The Worst Day of My Life
What it Takes to Clear a Compound
by Mark Walker
I have been given a gift. Imagine one of the worst days of your life, one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to you. That thing that you think about almost every day. You play it over and over again. All the steps. You might even ask yourself did it really happen? Am I just imagining certain parts of it? Now imagine that someone wrote about it in a book, and they didn’t just write about one perspective of the event. They interviewed several people and wrote down all their perspectives. This has happened to me. I think this is common for major historical events like Nine Eleven or the assassination of JFK. But this event happened to a platoon sized (20 people) element in a valley in Afghanistan. I never thought that I would read anything about that event. Maybe someday I’d talk about it with the EOD team that I was there with, but never find a book that lays out in detail the events of a day that happened 15 years.
These are the facts - on December 26, 2009, my EOD team was supporting the 82d Airborne as they were establishing a presence in the Arghandab Valley outside the city of Kandahar. We were on a patrol and establishing an overwatch position in an abandoned house when Private First Class Towery stepped on a landmine that was connected to a larger IED. Specialist Johnston was right on top of the main charge of the IED. He died in the explosion; Towery lost his leg and a few fingers. The rest of us that were there received minor injuries from TBIs to cuts and bruises to hearing loss.
As part of the process of unpacking some deployment baggage and healing some mental wounds I recently bought two books that were written about operations that I was involved in during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The books are No One Left Behind and Damn the Valley. I started reading Damn the Valley first because it showed up first. It was written in 2023 by Private William Yeske who is now out of the military and a thriving business owner. What I didn’t realize was how connected I would be to parts of the book and that a major part of my own story would be mentioned within the pages. This has allowed me to unpack some major baggage and open my eyes to a very pressing character flaw.
During EOD school the training was very intense. Most people don’t make it through school without “double tapping” (failing at test twice (failing is 84% or lower and some things you do can cost you 16 points)) a test and getting sent back to redo a section of the school. I did this during the Air Ordnance section, specifically Guided Missiles. I got put back in a class that was right behind me. You have to learn new names, new temperaments, and a different culture. The class was great, and I quickly integrated. A little further on when we were learning about Improvised Explosive Devices several students failed a test. One of these was Airman Miller. Airman Miller was the last Airman holdout that hadn’t double tapped a test. But he wasn’t the guy that you would think was one of the smartest in the class. He was kind of goofy looking and not quick witted and liked to keep to himself. We all saw this and several of us were making comments like, “I can’t believe that it was Miller that was the last one to double tap a test.”
Miller was pretty devastated about his failure and having to do the section over again. Especially because if you fail a third time you usually have to find a different job in the Air Force. But he was also really upset because he overheard people talking about him and saying things like they couldn’t believe he had made it this far in school. He pulled me aside and asked me why I thought that they were saying these things. I thought about it for a while and then I said that I thought that they were knocking him down because they didn’t feel good about themselves. That they weren’t confident about passing EOD school and that if they could tear him down, they felt better about themselves. The reason I came to this conclusion was because I saw it in myself. What I didn’t tell him was that I was right there having the same conversation about him as everyone else. It was very eye opening to me. I started calling this line of thinking and acting “Special Forces Syndrome” because the jobs that are special within the military can attract certain types of people that feel like they have to do something extreme and important to prove themselves. This doesn’t usually satisfy that character flaw and so they quite often will continually bag on other people or career fields. Knocking others down to build themselves up.
I thought that because I saw this character flaw within myself, that I had the emotional intelligence to realize it, that I had somehow inoculated myself to it. I have been shown that this is not the case. For the past fifteen years this is how I have told the story of December 26, 2009 -
We were tasked to do a post blast on sheep. EOD teams don’t usually respond unless there is something for them to do. We are kind of like firefighters. They don’t respond to a house unless it is on fire. Responding to a post blast is kind of like responding to investigate how a fire started. But responding to a herd of sheep that got blown up was not typical for us. In previous deployments we didn’t do post blasts unless there was a pressing reason to do so, like a military member was injured or killed. This was because, especially in Iraq, there were so many IEDs going off we didn’t have the manning and the resources to check them all out.
My team leader didn’t push back when we got the tasking to check out this IED that killed a couple sheep. I did. I pulled him aside and asked, “Why aren’t you telling the commander that this is a waste of our time.”
He said, “We are just moving into the battle space and the commander wants to know what might kill or injure his soldiers, so I think it is good for us to go and get that intelligence.”
That made sense to me, so I went a long albeit a little begrudgingly. We patrolled to where the sheep got killed and did a quick investigation. They had stepped on a typical pressure plate made with two pieces of wood with saw blades on either side and separated by pieces of cut up sandals.
The platoon was continuing on with a patrol to check out a house that had a person of interest in it. It was not usual for us to go on missions like this. And again, I had an attitude of frustration. I might not have verbally communicated it, but I did not think that we should be patrolling with the platoon, but they had a mission and they were not going to go back to base just to drop us off.
The platoon found a house near the one with the person of interest. The house was abandoned. It was a good place to set up an overwatch while the rest of the platoon went to the other house and checked out the guy they were looking for. We called houses in Afghanistan compounds because of the way they were set up. They usually had an outer wall that was up to 6 feet tall. This surrounded the property. Inside this wall would be an orchard or a vineyard or some type of crops. Inside the outer wall, close to the house, there would be an inner wall that was connected to the house.
A soldier cleared, with a metal detector, past the outer wall through an orchard into the inner wall and up to a porch that was connected to the house. We all followed him into the area within the inner wall. Some of the soldiers went into the house to clear it, others were just standing around, and a couple guys were trying to get on the roof to set up the over watch.
Private Towery was helping someone climb up on the roof in the corner of this courtyard where the inner wall met the house when he stepped on a small landmine. The landmine was connected with detcord to a larger explosive device about ten feet away from him. This device was buried in the ground along the wall that we had all just walked over. Specialist Johnston was standing right on top of the large explosive device and was thrown into the orchard.
The dust cleared and everyone started to move to the wounded. My team leader called out for everyone to stop. If there was one IED there was probably more. He cleared up to Towery and then to Johnston. The medic followed him to Johnston, and I started working on Towery with another soldier. It seemed to me that the platoon leadership was in shock and having a hard time calling in a medivac.
My team leader cleared out to the outer wall and put an explosive charge on it to breach the wall. There was a large field on the other side of the wall for the medivac to land.
I helped put two tourniquets on Towery, gave him a combat pill pack, filled out his casualty card, and then helped carry him to the orchard. By this time the medivac was on station, but they had not established a Landing Zone (LZ). One of the Pararescuemen or PJs fast-roped into the orchard and asked the medic how long he had been giving him CPR. The medic said 15 minutes. The PJ said he’s dead. Put him in a bag. I helped put him in the body bag. The medic looked at Towery and saw that there was nothing on the stump of his foot. He told us to get it covered up. They eventually hoisted him into the hovering helicopter. The helicopter landed and everyone else that was wounded was loaded up and they took them back to Kandahar Airfield.
When I got the book, I started thumbing through it and noticed that there was a subchapter entitled, “The Johnston Incident December 26, 2009”. I quickly skimmed through the chapter and saw “EOD cleared.” I didn’t read much more, but those words really bothered me. I wanted to respect the author and read the book the way he intended it to be read so I started at the beginning, but during the couple of days it took me to reach the pages where he talked about our incident, I kept thinking about those words “EOD cleared”. EOD doesn’t clear. We show up when there is an explosive hazard found. We are like firefighters. A firefighter doesn't go out looking for fires that might start. I knew the author had bad mouth our team. I knew he wrote that we didn’t clear the compound correctly and that it cost his friend his life and another friend his leg. But when I got to the pages, he wrote that Specialist Culp cleared the compound with a metal detector, that the landmine probably had a very small piece of metal in it and that EOD had visually cleared as we came in behind them, but there was no blame cast our way.
I think that I thought he was going to blame us because I feel guilty for what happened that day. If we had cleared it maybe we would have found the IED. We are far more trained in finding IEDs then these soldiers were. Maybe we could have avoided this tragedy. But this isn’t the major insight that my eyes were opened to this week, the gift that I was given. What I realized was that I have been bad mouthing this platoon for years. I said that they were not quick to call in a medivac. That they all just started running around after the blast when they should have known to stay in place after an IED strike because there were probably more IEDs. That the medic didn’t know what he was doing because he was giving Johnston CPR (you don’t give CPR in combat situations). When I tell this story I always say that the Army Platoon didn’t know what they were doing and once the IED strike happened our EOD team had to take over, direct them, and get us out of there safely.
After reading this subchapter I realized that immediately after the blast the radio operator called back to his headquarters and gave them a rough estimate of what happened, where we were, and that there were multiple casualties. I found out that Johnston was alive much longer than I realized, and that the medic was working on him right up to the point that the PJs got there and possibly had just started giving him CPR.
I thought that he was going to tear down our team, but I thought this because I had been tearing down his team for years. I had talked badly about them because my confidence wasn’t strong. I was scared. There was so much unknown. New IEDs were emerging on that deployment we had no way of finding. I was sent on missions as a very young team leader with very little experience. And I was doing a job that was special because I felt like I had to prove myself to the world. I have been tearing people down for years to build myself up because I am not ok with the person I am.
This is one of my blind spots. Jesus talks about getting the log out of your own eye before you help get the speck out of someone else's. This saying hit me so hard this recently. Yes, I know that I struggle with confidence. Yes, I know that sometimes I can tear others down to build myself up. (Just a little bit though, so it’s not a big deal). I know that this is a flaw that a lot of guys that I work with have. It's the Special Forces Syndrome. I mentor people about this exact problem. I tell them to watch out for it. I have talked to my kids about it. But I still have the log in my eye. The depth of emotions and the thoughts that were going through my head as I was waiting to read this section of the book and the reveal after reading what Private Yeske wrote has been shocking to me. Wow there is a log in my eye. What caught me off guard was not the words that were coming out of my mouth about others. Besides what James says sometimes it is easy to tame the tongue. It was the thoughts, the emotions, the feeling of knowing that my actions were going to be judged in these pages and thus they were being judged in many other people’s minds for years. And then I read what he wrote, and the log was right there for me to see. No, it has been me that has been judging other people’s actions for years.
Over the few days between skimming the book and reading the chapter I did what I now know is my typical PTSD reaction. I withdrew from my family, I got short, angry, and critical about the actions of others around me, and I was hyper focused on the day after Christmas 2009.
My wife asked me to do something different them the way I was doing something and all I could think of was why couldn’t she have asked me in a way that was nicer. Then I thought she is such a mean person. And then I got tense and then things blew up. (I didn’t disarm the situation very well). I ended up yelling at her “Why are you such a mean person.” To be fair there was yelling back and forth, but she asked how she could have said what she said any nicer. I thought about it. And realized that what I was thinking at the beginning, why couldn’t she ask me this nicer? was because I was so tense and looking for flaws. She really couldn’t have asked me nicer. I was the person in the situation that was being mean. We ended up having a long, deep conversation that night and she wanted to know what I was struggling with, and I told her. I told her that these thoughts and feelings about the deployment were hard and brought up so much stuff that I didn’t realize that I hadn’t dealt with, but that I knew that I needed to deal with it if I was ever going to be healthy and whole and a better husband and father and friend. She was very gracious and just asked that I communicate with her more as I was going through these struggles.
This last week we were part of a team that took about 70 people up to Bass Lake and the Yosemite area for a High School Summer Camp. My wife was in charge of the food and I was leading the activities. This is the third time we have done this, but this was our largest group by far. Every other time we have been a part of leading these groups we have gotten into several fights. This time we did not. There were a couple tense moments. And in the past my thoughts went to why is she acting this way? She needs to do this differently. I know a better way to do this. Why is she so mean? This time I felt some of these things rising up within me, and when the tension hit, I saw the log in my own eye, and I pulled back and tried to see the negative aspects that I was bringing to the situation. And the tension dropped. And the fight didn’t happen.
Several years ago I was out in New York for work. I met up with an old mentor of mine. We hadn’t seen each other in years, and we were catching up and then he started asking the hard questions as he always used to. My marriage was in a really bad place at the time, and he asked how we were doing. Tears started rolling down my face and he said, “That bad huh?” I shared a couple things and then he said, “Have you ever considered that maybe you are the asshole in this situation?” I was taken a back. Me the asshole. Do you not see me crying right here in front of you? Did you not hear the things that I just shared with you? But the truth is that is what I actually needed to be asked at that moment. Weeks later I shared what my mentor said to me with my wife, and he became her favorite person.
I have been the asshole over several years in several situations. I have been the one with the log in my eye trying to get the speck out of other people's eyes. I have been given some valuable insight these past couple of weeks. I have been given a gift, but I would be naive to say that I am completely healed, that I am totally free and inoculated from this burden that I have been seeing the world through for so many years. But steps have been taken to make me and my circle of influence whole, and yet the process continues. I know that this realization, that this gift, is making me a better man, a leader, a husband, and father and that it is also making those around me better people.
-Keep Your Powder Dry
(Mark Walker sent this forward but maintains an interesting sub stack that can be found here)