What it’s like for one Gilroy soldier facing increasing
hostility in Afghanistan
While Congress spends time debating partisan resolutions on the
future of Iraq, and the country sinks further into the worst
national divide since Vietnam, Sgt. Lisa Meighan remains focused on
her job: Ensuring the three-man armored humvee team she leads
returns safely everyday to its base near Kabul, Afghanistan
– an increasingly difficult task.
What it’s like for one Gilroy soldier facing increasing hostility in Afghanistan
While Congress spends time debating partisan resolutions on the future of Iraq, and the country sinks further into the worst national divide since Vietnam, Sgt. Lisa Meighan remains focused on her job: Ensuring the three-man armored humvee team she leads returns safely everyday to its base near Kabul, Afghanistan – an increasingly difficult task.
And while old men debate the merits of war in the secure confines of Washington, D.C., this 37-year-old mother of four from Gilroy, along with her gunner and driver, is part of a unit providing perimeter protection for U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan’s capital city.
By the time this edition of The Sunday Pinnacle hits doorsteps, Meighan will be ending a flight that will have taken her to Kuwait via the United Kingdom, and then on to a U.S. airbase in Bagram, Afghanistan, where she will join other troops heading south to Kabul. Meighan, a Gulf War veteran who is the daughter of Gilroy community leader Charlie Morales, has been in Afghanistan since March, and already it’s been heating up.
More than 500 people have been killed in the past month as insurgents, primarily Taliban, have stepped up attacks against coalition and Afghan soldiers. Afghan soldiers – along with U.S., Canadian and British troops – are spreading out over the southern provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar and Zabul to hunt down Taliban fighters blamed for a recent surge in ambushes and bombings.
As part of the U.S. Force Protection unit, Meighan and her team respond any time U.S. troops become bogged down from an accident or other equipment failure, protecting them from ambush while the troops and vehicles are transported back to base. She also patrols roads surrounding the U.S. base, as well as sections of Kabul. For the most part, she said, her job is uneventful, punctuated by moments of intensity.
A couple of weeks before she flew home on leave, a U.S. vehicle struck and killed an Afghan civilian, setting off riots that claimed 20 lives.
“We could see the firefights 300 meters north of us and the rioters were armed with AK-47s [Russian-made automatic assault rifles] and rocket launchers and were constantly moving – it got the adrenaline going,” she said last week from her father’s home in Gilroy. “These mobs were made up of between 200 and 300 people, including women and children.”
But it is perhaps the absence of people that holds the most danger. One of the reasons for the coalition offensive in the southern mountains is the increased number of ambushes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) an emboldened Taliban is launching. Meighan hears the IEDs explode just five minutes from her base. Before she was deployed to Afghanistan, she was put through advanced training at Ft. Lewis, Wash., to spot potential IEDs. But it’s often nigh impossible to catch them all.
“They’re in everything,” she said. “Trash, Coke bottles – there’s trash all over Afghanistan. Sometimes you can see the wires to the timers and they are very, very thin.”
Even sleeping can be dangerous assignment in Kabul. Two weeks after she arrived at the Kabul base a rocket was fired near an embassy another five minutes from the base detonated when it ripped through trees, scuttling Meighan and other troops out of their sleep and into a high-alert status.
Even something as seemingly innocuous as providing support for other troops involved in vehicle accidents can turn deadly in seconds.
“We were called in to provide support after a vehicle accident while the guys and equipment were picked up,” Meighan recalled. “Suddenly two [Afghani men] jump out of a taxi and start ordering all the kids to go away. That got pretty scary.”
That was a textbook ambush scenario, but fortunately for Meighan and her troops, the Afghanis were not Taliban and were just shooing away curious kids.
These kinds of day-in-day out threats create an intensity in soldiers that is hard to turn off. It’s one of the reasons the military drills rules of engagement into troops. But those split-second decisions must be made without the luxury of knowing everything about a situation. Meighan cited the use of what the military has dubbed VB-IEDs – vehichle bombs secured to either a vehicle or strapped to the driver. Meighan is a “trek commander,” meaning she is the one that must run down a mental checklist of the rules guiding when to open fire – all within seconds.
“Every action my team takes is my responsibility,” she said. “I must give the order to fire and in a split second must be aware of our total surroundings. Is that guy shooting at you or someone else? Then it’s a life or death call. My job is to make sure my guys are safe, and if it comes down to them or us, it’s not going to be us.”
Meighan is soft-spoken, with large, engaging eyes. As she describes the intensity of battlefield scenarios, she is relaxed, sitting at her dining room table with one leg crossed over another, casually slinging one arm over the top of a chair as she speaks – the picture of composure. But it’s a switch that isn’t easily thrown – spending Friday in the sultry summer of Gilroy, and 48 hours later locked and loaded and trying to get a read on an approaching truck in a hostile area of Kabul.
“A lot of my friends are re-upping – fourth, fifth, sixth tours – because when they come back, it’s too still,” she said.
Stillness is deceptive.
“The other day we were standing out on the balcony overlooking the park, and some kids let off a firecracker or bottle rocket and she jumped back from the railing,” her father said.
Morales is the epitome of a proud parent. His eyes crinkle in a broad smile as he talks about what patriotism and duty means in his family. Meighan recalls growing up in a family culture of duty to community and country.
“When the first Gulf War broke out, I just realized that I needed to be there, to be part of it,” Meighan said.
The politics swirling about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are played out in the war zones much like they are stateside – there are those soldiers who are vehemently opposed and others who see it as necessary.
“A lot of them just want their tour over,” Meighan said. “Others don’t believe we should be here. I’m one of those people that’s more like a leaf in the wind. My experience with my deployment is that of personal growth.”
She understands that the people of Afghanistan are caught in the middle of multiple paradoxes, and is cognizant of what they are suffering through. They are a people who for centuries have been occupied by one foreign force or another, and are distrustful of the newest occupier.
“We have limited interaction with the locals, but we have a bazaar each week where we see each other and I find them to be very nice, humble, respectful people,” she said. “We were out on an IED sweep one day and I remember this woman looking at me with hate in her eyes, and I couldn’t understand whether she hates Americans or whether she hates the freedom that [women] have to be in uniform.”
While she has experienced some “cold shoulders” while stateside, she also has experienced moving moments when Americans rally around her. As she was en route to Gilroy, she was flying American Airlines, which “hot spots” troops to their destination by providing seats on the next flight out, regardless of what their tickets call for.
“When we arrived in Dallas, they had fire trucks out shooting water out of hoses for us,” she said. “And then when we were on the plane, the crew announced that we were aboard and said ‘thank you for your duty.’ The whole plane started clapping.”
Her eyes get a glint in them. Or maybe a mist.
“That was really neat.”
