A soldier's story Rockville man recalls his role in Afghanistan battles

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by Effie Bathen
Staff Writer

Submitted photo Capt. Thomas Murphy Jr. of Rockville saw extensive action during the Battle of Anaconda in Afghanistan.

The second day of Capt. Murphy's war against terrorism was the worst.

"We call it the day we got mortared," he said, referring to the enemy's firepower.

Thomas D. Murphy Jr. of Rockville, 27, a battalion fire support officer, was among 1,500 ground troops sent to flush out Osama bin Laden's followers after the United States in early March launched an attack against Afghanistan's deposed Taliban government.

The U.S.-led offensive dropped more than 3,000 bombs on al Qaeda's eastern mountain stronghold in what is called the Battle of Anaconda. Murphy's platoon-sized group of the 101st Airborne Division's 187th Infantry was among the first U.S. forces on the ground.

The worst part, Murphy said, was hearing the crack of mortar fire about two miles away, followed by the quiet.

"We had about 30 seconds," he said. "We'd hear the pop. Then silence. There wasn't much breeze. There were no trees. No leaves. We'd wait until we heard it come screaming in."

Then Murphy's fellow soldiers would scatter, under the weight of battle gear. They got low, moving the rocky dirt away with their hands, as if that would save them the bite of shrapnel. As if it would save them their lives.

"Sometimes they would hear a single mortar," Murphy said. "Other times they would come one after another."

Murphy was awarded the Bronze Star for valor for staying at his post and calling in enemy positions on at least 20 missions in the Battle of Anaconda, March 2-11.

His group of forward observers was lucky. Only a handful were wounded in what history may judge as the landmark battle that drove ultra-fundamentalists from the country. Part of Task Force Rakkasan, they had about two dozen soldiers, the size of a platoon.

Murphy had trekked across Afghanistan's dusty plains and snowy mountains since the end of January. Once the battle began, he had no way of really knowing whether it would last days or months. After Anaconda ended, he eventually got his first real shower.

For him, it was day 45.

Pushed to the limit

Murphy joined the Army five years ago after ROTC at Providence College in Rhode Island. His thinking then: "Yeah, why not camp out in the woods?"

He found the field training for elite forces left him "tired, delirious," he said. "You're not sleeping or eating. In the hills and swamps, you keep going through the night 15 miles. Upwards of 100 pounds on your back and your weapon. When you stop, you fall asleep standing up."

Air assault training taught him to slide out of a hovering aircraft and into live fire. Airborne training taught him to parachute into a battle zone. And Ranger training in the Florida swamps, he said, pushed him beyond anything that he thought he could survive.

Still, in Afghanistan, he said, "Mentally, there was more stress. There were actually people trying to kill you.

"Everything has bullet holes in it. Everything," he added.

As an artillery officer, Murphy's work took him to both the tactical command post and to forward observation points, in the isolated mountain ridges and canyons south of Gardez.

"We called them the rat lines to Pakistan," he said.

Sitting on his parents' back yard deck in Rockville last month, far from the battlefield, Murphy tried to describe how isolated each tiny group of U.S. ground fighters felt.

He searched through snapshots, some showing helicopters landing on a brown moonscape, a line of soldiers like tiny dots are dwarfed against an endless dark horizon.

Another picture showed the bearded Murphy in a muddy battle uniform. Gray tents are half-covered in snow behind him.

"You can't believe how alone you are," he said.

A cause that means something

For Murphy, the war is personal.

Three of his friends had been killed in the World Trade Center attacks. One was a New York City policeman. One was a friend working across the street as the buildings collapsed. The other was a girl named Linda he had dated in college. She was aboard one of the planes that slammed into the Twin Towers.

Six months later almost to the day, on the other side of the world, he watched as allied bombs -- bombs he called for -- fell on Taliban targets.

When they hit, one of his fellow soldiers would stand in the open, throw a fist into the sky and yell, "How do you like that, you SOBs?"

In the times when bombs were not falling, his thoughts went to the homefront, to his wife.

"I thought of Nora all the time," he said.

His bride of eight months is a native of Hungary. He had met her while on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia three years ago. That separation was tough, he said, but nothing like what they experienced when he left for combat.

Then and now

America's fiery battles in Afghanistan's mountains have ended for now, but Murphy still remembers what ran through his mind the first day of Anaconda.

The blowing of his transport's rotors had no sooner lifted when an invisible enemy sent bullets zinging overhead and off the rocks.

What ran through his head then was not so much fear, but the questions: Where were they? Who were they? What would they strike next?

A year after the terrorist attacks on American soil, the war is moving into a new phase, one focused on security on the homefront.

Murphy said, however, that the same questions about what the enemy will do still haunt him.

A few days before Murphy's unit deployed, he and Nora were married in a brief civil ceremony

This month, as he leaves the Army, the couple is planning a church wedding.