Soldiers recount deadly attack on Afghanistan outpost

[babylonsister]

Soldiers recount deadly attack on Afghanistan outpost
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 19, 2008



Everything was on fire. The trucks. The bazaar. The grass.

It looked surreal. It looked like a movie.

That was what Spc. Tyler Stafford remembered thinking as he stepped onto the medical evacuation helicopter. The 23-year-old soldier would have been loaded onto the bird, but the poncho that was hastily employed as his stretcher broke. His body speckled with grenade and RPG shrapnel, the Vicenza, Italy, infantryman walked the last few feet to the waiting Black Hawk.

That was Sunday morning in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar province. At a forward operating base — maybe as big as a football field — established just a few days prior.

Outnumbered but not outgunned, a platoon-plus element of soldiers with 2nd Platoon, Company C, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team accompanied by Afghan soldiers engaged in a fistfight of a firefight.

After maybe two hours of intense combat, some of the soldiers’ guns seized up because they expelled so many rounds so quickly. Insurgent bullets and dozens of rocket-propelled grenades filled the air. So many RPGs were fired at the soldiers that they wondered how the insurgents had so many.

That was July 13. That was when Stafford was blown out of a fighting position by an RPG, survived a grenade blast and had the tail of an RPG strike his helmet.

That was the day nine Chosen Company soldiers died.

It was just days before the unit was scheduled to leave the base. :cry:

more...

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=63479&archive=true

[Squatch]

1. Holy crap. The 3rd Herd is one of our finest fighting units.

RIP to those brave men who died defending their comrades.

[ellie]

2. My nephew's company

was there right before it happened.

[TexasObserver]

3. "Lions for Lambs" plot line.

The excellent film by Robert Redford showed a new (fictional) strategy aimed at getting US support for a new conflict with Iran. It involved sending troops to remote areas in small numbers. The real agenda seemed to be to create US casualties, to create such events as the one recently seen in Afghanistan.

You have to wonder what our troops were doing out there without more numbers, and without any air support. That's suspiciously like the plot line in Lions for Lambs.

[Bandit]

4. Calling it a base or FOB is very misleading

It was basically a grouping of vehicles (think circle the wagons) and some concertina wire stretched about. It was very temporary, There were no buildings or trenches. It was basically a temporay stop in the road and then they moved, they did not abandon a base.