the field, then on the helicopters and eventually at the rescue center.

There, the surgeons and medics have treated wounded for hours, wiped away the blood in short breaks, sat down in the yard for a coffee, a cigarette.

Pale, turned to stone, tearless.

„That only came later", their chief Jens B. will describe the conflict to have friends and comrades lying before them half-dead, „but at the same time having to function, to make no mistakes. That was the most difficult, „that we all know each other among us. Know the dead, too." He does not say: knew.

1804 hours The remainders of Golf platoon reach the camp at Kunduz.

Circa 1915 hours 2nd Company moves out to relieve the fighting. Rumors are circulating that the Taleban want to blow up the bridges. Nothing of that sort happens, but all are highly tense and angry.

Then the Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles encounter two Ford Rangers of the Afghan Army at Chahar Dara.

1940 hours For encounters like this, light signals are agreed between the commands of the forces to recognize each other.

There are only seconds remaining, both convoys are driving towards each other, already close to the combat zone. The first Marder sends the signals, but the Afghans do not reply. The gunner of the first Marder fires the autocannon at the two oncoming vehicles. Six of the Afghan soldiers die.

They were carrying provisions for their troops. The Bundeswehr soldiers are shocked. The next day Brigadier General Frank Leidenberger, the commander of the German contingent, will make his condolences to the allies. Chancellor Merkel will express her sympathy to President Karzai by telephone.

0050 hours Captain Jan S. arrives at the camp in Kunduz with the last men of 1st Infantry Company.

A few hours later all participants will begin to go through the details of the action.

What could have been avoided, what gone differently? From Germany will come complaints about the training, demands for ever heavier weapons, up to main battle tanks.

Jan S. and Specialist Patrick S. are sitting together a week after Good Friday and are weighing their answer. Training deficits?

There just were too few Dingos in Germany for the driver training, but in that regard there had been no mistakes made at Isa Khel. To have more, different weapons would be good but they would have hardly made a difference for the progress of the battle.

In Germany, among soldiers too, the discussion will go on, most of all about the question why the Bundeswehr has no helicopters that can fly missions under fire.

Approaching 2 o'clock Company Sergeant Severin J., the medical company's „Top", has been in action for twelve hours. Now, as all the others have gone, he begins with the casketing of the dead.

„I did that only at night on purpose. I didn't want their comrades to witness that." He stays until 3 o'clock in the morning, gently takes from the neck of one of the three the medaillon with the photo of his family.

Severin J. knew when he came to Kunduz for a surveying trip in 2009 that this might become part of his mission. And did an internship with a funeral firm in Bremen. „That was important for this moment, not having to think about it, but to simply know how to do it as respectfully as possible."

April 3rd, in the morning Severin J. will hang off the refrigerating containers with wine-red cloth, lay out green carpet before them, put up a small awning, place the three pictures of the fallen and tea lights besides them. On the table in the middle, between two candles, he will put the condolence book into which those saying goodbye can enter their names from twelve o'clock at noon on.

All day and all through the night until the coming morning at eight, the line will not stop.

Until farewell formation begins.

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Three Warriors

Five years ago in Afghanistan, a Bundeswehr unit got into an ambush of the Taleban. Back then, the lives of three men intersected. One lost an eye. One his fighters. One his soul.

By Jan Christoph Wiechmann

They were three warriors. Mutschke. Habib. And LaCrosse. A soldier of the German Bundeswehr. A Taleban commander. A pilot of the US Army. They met in the North of Afghanistan, on Good Friday five years ago. Meeting is overstating it. They were facing off, in battle. They shot at each other. And they hit.

At first glance the three man have not much in common. Except that they were warriors with body and soul. But on 2 April 2010, their lives interwove in dramatic fashion. In hindsight it can be said that their real war only began afterward. They are asking themselves: Who was shooting at whom back then? Who won the battle? And who the war? How do you live with war? And how without it?

Accompanying the three warriors stretched across five years and led to various places of the world: to California and Maine, into the East of Germany and the Upper Palatinate, to Kabul and Kunduz. There their story starts, in the district of Tshar Darah, on the morning of 2 April. Actually it was a peaceful day, Specialist Maik Mutschke recalls. Without incident, he and 25 comrades of "Golf" platoon reached the edge of the little village of Isa Khel towards 9.15 hours, with four Dingos, army vehicles, two Fuchs infantry fighting vehicles and the "desire for some action". Their mission was to clear the access roads of explosive charges and win back the villages controlled by Taleban. Mutschke recalls the tingle in the stomach and his ravenous appetite for chocolate. That he can remember every detail says a lot about this day, and what he made the soldier Maik Mutschke from Döbern in Brandenburg.

It was a day like any other, Commander Habib remembers by contrast, leader of a local Taleban unit. He merely believes to recall that he and his 13 men assembled soon after sunrise to lure the Germans into an ambush. They entrenched themselves between clay huts und waited with tea and flatbread and a good joint.

In any case, two very different sharpshooters were facing off. The novice Mutschke, 24, war experience: four weeks. He is a paratrooper of Battalion 373, 1.85 meters tall, 110 kilo of weight, a bear of a man. Equipped he was with a G3ZF assault rifle and a pistol, with bulletproof vest, combat knife KM 2000 and a battle helmet of aramid. And on the other side Habib, 38, married, six kids, 25 years of war experience, 1.75 meters small, the body a field of scars. Equipped he was with an old Kalashnikov, turban and worn-out sandals.

For Mutschke it was war for the first time in his life. For Habib, war was life. Mutschke is asking himself to this day what the war is making of him. Habib is rather asking what he is making of war.

About 10 kilometers away, in the field camp of Kunduz, Captain John LaCrosse, 35, the third protagonist of the battle, was meanwhile starting his day. He went to the gym and watched movies about the Second World War. LaCrosse, pilot of a medical unit of the US Army, had been to Kosovo, to Iraq, and three times to Afghanistan. Unlike Mutschke and Habib, he did not feel like action. He had already experienced everything. So he thought.

In the village of Isa Khel, Mutschke's superior, Master Sergeant Naef Adebahr, sent a drone airborne towards 12.30 hours. It was to spy on positions, but crashed. Recovery was risky, yet the deputy platoon leader detached nine paratroopers to look for the drone costing about 60,000 Euro. The first in a string of errors, on this assessment Mutschke and Habib agree. Soon afterwards the fatal order went out that part of the reconnaissance party should return, so that only four German soldiers remained in the wheat field, among them Maik Mutschke, called Maiki, the best shot of his unit, the man with the calm hand.

Most of all Mutschke recalls the quiet. Why are the peasants scurrying behind walls, like they wanted to get into position? And why the hell is he standing on this unprotected field like open season was declared? Only about 80 meters away, the Taleban are aiming their Kalashnikovs. How amateurish those Germans are, Habib thought to himself. Putting themselves into the field like unprotected game. They may have the best equipment, but do not know the area. They have high-tech drones, but cannot find their enemies at 80 meters. Then, towards 13 hours, the first shot broke.

Shooting anything that moves

As always in war, each side has its own truth, clouded by memories, filtered in the purification stages of propaganda. If there is anything like agreement between Bundeswehr and Taleban at all, it is about two very dissimilar enemies facing off in the following nine hours.

A meeting with Commander Habib is not easy. The way alone is an adventure. It leads from a contact in Kabul to a middleman in Kunduz. He accommodates us in a downtown hideout. The next morning, his driver takes us to a house under guard on the edge of town. The owner knows Habib from a shared youth.

About an hour later, four armed men arrive. In an empty room, they are sitting crosslegged on the carpet. We have rice and flatbread come in, oranges and pistachios. The men are eating with their fingers and munching, they are drinking Sprite. Commander Habib is wearing a dark-green cape and a grey turban. In his hair, first grey streaks are glinting. He is sitting barefoot in the cold, in his look is a smile which does not seem friendly, more challenging. Maybe that is because he has only one eye left. The left one he lost in a battle on the border with Tajikistan. "He looks like Mullah Omar", one of his companion says. Everybody laughs there. Only Habib does not laugh. He says: "I took a lot. But also gave a lot." Habib wants to make it clear that he is the best sharpshooter in the area.

The third burst already hit Master Sergeant Adebahr, he suffered through-and-though shots in the upper and lower tigh, and a grazing shot in the foot. For some minutes there on the edge of the village of Isa Khel, this asymmetric war of drones and infrared cameras, of bombs and suicide attacks turned into a, one might almost say: battle of equals. Man against man. Both sides aimed for anything that moved.

After just a few minutes, a shot hit Commander Habib into the lower tigh. A burning pain, but the main artery was unhurt, he stated, nothing that would keep him from fighting on. He did not need surgery, he also - unlike the Germans - received no therapy or medals. Things get delicate upon further inquiry. Now it is about killing. About the moment you purposefully extinguish the life of a human being.

Unlike Habib, Mutschke initially evades the question. Our first talk occurs in a paratrooper barracks in Lower Saxony, in early summer 2011. Mutschke is surrounded by two public action officers and the "Ombudsman for the Deployment-damaged of Airborne Brigade 31".

Did you hit?, I ask him.

"Don't know. You just shoot. You don't see everything after all."

How is the moment in which you shoot to kill?

"You're just doing your job. You try to not think much about it."

In later talks, Mutschke is approaching the truth. There he says: "Anybody would shoot. It's this duel: you or I. You want to apply what you train for for four years for once, too."

A year later, he says: "I'd like to know how many we hit, after all. Can't you find out?"

If you ask Habib whether he killed the Germans, he says: "That is what it's about. I have no scruples to kill."

How many have you killed in your life?

"Surely 200", he says.

LaCrosse, the pilot, says: "In all our missions, we eliminated over 100 enemies. They didn't deserve differently." Only later, after years, he modifies his view. There he says: "I don't like killing. I take the son from the father. The father from the son."

Their statements cannot be checked. The Taleban tend to exaggerate, the Germans to play it down. One only ever simulated war. The other always lived it.

Towards 13.15 hours, the situation in the wheat field was becoming ever more dicey for Maik Mutschke and his three comrades. The shots were now coming from all sides, the four were isolated. Mutschke recognized that his injured superior Adebahr could no longer execute command, also they were running out of ammunition. One had to make contact with the main platoon 300 meters away now.

And so Mutschke ran off blazing. 110 kilos body weight plus 30 kilos of equipment, the G3 at hip height, into the middle of the enemy position, 300 long meters across the stubbly wheat field.

It is the moment you cannot train for, in which people fail or grow beyond themselves. Mutschke says today: "In that moment I had no fear of dying, just unbridled will. You think: I don't get hit. When I realize today what I did, I think: madness. What would have happened if I hadn't made it? Then I'd have hung massacred in a propaganda video."

Mutschke reaches the men of the main platoon, they got out the injured Adebahr and the others. Later, Mutschke receives the Honor Cross for Bravery and a combat medal for this.

In the ambush

In the field camp of Kunduz meanwhile the news spread that "Golf" platoon has gotten into an ambush. LaCrosse, who can hear the battle noise even in his room, asked: "If there are injured, why aren't we called?" The German comrades told him: "We don't fly into the battlezone." He replied: "We do." He calls what now followed a battle of two philosophies, of German reluctance and of American "can do", a mirror image of this whole war. Valuable time was lost, at one point he withdrew to his room in frustration.

Meanwhile the Taleban were encircling "Golf" platoon from three sides, about 80 fighters were involved. In front of Mutschke, his mate Robert Hartert collapsed without a sound. A bullet had hit him in the upper body. Hartert. From the East like him, soccer player with SG Motor Wilsdruff, only 25.

At this point, Mutschke always becomes quiet. It is now about dying. He talks about everything, but not about the dying comrade in his arm.

Habib by contrast says: "That is part of ever day. War is dying. I lost 60 men. They are with Allah."

LaCrosse says: "I have lost many comrades. Their images are haunting me to this day. The only thing worse are those of dying kids."

After another battle of words, LaCrosse finally got the okay for the flight. Inside seven minutes he was airborne, together with his medic Travis Brown and a second Blackhawk which was to blaze the way for him. But then he got a radio call: Return immediately. The mission is too dangerous.

"I thought about it for a moment", LaCrosse relates. "Can't refuse orders. Can't abandon injured either. So I said: Cannot understand anything. Got problems with the radio connection."

But is that not refusing an order? LaCrosse grins. "You cannot write this as long as I'm in the Army. I'll get fired."

The first meeting with LaCrosse takes place in his house in the Upper Palatinate. The American pilot lives there with his wife Michaela and two kids. For 16 years he has been based in Bavaria. Unlike Habib, LaCrosse talks without a penchant for self-glorification. Unlike Mutschke, he talks without a penchant for irony.

"So we're going in. 13 hours. Want to land. But shots everywhere. Pop. Pop. Like popcorn. A rocket explodes below us. Two shots piercing the rotor. But Blackhawks are tough. We're breaking off the first landing. Approach faster. I'm advised: touchdown impossible. Landing zone too hot. I reply: Cold enough for me. My attack bird shoots some Taleban out of my way. Then we land. Take the two injured on board. Are on the flight back. Then we hear the explosion."

On the ground, another fatal order went out. In the middle of the village the Dingo tried to turn, then a boobytrap got remote-detonated. The explosion killed two more German soldiers. Maik Mutschke was heavily hit, too, the bomb tore up his face and the left arm. He is saying it like this: "You could see from the open throat up into the jaw. There it was off duty for me."

There Mutschke was lying in the dust of Isa Khel and seemed doomed. A medic was with him. For the case of the case, he had handed a song to his brother-in-law. He was to play it at his funeral, "Born to Live" by the group Unheilig. "You think about dying after all", Mutschke admits. "That you maybe will never come home."

About the attack, Mutschke initially says: "That was cowardly and devious." Later, after years, he is also seeing the other side: "That was well-planned by the Taleban. Those are people who know their business."

Does he not feel any hate? "In the beginning I did", Mutschke replies. And today? "They're fighting against their invaders after all. But boobytraps are still devious."

Habib answers: "Boobytraps are not my thing, but they create equality in battle. The Germans have drones, aircraft and tanks. There is a division of tasks in the Taleban: the clerics, the bombmakers and the warriors. I am a warrior. I find direct killing more honest."

After the attack, LaCrosse flew back into the battle and took in the next injured. There he saw Mutschke - as a bundle of dressings and blood -, "an image which has burned itself into my brain". Four times the Blackhawks went back and forth, they collected wounded and dead, they fought the Taleban from the air and signalled to the Germans where the enemy was. They turned things around, Habib admits with gritted teeth.

No fear of dying?, I ask LaCrosse, too. "I don't mind getting shot at. I love the adrenaline."

After more than eight hours, the battle of Isa Khel concluded. The Bundeswehr experienced the worst hours of its 60-year history. It suffered three dead and eight injured, the Taleban lost more than a dozen fighters.

Who won? If you believe Mutschke, the battle ended a draw. "They gonna have really puked that they only killed so few."

LaCrosse, all analytic, says: "Really the Germans. They prevailed against a numerically superior enemy. Still it was a loss. The people have been against the deployment ever since. Afghanistan is the German Vietnam."

Habib sees a clear victory of the Taleban, proof that a group of warriors in sandals can bring a highly equipped high-tech army to its knees.

The three only agree on one point. Who will win this war? There they all say: Nobody.

The reward for killing

Some weeks later, the battle of Isa Khel is forgotten in the public. But not for the three warriors. Maik Mutschke is resuscitated three times and flown to Germany the same day yet. Not 24 hours later he undergoes surgery in Koblenz, it is the first of twelve operations. The doctors are dealing with kidney failure, internal burns, a blasted face. The parents should expect the worst, they say.

Ramona and Andreas Mutschke are spending every day at the bedside of their son, for ten weeks. They see him fighting in a coma, like he was carrying on with the battle. His doctor says: “Only very few are surviving something like this. Maik’s fitness made the difference. And this unbelievable will to fight.”

That is a difference between the warriors, too. Mutschke is fighting death. Habib by contrast is almost longing for it. He did, from his view, clean house for Allah. He has overexceeded his plan target.

After four weeks, Mutschke awakens from the coma. His first way leads before the mirror. He sees a man there whom he does not recognize. To take the worries from his mother he says: “I still got one eye after all. We’ll carry this off all right.” Six months he spends in hospital, followed by rehab, therapies, a glass eye, “a new shoulder orthesis for the price of a used car”. He gets an individual payment of 150,000 Euro, a disability pension, even gets paid a training to become a ski teacher. “I’d rather have my face back”, Mutschke says.

The Taleban by contrast are paying success-dependent. For Habib and his unit, there is a lump sum: 100,000 Afghani per month, 1,600 Euro. From this he pays motorbikes, gas, food, clothing. Beyond this, the performance principle applies. Habib is judged by the number of victims. Good Friday 2010 was his best payday.

Afterwards, his life changes. Soon after the battle, the Bundeswehr takes Isa Khel and launches a counteroffensive. It increases pressure on the village elders, it offers the incentives of “counter insurgency”, builds bridges, roads, wells. The village elders in turn now increase pressure on people like Habib. They issue him an ultimatum: Either we surrender you, or you join the CIP; a kind of citizen militia, which gets paid by the Bundeswehr and US Army.

A change of sides? A downgrade to scout? He can only do war after all. Habib already fought the Russians at 14. He was the youngest of ten kids, can neither read nor write. As others enter puberty, so he entered war. He agrees with a heavy heart. As many Taleban, he is not as ideological as often portrayed. He cares less about the death of the unbelievers than about money and power. In the language of the West: about the career perspective.

Returning is more difficult for Jason LaCrosse. After his sixth deployment he was looking forward to his tranquil village, but now he cannot begin anything with it. At day he goes on risky mountainbike tours. In the nights, he wakes up soaked in sweat. He takes the war with him to bed, into the woods, into the battle of words with his wife. These are the signs of a post-traumatic disorder. But he is not only tortured by the images of dead bodies and the smell of burning human flesh. Most of all it is the question: Why did I not save more soldiers?

But you were the hero!, I object to him. “I failed”, he counters. “Hartert was still alive. If we had gone out earlier, he could now sit here.”

You saved seven others! “But lost one. That’s getting to me.”

LaCrosse is sitting at the kitchen table, the youthful face buried between his hands. You hear the ticking of a clock, the mooing of a cow. He has to interrupt the talk. You expected a hero and are meeting a broken man.

It is paradoxical, LaCrosse and Mutschke find today. They are the heros of Isa Khel, and at the same time the victims. On the first anniversary of the battle, the men are seeing each other for the first time. They say no word. They hug. And cry.

Mutschke makes progress in health, but does not know where to go with himself. We are meeting at irregular periods, in the barracks and at his place. His parents describe him as one who came into the world as a warrior already. From being little he went into the woods with his father, a former DDR soldier, carrying as much military equipment as a kid can just carry. He was a boy who had too much power. One for the woods, not for classrooms.

They are sitting around the eating table: father, mother, sister, Maik, a closely-linked family. On the wall hangs a postcard from Afghanistan: “So, my dear parents, it’s Easter. The first time Easter without family. We will make the best of it with the boys. Your junior.”

Mutschke is initially disappointed in his superiors. They have left him alone, first in the war and then in his war afterwards. He is to be trained as a matériel control soldier. “I’m no longer being used for shooting, but for schlepping batteries” Not the injury is the worst, but the senselessness, he finds. Half his body may be gone, but not his personality after all.

In the street, people are staring at him. They are seeing a face they only know from horror movies. When passersby politely ask for the cause, he explains it to them. When they gape, he is gaping back. Once one explains to him that it serves him right. That is what gets to Mutschke most: The Germans do not have to like vwar after all, but they could feel with their wounded soldiers.

Habib by contrast is reaping admiration for his looks. “The crueler, the better”, he says. His wounds are telling the story of a warrior. For Mutschke, scars may be a sign of infirmity. For him, they are one of perfection.

LaCrosse says about his injury: “You cannot see a destroyed soul.”

If you ask Mutschke whether he wants to know who mangled him like that, a longer pause follows. “No”, he says. His voice is shaking. Unlike Habib. He would like to know who hit him. These are the most delicate moments of the talks. “I’m also talking to the Taleban”, I’m telling Mutschke, “with people who shot at you.” Mutschke hesitates with a reply. Finally he says: “Why not?”

Would he talk to them himself? – “Time is not yet ripe for that. They killed my comrades. But I would like to know what they think after all.” Habib says about a meeting: “Anytime. When they come into my village by prior announcement, I would butcher them a sheep.” And if not? – “They get killed.”

There is only one salvation: Deployment again

At the next meeting, LaCrosse seems to feel better. It takes place in autumn 2013 on a US military base near Regensburg. LaCrosse is full of élan. He is finally in combat again, this time with his own army however. They want to shunt him to South Korea for a year, a desk job. There he tenders his resignation on a whim, ten days before he is to be promoted major. After 21 years of Army, 700 combat hours. He wants to start a new life, at home in the US state of Maine. His father fought in Vietnam already. His grandfather landed in Normandy in the Second World War. It was an outright organic path into war, a destiny.

At the same time Mutschke is also setting out for America. He is fulfilling himself a dream and participates in the “Warrior games” in Southern California for Germany, a competition for maimed warriors, paid for by the Ministry of Defense.

These are hot days in Camp Pendleton, the ground dusty, the plants dry, almost like in Afghanistan. But memories do not come up with him. Mutschke walks into a shopping center, there he hears: “Thank you for your service.” On the bus: “Thank you for your service.” – “Plain awesome”, he finds, “the Amis love their soldiers.” Mutschke is completely changed. He is surrounded by people who look similar to himself. Amputees, scarred, burn victims. And thousands are cheering him.

In the early evening Mutschke is sitting beneath a palmtree, on his tracksuit the German eagle. Never in these five years he seemed so happy. He says: “I got a new aim. I want to attend the Paralympics. I want to shoot again, as before, be a sharpshooter again.”

For Habib in contrast the situations gets ever worse with the years. He is now watching bridges, roads, ditches, says: “I used to be a leader. Everybody respected me, because I was a good warrior.” He feels like LaCrosse, and Mutschke before him: He is feeling useless. He is chainsmoking, his telephone rings, a Western melody. “The worst is that the Taleban want to kill me because I’m a traitor. I don’t sleep anymore.” That upsets him so much that he wants to change sides again. “I would have to do something big though. Only this they would accept.” What could that be? – There he grins. “Something big. That includes: murder of the governor, attack on NATO soldiers, kidnappings of Westerners.” It is the last talk with Habib. Afterwards his telephone is unsubscribed. The war in Afghanistan is going into its 37th year.

One last talk with Maik Mutschke, March 2015, he is on his way to England for the world cup. Afterwards it is on to South Korea, Australia, America. He is preparing for the shooting competitions in the 2016 Paralympics. He is looking good. His calm hand from the war is back. Five years after Isa Khel it can be said: Mutschke has made it.

What helped? “A family and superiors who stick with you. And an aim in life, Rio de Janeiro 2016.

A log cabin in Maine on Lake Togus, late March. The lake is still frozen, it was a hard winter. Jason LaCrosse is flying emergencies for a hospital in the small town of Bangor. “A horror job”, he growls. “Nothing going on. High point is the accident of a snowmobile in the woods.”

His wife joins us. “He’s so negative”, she says. – “I’m trying to find myself”, he replies. “When you’ve found yourself, please leave behind the asshole you are, honey”, she says lovingly.

LaCrosse looks out over the lake. He has gained weight, looks more like a teddybear than a wiry warrior. “With whom should I do sports?”, he complains. “I have no friends here. My marriage was on the brink, too.” Why is that? “I’m having nightmares. But most of all I’m missing the Army.” There is still a chance for a return, LaCrosse says at farewell. “If things really get going against the IS. Then I won’t fail my brothers and sisters.” It does not sound like a possibility as much as a hope. A salvation.

Finally on deployment again.