Operation Strong Eagle - Daridam village,Ghaki Valley,Afghanistan

[SgtJim]

first of all: for their actions during Operation Strong Eagle, (http://www.apacheclips.com/media/27446/1_mission__1_Silver_Star,_2_Bronze_Star/) 9682
U.S. Army Capt. Steven J. Weber was awarded the Silver Star with Valor; (http://www.apacheclips.com/media/27446/1_mission__1_Silver_Star,_2_Bronze_Star/)
U.S. Army Cpl. Joshua M. Frappier and U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class John T. Howerton
were awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor. (http://www.apacheclips.com/media/27446/1_mission__1_Silver_Star,_2_Bronze_Star/)

story By Diana Cahn/Stars and Stripes
original source: http://www.stripes.com/a-nervous-night-then-a-brutal-battle-in-unrelenting-summer-heat-1.118593#

my note: it's a little bit long, but you should read through
all pictures got a description, just "mouse over" it


Day 1: A nervous night, then a brutal battle in unrelenting summer heat

SANGAM, Afghanistan — The Afghan soldiers reached the tree first, rounding the bend of the bouldered valley road shortly after 7 a.m.,
the Americans bringing up the rear. The heat was already settling in and Sangam villagers, seeing the long arm of warfare snake toward them,
began a hasty exodus into the mountains north and south.
As 1st Lt. Stephen Tangen and 15 men from his Headquarters Company, 1st Platoon neared the back of the tree, gunfire and
rocket-propelled grenades exploded across the valley floor like a meteor shower tearing through the advancing forces.
One Afghan soldier fell dead. Another was shot in the stomach, a third in the head. In all, five Afghan soldiers took bullets or shrapnel.
One of Tangen’s men, machine gunner Pfc. Stephen Palu, was shot in his arm and in his leg. Men recalled bullets flying by their heads.

“At least we had a little bit of cover,” said Spc. Adam Schwichtenberg, 20, of Morristown, Minn., who was a squad point man.
“The ANA (Afghan National Army) were pinned down at the tree.”
9681
For many of the men in the 2nd Battalion, 327 Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the opening volleys of Operation Strong Eagle
on June 27 marked their first foray into battle — a combat baptism meted out by an entrenched enemy.

The battle would last far longer than anyone imagined, ranking as the longest and largest fight that this battalion could recall since Vietnam.
It would turn young soldiers into warriors, cost men their lives and leave a newborn girl without a father.

And the fight would lay bare every major challenge that U.S. troops face in the ninth year of America’s longest war: a committed enemy,
a terrified local populace and wavering Afghan security forces still unable or unwilling to defend their own nation.

Insurgents had been massing for months in the mountainous maze of Marawara district’s Ghaki Valley in eastern Kunar province. By June,
they occupied nearby villages and were closing in on government centers in Marawara and the nearby provincial capital, Asadabad. Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell,
whose battalion took over the Kunar River valley in late May, knew that Marawara was his first priority.

“It was staring everybody in the face,” Vowell said.

Meetings with frightened village elders, intimidated by the insurgents in their midst, proved fruitless.

“We are Taliban,” one elder from Chinar village told Vowell. “The Taliban is our government. Do not expect us to cooperate with you.”

Vowell saw the villagers as hostages, held by Taliban forces who focused their efforts on Kunar after the U.S. began its surge in the
southern provinces. In addition, Pakistan’s military was now denying the Taliban havens they’d long enjoyed across the border.
Suddenly, this region of Afghanistan, devoid of any functioning government, became the ideal sanctuary for a Taliban surge, Vowell said.9683

The plan was to take Daridam. This would block the insurgent advance and target the top commander, Qari Zia ur Rahman, who was holed
up in Chinar, the next village over. At a minimum, it would give the Afghan government a foothold in the valley.

Much hinged on the unreliable Afghan forces. They would be in the lead to clear Daridam. They would march up the road first, knock down
doors first, clear the homes first. And they would be the ones to ultimately hold onto the village once it was cleared.

Vowell knew they were the weak link. He didn’t dare tell them about the operation until shortly before, fearing a leak would cost him the
element of surprise needed for his men to seize the high ground.

Moving out

The night before they pushed off, Tangen, a 24-year-old from Naperville, Illinois., offered his men a circle of prayer,
said Sgt. 1st Class Gabriel Monreal, the platoon sergeant who, at 32, had seen combat. Squad leaders told the men it was normal to be scared.

“It means you have something to lose,” Monreal, of Corpus Christi, Texas, recalled one saying. “But once the rounds start flying, your bodies
will react naturally and your training will kick in.”

Early on the morning of June 27, under the cover of darkness, units arrived by helicopter on three peaks surrounding the road, seizing the
terrain advantage from the insurgents, though the Taliban still held the key ridge line along the Ghaki Valley road.

Headquarters Company Capt. Steven Weber, 32, of Winthrop, Minn., and his men staged at the Marawara District Center at the entrance
to the Ghaki Valley. Tangen’s platoon, along with 60 Afghan soldiers, led Weber’s armored vehicles up the valley road on foot, while 2nd Platoon,
teamed with Afghan Border Police, walked the ridge line to the north.

The men knew the tree outside Sangam could mark the start of the fight. The Taliban were dug in at Daridam and had fortified positions
overlooking the road. The voracity of the insurgent assault surprised the Americans. The initial wave didn’t let up for more than two hours.9684
The lead route-clearance vehicles fired so many rounds that they required a resupply in the first hours of combat.

Fire came at them from three different ridges. When Palu was shot, two sergeants leaped into action, ignoring the stream of bullets
to bandage him and pull him out of danger.

With the vehicles offering protection, the men pushed forward. But the fire was overwhelming. Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw, one of Tangen’s
squad leaders, ran up to alert the Afghan soldiers that they were stopping and to find cover.

Shaw, originally of Exeter, Maine, was a father of three girls, the youngest a newborn whose birth kept her 31-year-old dad back home
when his battalion deployed in late May. But he was eager to join his men and arrived in Kunar a week before Operation Strong Eagle.

As Shaw maneuvered back behind the truck where Tangen was standing, a bullet found its way under his helmet, shattering his face.

For the first time in his command, Tangen watched one of his men die.

Tangen’s distraught call went over the radio. “We have a KIA!” he shouted. “Shaw is dead! We need to evacuate his body!”

For Tangen it was a moment of deep reckoning. Shaw had been his mentor during training at Fort Campbell, Ky., a sergeant with the
experience that Tangen was training for. They were friends, brothers, and teacher and student. Now he put aside his own shock and
grief to lead a group of shocked and grieving men in battle, gripped by the knowledge that it could have been any one of them.

“There is no way to train for a squad leader that you spent a year of your life with to receive a gunshot wound to his head and die
right in front of you,” Tangen said, still emotional a month later. “There is no way to prepare his squad for that. … You have to keep moving.”

It was a loss many of the men would deal with only later. Shaw was a devoted leader who adored his family but saw his squad
as family, too. He’d rushed to join his men in Afghanistan, but he would lie in bed each night staring at a picture of his daughters, Tangen said.

“Staff Sergeant Shaw died being Staff Sergeant Shaw,” Monreal said. “He was always a leader, making things happen. He didn’t die
taking a knee. He died making things happen.”

Tangen, who’d never seen battle before this day, returned his attention to the fight. In a matter of minutes, he’d become a combat
veteran and a leader who would take his men through the fiercest fight and the hardest day they might ever know.

‘Knockdown, drag-out’

By midday, the men on the ridges were mired in their own fights.

The early summer heat in this mountain valley was well over 100 degrees and the sun was unrelenting. After five hours of battle,
the men had gone through all their water. Soldiers were fainting and vomiting. But there was no time to refit. Medics in the field
were pumping men full of IV fluids and sending them back into battle.

“It was a knockdown, drag-out, brutal fight, and it was close,” Vowell said. “It lasted a long time.”

Second Platoon, led by 1st Lt. Doug Jones, was fighting hard on the ridge line, while on a peak behind them, Company A was in
face-to-face combat to regain the high ground.

Across the valley, on a peak to the south, a platoon of scouts was fighting insurgents on all sides. Company B was southwest of them,9685
in a fight similar to Company A’s, battling insurgents trying to attack from the rear.

On the road, air support helped suppress the insurgent fire, allowing the men to evacuate their wounded. Sgt. Joseph Moore,
a 22-year-old from Pittsburgh, escorted the body of his close friend Shaw to the helicopter landing zone at the Marawara District Center,
where Shaw would begin his journey home.

Weber, hoping to ease the pressure on the scouts, pushed his element forward.
But the Afghan army soldiers, alarmed by the withering fire and their casualties, had had enough. As the wounded were evacuated,
the rest of the Afghan soldiers retreated with them. They were done.
The Americans were left to fight alone.

[SgtJim]

Day 2: 'I don’t know if discipline is something you can teach'

The Ghaki Valley was on fire. Bullets, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, bombs, artillery.
All battered the valley floor, its steep mountain walls — and the men trapped within them.Capt.
Steven Weber’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company inched up the narrow road, trying to maintain forward motion9686
despite significant obstacles. His support units on the high ground were all in heavy fights and his front line road element
was down to 14 men from the original 76,
after two of his soldiers were shot — one fatally — and his Afghan National Army partners retreated.

“I was pretty mad about it,” said Pfc. Adam Schwichtenberg, 20, who was experiencing his first firefight.

His squad leader, Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw, had just been killed and the men were reeling.
They’d been walking up the same road and taking the same fire as the Afghan soldiers.

“It’s a discipline issue,” Schwichtenberg said of the ANA. “I don’t know if discipline is something you can teach.”

The fighting had been going on for hours on June 27, pinning down the men of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment,
101st Airborne Division at a bend in the road near the start of their eastern advance on the
insurgent-controlled village of Daridam.

They were dehydrated and exhausted. Route-clearance vehicles at the fore of the advance were hobbled
and had to be pushed off the road.

Insurgents had massed along the Ghaki Valley in heavily fortified positions, enabling them to pummel the advancing forces.
They had command of the best ridges, held their ground and absorbed their casualties stoically.

It was an eye-opener for the Americans who, no matter their superior training and valiant fighting, suddenly found themselves
up against an able and equally determined enemy.

Afghan fighters had scrambled through these steep, rocky mazes for years. Their familiarity with the punishing
terrain gave the insurgents a distinct and at times overwhelming advantage. It quickly became apparent to the
American warriors why divisions of Russian soldiers had been defeated in this eastern mountain region of Afghanistan and why,
more recently, U.S. troops withdrew from embattled outposts in Wanat, Keating and Korengal after enduring fierce, close fights.

The Taliban’s “will and his drive to try to overrun us or keep us from maneuvering was something I’d never seen before,”
said Sgt. 1st Class Gabriel Monreal, 32, a platoon sergeant from Corpus Christi, Texas.
“I’ve never taken the enemy for granted. But the training these guys had, it was definitely a wake-up call.”

American units who had dropped onto surrounding peaks were under intense fire. All were taking serious casualties, and
on a mountain ridge south of Weber’s position Company B had lost one of their own, Sgt. David Thomas, in a hail of gunfire.
Company B was fighting insurgent infiltration from the rear, while east of them, closer to the road, the scouts were on a ridge
overlooking Daridam and the road. They were fully surrounded and fighting with everything they had, soldiers recalled.


Hoping to refocus some fire away from the scouts, Weber ordered his platoons to advance: First Lt. Stephen Tangen, leader9687
of 1st Platoon, jumped into the lead vehicle and advanced up the road, while 2nd Platoon, under 1st Lt. Doug Jones, made a
parallel push along the north ridge line.

Tangen’s truck, an all-terrain bomb-resistant vehicle known as an M-ATV, moved several hundred yards forward, reaching
the far outskirts of Daridam. From a walled compound above, halfway up a terraced mountainside and set back behind
a fruit orchard, insurgents pounded the road with all means of fire.

RPGs rained down, exploding all around Tangen’s truck, stopping it in its tracks, the men recalled. Three grenades hit
one after the other. One landed in the engine bed, but didn’t explode. Machine-gun rounds were cracking the windows.
Then two more grenades struck.

Smoke started pouring in through the vents and in the suffocating heat, the men were forced to turn off the engine.
Inside, Pfc. Thomas Shelton, 24, of Dallas, struggled to keep the automated machine gun firing once they lost engine power.
Explosions rocked the truck. It was so hot, Shelton recalled, he could barely breathe.

Tangen was on the radio screaming for backup. A second truck pulled up behind them and it, too, was soon disabled.
The men wondered how they could ever get out of this alive.

“Lieutenant Tangen kept telling us were were going to be all right,” Shelton said. “There were a lot of ‘I love you, mans.’ ”

Up on the ridge lines, where soldiers had climbed up to overwatch positions, men looked on helplessly as the battle unfolded
below them, too far away to effectively fire.

“We saw RPGs hitting Shelton’s vehicle,” Schwichtenberg said. “We saw smoke everywhere. They were down there getting whupped.”

Across the road on the other ridge, Jones had divided his platoon into two groups to engage several enemy positions.
One group took shelter in a small compound a few hundred yards from where the insurgents were dug in. The other group
took position behind a wall in the roofless ruins of an old building about 50 yards away.

As fire rained down the vehicles, Jones’ men battled on the ridge, several men surviving by a hair’s breadth.
Pvt. Jeremy Impiccini, 26, of Phoenix, had a bullet come straight for him, but it hit the magazine casing in his bullet pouch instead.

“We were crossing one of the terraces and Impiccini said ‘Sergeant, I think I got shot!’ ” recalled Sgt. Cole McClain, 22,
a squad leader from Fairbank, Iowa. “But we were good.”

With all his men in heavy contact, Weber was commanding from the rear, working to relay positions to the air
assets so they could bomb the enemy positions.

On the ridge, Staff Sgt. Matthew Loheide heard the call for men to take cover ahead of the bombing. Loheide, of Long Island, N.Y.,
was more concerned with the men on the road below. “We thought the bomb was going to hit 200 [yards] away [from us],” Loheide said.

But something went terribly wrong.

Instead of striking the insurgents, the bomb fell on Loheide’s position in the roofless ruins. The other half of 2nd Platoon watched
in horror as a bomb landed near their brothers.

The wall collapsed into a pile of rocks. As the smoke rose, none of the 15 men in that position was visible.
Their platoon mates ran over to dig them out, pulling them from the rubble one by one.

One suffered a punctured lung. Four others had concussions severe enough to require evacuation. Jones and his men
made two trips down the mountain under heavy fire to evacuate the wounded.

They were all rattled and dazed. Miraculously, not a single man had been killed.

[SgtJim]

Day 3: A tough lesson on who wants it more


For Lt. Col. J.B. Vowell, the whirring kerthunk of helicopter blades supplied a steady heartbeat to the pitched and relentless battles
his men were fighting in the mountain terrain below.

By running a command center in a helicopter, Vowell could stay in direct communication with all his men. It was chaotic.
He had five positions fighting to take the insurgent-controlled village of Daridam, but Vowell had another problem.

Vowell’s original plan for his Afghan National Army partners to lead the entry into Daridam had fallen apart when the Afghan soldiers
retreated early in the fight. Vowell was on the radio with his brigade in Jalalabad to find an alternative. They proposed a team of Afghan9688
commandos led by U.S. Special Forces who would arrive that evening.

It was June 27 and the men of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division had just launched the kind of battle
that most soldiers only read about. They’d pushed into Kunar province’s Ghaki Valley to rout insurgents who’d massed there by the
hundreds and were terrorizing the population, commanders said.

U.S. soldiers fought insurgents fortified along the ridge line overlooking the valley road. It was a long, mean fight in the scorching summer
against a formidable opponent amid forbidding terrain.

But the Americans fought alone, to seize and hold territory for Afghan security forces not ready or not willing to stick out the fight.
For Vowell and his men, the battle of the Ghaki Valley signified how little has been accomplished toward America’s goal of building
a capable Afghan army so that U.S. soldiers can begin to make their way home.

“They just aren’t ready,” said 1st Lt. Stephen Tangen, whose platoon was among the main headquarters element pushing
up Ghaki Valley road. “They don’t have enough weapons or food. We can seize terrain for them but the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces)
need to get larger, more trained and they need more weapons.

“They get those things and they can take over their own country.”

That morning, three platoons had dropped onto peaks surrounding the valley road where the main element advanced on Daridam.
Within a short time, every unit in the Ghaki Valley was in a brutal fight. Two Americans and two Afghan soldiers had been
killed and numerous soldiers had been wounded.

On two adjacent ridges across from Daridam, a scout platoon was taking a beating.

They had been dropped in the dark onto the wrong ridge line in the dense mountain terrain of this eastern border region, along with
three heavy-duty stretchers, each bearing several hundred pounds of ammunition and supplies.

For hours, they dragged the supplies up 3,600 feet, reaching two positions as close to the right ridge as they could before daybreak.
Even before their long fight began, they were exhausted and low on water.

Capt. Kevin Mott, the platoon leader, perched on a low ridge line across the valley road from Daridam. His men had sketchy radio
communications and were soon surrounded by insurgents.

On an adjacent ridge, Sgt. 1st Class John Howerton’s section had the high-ground advantage and fought off an insurgent attack
early in the day. Watching as Mott’s group took fire from as many as nine enemy positions, Howerton’s men were torn. They wanted to
move down to help their comrades, but they knew it would be foolish to give up their position.

So they called in a response team that fought its way into the low ground between the two ridges, forming a
contiguous line of coalition forces.

On the lower ridge, Mott and Staff Sgt. Brent Schneider, 27, of Amarillo, Texas, ducked and ran from position to position to ascertain
enemy locations. Insurgent machine-gun and sniper fire came in hard.

“It was extremely effective, very accurate,” Schneider recalled. “You could hear it snapping right next to you.”

Suddenly, Mott was down. A bullet grazed his head and he lost his footing. Schneider watched helplessly as Mott flopped like a rag
doll down the ridge. He hit the rock, bounced off it and fell down the next cliff — and the next one.

“Just to watch him tumble down lifeless, that’s a sickening feeling,” Schneider said. “A lot of the guys felt it, too. It sucks,
because you are watching it go down and there’s nothing you can do.”

Mott fell so hard his body armor and helmet ripped off of him.

Schneider stripped off his own gear to go after his captain. But he quickly realized that if he went, he’d fall, too. And enemy fire was
still coming at them strong. He needed to keep the men fighting. Schneider was sure Mott was dead.

When a squad leader saw Mott’s legs move, Schneider called down to him. Mott gave them a thumbs-up.

Then, despite what was later determined to be three cracked vertebrae, a broken rib, a gunshot wound to his head and abrasions
all over his face and body, Mott dragged himself into the shade of a tree and waited for the fight to subside so he could be evacuated.

Schneider resumed his movement to the different positions. He helped bandage the radio operator after a bullet lodged in his chest.
He fed rounds into a grenade launcher and talked the helicopters onto insurgents firing not just at the scouts, but at
the main element on the valley road.

When a resupply helicopter finally dropped off water, Schneider ran, yet again, through heavy fire to grab water
and chuck it to his men.

Howerton had taken over command from his hill and stayed in constant contact with Vowell and air assets. Soon, help
arrived and the men gained the upper hand.

Finally, across the valley, the sun — and the fight — relented. The soldiers had been on the offensive since 3 a.m.,
18 hours earlier. They’d fought through the heat of the day without food or water.

Both sides took the opportunity of cover under darkness to consolidate and ready for a new day of battle. Men peered
through night-vision goggles as the insurgents collected their dead.

U.S. soldiers believed they faced as many as 250 insurgents, and before the fight ended, about half were dead.9689

At 1:30 the next morning, the Afghan commandos pushed into the village of Daridam. On the ridge lines, American forces
watched the flashes of an all-out battle in the dark.

“It was like watching Fourth of July fireworks,” recalled Tangen.

Then it was over. As the first light of the second day peeked over the horizon, the Afghan commandos, joined now by the
returning ANA, the Afghan National Police and the Americans behind them, walked into the village of Daridam.

It was a ghost town. The insurgents had retreated.

Holding Daridam

After clearing Daridam, U.S. forces remained with Afghan police for three days and then rotated men in for the next month.

It took a week for any of the villagers to return, Vowell said, and most would just come in and farm and then leave again.
Weeks later, the majority of Daridam villagers still refused to stay in the village at night.

In mid-July, U.S. forces launched Operation Strong Eagle 2 to capture Chinar, just up the Ghaki Valley road, where Taliban
commander Qari Zia ur Rahman was headquartered. This time, Vowell moved his men into the village under the cover of darkness.

But there was nobody there. The insurgents — and the villagers who sheltered them — had also taken lessons from the
prior fight. They’d fled, Vowell said.

A month after Daridam fell, U.S. forces handed over security to the Afghan National Police. The insurgents had
taken a beating. Vowell was sure they would not be massing in the area again anytime soon.

But the Afghans were not convinced. Like their Afghan army counterparts during the battle, the Afghan police retreated. They’ve
refused to go back without the U.S. forces, saying the Americans have the big guns and the artillery.

Afghan police commanders told Vowell that insurgents came and burned down the trailers that the Americans had given the
police to set up an outpost at Daridam. But when U.S. forces patrolled in the valley, they saw the structures intact.

For U.S. soldiers who had fought hard to take the village and beat back the insurgents, the retreat of their Afghan
comrades was a stinging blow.

“It just kind of sucks, you go through all this and they reneged on their end of the bargain,” said Howerton, whose friend
Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw was one of the two Americans killed. “It’s frustrating. We had two guys killed, numerous wounded.”

Like he did when his Afghan army partners abandoned him, Vowell is now working on bringing in other Afghan forces to
maintain security in Daridam and he’s trying to reassure villagers that the area is safe.

It took three attempts to persuade Daridam villagers to even attend a meeting meant to pay out property damage
compensation. Now, Vowell is trying to get the villagers to set up their own local security forces until the police can
grow into a more professional force.

In the meantime, Vowell is working with the Marawara district government to maintain a presence in the valley. They hold
regular meetings with villagers and District Governor Pacha Gul is partnering with the United States Agency for
International Development on a project to improve the valley road to Daridam.9690

But the villagers, and Gul, still fear the insurgents.

“Now that you’ve pulled back, there’s no one there,” Gul told Vowell during a meeting in July. “The only person
left is me. I have to do something to show there is government there.”

And Vowell knows all too well that without the Afghan forces pulling their weight, everything falls apart.

“My No. 1 lesson learned as task force commander is that you can’t want it more than they do,” Vowell said.
“They have to want it more.”

[Toki]

Thanks for posting, Jim.

[SgtJim]

::::::UPDATE::::::


i found many other Soldiers, who's awarded Silver Star for that Operation Strong Eagle:

- Sergeant First Class John P. Fleming
- Staff Sergeant Brent A. Schneider
- Staff Sergeant Daniel J. Hayes
- Corporal Joshua Busch
- Private First Class Richard T. Bennett
- First Lieutenant Stephen R. Tangen

these soldiers awarded on Dec. 7th, 2010. by defense secretary Robert M. Gates. at FOB Joyce in the Kunar province, Afghanistan



-----> later, i will post all the private stories
and before here is Tangen's father words:

Andrew Tangen was impressed but not surprised by his 24-year-old son’s heroic actions.

“They’re like his family,” said Tangen, whose three sons are all Eagle Scouts.
His eldest son, Andrew, is a lieutenant in the Navy and also deployed in Afghanistan.
“It’s just who they are. They’re doing what needs to be done.”

[bu187]

thanks

[neverbee]

heroes of my mind

[neverbee]

gud luck to them

[spckoch101]

Day 2: 'I don’t know if discipline is something you can teach'

The Ghaki Valley was on fire. Bullets, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, bombs, artillery.
All battered the valley floor, its steep mountain walls — and the men trapped within them.Capt.
Steven Weber’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company inched up the narrow road, trying to maintain forward motion9686
despite significant obstacles. His support units on the high ground were all in heavy fights and his front line road element
was down to 14 men from the original 76,
after two of his soldiers were shot — one fatally — and his Afghan National Army partners retreated.

“I was pretty mad about it,” said Pfc. Adam Schwichtenberg, 20, who was experiencing his first firefight.

His squad leader, Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw, had just been killed and the men were reeling.
They’d been walking up the same road and taking the same fire as the Afghan soldiers.

“It’s a discipline issue,” Schwichtenberg said of the ANA. “I don’t know if discipline is something you can teach.”

The fighting had been going on for hours on June 27, pinning down the men of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment,
101st Airborne Division at a bend in the road near the start of their eastern advance on the
insurgent-controlled village of Daridam.

They were dehydrated and exhausted. Route-clearance vehicles at the fore of the advance were hobbled
and had to be pushed off the road.

Insurgents had massed along the Ghaki Valley in heavily fortified positions, enabling them to pummel the advancing forces.
They had command of the best ridges, held their ground and absorbed their casualties stoically.

It was an eye-opener for the Americans who, no matter their superior training and valiant fighting, suddenly found themselves
up against an able and equally determined enemy.

Afghan fighters had scrambled through these steep, rocky mazes for years. Their familiarity with the punishing
terrain gave the insurgents a distinct and at times overwhelming advantage. It quickly became apparent to the
American warriors why divisions of Russian soldiers had been defeated in this eastern mountain region of Afghanistan and why,
more recently, U.S. troops withdrew from embattled outposts in Wanat, Keating and Korengal after enduring fierce, close fights.

The Taliban’s “will and his drive to try to overrun us or keep us from maneuvering was something I’d never seen before,”
said Sgt. 1st Class Gabriel Monreal, 32, a platoon sergeant from Corpus Christi, Texas.
“I’ve never taken the enemy for granted. But the training these guys had, it was definitely a wake-up call.”

American units who had dropped onto surrounding peaks were under intense fire. All were taking serious casualties, and
on a mountain ridge south of Weber’s position Company B had lost one of their own, Sgt. David Thomas, in a hail of gunfire.
Company B was fighting insurgent infiltration from the rear, while east of them, closer to the road, the scouts were on a ridge
overlooking Daridam and the road. They were fully surrounded and fighting with everything they had, soldiers recalled.


Hoping to refocus some fire away from the scouts, Weber ordered his platoons to advance: First Lt. Stephen Tangen, leader9687
of 1st Platoon, jumped into the lead vehicle and advanced up the road, while 2nd Platoon, under 1st Lt. Doug Jones, made a
parallel push along the north ridge line.

Tangen’s truck, an all-terrain bomb-resistant vehicle known as an M-ATV, moved several hundred yards forward, reaching
the far outskirts of Daridam. From a walled compound above, halfway up a terraced mountainside and set back behind
a fruit orchard, insurgents pounded the road with all means of fire.

RPGs rained down, exploding all around Tangen’s truck, stopping it in its tracks, the men recalled. Three grenades hit
one after the other. One landed in the engine bed, but didn’t explode. Machine-gun rounds were cracking the windows.
Then two more grenades struck.

Smoke started pouring in through the vents and in the suffocating heat, the men were forced to turn off the engine.
Inside, Pfc. Thomas Shelton, 24, of Dallas, struggled to keep the automated machine gun firing once they lost engine power.
Explosions rocked the truck. It was so hot, Shelton recalled, he could barely breathe.

Tangen was on the radio screaming for backup. A second truck pulled up behind them and it, too, was soon disabled.
The men wondered how they could ever get out of this alive.

“Lieutenant Tangen kept telling us were were going to be all right,” Shelton said. “There were a lot of ‘I love you, mans.’ ”

Up on the ridge lines, where soldiers had climbed up to overwatch positions, men looked on helplessly as the battle unfolded
below them, too far away to effectively fire.

“We saw RPGs hitting Shelton’s vehicle,” Schwichtenberg said. “We saw smoke everywhere. They were down there getting whupped.”

Across the road on the other ridge, Jones had divided his platoon into two groups to engage several enemy positions.
One group took shelter in a small compound a few hundred yards from where the insurgents were dug in. The other group
took position behind a wall in the roofless ruins of an old building about 50 yards away.

As fire rained down the vehicles, Jones’ men battled on the ridge, several men surviving by a hair’s breadth.
Pvt. Jeremy Impiccini, 26, of Phoenix, had a bullet come straight for him, but it hit the magazine casing in his bullet pouch instead.

“We were crossing one of the terraces and Impiccini said ‘Sergeant, I think I got shot!’ ” recalled Sgt. Cole McClain, 22,
a squad leader from Fairbank, Iowa. “But we were good.”

With all his men in heavy contact, Weber was commanding from the rear, working to relay positions to the air
assets so they could bomb the enemy positions.

On the ridge, Staff Sgt. Matthew Loheide heard the call for men to take cover ahead of the bombing. Loheide, of Long Island, N.Y.,
was more concerned with the men on the road below. “We thought the bomb was going to hit 200 [yards] away [from us],” Loheide said.

But something went terribly wrong.

Instead of striking the insurgents, the bomb fell on Loheide’s position in the roofless ruins. The other half of 2nd Platoon watched
in horror as a bomb landed near their brothers.

The wall collapsed into a pile of rocks. As the smoke rose, none of the 15 men in that position was visible.
Their platoon mates ran over to dig them out, pulling them from the rubble one by one.

One suffered a punctured lung. Four others had concussions severe enough to require evacuation. Jones and his men
made two trips down the mountain under heavy fire to evacuate the wounded.

They were all rattled and dazed. Miraculously, not a single man had been killed.

That was my platoon. I wasn't on Strong Eagle but 2nd Platoon led by 1st LT Jones was who I served with during my time in the Army:USA: