Charlie Troop had six months to save a forgotten Afghan district. But what, and who, would they leave behind?

WHEN CHARLIE TROOP went out on missions, Major Roy Rogers usually liked to ride in the lead vehicle. But early on the morning of May 7, 2012, it looked like the scheduled patrol might be called off. It had rained during the night and, if the ground was too muddy, the heavy armored trucks ran a risk of becoming stuck. Rogers and the 100-odd men comprising Charlie Troop had been in Giro District—on the remote eastern edge of Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province—a little more than a month, long enough for them to know that getting bogged down outside the wire was a situation best avoided. Set among bald hills and craggy mountains that ringed a sprawling desiccated plain, Giro was only about 100 miles south of Kabul but it might as well have been another country altogether. For years, Charlie Troop’s predecessors, a group of Polish coalition soldiers, had failed to secure much beyond a tiny, embattled outpost on a low rise overlooking miles upon miles of Taliban-dominated villages and desert. Now, during the twilight of the war, Charlie Troop had been given six months to try to turn things around and create some conditions that the Afghan security forces could handle on their own.

As the weather cleared, word came down that the mission was a go, and the soldiers piled into their trucks. Rogers, a towering 37-year-old Kentuckian with a sly Southern drawl blunted by a long, itinerant military career, headed for the front of the convoy. Rogers was the highest-ranking officer with Charlie Troop but not its commander. His job was to mentor the Afghan police and soldiers—to prepare them as best he could for the imminent U.S. withdrawal. It was a daunting task. The Taliban held far more sway than the government over Giro’s inhabitants, and the Americans had quickly discovered that you could barely step outside the base without getting shot at. One platoon was attacked on 14 consecutive patrols. Giro was so far behind other parts of Afghanistan that Charlie Troop’s objective on the morning of May 7 was simply to make contact with elders in villages where coalition forces had yet to go.

The lead truck was a multi-ton personnel carrier with a third axle, called a mine-roller, extending out in front to detonate pressure-activated bombs in advance of the vehicle itself. Rogers found Sergeant Jacob Schwallie sitting up front on the passenger side and Specialist Chase Marta behind the wheel. In back, Sergeant David Griffis and Private First Class Dustin Gross faced one another in a dark metal compartment cluttered with wires and gear. Occupying a mini-console of sorts, Private First Class Destrey Groom watched the world outside on a video feed that followed the muzzle of the roof-mounted machine gun he controlled with a joystick between his knees. That Schwallie’s squad had grabbed the lead was no surprise. An experienced Iraq veteran, Schwallie felt that soldiers without children could tolerate a higher level of risk than soldiers with: Since, among them, Griffis alone was a father, Schwallie often volunteered to take point.

Major Rogers jumped in a vehicle farther toward the rear, and the convoy headed south through a desolate, sparsely populated landscape. A few nomads herded sheep over thorn-bush and rock; thin streams—too shallow and turbid to bring forth much other than mossy stones and spindly grass—carved the scorched terrain; here and there, impoverished villagers worked modest fields of wheat. After moving on from their meeting at the first village—which passed without incident—the platoon soon arrived at a deep and wide wadi (a dry gravel stream bed). Because the banks of the wadi were too steep to drive up or down, Schwallie and Marta had no choice but to cross it on a well-traveled road that cut a gentler grade. The road presented a natural chokepoint, but there was nothing for it. When they reached the far bank of the wadi and began to climb the incline, it looked for a moment like Marta hadn’t gathered enough momentum to gain the top. Sergeant Griffis urged Marta on; as the mine-roller crested the lip of the bank and the truck leveled itself onto the flat, he laughed and congratulated Marta on the job.

Rogers was still waiting his turn to enter the wadi when the wave of the blast rocked his vehicle on its axles. Up ahead the sky was dark with dust. There was a moment of astonished silence. Then the driver said, “Oh my god.”