Heroes 2011
'Things could have been a lot worse'
When it was over, when the bomb blast stopped echoing in his ears and the living and dead were accounted for, Pfc. Justin Gleba called his father.
He gave only the basics: His squad had been struck by a bomb buried beneath a road in a dusty village on the outskirts of Kandahar. Two men were killed. Two good men. Gleba assured his father that he was OK.
It was all he could muster.
Who knows on such days why death chooses one person over another? Why some are put in its path while others, through fate or chance or dumb luck, walk away unbloodied?
Gleba wasn’t ready to share the details, and he wouldn’t be for some time.
The hell is in the details, and it all started with a fire.
From the far end of an alley, flames and dark smoke rose from a destroyed truck. Soldiers raised their rifles, peered through the scopes down the length of the alley and concluded that the truck belonged to the Afghan Civil Order Police. It was likely the same vehicle that had been reported stolen earlier in the week.
But the day was winding down and the soldiers were weary from carrying 100-pound rucksacks through 120-degree heat. The decision was made to continue on to their temporary home, an abandoned compound where the soldiers of Operation Southern Comfort — a 10-day campaign to clear the village of Malajat — found fitful sleep during the night.
The next day, Aug. 30, 2010, Gleba’s platoon waited until late afternoon to check out the stolen truck. They left the compound at 4:15 p.m. Within minutes, the soldiers started down the alley in single-file lines, hugging the wall on either side. Gleba, a 20-year-old medic, was on the right side, halfway back.
After some distance, the walls stopped and opened to a clearing. The truck sat in the road. Off to one side, in a field, was a small shed.
As soldiers carefully approached the truck, seeking first to confirm the vehicle identification number, Spc. William Fisher eased over to inspect the shed. Gleba, preparing to keep watch, lowered himself to one knee.
At 4:30 p.m., the explosion.
“There was a bright flash of light, and then everything turned gray,” Gleba said. “I saw it just an instant before I heard it, and then the concussion hit me. It was like I got hit in the head with a sledgehammer. It threw me to the ground, and then there was dust everywhere and I heard people screaming.”
He realized immediately that soldiers were hurt, perhaps badly, but amid the swirling dirt and debris, he could barely see.
The company’s commanding officer was on the radio reporting the explosion. He directed Gleba to the other side of the road. That’s where he found his friend.
‘He’d always fight for us’
Staff Sgt. Casey Grochowiak didn’t have to be in Afghanistan. At 34, married with two kids, he’d done two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. Years earlier, he’d hurt his back parachuting out of an airplane, an injury that required multiple surgeries and would have easily allowed him to keep a stateside assignment.
“He always told me that he would wake up feeling like the tin man that got left out in the rain,” Gleba said. “And not only could he have chosen not to go, but he actually had to try very hard to get medical clearance to go. He was very determined to come here.”
A Ranger-tabbed noncommissioned officer, Grochowiak had spent time instructing young soldiers and believed deeply that, injuries aside, his experience and expertise were best put to use alongside those young soldiers in combat. It might just keep one of them alive.
He befriended Gleba soon after the junior soldier joined the unit, fresh out of combat medic school at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and just before they deployed to Afghanistan in early August.
Grochowiak told Gleba stories about past deployments and covert missions. He also talked often about the dog he planned to get his family upon returning home and the rifle he would buy for his son so they could go shooting together.
“He always liked me, too,” Gleba said. “I was the doc. He’d always say, ‘No one messes with my doc while I’m around.’
“He was kind of a badass. Not only that, he was a good NCO. He looked out for us. When we got ridiculous orders to do something stupid, he’d always fight for us.”
Gleba found Grochowiak just outside the crater dug into the earth by the force of the bomb. Grochowiak’s legs were severed, and most of his right arm. He was conscious, barely, but quickly sliding into shock. Nothing could be done to save him.
At medic school, soldiers are taught to expect this moment, be ready for it, don’t dwell on it. In his head, Gleba remembered all this. In his heart, it’s not so easy.
He injected his friend with morphine, easing his passing.
‘Pieces that went with the dead’
A rustling in the woods jarred Gleba back into the moment, and he realized that he and his men might not be alone. The bomb could have been triggered by a hidden Taliban fighter. For all he knew, there could be dozens of Taliban watching them.
He rose from his knees, where he’d tended to Grochowiak, and along with Sgt. Richard Cardenas took a step toward the tree line. They considered spraying bullets into the trees — “recon by fire” — and moving forward to investigate. For reasons Gleba cannot recall, they opted against it.
Nearby was the body of the platoon leader. First Lt. Mark Noziska had been killed instantly.
Noziska, 24, had joined the National Guard after high school and gone active duty after graduating from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a criminal justice degree. Friends and family told newspapers after his death that he’d been moved to join the military by the Sept. 11 attacks. He was only a sophomore in high school then, but he vowed to serve his country. He was, they said, a patriot.
“I didn’t get to know him as well,” Gleba said. “But he was the same as Staff Sergeant Grochowiak. He’d always fight for us. He cared about us. … Those were two of our best guys.”
The most seriously wounded were Pfc. Adam Moreau, who was just 10 feet away when the bomb detonated, and an Afghan interpreter. With the area around the crater still unsecured, Gleba instructed other soldiers to take the wounded back to the alley’s entrance, where he could treat them in relative safety.
Moreau suffered a concussion and a ruptured eardrum. Shrapnel pierced his face, neck and arm. The interpreter absorbed shrapnel in his side. Gleba cleaned up both of them and saw them loaded onto an Afghan police vehicle that delivered them to a medevac helicopter for a lift to Kandahar Airfield.
A second vehicle arrived to carry away the bodies of Grochowiak and Noziska, destined to travel the same route. This time, there was no sense of urgency.
Calmly, Gleba walked back down the alley to retrieve “the pieces that went with the dead.”
‘We’ll never know’
Operation Southern Comfort ended early, the soldiers carrying it out shaken by the sudden violence.
For his level-headed response in caring for his soldiers during moments of death and chaos, Gleba received a Bronze Star with “V.” Those questions of life, death and luck remain unanswered.
Grochowiak and Noziska died Aug. 30. For the rest of the squad’s soldiers, despite their losses, it was one of the most fortunate days of their lives.
An explosive ordnance disposal team sent to the site later found five more pressure-plate bombs buried in the immediate vicinity of the stolen Afghan police truck. That no one else stepped on a plate during the entire frantic ordeal, Gleba said, is nothing short of amazing.
As he treated Grochowiak during his final moments, a bomb waited about three feet away. Had Gleba and Cardenas chosen to further investigate the rustling in the trees, one of them surely would have stepped on it.
Fisher, who was on his way to inspect the nearby shed when the blast went off, might be the luckiest of all. The EOD team discovered that the shed doors were rigged to detonate a dozen 155mm Russian artillery shells.
“With our proximity to that shed, I wouldn’t be surprised if that killed half of the squad, myself included,” said Gleba, who along with Moreau recently was promoted to specialist.
At that discovery, the EOD team deemed it too dangerous to continue and called in an airstrike. Six 500-pound bombs finished the clearing job.
“Things could have been a lot worse that day,” Gleba said. “There could have been more there, but we’ll never know. And I don’t want to know.”
turnerd@stripes.osd.mil
Twitter: @DerekTurnerDC
