However, at least 3 false starts delayed their deployment for almost a month. At first, the planes wouldnt fly below 15,000 feetthe brass was worried about surface-to-air missilesso targeting was sketchy. The first thing we wanted to do was to say to Dostum, The Americans are here, Paul explains, and to make it a fearsome prospect to mess with us. The Americans set up their gear at Dostums command postwhich overlooked Taliban positions about six miles awayand immediately began the process of calling in close air support, or CAS. All the while, we could see troops moving and disappearing. In 1996, when the Taliban rolled into Kabul, Dostum was forced to retreat to his stronghold in Mazar as the mullahs instituted their version of a pure Islamic state. Whoever gets the high ground first wins the wars here. From their perch on the east side of the gorge, the Green Berets could shoot directly into the trenches of the Taliban. No. Mitch Nelson," a. The crowd of men follows Dostum into his fathers compound. The 12 Strong true story reveals that they finally left Kentucky on October 5, 2001. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. Images of them doing this can be seen below and in Alex Quade's short documentary Horse Soldiers of 9/11. However, one was dropped due to a lack of confidence in the team. They had to kill their horses for food. Aside from the challenges of cultural differences and a sense of distrust on both sides, the Americans, with their state of the art technology and equipment, had to learn to navigate the treacherous mountains and desert landscape the same way the locals did: on horseback. The men in the room try to act formally, but as Dostum starts to leave, some begin to cry. Real Life Special Forces Heroes Helped Keep 12 Strong True To Life -NPR, No. When war first came to Afghanistan, two decades ago, he built his first stronghold here to guard the village. Ive arranged through intermediaries to spend a month with the general, but for the past week, he has been a hundred miles east, trying to subdue Taliban forces that control the city of Kunduz. -Horse Soldiers book, The movie finds the soldiers being told that there is a good chance they won't survive the mission. A hundred yards away, villagers stand against a long compound. Mark Nutsch and his team had to gain Dostum's trust and convince him that 9/11 had changed things. The rest of the time they travel. This article on ODA 595, General Dostum, John Walker Lindh and the battle at Qali-i-Jangi was originally published in the March 2002 edition of National Geographic Adventure, THE LEGEND OF HEAVYAND THE BOYS By Robert Young Pelton. I had first tried to meet the General in May of 1997. Various close ups of American Specia. Where you from? The man finally answers. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. is the manner in which military members tend to downplay their service or push aside thanks, rarely focusing on themselves, but on their team or country as a whole. I was at the prison in Sheberghan when they unloaded the trucks and watched the Red Cross medics count the dead and note the wounded. Matt yelled, Duck your head and get down! And that pilot dropped a shitload of bombs, Mike said. He confesses that he had worried at first how the Americans would handle Afghan warfare: It was cold; the food was bad. The radio crackles with call signs and traffic broadcast between bombardiers and the American soldiers. The Taliban had dug-in, trench-line bunkers shooting machine guns, heavy ma-chine guns, and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. My attempts to convince the Afghans took place in a building in which men with dark beards sat in from of Tony Montana style palm tree sunset wall paper murals. I targeted a spot right next to this guys head. ODA 555 was inserted next in the east in the Panjshir Valley, with the mission of working with ethnic Tajik fighters. -The Fayetteville Observer, ODA 595 was an experienced, mature team of Green Berets that had recently worked with special operations forces in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan's northern neighbor. The team had been working together for two years and the average age was 32 years old. I feel he is my brother. People still walk by the 16-foot bronze statue of a Green Beret on horseback overlooking Ground Zero and are unaware of its significance (the Horse Soldiers monument is pictured near the bottom of this page). In the bewildering matrix of Afghan politics, Dostum has frequentlyand nimblyswitched allegiances. Over 5000 Taliban remained hidden in surrounding villages. Since I was a guest of General Dostum it was a little difficult for the men to avoid me. Dostum and his commanders wanted to negotiate, but the foreign Taliban shot and killed their peace envoys, which left Al-liance leaders with little choice. The young commando Abdul Rashid, quickly rose through the ranks. Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. Both are awake, both unwilling to break the silence as their young child sleeps nearby. The trapped Taliban volunteers, it seems, remain hungry for martyrdom. The horses cast long shadows in the late afternoon. I convince the staff to move him to an upstairs bed, where Bill inserts an IV of Hespan into the mans dehydrated body to increase blood circulation. Not exactly. He did have trouble getting off his horse, and like in the movie, the medic gave him something for the pain. The Taliban are running. It works against tanks, but its plain stupid in this terrain. A man whois said by some journalists to define violence and treachery. Once we hit Keshendeh-ye Bala, we picked up a road and followed it north in a truck Dostums men had captured from the Taliban. My memorable experience as cast member of 12 Story One of the soldiers from the ODA 595 died later while serving in Iraq. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. Americas finest were about to fight their first war on horseback in more than a hundred years. Dozens of dark-eyed men in turbans scramble into battered Toyota pickup trucks and assorted four-wheel-drive vehicles. Early in the afternoon on November 10, Dostum reached Mazar. It was pretty painful, Paul says. So, I worked for him, directly," says Riggle. We fought with nothing but hope.. Based on history and dossiers full of Pakistani provided intelligence, theAgency wanted nothing to do with Dostum. Once the plane got there, it circled about six times, Paul says. No more Taliban. As I wait for Dostum to return, though, the constant chatter of machine guns and the badoom badoom of cannons from an American gunship bombarding the fortDostums military headquarterssuggest that I might be a bit premature in offering any congratulations on winning the war.
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