Fort Drum Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Olson Jr. earns a Silver Star for leadership in battle against Afghan insurgents.
Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Olson, Jr., 32, of the 10th Mountain Division, was awarded the Silver Star for fighting off insurgents attacking the governor's compound in Pul-e-Alam, 45 miles from Kabul. He helped his inexperienced team deal with a car bomb, a booby trap and face-to-face combat with insurgents holed up in a concrete building.
Last August, 10 days before Afghanistan’s second presidential election, a 10th Mountain Division soldier led a makeshift team on a mission through hell, a mission that still gives some nightmares.
It came during Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Olson Jr.’s fourth deployment, his third to Afghanistan. With roadside bombs increasing and a unit filled with less-experienced U.S. and Afghan soldiers, it turned out to be his hardest yet.
“It was 10 times more intense than my first deployments,” he said.
The day’s battle highlights the difficulties that even an overwhelming military force has against insurgents. The battle involved nearly every tactic and challenge that characterizes this war in Afghanistan — an insurgent attack on a government headquarters, a car bomb, a booby trap, Apache helicopter gunship attacks, face-to-face gun fights, and the struggle to get Afghan soldiers and police to secure their country. When it was all done, an ingenious strategy by Olson saved the day.
When he returned to Fort Drum, Olson, 32, a native of Spencer, Mass., was awarded the Silver Star, the U.S. military’s third-highest combat award, for his bravery and leadership.
Based on a detailed narrative recommending him for the award, interviews with Olson and four others involved in the fight, this is the story of that day.
It began at 10:45 a.m. Aug. 10, with a call to Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar Province. Insurgents were attacking the governor’s compound in Pul-e-Alam, a small city 45 miles from Kabul.
Olson’s team rolled out. The soldiers didn’t know if the governor was truly at risk or if they were being drawn into a fight. Fifteen minutes later, they were taking fire.
Olson’s official job was leading a team that responded to improvised explosive devices. This day, the soldiers were responding to an attack. Yet his core team was mostly inexperienced in battle. After nearly eight months in Afghanistan, the 10th Mountain infantry soldiers he would typically rely on were wounded, out of commission.
Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Olson Jr., of the 10th Mountain Division, investigates the scene of an improvised explosive device blast last June in Powrak, Logar Province, Afghanistan.
On Olson’s team was an administrative officer who had never been in a firefight, a green private who had arrived in Afghanistan the week before, a radio telephone operator and a bomb specialist.
Olson’s team, and other U.S. forces, immediately drew gunfire from a pink, five-story building under construction. The building had a bird’s-eye view of the city, including the governor’s compound.
U.S. gunners fired back from trucks. But the insurgents were secure. The building was a fortress. Its brick, concrete and stucco walls were 18 inches thick. It was hard to get to the top. One stairway went only to the second floor. A stairway at the other end of the building went only to floors three, four and five.
Was the governor safe? That was Olson’s first concern. He ran to the governor’s compound and found the governor unharmed. Olson asked the Afghans for permission to assault the pink building. As Olson’s team members returned toward their trucks, a car bomb exploded next to the pink building.
“It was nuts,” he said. “It had a huge fireball, higher than the five-story building.”
As car bombs go, it wreaked little havoc. One civilian was wounded.
Lesson under fire
In the aftermath, a quiet chaos descended. Olson slowed things down. He ordered soldiers to check other vehicles, some oddly parked. Slowly, by hand, bomb specialists searched them. No big explosives.
Except for soldiers, the city was a ghost town, Olson said. Residents had fled or taken cover.
First, Olson called in Apache helicopters. They fired 30 mm guns, rockets and Hellfire missiles. His truck gunners fired machine guns and 83 mm bunker-busting missiles at the building. It stood solid.
Pvt. Nicholas Henry, of New Hampshire, then 19 and in the Army just half a year, figured no one could survive all that shelling.
“I pretty much assumed everything was dead in there,” he said.
Olson’s plan was this: Two teams would enter the building, each with six Afghan soldiers leading the way. One team would check the first floor. Olson’s team would check the second. Floor by floor, they’d make their way to the top.
Before they started, they practiced dry runs with Afghan soldiers at a nearby building. French translators bridged the language barrier.
In principle, this is the Afghans’ war. Where possible, every fight is both combat and a teachable moment, with Afghan soldiers at the front. The Afghan army has roughly 110,000 soldiers, most of them inexperienced. If they can figure it out, the Americans can go home.
The Afghans flee
They began clearing the building. At the second floor Olson threw grenades down hallways and then advanced. No one knew the stairs went only part way. When Olson’s team came to the end of the stairs, it left the building and found the stairs leading to the third floor. In that stairway, the soldiers found a dead insurgent. Approaching the third floor, Olson again threw grenades. When they reached the floor, they found another dead insurgent.
In rubble on the first floor, Sgt. Scott Lund, 36, from Balaton, Minn., spotted wires leading to a battery. A bomb. He radioed Olson upstairs and soldiers evacuated.
Lund’s bomb specialist, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brandon Livingston, sent in a $230,000 robot, but the robot couldn’t maneuver the rubble. So Livingston had to do it himself, wearing his bomb disposal suit. As he approached the building, insurgents fired at him, removing any doubt they had survived the helicopter attack. When Livingston reached the bomb, he put a charge on it and detonated it.
Were there more bombs? No one knew. Because they’d left the building, they had to clear it all over again, starting on the ground floor.
As they approached the fifth floor, two insurgents opened fire. Three Afghan soldiers turned and ran down the stairs, knocking down and stepping on Christine Hein, 25, a sergeant from Sullivan, Mo. Hein tumbled down eight rubble-filled stairs. Bruised and bloodied, hers would be the only injuries Americans would take in this fight.
Air Force Tech Sgt. Mendell Holley and Henry fired back, killing one insurgent. Holley, 31, with the Air National Guard Fighter Wing in Portland, Ore., continued firing at the second insurgent. When his rifle ran out of ammunition, he used his M-9pistol, while Olson and Henry moved to safety.
Through it all, Olson said, he was single-minded about killing the enemy and protecting his soldiers. This wasn’t like other fights, where the bad guys mixed in with the innocent and U.S. troops pulled their punches for fear of creating more enemies. This was clean. It was what they trained for. Those guys at the top of the pink building were never going home.
“I’ve learned tactical patience,” he said. “There’s some times when you got to act extremely aggressive, and some times where you got to let the situation develop, or you find yourself getting smoked.”
Battlefield ingenuity
On the fourth floor they regrouped. Afghan soldiers wouldn’t rush the building again until French soldiers — their mentors — ordered them. The Afghans charged. One was shot and killed, another wounded. The remaining Afghans ran down the stairs.
From the fourth floor, Olson had his Afghan interpreter yell up the stairway, trying to persuade the remaining insurgent to surrender. He answered with rifle shots. Olson called in more shelling from trucks. When it stopped, Olson threw a broken tile up the stairs. Again, rifle shots from above.
Soldiers removed the wounded Afghan soldier. Apache helicopters rocketed the building again.
On the ground Olson considered throwing a grenade up the stairwell, but realized it would be easy for the insurgent to throw it back. He considered mounting a big explosive under the floor. But that could harm his soldiers. He considered scaling the scaffolding alongside the building to get at the insurgent.
Then it came to him. Duct tape. A long pole. A Claymore mine.
Roughly brick-size, Claymore mines fire hundreds of ball bearings in a 60-degree arc. Their explosion is much bigger than a hand grenade’s. Usually they are set on the ground to defend against enemy advance.
Olson had a different idea. He would duct-tape a Claymore mine to a pole. He’d stick the mine through the narrow stairwell space to the insurgent’s position.
No one in the fight had ever seen a Claymore used like this.
Olson took two 15-foot poles from a street vendor’s stall. He taped a mine to each and marked at his end which direction the Claymore had to face. Back into the building they went, fresh Afghan soldiers in the lead. By this time, there were more than 100 Afghan soldiers and police in the area, most of them spectators.
Again, each floor was cleared. As they approached the fifth floor, the insurgent shot down the stairwell, wounding two Afghan soldiers. They and the ones behind turned and fled.
Olson could hear the insurgent walking above him. Holley could see his rifle muzzle. With hand signals, Holley directed Olson where to aim the Claymore. Olson propped the pole’s butt end on a stair. They moved to a nearby office and detonated the mine.
When the dust cleared, they found two dead insurgents. A grenade lay next to one insurgent’s hand. Olson looked at Hein. Her face was white.
She still has difficulty processing that day.
“I understand, they were the enemy,” Hein said. “They were trying to kill me and we killed them. But it’s still somebody’s father. Somebody’s brother. Somebody’s husband. It’s a life that’s no longer here. But I know we did the right thing. You’re proud, in the strangest way, that you won the battle.”
Maj. Gen. James Terry, commander of the 10th Mountain Division (left) awards Sgt. 1st Class Richard J. Olson Jr. the Silver Star earlier this month.
A lasting impact
Several soldiers supporting Olson were awarded Bronze Stars for that day. Several were awarded Army Commendation Medals with Valor.
After returning, several carried other reminders of their time in combat.
A divorce. A drunk-driving charge. Admissions to the psychiatric ward at Watertown’s Samaritan Hospital. Nearly all have sought help at behavioral health clinics.
“The effects are with you forever,” Hein said.
After 5½ hours of battle, at least five insurgents had been killed. One Afghan soldier aiding the Americans was killed, four wounded.
The building secure, the mission still wasn’t over. Olson’s team gathered and blew up insurgents’ unused hand grenades — eight of them. It took DNA samples and photographs, collected evidence from the car bomb and the building bomb and sketched out a battle story board. When they left Pul-e-Alam, it was dark.
Olson, who has been in many firefights, looks back on that day’s mission with pride.
“I wouldn’t change nothing,” he said. “It went absolutely perfect.”
But, he adds, “I could have done without the Afghan soldiers.”
Back at FOB Shank, Olson had reports to write. He told his soldiers to shower, restock ammunition and prepare trucks for the next mission before going to sleep. They were still in one of their 24-hour on-call cycles. Olson, an insomniac, wouldn’t sleep.
“It never ends,” he said.
Contact Dave Tobin at dtobin@syracuse.com or 470-3277.