The Great Gatorade Battle of Helmand Province

I’ve waited years to tell this story. I wanted to make sure I told it right or in the best way I could. I wanted to also make sure the appropriate people were out of the Marine Corps. It’s not that we did anything wrong per se, but the humorous aspect might follow some very distinguished careers, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

The Great Gatorade Battle of Helmand Province occurred sometime in early 2010 and was a day-long fight over Gatorade. Kind of.

We were on a mission in Afghanistan’s Helmand Provovince. However, the land’s unforgiving terrain limited our our mobility to foot patrol – but moving in an IED-laden country on foot means moving slowly.

To widen our control over the area of operations, we established patrol bases all around our Area of Operations (AO). My squad was tasked with occupying the northernmost patrol base and we alternated with a squad from our company’s first platoon. 

Our two squads built the patrol base from an abandoned compound in the middle of a field into a fortress of machine guns, sandbags, and fighting positions. We had to make it defendable because the backup was pretty dang far away. Patrol base life is like camping. You eat MREs, drink the water you brought with you, and live in very tight quarters. 

We were quite excited when we got the offer to receive two pallets of Gatorade airdropped by Hueys. It was a break from the monotony and a sweet treat. Little did we know it would turn into one of the biggest firefights of our deployment. 

The combatants 

I was part of an experimental squad known as the RAF Squad which stood for Reconnaissance Assault Force and was our company commander’s brainchild. A Fallujah veteran led us, and we had specialists assigned to the squad, including a radio operator with a radio MOS, a combat engineer, and an artillery scout. Our infantry forces included riflemen, assaultmen, mortar men, and machine gunners.

The infantry portion of the squad was handpicked from the company, and some of the best Marines in the company had been selected. Well, mostly. I’m not sure why I was there. I was average on a good day, but maybe I was just lucky because everyone on the squad could outperform me. In fact, my only real talent was a penchant for hauling heavy things over long distances. 

Our squad acted as a company-level recon squad and would be directly commanded to do the company commander’s bidding. Whatever he needed we could be assigned to do without disrupting platoon operations around the AO. Sometimes, we recce’d crossings; other times, we were a personal security detail, and sometimes, we would do direct action on Taliban hot spots. 

For this trip to the patrol base, we brought our Air Officer, a pilot doing a ground tour, and our company’s comm tech. We also had a six-man sniper team who often stayed at the patrol base. We were loaded for bear. 

Related: Still in Saigon: How a Vietnam War song can speak to all veterans

The setting 

Our patrol base was surrounded by wide open fields which was perfect because you couldn’t sneak up on us. Aboutt 200 meters to the south was a moderate-sized village. It wrapped upward to the northeast and formed roughly a third of a circle around our compound. To the north, there were scattered compounds. 

Since our base was no Command Observation Post or FOB, the Hueys couldn’t land with the electrolytes directly into the compound. Instead, they helicopters landed two pallets of Gatorade about 25 yards to the northeast of our base.

These pallets were stacked about six feet high with crates of Gatorade. It would be a lot of work to unload and load the pallets into the base, but no one cared, we had Gatorade!

One mistake we made was being a bit complacent. By 2010, we had beaten our local Taliban into the ground: we’d shut down a lot of their fighting force; deprived them of supplies; and starved them out. With that in mind, we didn’t assign additional security; we just had the normal two posts covering the entire area. 

We began working like ants. Grabbing case by case and bringing them into our patrol base.

We had been working for the better part of half an hour. I had just dumped my case of Gatorade and hopped over our homebuilt wall to grab another – when the machine guns opened up on us, and the ambush of all ambushes started.

Get shooting

There is something to be said for training as without thinking, I turned back around and jumped over the wall and back into the patrol base. At the same time, I saw a burst hit right below Post 1’s face and into the compound wall. 

It sent the Marine behind cover for a moment. He regained his OODA loop, and as far as I can remember, he was the first of us to return fire. He was armed with nothing more than an M16A4. 

The machine gun fire was coming from the town in the southeast. Post 2 only had a limited sector of fire due to the location of our fellow Marines. As I jumped back into the compound, I retrieved an M249 SAW from a squad member. I rushed back to the wall. Marines were pouring in and the Marine at Post 1 gave me an ADRAC (Alert, Direction, Description, Range, Assignment, and Control). 

He told me a machine gun was at a big white compound 200 meters southeast, left corner. I aimed and started pouring out rounds. I hammered the position, but, seconds later, I realized there was more than one machine gun in the compound. 

They were hammering us from the south, the southeast, and eventually from the north. I alternated targets and worked from left to right; if I saw a muzzle flash, I’d fire a burst. 

Related: Keep fit on deployment with these improvised workout equipment ideas

A porcupine 

My fellow Marines grabbed rifles and started shooting back. Eventually, our patrol base looked like a porcupine, but instead of quills, it had barrels. Everyone was fighting, and as I ran through the 100-round “nutsack,” I realized I wasn’t wearing any armor. No armor meant no reloads, so I ditched the SAW I’d picked up, grabbed my armor and my own SAW, and got back on the wall. 

By then, snipers were in play and grenades were being launched including smoke grenades that were blocking the enemy’s vision. And all that was happening just 60 to 90 seconds after the first shot. Our squad leader was barking orders, and Marines in everything from PT gear to full cammies were fighting back. 

We had a defensible position and would be suicide to try and close in on us, so we could stay firm all day. However, in the first 60 seconds, our squad leader did a headcount, and we were missing three Marines. Two snipers and one of our guys. They were taking cover behind the pallets of Gatorade, lying in the dirt, unarmed and unarmored. 

For God, Country, and Gatorade 

The best thing about fielding a machine gun is that you always get to face the fight. You don’t have to hold rear security, and you aren’t ever in the rear. However, as a rescue mission became necessary to retrieve our Marines, that became a disadvantage for me. I still feel a pang of shame, but I didn’t want to go. I was scared to death. 

I’d been in plenty of firefights, but this was the first time I felt we were outgunned. There was no cover outside the walls. I, of course, said nothing, and when tapped to go with my team leader, I didn’t hesitate. My team leader, call-sign “Grim,” whom I won’t name to protect his privacy, was a real warrior. A killer and a legend amongst the lower enlisted. He was aggressive and fearless. 

There’s a quote old and fat veterans like myself like to post on Facebook that is credited to Heraclitus of Ephesus. I usually cringe and roll my eyes when I see it, but it goes:  

“Out of every one hundred men, 10 shouldn’t even be there, 80 are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

A lot of people like to think they were the one warrior. They weren’t. My team leader, Grim, was the warrior. He grabbed a handful of us, including both our squad’s M249s, and led the charge from the front. He was the first over the wall, covered by a smoke grenade thrown by our squad leader. 

Semper Bibere

We formed a half circle around our precious pallets of Gatorade, oh, and around those three Marines, too, I guess. We laid down cover fire, but a lot of the fighting was slacking off. The Taliban lacked command and control, and we could listen to their radios. 

Our three Marines rushed back into the compound, geared up, and grabbed their rifles. We returned to the compound ourselves, and the leaders began to plan. Here’s the thing about the Marine Corps rifle squad: Your mission is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy or to repel his assault. 

Well, we repelled an assault, kind of. We located the enemy; now we had to locate, close with, and destroy him. With the squad assembled, we did just that and charged into the town. By that point, the enemy’s fire had ceased, but we poured into the village. We cleared compounds, looking for fighters, weapons, and anything else we could find. 

We began questioning the villagers, but we came up short on any actionable intel. The Taliban had run away and taken their weapons and their wounded or dead with them. One telltale sign was that parts of the ground were covered with water. It was a common Taliban tactic to cover the blood of wounded and dead with water. 

The fight was over. We went to every identified firing position in the village, in the scattered compounds, and everywhere we thought they mightpbe hiding. We spent the whole rest of the day making our presence known around the village. 

We dragged ourselves back to the patrol base before sunset and resumed moving the Gatorade into our patrol base. This time, we posted a bit more security. Once our task was done, we all got a bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade. It was the sweetest Gatorade I’d ever tasted. I still love lemon-lime Gatorade to this day. 

Feature Image courtesy of author.

Read more from Sandboxx News

• Army and Marines embrace kamikaze drones for ground combat
• Germany to help Ukraine produce a ‘significant’ number of long-range missiles
• Russian nuclear bases exposed in enormous intelligence leak
• Poland’s FB Beryl is a rifle between worlds – Service rifles from around the world
• Hermeus Quarterhorse Mk 1 takes flight marking a big step toward fielding world’s fastest jet