"There I was..." with Brad

John "Rain" Waters (0:00)

Brad, thanks for hanging around for a There I Was story. Pretty straightforward, man. I know you probably got a few of them, so I'll just hand it over to you, give you the talking stick, and let you run with it.

Brad Young (0:10)

Yeah, so on one deployment, I kind of circumnavigated the area of operations that we were in, and on one mission, we ended up over on Regional Command West, which had been abandoned for a long period of time prior to us coming back in. And we were operating out of an installation that had once been occupied by the Italians, and we had actually brought some Italian mortar teams in to help defend us. And so we're at this Regional Command West installation, and we're operating away. So really, the objective is about a 25-minute flight from that installation. And so daily, we're flying out and we're on a separate objective. And so on this particular mission, we were supporting an allied force with zero American fighters.

And they did not have a translator. So we had no way to communicate with the ground forces, except we had a position with a sat-com radio that we reported to. And they could glean information based off of the reports they were getting from both sides. And then minutes later, that information would come to us. So we had been on this objective for several days.

At the time, we had been ordered not to shoot Hellfire missiles into this built-up area. We were allowed rockets, we were allowed 30mm, but no Hellfires. And so we had come in with this force, and there was this one compound that was kind of centralized, that was well fortified. The next-year wall was very thick, and the enemy was well trained, and they were fighting from behind this fortified wall. We had a good look down, but they were so good at utilizing this wall, this heavily thick fortified wall, that it was very difficult for us to get munitions that weren't laser-guided, which is the Hellfire missile, on their position. And firing from the south side of the wall was impossible, because none of our munitions were penetrating the wall. It was causing some superficial damage, but not penetrating. And so, I called back, and I requested F-16s drop bombs on, 500-pound bombs on this location. And sure enough, that got approved. They flew in, they dropped two 500-pound bombs. And that kind of position, that fighting position was decimated. And we left, because we thought, okay, success criteria, the Allied force kind of withdrew. And so, we knew we were coming back the next day to continue operations. We were just gonna move from that objective to another objective.

And so, we arrive the next day, and before we even make it to... Anywhere near, anywhere near the objective, the convoy comes under a complex attack, and there's a few bombs that go off immediately, roadside bombs that go off immediately, that damage and kill several people on this convoy. And then, a complex attack happens immediately, so gunfire now for everybody exiting their vehicles, trying to escape some of the situations. Gunfire now is killing them. And...

I think the reported number was 29 dead, and 29 dead rapidly.

John "Rain" Waters (4:36)

And you mentioned, yeah, you're getting...

So, language barrier, so not like direct comms. You probably, at the very beginning, have a pretty good essay of where people are, but that probably, I would imagine, quickly dissipates. And then you're saying the relay, you said minutes, right? And that, I would think, translates into years when you're trying to figure out how... Yeah, it fills that way. Yeah, how... what the battlefield is going.

Brad Young (5:00)

Yeah.

So we stay, because we can't leave. And the sad part about it is there was no dedicated Medevac helicopters for that mission. Like, we weren't even co-located with Medevac helicopters. The nearest Medevac helicopters were in Regional Command South, which was hours away.

John "Rain" Waters (5:28)

I'm trying to think. RC West. I'm just looking over here.

I'm blanking on the name of the town that I was thinking that was out in the West. Because again, when I was there, everything is in the East and the South.

Brad Young (5:43)

Yeah.

John "Rain" Waters (5:45)

Stuff up to the North.

Brad Young (5:49)

There's reasons why we were back in the West that had to do with some border crossings that were crazy.

John "Rain" Waters (5:58)

The big city that I was thinking of was Harat.

Brad Young (6:02)

So we weren't far from that location, but we were not at that location. So very, very close by to that.