“Everywhere I turned, nobody had nothing,” Mulholland said.
But there was not much information available on Afghanistan or what his soldiers could expect. He knew 5th Group, which was historically aligned with the Middle East, would likely have a role in the coming fight.
11, 2001, Mulholland said the challenge came with the unknown. At the same time, he was trying to learn the strengths and weaknesses of his teams. And he was not happy with the state of the unit’s training, which he called “woeful.”įor the first few months of his command, he was constantly lobbying for more money to support his soldiers. Mulholland had taken command of 5th Group in July 2001. Those teams would deploy with much less information than any troops would today, the retired general said. “We knew time would be of the essence,” Mulholland said.Īnd leaders were pushing hard on Washington to give the green light to send troops into Afghanistan. Special Operations Command were planning the initial invasion. They read whatever they could find on those factions, trying to determine if any of them could become partners.Īs ODA 595 prepared for its mission, senior leaders with the 5th Special Forces Group routinely disappeared for Florida, where officials with U.S. In a matter of days, the soldiers soaked up as much information as they could on a conflict that has raged for more than 100 years, with ethnic factions continuously at war in Afghanistan. And without military maps, they resorted to using tourist maps of the country. The soldiers read anything they could find in magazines. In those days, Nutsch said, there wasn’t much, if any, official material on the country. Once the air war in Afghanistan began, the team would be tasked with retrieving any pilots shot down in enemy territory.Īs they trained, the team fielded new equipment and learned as it could about Afghanistan.
#Oda 595 members plus#
“And to me, that was a plus when you got saddled with a mission that was going to be as complex as this one.”Īt first, the soldiers prepared for a personnel recovery mission. “They were very mature, very family-orientated,” Pennington said. And 10 of the 12 had at least two children. Many, including Pennington, had combat experience, whether in Desert Storm, Somalia or Kosovo. On average, the 12 members of the team were 32 years-old, had eight years of experience and had been working together for two years. ODA 595 was a natural choice for the mission - a mature, experienced team that had recently worked with special operations forces in Uzbekistan, a northern neighbor to Afghanistan. “I wanted to bring Mark back to the team,” he said. And that meant bringing Nutsch back into the fold. Pennington said the first priority was putting the team back together. 14, although it would be almost a month and at least three false starts before the deployment. ODA 595 learned it would be among the first in Afghanistan on Sept. “She said, ‘You’re going to war, aren’t you?’” “She knew it right away,” Pennington said. Hours later, Pennington said, he finally was home, where his wife, Michelle, was waiting for him. Pennington said the men explained that they were Special Forces soldiers and needed to find out what was happening. They cut around the line and tried to make their way into the installation before being stopped by armed guards. Meanwhile, Pennington and the remaining members of ODA 595 arrived at Fort Campbell to find miles of cars waiting to enter the post. “A lot of questions when you saw the first plane hit,” he said, “but when the second plane hit, you recognized this was a coordinated attack of some nature.” 11, 2001, he was home with his wife - then six months pregnant - and their two boys, then ages 4 and 3.Īt first, Nutsch wasn’t sure what he was watching on his television.