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Marines ambushed in Afghanistan 20 shots 20 kills
Marines outnumbered 8:1 and come out on top.
One Cpl logged 20 shots and 20 kills.
Marines outnumbered 8:1 and come out on top.
Marine Times said:The platoon was in a remote area of southwestern Afghanistan when it happened — the kind of massive ambush and firefight that is the stuff of Marine legend.
Patrolling the town of Shewan in Farah province, the troops from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, were attacked by a small group of insurgents that eventually swelled to more than 250 fighters. They had enough rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun ammunition to wage an eight-hour battle against a well-trained, well-equipped Marine force.
And in the end, the results were devastating — for the insurgents.
More than 50 enemy fighters were killed in the battle, and several more wounded, Marine officials said. A single Marine corporal, serving as the unit’s designated marksman, killed 20 insurgents by himself, using only 20 shots to do it.
The estimated 30 Marines involved, on the other hand, rolled away relatively unscathed. No Marines were killed and only one was wounded in the battle, the platoon commander said.
“We didn’t win the fight because of our superior firepower,” he said, speaking through e-mail on condition of anonymity. “We were severely outnumbered and outgunned. From [the] first counter-ambush assault, we gained the momentum and maintained it until the enemy finally fled from the battlefield eight hours later.”
As 2/7’s deployment comes to an end in December, many details about the Aug. 8 battle at Shewan and the heroism displayed there remain shrouded in secrecy.
The Marines involved in the battle have asked for privacy and the Corps has agreed. Several have been nominated for combat awards, but Marine officials will not disclose who those Marines are, which platoon or company they were with, or what awards they might receive.
For now, they are simply an unidentified band of brothers. And while it’s clear they were outmanned, whether they were outgunned is a matter open for debate.
‘Trapped in the kill zone’
Shewan is a village that sits in Farah province along Highway 517, south of the center of Bala Buluk, home to more than 100,000 Afghans. Like many locations in southwestern Afghanistan, it was an insurgent stronghold when 2/7 arrived in the spring, and the site of several battles that lasted anywhere from three to 36 hours, the platoon commander said.
The Marines targeted Shewan for patrols because it was a known home to insurgents and near a supply route through Bala Buluk that needed to be secured, Marine officials said. Opening the route would make life easier in Farah for the Marines who were there.
What the Marines did not realize on Aug. 8 was that insurgent leaders were holding a meeting in a Shewan compound. By patrolling the area, the platoon was interrupting and trapping the insurgents inside, Marine officials said.
The platoon patrolled Shewan, in vehicles and on foot, for about 90 minutes before it was attacked, the platoon commander said. The ambush began with a rocket-propelled grenade streaking over the top of a Humvee outside the town’s center, drawing attention to a three-man team of insurgents about 150 meters away.
“My platoon sergeant killed the RPG gunner and another one of my Marines killed the second RPG gunner before he could fire his weapon,” the platoon commander said. “We start[ed] taking fire from various compounds, but we kept pushing into the village.”
About an hour later, the Marines were ambushed again, this time by five to 10 insurgents hiding in a shallow irrigation ditch, the platoon commander said. The Marines fired back, but began taking heavy fire from a trench line to the north.
“Two of my trucks were ambushed from another position ... with heavy machine gun and RPG fire,” the platoon commander said. “One of the vehicles took a volley of RPGs to the hood. The crew dismounted from the vehicle and immediately started taking accurate machine gun fire from the trench line.”
Related reading:
See a timeline of the battle
With the targeted Humvee on fire and two Marines trapped inside, a machine gunner turned his squad automatic weapon on the insurgents, suppressing the enemy while leaving himself exposed to incoming fire, the platoon commander said. Three other Marines got out of the platoon commander’s vehicle and added to the suppressive fire, allowing the officer to push his truck in front of the downed vehicle and provide cover for the trapped Marines.
“My gunner was taking a lot of fire to his gunner’s shield, but he stayed up on the gun and continued to effectively suppress the enemy,” the platoon commander said. “The SAW gunner took charge of his team, pulled his vehicle commander out of the burning vehicle and exposed himself to enemy fire … so that his Marines could get behind some cover.”
Things got worse, though. The enemy fighters opened up on the platoon commander’s Humvee with an intense second wave of fire from a nearby tree line, prompting an intense, 20-minute firefight as the platoon battled to recover Marines in the disabled vehicle.
“The enemy fired over 40 RPGs from the tree line but were unable to effectively engage the Marines trapped in the kill zone because of the high amount of accurate fire being directed at them,” the platoon commander said. “The SAW gunner continued to suppress the enemy while the gunner on my vehicle systematically shifted his fire from fighting position to fighting position.”
20 shots, 20 kills
With the insurgents sending for reinforcements and “replacing fighters as quickly as we were killing them,” a designated marksman — identified only as a corporal — took action, the platoon commander said.
Positioned on a nearby berm, the corporal began firing at the incoming insurgents, ringing up kill after kill while leaving himself exposed to small arms and machine gun fire landing as little as a foot away, the platoon commander said.
By the time the shooting stopped, the Marine had notched 20 kills on 20 shots, the platoon commander said.
“I was in my own little world,” the corporal said, in an account of the battle released by the Corps. “I wasn’t even aware of a lot of the rounds impacting near my position, because I was concentrating so hard on making sure my rounds were on target.”
After 20 minutes of fighting, the platoon was able to hold back the insurgents long enough to get a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle into the kill zone to recover the trapped Marines, the platoon commander said.
“The vehicle commander from the downed vehicle was incoherent,” he said. “The gunner wasn’t in much better shape. We drove out of range of the enemy’s fire, took 10 or so minutes to redistribute ammunition, then came up with a game plan.”
The Marines called for close-air support. Then they launched an assault on the trenches where the ambush began, eventually crossing over a road to complete the assault.
“As soon as we started to make our way over we took heavy machine gun fire from a compound to the north,” the platoon commander said. “We took another 60 or so RPGs, some rockets and mortars. We turned the direction of our attack and fought our way to the eastern flank of the compound. It wasn’t as far to the compound from that direction, but as we attempted an assault we started taking more fire from another compound. The enemy had established a defense with mutually supporting positions.”
Faced with fire coming from both compounds, the Marines pulled away, deciding it would be too difficult to engage the insurgents directly.
“We could see vehicles arriving from the distance with dozens of enemy reinforcements who could be seen swarming through the fields and trenches to protect their stronghold,” the platoon commander said. “We engaged these fighters, but while we significantly reduced the number of enemies on the battlefield, there was no lull in the fire from the enemy compounds.”
Unwilling to give up, the same team leader and SAW gunner who provided suppressive fire for the disabled Humvee crawled under fire until they were 30 meters away from one enemy compound, so they could log its exact location. They crawled back behind cover 75 meters away, called in air strikes, then watched it get lit up, the platoon commander said.
“At this point, we saw that the enemy was starting to pull back their forces,” he said. “We drove them off the battlefield.”
The aftermath
The Marines involved that day took out “a good number of mid-level leaders, thereby crippling their operations in the Shewan area,” said Lt. Col Richard Hall, 2/7 commander, in an e-mail. So bloodied were the enemy fighters that one of the remaining insurgent leaders tried to swap sides and support coalition forces after the fight, Hall said.
Farah province remains unstable, however, so Marine officials expect the insurgency will recover.
“Until we achieve area stabilization and get the people to take ownership of their own future, which I am confident they will at some point, the enemy will simply backfill their losses and continue their murder and intimidation campaign,” Hall said.
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