Combat Outpost Keating, along with several other tiny firebases in eastern Afghanistan, was ordered to shut down. By fall, the United States was quietly withdrawing from part of its archipelago of little posts.
But before Combat Outpost Keating could be closed, the insurgents struck.
Early on Oct. 3, they massed for a coordinated attack, pounding the little outpost with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades and raking it from above with heavy machine-gun fire.
Groups of gunmen rushed the post’s defensive wire. They simultaneously hit a smaller observation post nearby. At least 175 enemy gunmen were involved in the offensive; some accounts described a force twice that size.
The first classified summaries of the attack are a frightening record of a small unit caught at the juncture between old and new ways to fight the war. They depict American troops isolated and overwhelmed on enemy turf. The reports include excerpts of real-time computer messages to headquarters typed by soldiers in the outpost and accounts of pilots who attacked the insurgents from the air.
At first, the outpost reported that Keating and the observation post were “IN HEAVY CONTACT.”
Typing in the casual familiarity of Internet chat, on a secure server, a soldier immediately asked that an “Air Tic Be Opened.”
That was military jargon for shifting available close-air support to troops taking fire. The sense of urgency was clear; the reason chilling.
“We need it now,” another soldier typed. “We have mortars pinned down and fire coming from everywhere.”
The battle escalated from there. The outpost relayed details. “We are taking casiltys,” the first soldier typed within minutes — the first reports of wounded troops. He added: “GET SOMETHING UP!”
The consequences of decisions made in distant headquarters were now taking shape for young enlisted men. The enemy had the high ground. The outpost had the low ground. The troops were outnumbered, and starting to drop. Fire support was far away.
The arrival of attack helicopters, the outpost was told, would take time. “IT’S A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT.”
The outpost asked about jets.
“We are taking fire from inside urmul village,” it reported. “Our mortars are still pinned down unable to fire.”
Jets were on the way. Soon a soldier was describing where aircraft should drop their ordnance. “Multiple enemies running through” the Afghan National Police station “and fire coming from the mosque,” he typed.
He added, “The police station is shooting at us.”
A Frantic Call for Help
Forty minutes into the fighting, he reported that the observation post was about to detonate its Claymore mines — a sign that the attackers were almost at its walls. “They are that close to the wire,” the soldier typed.
Eight minutes later he reported that the attackers were breaching Keating’s last defensive ring. The post was at risk of falling, and having the fighting go hand-to-hand.
“Enemy in the wire at keating,” he typed. “ENEMUY IN THE WIRE ENEMY IN THE WIRE!!!”
An entry soon after was a model of understatement: “We need support.”
Insurgents entered the outpost. The American attack helicopters began to arrive, joining F-15s and an aircraft with jamming equipment to block the insurgents’ two-way radios. One of the pilots’ initial reports described, in laconic terms, flying through gantlets of fire, and occasionally finding a shooting gallery of insurgent targets.
Hellfire missiles were fired on the local mosque, from where soldiers on the ground said the insurgents were firing. The mosque was destroyed.
As bombs exploded above and around the base and helicopters made strafing runs, the soldiers consolidated in a building that was not burning and began to counterattack.
As the four-hour mark of the battle approached, a higher command noted that soldiers at the outpost reported that they “have retaken another bldg, can’t push any further due to lack of manpower.”
Outside the perimeter, the insurgents still fired.
At the nine-hour mark, the higher command summarized word from the ground: “Only one building left that is not on fire. Have consolidated all casualties at that location.”
Late in the day, American reinforcements were shuttled by helicopter to nearby terrain. They bounded downhill toward the outpost. The fighting by then had stopped.
The outpost had held on, but barely. Eight soldiers were dead. Almost two dozen others had been wounded. Several Afghan soldiers and guards were killed or wounded, too.
The Americans evacuated their casualties. Over the next days they declared the outpost closed and departed — so quickly that they did not carry out all of their stored ammunition.
This.
