Photo By Ken Scar | Spc. Brett Waller (second from left), from Ponca City, Okla., hangs out in his B-Hut...... read more read more
PARWAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan — Ernest Hemingway said, “Courage is grace under pressure.” If that is true, then there is no deeper pool of courage than that at Combat Outpost Red Hill, and no more stalwart a soul than Spc. Brett Waller, a soldier with Task Force Maverick, 1st Cavalry Division.
Burly and soft-spoken with a finger-crushing handshake, Waller is not the typical American 23-year old. Even though feature films could be made about the feats he and his battle buddies accomplish on an almost daily basis, you get the sense from him that there’s nothing he’d like less than being on some reality TV show, Waller’s journey from his hometown of Ponca City, Okla., to this desolate but beautiful alpine valley reflects that of many in the new generation of U.S. war fighters: It is not glory or revenge he seeks but peace, as in a peaceful life for his wife and two sons. It’s as simple as that.
Soldiers at COP Red Hill enjoy a seemingly mundane life while they’re home inside the wire – working out, doing laundry, playing video games – but looks are deceiving. Waller and his platoon live under the constant pressure of being deep in Afghanistan. They execute frequent missions into the backcountry surrounding their outpost. They must maintain a posture of constant readiness.
Minds and bodies have to stay primed for action at all times. There is no real down time in a war zone.
Sitting on the old leather couch in his B-Hut, waiting for darkness to clear a village with his platoon, Waller spoke calmly about recent missions, recounting ambushes and rocket attacks as if they were flat tires or parking tickets.
At one point he noted the empty bunk next to his where his roommate would be if he hadn’t taken four bullets in the leg on their last mission.
“We got on the road and we saw him running up towards us and he just looked like he was just tired of running. He said ‘man my leg really hurts!’ and we looked down and he had a chunk of meat hanging there. We got him up to see the medic and they found three bullet holes in him, and when he got to Bagram they found another one,” he explained, shaking his head slightly and taking a puff of a cigarette. “He’s doing fine now. Should be back here next week.”
Tales like this are a dime a dozen at COP Red Hill. To Waller and his buddies, it’s all in a day’s work.
“I needed a job,” he said when asked why he joined the Army, “I needed security [and stability] for my kids.” The Army offered him a chance to provide for his two sons – Brandon, 3, and Ryan, 4, - and get out of Ponca City where he was “just running around being stupid”.
“It worked great,” he says with a smile. “It changed my entire life.”
It was an easy choice for him, said his wife Whitney, who anxiously waits for his calls home when he’s safely behind the Hescoe walls of the COP. “I worry about him all the time,” she said. “He’s the best husband and father a person could ask for.”
“You can’t get a sentence out of Waller without the words ‘my boys’ coming out of his mouth,” said Waller’s platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Ashley Waruch from Accord, N.Y. “He is the most family-oriented person I’ve ever known.”
“He’s also very funny and outgoing,” said Mrs. Waller, who met her husband by putting a note on his car in a Walmart parking lot. “We were just teenagers then. My friends said he was a nice guy so I wanted to see if he’d call – and he did.”
They married two days before Waller shipped off to basic training.
Waller’s original job with the Army is as an air conditioning mechanic, but when he was placed in what is for all intents and purposes is an infantry position, he took to it in his typically steadfast way.
“When they turned us into more or less our own little infantry platoon every one was down to do it,” he explains in his easy southern drawl. “We were ready for it.”
His platoon has been conducting dismounted infantry missions for six months now, taking fire from insurgents more often than not, including one clash with the enemy that lasted over seven hours.
“That was the worst one,” he said. “It wasn’t really hard [physically] but that was the worst contact we’ve taken so far.”
During another grueling firefight Waller fought through a complex attack with several other members of his squad. When they were finally able to get clear and report back to Waruch, he informed them that there was another squad still pinned down. Despite having just survived an exhausting exchange with the enemy, Waller immediately volunteered to go back into the fight.
“When I need something done he’s the first guy in the mix – he’s right there standing up. When we had guys pinned down and I said, ‘Hey we still got guys in trouble’, he said ‘Roger’, gets all his gear and is ready to go back in.”
To Waller those kinds of actions are not exceptional. Like good soldiers do, he has become almost desensitized to the extraordinary circumstances of his day-to-day life.
“I love being over here with my buddies,” he said. “We all got the same amount to lose.”
Waller is typically pragmatic about the big picture as it applies to the war on terror. Doing an extraordinary job in the relentless pressure cooker of war, he quietly and consistently exhibiting grace under pressure..
“They say we gotta be out here so I’m just along for the ride,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just doing my job.”
| Date Taken: | 10.13.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 10.19.2011 21:28 |
| Story ID: | 78732 |
| Location: | PARWAN PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 1,154 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Task Force Maverick soldier’s journey to Red Hill, by Ken Scar, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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