An Insurgent’s Nightmare: MSG Earl Plumlee

Ken Harbaugh:

This interview contains graphic depictions of violence and gore. Listener discretion is advised.

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, in a special Memorial Day episode, we’ll be hearing from Master Sergeant Earl Plumlee. Plumlee served in Afghanistan as an Army Green Beret, and was awarded the Medal of Honor for the role he played in defending Forward Operating Base Ghazni. In just 9 minutes, he neutralized several enemies, survived multiple close-ranged blasts, and emerged with only minor injuries.

MSG Earl Plumlee:

Earl Plumlee, mas sergeant, retired US Army. And I was a Green Beret. I started as a weapon sergeant, and then ended up as a team sergeant on a ODA.

So, I came from a military family, I was always going to join the military. Where I ended up was kind of up for debate, depending on how my childhood was going and what movies were out. And I actually found out you could join the military with just a GED. And so, I went down to the Marine recruiter to try to join when I was still in high school, I was a sophomore. And they're like, “Yeah, no, that's not how it works. It's after your class graduates if you have a GED, we can take you. It's not a get out of jail free card.” So, anyway, he said, “The National Guard would take you.”

So, I went down, talked to the National Guard recruiter, ended up joining the National Guard as a sophomore in high school. And did two years in the Army National Guard, the Oklahoma National Guard as a 13M.

That's a MLRS crewman. So, I'm really enjoying the Ukrainian war because I'm like, “See, we told you what it could do.” Because the MLRS was a magnificent system and never really got to demonstrate what it was capable of on the battlefield, because the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, it wasn't a big player just because of overwhelming air power. And obviously, the 20-year occupation, you didn't need a system like that. So, it's been neat watching it in Afghanistan.

Well, what it smells like is BO because you're usually been driving around for a couple days in the cab with no AC, so it smells like arguably a worse version of the infantry because to me, that stagnant smell of guys just kind of sitting is worse than guys that are out there moving around the brush. And it's impressive though. You're sitting in that big heavy track, I don't know what they weigh, but it's for the lay person, it's a tank. And it shakes every bit of it, everything in there. You feel that 300-millimeter rocket jerking out of there. It's impressive.

So, it was a neat job especially for a high school kid to go out and drive a tank on the weekends. But it wasn't my adventure. So, I wanted to be out there in the very, very front, sneaking around in the weeds. So, ultimately, when I graduated high school, I joined the Marine Corps on an infantry contract and had a new manner of suffering defined for me.

I mean, some of it was a culture shock, obviously. There is a gigantic gulf in between the Marine Corps Infantry and the National Guard Field artillery. But you still have to work with people from all over the country. You still have to get the job done. And so, for that, especially after basic training after the School of Infantry, I was ahead of my peers and like understanding the relationship between the ranks, how tasks were given out, and how you get things done.

So, yeah, I joined in peacetime, so I was just looking to travel the world and drink beer in whatever ports that they would put me in.

And so, 9/11 happened my very first year in the Marine Corps. I was forward deployed in Okinawa as part of a UDP, a unit deployment program. And that's one of my big pivots from military adventure to being in the profession of arms in a time of war. And that's really one of those first steps where this isn't a cute little adventure. This is a big deal. This is a real life war.

I figured that out fairly early on because even before war, the infantry and the field artillery are dangerous places. And accidents when you're moving around heavy equipment in the field artillery, if you're not paying attention and you're taking a lax or evasive approach, you'll kill somebody. You'll drive over them with a track. If you do improper maintenance on that thing and the hydraulics fail, you get smashed by a box that weighs 40,000 pounds.

And especially growing up in western Oklahoma, in the oil field, I think the gravity of your decisions can impact not just your life, but those around you, came pretty early. So, I think I took that into the military where I was always kind of fun and cracking jokes. But I also, understood when to be serious and when to tighten it up a little bit and pay attention so that you didn't kill somebody.

Understatement, yeah. So, the infantry's already an arduous life. I was already out living that life, living out of my ruck, carrying everything I own, moving not just every day, sometimes moving a couple times a day and a couple times a night, and distances that most people would consider in an extreme circumstances only. I think every time we started walking, we knew we were going to walk five or six miles. That would be a short movement. Or usually, we had a 12 or 15 mile hike at the conclusion of every single training evolution in the infantry. So, I was already a fairly hardened person.

And then I got to the Reconnaissance community, and it was all the same stuff, except for the tempo was a lot higher. So, I think I did something fairly physically aggressive every day of the week. And my weekends became very precious because things weren't hurting. But it was like jumping into cold water, but I got used to it. And within a couple months, it's not different anymore. That's just your lifestyle. And of course, you're running five miles at four o'clock in the morning on Monday because we have to get our run in, so we'd be ready to swim when the sun comes up.

Several times throughout my career, even in the infantry, I was like, “I can't believe I get to do this.” I remember in the infantry, we hiked to the top of Mauna Kea on the big island. And I just remember every muscle in my body feels like it's got quick creed in it, and I blisters all over my feet. But then turning around and looking off that mountain, and I got paid to be here today.

And the recon was the same thing, out driving boats around Hawaii. People pay vast sums of money to get out and ride a boat away. It's a little different, it's not a black rigid inflatable, and they're usually doing it in the sunshine instead of the middle of the night. But I've had that experience my entire career is I can't believe I get to be here today with these people. And yeah, don't cry because I'm too tough, but a lesser man would.

So, my first deployment was about a week after 9/11. We didn't know we were going to Afghanistan when I deployed forward. We didn't know where we were going. But I ended up going to Bahrain and was a shipboard security detachment for the USMMA ships, the Merchant Marines. Every Merchant Marine ship got five or six Marines on it to support the buildup for the invasion of Afghanistan. So, I was super pumped because I got to go first. Unfortunately, I was too soon so I had to support other formations as they invaded Afghanistan. But even then, I saw neat things. I saw the JSO task force on the carriers at sea. We saw the 160th birds. So, I was there for some pretty neat benchmarks in history, except for I was a private standing a post instead of an operator getting to go through the door first.

What drew me to Recon, it was an elite unit or an elite formation inside the Marine Corps. And the Marine Corps itself is already an elite organization. So, I wanted to be there. I wanted to work with the best guys. But really what got me is I wanted to be the first to go. I wanted the important missions and recons where you do that in the Marine Corps. AKind of hard, and so, I didn't realize the Marine Corps was like, “Yeah, cool, go do recon, but you promised us four years in the infantry, so why don't you knock that out first?”

And honestly, I talked to young guys and girls trying to do these elite formations. And actually, the Marine Corps did me a favor, because Recon didn't want nothing to do with private Plumlee. They were very impressed with Sergeant Plumlee, but I didn't bring a lot to the table those first couple years that they would've been interested in.

We did an extra platoon out of Second Force, which was whatever recon Marines they could find from the reserve or active duty, they built a platoon. And we deployed to Iraq in 2005. And it was everything that I had been searching for, it seemed to me as a young man, those many years. But now looking back, it only took me really three years to get to the place I wanted to be. But we went to Iraq, and we had the direct-action mission out of Al-Asad. And it was special operations movie stuff. We flew out of a small area or HLZ right next to our living area. We'd fly out, prosecute targets and be back for breakfast. And I felt pretty important. I had really big britches on me at that time, and was pretty proud of myself.

That was my first war fighter deployment. I think that's when I kind of figured out I was slightly more adept, just emotionally more cut out for combat. The stress of driving over the IED roads every day, the stress of is this house going to be an ambush or a VBIED or HBIED, started wearing people down.

And then also, we started taking casualties. So, every mission wasn't a perfect win. So, guys started getting wounded and a friend of mine, Seamus Davey was killed. And so, you start kind of rectifying that this cool wartime adventure has a cost to it. And I started to see that.

That's something that I think everybody, when they get to combat, they think, “Am I the main character?” And then you start seeing especially more physically fit, more well-spoken, smarter guys, stronger guys, better guys get killed in just these lackluster type of deaths. And you're like, “Man, that could have been me. The sniper had to shoot somebody and his story stops here today at 20.”

And so, to insulate myself from it, because I saw people struggling and it served me well throughout my career was, I'm going to make sure that I do the best that I can every time. That way if one of my friends gets killed, that was the enemy's fault, not my fault. And I think it's really important for war fighters to insulate themselves with that. There was nothing more I could have done on the battlefield to prevent that friendly casualty because if you don't know that, it eats at you. And I've seen guys be completely consumed by it 20 years later.

It's one of those, you can explain it to a guy and until he forgives himself, it falls on deaf ears. You can explain it to him a hundred times, you can give him the tools, but until they actually realize that when you go to war the enemy gets a vote on who gets to go home. And it's why we honestly should avoid war at all costs. Well, not all costs, but to only undertake it under the gravest of circumstances.But when it is time to go to war, we should go as well prepared and as violently as possible because you never want to come in as the nice guy and get your unit just absolutely obliterated because you never get to take that back.

And I've explained it to people I've served with, “That wasn't your fault he got killed.” And there's always these what ifs and these tiny minutia, they're like, “If I had got up and had breakfast earlier, I'd have been more alert. And I probably would've spotted that guy.” Like probably not. I don't think you can be more alert when you're rolling up on a house expecting a gunfight. I've never driven up telling like, “Hey, the safe house,” and been sleepy as we rolled into the front gate. And you got to throw that to the things you can control, control them well. And the things that you can't, you have to understand that you can't.

We all take turns, walk in point with the knowledge that more than likely somebody's going to sacrifice himself for the formation. It could be you or it could be your buddy. Unless you're a fortune teller, it's not your call.

When you get your mission brief, you're excited or at least I was. Every time I get a good mission, you're like, “Hey, high probability that this important person is going to be this place tonight and we're going to go.” That's the purpose of all the selections. That's the purpose of all the effort you put to be in an elite formation. So, for me, it was always very exciting. And then usually about the time we start infill is when I would start thinking, “Does he know we're coming? What's his plan? Because he's got to know we're coming eventually.” Like if you're an Al-Qaeda leadership position, you know that we're coming. One night, we're going to be there. So, to think that they haven't taken any precautions is pretty childish.

So, you start wondering like, “What's this guy's game plan? Is he a runner? Is he a fighter? What are we going to find here?” And then usually I settle down as we kind of left the last cover and concealed position. And at that point, it doesn't matter what his plan is because what's going to happen is going to happen. Either we're going to catch him sleeping, or he was ready for us and it's going to be a gunfight. There is nothing left to think about. We've done our rehearsals, we've made our plan, and now, the only thing we have to do is violent execution. And really the only thing you can do to guarantee failure on the objective is to not do violent execution. If you start having what I always call it is that you make a good plan before you start drinking, don't come up with a new one while you're drinking. And to me, combat's like that is when you see where the X is and where the gunfights going to happen, that's not the time to let the good idea of fairies come in. We made a plan in a room with all of us coming up with the best course of action. And now, we're going to do it regardless of how scary your part of that plan is. And next time, maybe come up with a better plan if this part's too scary.

I lived for the deployments. I threw one marriage away. She said, “If you deploy again, I'll leave you.” And I went to work immediately following that conversation and volunteered for the very next deployment. So, I wanted to be the guy. And I guess I had, what I thought was payback that I owed the people I served with. My first battalion ended up going to Fallujah and took a lot of casualties, and I wasn't there for them. To me, I was chasing delusions of grandeur. I went to become a force recon Marine, and they all went to war. And if I'd known they were going, I would've went with them.

So, I spent a good portion of my career just paying back not being there for those guys because that was my first turn. I was a squad leader in the infantry, and I sent my young guys to war without me so I could go chase my career. And it kind of ate at me for years.

I put myself in front of every dangerous situation as often as possible to pay that debt I felt that I owed those guys. And drank too much and drove too fast. And got in bar fights at 2:00 in the morning. 20-year-old Marine stuff.

So, I was once again bummed out, our site that my ODA had got shut down, and I had a choice between go home or work at the company headquarters. No, Green Beret is pumped about either of those. And if he is, he should probably give his Beret back. But I was not going to be at home while my guys were deployed again. Just like that phantom fury thing that I missed, I was not going to do that again.

So, I stayed in the company headquarters on FOB Ghazni and took a support role. I was the weapon sergeant for the company headquarters. That is not a war fighting function. That's deep logistics for the ODAs. They send broke guns, I go get them fixed at depot level. They send up their ammunition consumption, and I try and guess what they're going to use next month so that I can have it ordered and shipped and keep them topped off. And then if they get in a bad gun fight, I have their emergency resupply bundles.

So, it's really a lot of bookwork. If they're out on patrol, I have to look at what their weapons are and they're manning and build the appropriate bundle for them. So, it's maybe interesting to some people, but it's not exciting work. And as I'm doing that, the Taliban selected FOB Ghazni as a site for a what we call a spectacular complex attack. They knew that we were going to close the FOB, so they figured it's a win-win. They can come in and just eviscerate the camp, and we'll leave. Or they'll come in, lose militarily or tactically. But since they know we're going to close it anyway, they can still claim that information victory and say, “See, we ran them out of town.”

I didn't know that at the time. So, to me, it was just an annoyance we were getting indirect fire fairly frequently. I thought it was just for harassment. But what it was is they had informants and Taliban fighters that were on the camp working as laborers that were recording where the rounds were landing, and recording what steps the camp took when under attack and the high-density areas of the camp for populations of soldiers. So that when they came in and wanted to get those mass casualties, they knew the areas of the camp to hit.

So, you fast forward about a month of that, just them harassing us, and they arranged for three truck bombs. 2 5,000-pounders and 1 20,000-pounder maneuvered to the camp. The 5,000-pounder detonated across the camp for me on an exterior wall. And 15 Taliban fighters with suicide vests, brand new Chinese rifles, brand new Chinese armor piercing incendiary ammunition, and brand new Chinese hand grenades rapidly maneuvered through that breach point and headed for the interior of the camp.

I didn't know that. They didn't give me the warning order, so I just knew the bomb went off. And I heard their base of fire. They had two machine guns covering their ingress into the camp. And I know what talking gun sounds like, and that's when you have two guns working back and forth to conserve ammunition in the operational envelope of the gun. But to lay down a massive amount of suppressive fire. I know what that sounds like. And I grabbed my gear and headed toward the sound of the gun, so to speak.

And as we're headed down there, started picking up all my buddies that … pretty much my team was manning the company headquarters. So, my old warrant was the company warrant. My intelligent sergeant from my ODA was the company intelligence sergeant. And Nate Abkemeier was a support soldier who I had gotten close with in the company headquarters. And we all linked up and moved down to that breach point. Independently, but we all got together as we headed down there.

I was a sniper and I had a sniper rifle. So, as we got to the last cover and concealed position, I had Nate slow down in the vehicle we were in. Matt Hornick and Chief Culbert on a four wheeler pulled just past us. And as soon as they broke around that corner, they both got hit with small arms fire. And then they were both obviously hit and then both very obviously under a huge amount of small arms fire. We could see it hitting all around them. But we couldn't see where it was coming from. But that's fine because we have a battle drill for that. We've rehearsed it about a million times. We pull the vehicle in between the good guys and the bad guys, dismount and either load up the casualties and maneuver more, or you fight it out there.

Unfortunately, I kicked my door open as we made that turn. And instead of being across the camp or out on the flight line, (I thought we had more space) we pulled right in the middle of what was their rally point.

So, we pulled in literally into the middle of a circle of about 12 fighters. And they all faced inboard and started directing their fire into our truck. Pulled my rifle up and tried to go to work and fired one round and my rifle jammed. Yeah, it's never jammed before, and it never jammed after, but for this story, it jams. And I was kind of like, “Well, I've seen it before, and I guess I'm the guy today that dies at the very start of the gunfight and doesn't get to participate.”

So, I've been trained in the Marine Corps and in Special Forces over and over again when the rifle goes down, pistol comes out. And I just stepped out of the truck and started closing with the nearest group of enemy fighters. And my hope was I could buy enough time for Nate and Drew to figure something out. So, I just presented my pistol and just started indexing back and forth between the fighters as fast as I could. Well, not as fast as I could because as soon as I pulled my pistol, I broke one round, who knows where it went. And I heard that just voice, it was like, “Hey, if you don't actually put good hits on targets, there's absolutely no way you're getting out of this.” So, I steadied up my front side tip and tried to remain as calm as possible as I just indexed from target to target. And just started closing with them as I went and slowly moving at a bleak angle off to their left and my right, trying to get to concealment. I got right in the middle of them and ran my pistol was about dry. And I was shocked and they were surprised as they never hit me for whatever reason. I guess they got too excited. But left me right in the middle of these guys and I needed time. And the only thing I could come up with was I'd have five seconds while this hand grenade cooked off. So, pulled a hand grenade out, cooked it off for what I thought in my head was two seconds, but I was probably counting just about as fast as you could count. So, it was probably about 200ths of a second, and just kind of stepped out and tossed it in the general direction of the fighters, which it worked. As soon as I stepped out with that hand grenade, everybody ran for the hills, except for one guy who I'd hit with my pistol. And can't tell but I remember indexing down off of their vests into their pelvic girdle. So, I think I hit him in the hips and dropped him because I remember as I broke that pistol round, he just dropped like somebody cut the strings on a marionette. And I remember being shocked because you always hear nine mil doesn't have stopping power. And for me, I fired one round at him, and he disappeared out of my sight picture.

But he was still sitting there and just by luck that that grenade when I tossed it, landed right between the ground and his hip. And he never tried to roll off of it. He didn't try and swat it away. He just pulled his rifle up and tracked me behind that water tank. And then the whole time I was working on my rifle, he was just shooting through that water tank. And I still remember very clearly as I was working on my rifle, dumping the mag and locking the bolt, I remember little pieces of white plastic sprinkling down on me because every time one of his bullets would go through it, it pulled just a tiny little plastic snowflake off with it. But he never hit me. So, whoever wrote the manual ‘concealment is not cover, but it serves just as well. The enemy can't observe you.’ Yep, totally right because he shot everywhere, except for where I was back there kneeling, working on my gun.

I had my rifle up at this point and started hearing rounds hitting the burn behind me. And I turned out to my left and rear and a fighter is about a hundred meters from me in a sling supported prone position. Just laying out there, driving him in.

And I knew it was a hundred meters because we're on base. This is literally where I do sprints in the morning. So, I dropped to a knee, held my rifle right on the notch of his neck, pulled the trigger. And he vaporized off the face of the earth, which shocked me because that doesn't usually happen. When you shoot people, they don't usually explode, in my experience. Some people have a different experience. But I remember even a hundred meters is fairly close to be from a suicide vest. And it was incredibly loud. And I was on my knee and I jumped to my feet, and I was looking around the airfield trying to figure out what just happened. And my first thought was that a Polish tank had come up and hit them with their main gun. But there was no tanks out there yet and I couldn't see any other weapon system. And it kind of dawned on me that exactly when I broke that round, this guy detonated. And I was like that guy had a suicide vest on, and I shot it. And I had like little small internal victory because every sniper wants to put in his log book, engaged suicide vest guy and detonated it. So, I had that story. I was like, “Cool.”

And as I was kind of like getting a survey of the land, I'm at this little four-way intersection. And I saw some fighters run off to my left, and I saw a bunch to my right in front, had run back down this little alley when I threw the grenade. And I didn't know what their plan was. And I was aware of like the bastion attack on the Marine Corps, that the whole point of it was they were trying to destroy all the aircraft. So, I kind of had maybe a suspicion that they were going after all the aircraft that the poles had.

And I couldn't go back to where my guys were. Just around this little corner I'm at, I could hear them yelling for a medic. And I knew if I went back to where they were, if the fighters came back, they'd be right on top of us. So, I figured I'll develop the tactical environment with one Earl Plumlee and went down to where I'd seen them take off to. And I got about halfway down this little alley. And they hung muzzles from cover and started engaging me. And I was shooting on the move, moving off to a generator panel off to my right. And trying to keep them suppressed as best I could.

And I got most of the way to this little panel and my rifle ran dry. And I had this big, huge rifle, 20-inch barrel on it. And I knew my pistol only had like a round or two left, and I had all these guys to my front. So, I knew if I was going to get out of this, I'd need that rifle back up.

So, instead of transitioning to my pistol, I went for a reload on my rifle and dumped the magazine and super elevated my muzzle. And as soon as I did that, the nearest fighter to me threw his rifle into his sling and broke from cover and just started sprinting toward me. And lucky for me, and unlucky for him is I practiced reloading vastly more than he practiced sprinting because I put a fresh mag in, sent the bullet home, and he was only about half the distance to me, which still put him at around that 10 to 12 meter line. And pulled the trigger and detonated his vest. And luckily, I pulled in behind that generator panel. So, it directed a little bit of the blast and caught all the frag, and just knocked me off my feet. And I was laying there going, “Man, that was a close one.”

And another fighter came walking up looking over his sight tried to finish me off on the ground there. And he just wasn't using his sights, and he was trying to shoot while walking, which is kind of an advanced skill and he wasn't quite pulling it off. And all his rounds were landing just a little bit short, about 12 inches, 15 inches short. So, I pulled my rifle back up and hammered away at him. Folded him up, got to my feet, and then started engaging his buddies that were covering his movement. And my rifle ran dry again. So, rather than find out if I could pull that feat off one more time, I dumped the magazine and pivoted and ran back to the corner where I was at.

I was also, kind of curious where all my friends were that I brought with me because I was like that scar's pretty loud, and I've been throwing hand grenades, and surely somebody heard this suicide vest detonate. Like where the hell is everybody at? And they had their own problems because when I ran around the corner, bumped right into Drew, who'd gotten out of the truck just as fast as he could, but just one of those freak of nature things every round that missed me either hit Drew or hit Nate Abkemeier when I stepped out of the truck. And then one of the rounds came through and hit the child safety locks. So, it was a civilian vehicle, it was a Toyota Tacoma. And it still had the child safety lock mechanism in the door. It had an up armor panels and stuff, but it still had child safety locks on it. And this round came through and hit the lever on it. So, Drew tried to follow me and couldn't, because he was locked in the backseat. Which I think is funny, Drew gets aggravated about it.

But anyway, he's jumped out of the truck and he saw me obviously advance on him with my pistol. Just doesn't know where I've been since. But I crash into him, and I tell him, “Hey, Drew, I know right where they're at. Let's go get them.” And he's like, “Alright, let's go.” So, I step back around that lane on the far right side of the alley, and Drew takes the far left. And it's a lot funner doing gun fights with a friend because you only have to look a couple places instead of all the places. And we start going back down this little alley. And the last guy I shot is just kind of laying in the lane there and he's smoking. Not a lot, but a little. And Drew is looking like he's going to step over that guy. And so, I yell at Drew, like, “Hey, stay away from him. They got suicide vests on.” Which kind of gets him to flex up a little bit. And he's like, “What?” And I'm like, “Stay away from the bodies. They all have suicide vests on.” And he's figuring that out, and as I'm telling him, that vest goes low order which doesn't explode, but it burns except for its high explosive so it's a pretty spectacular type of burn. So, it was like a 20-foot blowtorch. This is just as powerful as a match flaring up except for 30 pound of match.

And Drew runs over and I'm back behind this generator panel again, and I got Drew with me. And whether it was this guy's hand grenades or if they all just started throwing hand grenades at it, eventually it evolved into they had little buddy teams. One guy would suppress us with his rifle, and then his buddy would chuck hand grenades at us, which was working pretty good at keeping me and drew pinned behind that panel.

So, we're fighting it out. And lucky for Drew and I, we were so close. We're fighting at about 15 meters from each other at this point. And everything's on fire and there's smoke everywhere, so you can't see well. I remember moving my head around as the thick smoke would billow back and forth in between us. And they were throwing their grenades so hard that they would hit the wall behind us and then bounce back into the middle and detonate. So, it was equally detrimental to both sides of the fight. But yeah, if they'd have rolled one slow in there, probably would've finished us off.

And we're going back and forth at this. I finally actually got hit in the top of my plate carrier with a hand grenade and was messing around, flicking that thing back. And they finally got one into the fighting position behind that panel with Drew and I, which was emotional event for both of us. We were both kicking that thing all over the place. And Drew grabbed me and said, “Hey, we got to get out of here. They're going to kill us.” He says he said that. I don't remember that because I couldn't hear anything because everything was just exploding. But I'll take him at his word.

But he grabbed me and jerked me into a run. We took about five or six steps back toward the pickup truck in the little corner. And we both got blown off of our feet. I remember trying to get up and I was trying to get my rifle back into my shoulder, and I couldn't. The buttstock had been folded up, and I was trying to mess with it. And I looked down inside my buttstock and my sling, and there was a human arm from about just below the elbow down, had ripped in at Mach 5 and hit my buttstock and knocked my rifle out of my hands and broke the buttstock on my rifle. And I remember very vividly, it looked like a hand. It had hand fingers and an arm, but when I grabbed it, all the bone was just gelatinized. So, it felt more like a big squid tentacle, which was offensive to my senses because I remember picking that thing up and just being grossed out by it. Picked it up and ran around that corner, figured out that half an arm wasn't going to help me win the gunfight. So, got rid of it.

And we're sitting there, a Polish tank drove up and I was like, “Oh, easy, perfect. We'll get this tank spun around in here and have him drive right through the middle of them. And the battle will be over. And that the Polish tank commander was sitting real tall on his turret, and I was yelling at him and he couldn't hear me. That machine gun base of fire in the house had an amount of fighters. I forget what they said were in there. They also had brought a ton of RPGs. And as the Polish armor had moved into that gap to kind of block that, what was ended up being like, I think a 60-meter hole in the exterior wall, that base of fire started engaging the Polish armor with RPGs. So, they were out there in that gap fighting it out, catching RPGs to their armor. So, me yelling at that tank commander was not effective means of conversation.

So, I was like, I reached down and I picked up a big rock and threw it at him, and I was trying to hit him in the side of the helmet, but even better, it went right across his face, which scared the shit out of him. And he turned and looked down and I gave him the international sign for pivot this way and follow me. And he looked and shrugged his arms and said, “I got my own job. Sorry, you're on your own.” And pulled his vehicle forward and just as he rounded that corner, the insurgents would've been on just on the backside of these sealine containers. And as he pulled his tank around, they shot him in the side of the head and killed him.

So, well, that problem went, the tank buttoned all the way up and started kind of driving a little bit erratically, and then still went to the breach. The crew went to where they were supposed to go. And I was like, “Well, I guess this is going to be our problem to solve.” And as we're sitting there, I hear, “What are you boys doing?” And it was Chief Culbert. Well, last time I'd seen him, he gotten hit and hit the ground. And I was worried that he was dead, or at least grievously wounded. But he's up walking around. And I make fun of him, he got shot in the butt. And I guess when you get shot in the butt, it hurts a lot and you'll act like you're dead for a little bit.

But I'm elated. I ran over and gave him a hug, and he is like, “What are you boys doing?” I was like, “Chief, we know right where they're at. Let's go get them.” And he's like, “Well, okay, let's go.” We had one Navy Seal on the camp. You can't have a war story without a Navy seal. So, Lieutenant Turnipseed was ours.

So, he comes running up, him and Drew had known each other and worked together so they took that outside track again. And I'm going to lead chief into this mess. And I go to reload before we go around this corner because obviously, I keep running out of ammo, so it's I'm like, I'm going to make sure that stops happening. So, I go to reload and I can't find any magazines, and I look down and it's because I'm out of ammo. And I pull the magazine out of my rifle, and it's only got one round in it. And I was like, “Well, that ain't good.” So, I tell Chief, and he's stacked up behind me. I'm like, “Chief, you got to go first. I'm out of ammo.” And he peeps around. He is like, “What?” I was like, “You have to take point. I only got one bullet, so you take point and I'll cover you.” And he is like, “Yeah, you're going to cover me with one bullet.” But he does, he steps in front of me, and we move down to that corner.

About that time is when Mike Ollis, a soldier from the 10th Mountain shows up. He was at the MWR with his guys and checked to make sure they were all good, heard the gunfight and has sprinted across the camp with just his combat shirt and his Oakley M frames.

So, he comes up behind us and he is like, “Hey, can we come with you guys?” And I remember my first thought was, “You only got one magazine, maybe sit this one out.” And then I was like, “Well, that's bold talk for a guy that's only got one bullet.” So, I remember saying, “Hey, it's pretty bad, but come on.”

So, we stepped around that corner. And get all the way back down to that generator panel, which is also kind of a three-way intersection. And we roll up into it and nothing's on fire, nobody's shooting at us, nobody's throwing hand grenades. So, Chief Culbert was probably thinking, “These guys really sold, this is a big deal. And it seems not that bad.” But as we get down to the little concrete apron, you can start to see body parts all over the place. And there was heads, and arms, and feet, and legs, unidentified, just little grips of meat, little pieces of skin. And I remember looking at probably three or four pieces of spinal cord just kind of laying out there. And we're looking at all this mess. And as we're looking at it, an insurgent sits up behind this pile of dead bodies further out. And bounce passes two hand grenades at us, screams Akbar, and reaches up and pulls a lanyard on his vest and detonates himself.

I assume they had made this plan. So, at the same time this happens, another fighter has taken off sprinting toward the rear of us. And I remember, Lieutenant Turnipseed and Drew ran towards where this guy just detonated to get away from the hand grenades. The hand grenades, his rough throw, put one to my front and one to my back. So, I was like, “Well, I guess I'm in the perfect spot to ride these out.” And I just remember being very confident that I would be fine. I don't know why. I guess the 15 hand grenades I rode out before that just had hadn't hurt me. So, I figured, what's two more?

So, I remember seeing one this hand grenade run past me, and I tucked up to the wall and I remembered I didn't have eye pro on, so I was like, “Well, probably shouldn't look at it.” And just kind of stuck my face to the wall as that grenade detonated.

And I remember it hurting deep in my bones. And I remember feeling it in my femurs the most, it felt like my bones were splintering. But I didn't get hit with anything. And as soon as kind of shook it off and I could hear the AK fire behind us now.

So, I turned around, fired my last two rounds at this guy. And Drew was engaging him from that far angle with his MP5. And whether we hit him or whether he detonated his vests, either way, the result was the same. His vest detonated within a couple inches or maybe less of, he might have actually made it all the way to Mike Ollis, but it detonated and blew Mike Ollis most of the way to me.

And at this point, I had my pocket knife out. My pistol was empty, my rifle was empty. And I had my knife out, and I got to looking around at the tanks are still engaged in the space of fire, and the RPGs are still shooting back of the tanks, and there's artillery rounds landing all over the camp. And I was like, “Well, maybe knife fighting isn't the perfect answer for today.” So, I put my knife up and ran and grabbed Mike and picked him up by his belt and the collar of his shirt and jerked him over to this compound for the UAV compound. Started treating his injuries as best I could. And it was bad. But we're on base. So, I figured instead of keep doing these interventions with my IFAK, I was like, “Let's just get him to the hospital as soon as possible.”

Grabbed a civilian and his vehicle, had Mike loaded up, got them moving. He got to the hospital like 90 seconds after he was wounded, which is a better chance than almost anybody would've had. And unfortunately, he succumbed to his injuries, which were traumatic. He ate a suicide vest at point blank range.

The 20,000-pound truck, which was supposed to come in the middle of this grand assault, broke down. So, the Taliban attack is kind of stalled out. They have all these fighters on multiple points on the camp. One truck, the second 5,000-pounder was destroyed by a Afghan army, so they don't have this other breach point, wherever it was supposed to be. And then the couldn’t go out of the camp, this 20,000-pounder has broke down.

So, at this point, it's kind of a stalemate. They're out in the city firing into the camp. The Polish QRF is really hitting its stride. They've got their armor out. They've got their birds in the air. So, the tie to the battles is starting to turn. And my commander, Major Castor, has shown up at this point. And he's like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, the polls got it. I'm going to consolidate my forces back on the SF camp and figure out what the bill is.” Which ended up being incredibly cheap for us. I think everybody that participated in the battle got a purple heart. Everybody that did anything other than take shelter in a bunker got some form of Valor Award. And I was injured enough that I got narcotics, which was hilarious because I was the only person that wasn't directly shot. I got narcotics and got to sleep all night.

And Nate, Drew, and Mark Colbert got designated as walking wounded. So, they got bandages on their bullet holes, and they had to man a machine gun in a tower all night. Which was pretty funny to me, not to them because chief had to stand up the entire night because he had a hole in his butt.

Every recipient wears their medal differently. And I think when you look at the narratives, that's when you can figure out kind of how that guy's going to feel about it. So, while Mike Ollis was killed, which is tragic … I didn't know him. I met him on the battlefield. So, it wasn't my core group of friends that would've deeply affected me. And it wasn't a death that hit my family hard. All those guys that were there, my kids call them uncle. So, when you look at some of these narratives and you realize that like half this guy's friends died, and then he gets put up on this this altar, that's got to be very uncomfortable.

I didn't have that experience. I took all my friends to the White House with me. And we were kind of in a celebration mode until we got there because they awarded three medals the day I got mine. I was the only person that was present to receive their medal of honor. The other two were posthumous, which is add some gravity to it because we're sitting there and I got all my friends and we're high fiving about what a cool event this is. And then you're sitting in between two widows and two groups of children that their father's gone. Which brings some subdued gravity to the occasion.

And then the second thing that was just a neat thing for me is I took my one of my profound leaders of my career, Tony Bell, he was my sergeant major at the time. I took him with me.

And he was just so proud of me. And he told me he was proud of me, and I could see him just kind of looking at me. And that's somebody that I held in such high esteem, to kind of get that reciprocated, was very humbling.

So, somebody told me being a leader is super easy. And I can't remember who told it to me. And he's like, “Being a leader is super easy.” I was like, “Yeah?” And he's like, “Everything that your guys do good, you give them credit and everything that goes wrong, that's your fault. If you do that for your men, like you will build a immense following.” And so, it sounds like a simple thing to do, but then as I've gone through my career not everybody has the virtue to be able to do that. When something's good happens, they want to take credit. And especially as a leader, it's such an easy thing to in front of your boss, say like, “Actually, it was this guy, or it was these guys. They're the ones that delivered that success.” And then to stand in front of that formation when something failed and take that on the chin and be like, “Yeah, that was my fault. I let that happen.” It's such a simple thing, but it's such a unique thing that leaders just don't have. And I think just the ability to do that, your subordinates instantly notice it, and they start to trust you. And then your supervisors, it's not lost on them either. And it's such a simple thing and it works at all levels. I've never been anywhere and in charge of anything where if you just apply that one simple thing, has all these cast off benefits. So, if you set in your mind that if this thing fails, I'm going to take credit for the failure, you'll be very diligent in making sure that your formation doesn't fail once you've decided that is your course of action that you are going to.

For me, Memorial Day has always been an important holiday. Coming from a military family, I always understood the gravity of it. For my career, 25 years of it, about 20 years was at war. And I want to say it's on average, I buried a friend at least once a year since 9/11 has kicked off roughly. So, for me, Memorial Day, I always look at those pictures of those guys. If I get a chance, if they're in Arlington, I like to go see them and throw a coin on the headstone.

And it's evolved certainly, for me, especially when I look back at those pictures, in my mind we're all these fully mature warriors that met their fate on the battlefield. And then as a older guy and retired now, and I look back at those pictures, about half of them, they're kids. To me, I'm astounded that we even let somebody that young go confront the enemy in armed conflict. So, it's a special thing for me to look back and think about those guys I served with and I think about the cost of that war.

And also, something that's unique when I do that, about halfway through my career there started being widows and kids leftover. So, I always try to track them down if I can and tell them a story about their dad. But Memorial Day is obviously special for somebody that's spent their entire career at war.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Master Sergeant Earl Plumlee.

Thanks for listening to Warriors In Their Own Words. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We’re always looking to improve the show.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.