Впечатления якобы участника операции Анаконда (на английском) - терзайте !!
I've got a good friend over in Afghanistan right now who is the signal officer for
one of the battalion's in Task Force Rakkasan. He and I served together as
lieutenants in Germany before he was branch-detailed over to the Signal Corps.
Since he was deployed to Afghanistan, he has sent me regular updates; but I hadn't
heard a peep from him since "Anaconda" kicked off. Well, he just got back to
Kandahar airport, and sent me an e-mail last night. Thought I would share it with
everyone.
As a side note, I changed the names in his message....
Hi all, if you havn't been in a cave you know that the
101st had a pretty big fight lately. Now that its
over I'll give you as much detail as I can.
About mid Feb we moved up north to the city of Bagram
to plan what would become known as Operation Anaconda.
The plan was simple enough: clear out three towns,
Sherkankehl, Babankehl, and Marzak, all located in the
Shai-e-kowt valley, of bad guys. The method was to
have Special Forces soldiers escort an Arm,y of Afghan
forces into the towns from the west, while 101st Air
Assaulted into the mountains in the east to block the
escape routes. I planned the communications for the
mission. On D-Day, our Air Assault went great. Parts
of two battalion were dropped into the hills to the
east of the town without any al-quida realizing. All
we had to do was wait for the Afghans, who the SF
swore would perform perfectly.
Wellllll, they didn't do quite so well, the column of
SF and Afghans received mortar fire, in which 3
Afghans and one US troop were killed. After that, the
SF teams could not get the Afghans to advance, in
fact, they pulled back and refused to go forward. So
now every Taliban and al-quaida in the valley got wind
there were Americans about. It was on from there.
That WHOLE fight was the 101st (with a 10th mountain
Battalion attached to us). Once the units got into
good positions, they brought the wrath of the US Air
Force down on them. I was out there the 2nd night,
and its a very safe feeling knowing there are AC-130's
flying guard above you. The Taliban call that plane
the "spitting witch." They scan the valley floor and
can tell who is good and bad. If your bad, at night,
it kills you. That simple. It's brutal.
A friend of mine, Larry, an Infantry company
commander, had a funny story. We occupied the eastern
mountains as I said, the Taliban held a range to the
west we called the Whale. His company took mortar
fire from a group of Taliban on the whale. When Kevin
returned fire with his mortars, they would run into
caves, safe and sound. After the rounds exp[loded,
they would run out, yell some taunts, and fire their
mortars. If Kevin called in an Air strike, they did
the same thing. So he did this. He called an air
strike. As the bombs from the jets hit, he fired his
mortars, about a 20 second delay. After the air
strike was over, they came out of their caves to yell
again...
right as Larry's Mortar rounds landed on them!! After
the first couple of days, it was a total rout.
Infantry advanced south down the mountain range. It
turned out there were no good Afghans in the town, so
the air force leveled it. A-10s, AC-130s, and
Apaches, decimated the al-quida. WE extracted a
couple of days ago. Miracoulously, not ONE SINGLE
101st RAKKASAN soldier lost his life. It was the
largest fire fight since Vietnam, at the highest point
ever fought over, and every man that went in came back
out.
I have no idea how many terrorists were killed, but it
was a lot. The ones that murdered the SEAL that fell
out of the helicopter are all dead as well. I'm told
the AC-130 tracked them down and took care of them.
I am back in Kandahar now, enjoying all my packages
and letters. At least the 101st (RAKKASAN) got some
good press time from the whole thing. Right now I am
hoping to get some quiet nights ahead of me.
