posted by Jennifer Hlad on Jan 8
The lawyers for the government called their first witness this morning. The man was a staff sergeant and riding in the same vehicle as Capt. Noble in the convoy during the incident. He now is out of the Marine Corps and works for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The man, Nathaniel Travers (spelling not verified), was part of the Human Intelligence Exploitation Team, a team tasked with gathering intelligence.
Travers testified that Marine Special Operations Fox Company did not know where they were deploying to until about a month before they left, and the Nangahar province in Afghanistan was significantly more calm than another region they had heard they had go to, and therefore not as “hot” as they had hoped.
“As Marines, that’s what we do,” Travers said. “We take a hot battle space and we take control of it.”
Travers recounted the events of March 4, saying he was riding in the third vehicle of the six-vehicle convoy. He was sitting in the back right side of the humvee, he said.
For most of the day, the convoy was traveling on Route 1, the only direct route between Kandahar, Afghanistan and Islamabad, Pakistan, Travers said. During the day, the route sees heavy traffic, he said.
Unlike in Iraq, where civilians generally move to the side of the road and stop their vehicles when U.S. convoys are coming by, Afghanis generally do not move off the road or slow down for U.S. convoys, Travers said. That day, Marines in the turrets were motioning for people to move to the side, Travers said.
However, Travers said he believes he saw the gunner in the second vehicle in the convoy making “throwing motions” and then saw an oncoming taxi jerk off to the side of the road. The taxi had a large hole in its windshield, Travers said, and he believed that the gunner had thrown a rock at it.
Shortly after that, there was an explosion in the oncoming lane, Travers said, “a pretty big fireball.”
“I saw the rear end of vehicle No. 2 kind of swerve through the fire ball,” he said. “We came to a pretty abrupt stop … A lot of things started happening at the same time.”
After the smoke began to clear, Travers said he heard gunfire, but he does not recall who was firing or at whom. Capt. Nobles gave the order to “move out,” and the convoy immediately began to move again, Travers said.
Shortly after, he heard over the radio that the convoy was taking fire from a hilltop. But, he said, he did not hear or feel any impacts on their vehicle.
Travers said he saw the gunner in vehicle No. 2 and another Marine in the back of that vehicle shooting at vehicles on the road.
“At the time, I knew there was an inherent danger in the area, but at the same time, I thought it was a little bit excessive,” he said about the shooting.
Travers heard Capt. Nobles get on the radio and tell the Marines to stop firing unless they were taking fire.
After the shooting, Travers said he was “pretty upset.”
“I felt there were a lot of people that died that day that probably didn’t need to,” he said. “They were just driving their cars.”
Travers also discussed his decision to leave the Marine Corps, which he said he made before he even arrived in Afghanistan. Before the formation of MARSOC, he said, there was a general feeling in the intelligence community that the transition would be difficult. Still, he said he hoped that he would be able to be involved in the “next generation of warfare,” including counterinsurgency operations.
Instead, Travers said he quickly saw the focus was more on direct action — such as fighting on the ground — and asked for a reassignment.
When he heard a reassignment was unlikely, he decided to look for civilian jobs. The March 4 incident “really kind of drove home my decision to go ahead and get out of the Marine Corps,” he said.
The defense has not cross examined Travers yet. The court is currently in a classified closed session.