Welcome Home: 4th Brigade Combat Team back from Afghanistan

By Henry Cuningham
Military editor

Families cheered and waved U.S. flags Friday as an airplane carrying the last large group of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers home from Afghanistan touched down at Pope Air Force Base.

The arrival of the Omni Air International flight around 10a.m. marked the return of almost the entire 82nd Airborne Division to Fort Bragg for one of the few times since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

About 200 paratroopers were on the flight.

Retired Sgt. Maj. Darrel Shanks and his wife, Colleen, drove 17 hours from their home in Bolivar, Mo., to see their 27-year-old son, Sgt. Darrel Shanks II, arrive home. It was the second time they had made the drive to welcome their son's return.

"This one hasn't been that bad," the elder Shanks said. He was a sergeant major in 3rd Special Forces Group who made several deployments to hot spots around the world during his own military career.

The 4th Brigade Combat Team had more than 3,500 paratroopers in southern and western Afghanistan since August 2009.

"No brigade was asked to do as much and (operate) as decentralized," said Col. Brian Drinkwine, the brigade commander. Drinkwine and Command Sgt. Maj. Mark Sturdevant returned last Saturday.

Thirty-eight Fort Bragg paratroopers died during the deployment. With other attached units, the task force grew to about 5,700. A total of 50 troops from the entire task force were killed and about 200 were wounded.

"We had twice as many Afghan Security Forces that fell in the line of duty, as well," Drinkwine said.

The brigade and other coalition forces worked to build up the Afghan National Security Forces, bolster the Afghan government, fight insurgents and improve the lives of the Afghan people.

"Every single day, whether it was western or southern Afghanistan, we had troops in contact, we had leaders doing 'key-leader' engagements or meeting with villagers and making a difference," Drinkwine said.

The brigade, known as Fury, worked in Kandahar, the heavily contested home of the Taliban, and surrounding provinces.

A brigade from Fort Carson, Colo., replaced the 4th Brigade.

Lt. Col. Bob O'Brien, the brigade's deputy commander, led the formation of paratroopers up the sidewalk to the passenger shelter at Green Ramp.

His wife, Michele, had been watching weather reports on Hurricane Earl, which had been threatening North Carolina for several days.

"It's wonderful to have him home," she said. "We're so proud of him."

There was talk about the hurricane and whether the flight would be able to arrive on schedule.

"We've got a few guys left that are bringing home some of our equipment," O'Brien said. "This was the last main-body flight of Task Force Fury paratroopers. So it's quite a thrill to bring them home."

Von Evans, 73, drove six hours from his home in Clinton, Tenn., to see his grandson, Staff Sgt. Joel Evans, return from his second deployment. The grandfather wore a specially printed white T-shirt with his grandson's name in large black letters.

"Me and granny had to come and see him," he said. "He looked good. He's been through a trying time, I know that. He's got two kids. He hasn't seen the little girl since she was about 3 months old. She's little over a year."

• SLIDE SHOW:4th Brigade Combat Team returns home

Pullout deadline likely to slip for Marines in Afghan province

USA TODAY's Gregg Zoroya, reporting from Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan, says none of the nearly 20,000 U.S. Marines fighting in Helmand province is likely to be pulled out when President Obama's deadline for troop withdrawal is reached next summer.

Gen. Joseph Osterman, commander of Marine combat ground troops there, tells Zoroya that if there are reductions of Marines in the Helmand area, they will be sent elsewhere in the country rather than home.

About 19,000 U.S. Marines are deployed to Helmand province, including 12,000 to 13,000 ground combat troops in six infantry battalions under Osterman's command.

Zoroya sends us this file on his interview with Osterman:

While Marines have provided enough security in certain areas to allow schools to open soon and commerce to improve, too much of this southern province remains contested or controlled by the Taliban for any withdrawal to occur next year, Osterman says.
"This was the heart of darkness," he says of Helmand, for years a core Taliban stronghold. "It's one of those things where you can't be everywhere."
Obama set June of 2011 as the deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. forces as security operations are handed off to Afghan troops.
A limited transition to Afghan control could occur for some government centers in Helmand by the end of this year, Osterman says. But any Marines freed by this will be needed to fight elsewhere, he says.

Osterman concedes there were rosy predictions of rapid change when the Marine offensive to drive the Taliban from Helmand province began with the seizure of Marjah in February. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, promised a government-in-a-box approach that would quickly extend central government control.
Osterman, who took command of the 1st Marine Division here weeks after that operation began, says it took far longer to find competent government leaders who could run services in Helmand.

U.S. military report: Taliban uses youths in Afghan fight

By Gregg Zoroya • USA TODAY

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan — Afghan children as young as 3 years old are being used by the Taliban as human shields or to gather spent cartridges, and teen-agers are being given motorcycles for planting roadside bombs, U.S. Marines say.

"We've seen children actually dropping mortar rounds in the (firing) tubes against us," says Lt. Col. Michael Manning, commander of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment that is rotating home after seven months in this hilly northern district of Helmand province.

"I've never seen a culture that cares so little for human life. They (the Taliban) truly don't care unless it impacts their own personal family," says Manning, who has lost 13 Marines and seen 127 wounded since March.

U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers routed the Taliban from Helmand's main city of Marjah in February. They have undertaken an offensive to drive the Taliban from the province and are pressing into regions that the jihadists have held for years.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commander of Marine ground combat forces here, says the Taliban is increasingly relying on children to fend off the Marine offensive.

Marines have witnessed youngsters dragging away wounded Taliban, planting roadside bombs and collecting dropped weapons, he says.

At a remote firebase east of here, squad leader Sgt. John Ellis says he found children selling heroin wrapped in torn pages of the Quran in the village streets.

"We found children with pockets of heroin and wads of cash," Ellis says.

A Marine Corps battlefield report describes a fight in the Marjah district in August, where retreating insurgents "placed five children shoulder to shoulder on (the roadway) to cover their movements. Once the children were placed, the Taliban element mounted their motorcycles and escaped."

Another incident in the report describes how a child was sent out onto a roadway to observe a Marine patrol from a distance of 150 yards. He used hand signals to communicate the patrol's movements to an unseen enemy. Later, the patrol was ambushed, the report says.

"In both instances, the Taliban elements were willing to place children in direct danger to avoid risking themselves," says the report, portions of which were provided to USA TODAY by Osterman's office.

Battlefield reports typically derive from the observations of Marine officers in the field. The Marine Corps says it is difficult to identify how many instances where insurgents have been seen using children in Helmand. But they said there have been 50 battlefield reports filed since March listing one or several cases of kids used in combat.

"We're seeing an increasing trend," Osterman says of the Taliban's use of children.

Marine commanders believe that families are either coerced into allowing children to be used by Taliban fighters, or in the case of adolescents, paid money or offered inducements to fight, such as small, Chinese-made motorcycles.

"It's a recruitable, very easily influenced group of people," Manning says of the children and families. "And there's tons of them."

Osterman compares the trend with what happened in areas of Africa where child soldiers became veteran fighters. "Have they (the Taliban) gotten to that point of desperation now where they're going down that road which turns kids into combatants?" he says.

Veterans Affairs, Prudential made secret deal over benefits to family of fallen soldiers

Secret's out.

For more than a decade, Prudential Financial Inc. has had a confidential arrangement with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to withhold lump-sum payments of life-insurance benefits to the family of dead soldiers, so that Prudential could invest that money and keep whatever cash it made it itself, Bloomberg News reported.

The VA failed to inform soldiers and their families of the agreement. Prudential, the second-largest U.S. life insurer is the only provider of life insurance for 6 million U.S. military personnel.

The arrangement began in 1999 and was kept confidential until it was put into writing in 2009.

"Every veteran I've spoken with is appalled at the brazen war profiteering by Prudential," said Paul Sullivan, a 1991 Gulf War vet and executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit advocacy group. "Now vets are upset at the VA's inability to stop Prudential's bad behavior."

Survivors who requested lump-sum payouts were sent checkbooks, essentially IOUs that weren't federally insured, instead of actual checks.

Prudential held $662 million of survivors' money as of June 30. The general account earned 4.2% in interest in 2009, mostly from bond investments.

Bob DeFillippo, a Prudential spokesman, told Bloomberg News that the company was in compliance with its contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA has since launched an investigation of its life insurance program at the end of July.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he wasn't aware of the arrangement until the probe began.

"I actually believed that the families of our fallen heroes got a check for the full amount of their benefits," Gates said at the time. "This came as news to me."

In a statement, the VA announced that it will give beneficiaries the option between a lump sum or a retained asset account, allowing the money to accrue interest.

"The department will provide better clarity of payment options by using new documents that ask the beneficiary to choose one payment option, including a lump sum check, or a lump sum Alliance Account (retained asset check)," said VA in a statement."Beneficiaries [have] the option to immediately write a check for the entire payment or any lesser amount."

Paul Sullivan said the department has already dropped the ball.

"When grieving families check the box that they want a lump sum, they should get it. We remain disappointed and irate at the VA's failure to provide advocacy for veterans," he said.