Posted on 11/14/2003 12:51:00 PM PST by MediaMole
In the line of duty, a hero emerges
Ambush at Afghan fortress leads Brookfield man into action and, Friday, to a distinguished honor
Tampa, Fla. - Maj. Mark Mitchell had come a long way from the young boy who grew up in the shadow of Milwaukee's County Stadium, watching the Brewers, rising at 4:30 a.m. to deliver the Sentinel, dreaming that one day he'd be a soldier.
Now he was. And not just any soldier. A Special Forces officer, schooled in Arabic and trained to make decisions in tense, fast-changing situations when lives are on the line.
On the morning of Nov. 25, 2001, all of his training would be put to the test at a fortress in Afghanistan packed with some 500 Taliban prisoners of war. The fortress bears the name Qala-i-Jangi, which translates in English as "House of War."
In three of the bloodiest days in the young war on terrorism, the fortress would earn its name.
And Mitchell would earn the Army's Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest military honor, last bestowed almost 30 years ago in Vietnam. He will receive the award at a ceremony this afternoon at MacDill Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Central Command. Mitchell recalled Thursday evening how he earned that honor.
On that morning in Afghanistan two years ago, the bad news came in a rush from the lips of a visibly shaken Northern Alliance soldier.
"There's been a terrible battle. The prisoners are rioting," the soldier announced as he entered the abandoned high school where Mitchell and some other men had been staying about 12 miles from the desert fortress. "There are American dead. You must come now."
Mitchell had a feeling this was bad. Some 300 of the Taliban prisoners had surrendered just a day earlier. There had been ominous signs. One of the Taliban prisoners had blown himself up, killing a Northern Alliance intelligence officer. Oddly, the Taliban prisoners had insisted that as a condition of their surrender they be taken to the airport near Mazar-e-Sharif. They were taken instead to the fortress, a sprawling, mud brick structure a half-mile long and a half-mile wide. Surrender or ambush?
On the morning of Nov. 25, two CIA agents, one of them Johnny Michael Spann, had left the schoolhouse to interrogate prisoners at the fortress.
Later, Mitchell would come to believe that the "surrender" was never intended to be a surrender, but rather the set up for a surprise attack.
But as he received the first word of the uprising, Mitchell knew one thing: It was his job to respond to whatever had happened at the "House of War." He was in charge.
But he had very few men with him.
Mitchell and 11 other men in three vehicles rushed toward the fortress, "moving at terminal velocity," Mitchell said. "All that kept going through my mind was, 'Ambush. Ambush.' " He worried that, as they drove, a truck would cut them off.
As he reached the fortress, he could hear explosions. Bullets whizzed by.
He carried all of his training: 15 years in the Army, infantry service in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and now the Special Forces.
With all of that training, though, "You never know how you're going to react until the shots are fired," he said.
The men left their vehicles and sprinted toward the main gate.
The fortress was surrounded by a moat and had towering 30- to 35-foot walls. Inside, rooms were stocked floor to ceiling with mortars, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and all manner of arms. Who knew how much the Taliban fighters had seized?
Mitchell knew this much: His mission was to find and rescue the CIA agents, and to prevent the Taliban from gaining control of the fortress.
One of the CIA agents had managed to reach the main headquarters building in the fortress where he was holed up. Mitchell reached him by radio. Agent overwhelmed
Spann, the agent said, was almost certainly dead.
Although it remains unclear precisely how the uprising began, the agent told Mitchell there had been an explosion, possibly a grenade. In an instant, prisoners, many with their elbows tied behind their backs, swarmed over Spann. Prisoners freed themselves and raided arms stockpiles.
In a matter of minutes, they had taken the southern half of the fortress.
Mitchell told the CIA agent they would try to make their way to him, and they would call in airstrikes.
Mitchell wore desert fatigues but had no body armor or helmet. He carried an M-4 rifle and M-9 pistol.
With three others, Mitchell raced around the outside of the fortress under heavy fire. At one point, a mortar round exploded just behind them at a point they had passed perhaps five seconds earlier.
A Northern Alliance soldier who stood atop the fortress wall unwound his turban, and Mitchell and the others gripped the material as they scaled the wall.
They spent several hours atop the wall, directing missile strikes, feeling the powerful blast waves as 2,000-pound bombs struck nearby. To be within 1,600 feet when such a bomb hits is considered "danger close." Mitchell and his comrades were within 577 feet.
Finally, as the sun dropped below the horizon, they left the fortress. First, Mitchell made one last effort to find the agent with whom he had spoken by radio. With one other man, Mitchell made it into the headquarters building, which put him directly in the line of fire. Together the two searched, room to room, before leaving.
During his last radio contact, Mitchell had told the agent to try to escape over the fortress wall. The agent had done just that and arrived back at the schoolhouse shortly before Mitchell and the others. Night of planning
That night, Mitchell stayed awake, planning the next day's operation and making sure the schoolhouse was secure.
Mitchell, now with 15 men, returned to the fortress at first light. Soon the day's first airstrike was on its way.
Inbound, 30 seconds!
They hunkered down. An explosion, but not where it was supposed to be.
Mitchell watched a cloud of dust rise hundreds of feet into the air. Then came the report. The bomb had struck a section of the fortress wall next to a communications center. Of the 15 soldiers Mitchell was commanding at the fortress, nine were wounded. The officer's rule is that two men are needed to care for each casualty. The rest of the day was spent evacuating the wounded. All survived.
"As a leader, you maintain morale by not panicking, by maintaining your calm," Mitchell said later. "There's all the time after the battle to cry, but that's not the time or the place for it."
At the schoolhouse that night, Mitchell told his men: "I'm going back. This isn't the end of it."
He took five men back to the fortress under the cover of darkness. Despite mortar fire, Mitchell directed strikes from an Air Force gunship. He stayed until midnight.
On the third day, Mitchell returned to the fortress, hoping they would be able to retrieve Spann's body. But there were still Taliban fighting.
"After three days, it was obvious these people were fighting to the death," he said.
When the battle finally ended that day, only 85 of the 500 Taliban were still alive. One, a man who had to be flushed out of a basement room with water, turned out to be John Walker Lindh, the American who had converted to Islam and journeyed to Afghanistan to help the Taliban.
On the fourth day after the uprising, Mitchell's men finally recovered Spann's body.
Two years after that battle, Mark Mitchell, 38, prepared Thursday evening to receive the nation's second-highest military honor.
"My actions that day constituted my duty," he said while polishing his boots. "I expected nothing more than a pat on the back and a 'Mission accomplished.' "
From the Nov. 14, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Maj. Mark Mitchell (right) observes fighting between Northern Alliance troops and Taliban on the second day of a prison uprising at an Afghanistan fortress. During the three-day seige two years ago, a CIA agent was killed and Mitchell earned a top military honor for heroism.
"What a sucker! Duty? Service to one's country? Figures since he's not a Rhodes scholar like me!"
"Odd, isn't it? We have men like this in America then we have "men" like Bill Clinton".
A few images that left an impression...
A British Commando taking directions from an Afghan fighter, popping his head over the wall, taking one shot then slipping back. You just knew he hit his target with the one shot.
Afghan FF rushing the courtyard and running right up to a camoflauged fighting hole. A Taliban popping up to shoot at him and missing as the FF scrurried away. Then another Taliban shooting at him from behind a tree until the Taliban went down himself.
A FF being hit at the wall and sliding headfirst to his death at the photogs feet...
Truly courageous and remarkable filmwork.
'Mission accomplished.'
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