September 11, 2001 wrought destruction in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and sent shockwaves throughout the rest of the country, and the world, especially military communities, which knew they would soon be called to respond. Indeed, tragedy and outrage and tears turned to love and comfort and connection, but also resolve and vengeance. In fact, the sun hadn't even set on the smoldering pile of ruins that once was the World Trade Center, when the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and U.S. Army Special Operations Command began planning a response. They would rain fire on the terrorists who had claimed thousands of innocent Americans, and on the brutal regime in Afghanistan that had sheltered them.
It was soon clear that the initial operation, named Task Force Dagger, would involve bomb drops and small teams of special operators who would link up with local warlords and resistance fighters, collectively, as the Northern Alliance. They would train the Afghans, supply them and coordinate between the U.S and the various ethnic groups (many of which were historic enemies). The Army's 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) eagerly took on the job, despite little intelligence on Afghanistan, and despite the fact that few could speak Dari or Pashtun. They picked up a few phrases pretty quickly, and many of them spoke Arabic or Farsi or Russian and wound up doing three-way translations.
Link Download Mod Menu Special Forces Group 2
Download 🔥 https://bytlly.com/2yGbXI 🔥
"You had all of the emotions going on from 9-11," remembered Chief Warrant Officer 2 Brad Fowers, then a junior weapons sergeant on Operational Detachment A 574. It would be his first combat deployment, and his team wound up escorting future President Hamid Karzai into the country. (Fowers still serves on an ODA.) "There was a lot of emotions, excitement, amazement. It was an extreme honor. Looking back on it now, it's humbling. ... It was a very privileged moment in our history to see how things unfolded and what so many are capable of doing."
"We went carrying what we believed to be the hopes of the American people with us," added Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, former USASOC commander, in a speech. In September 2001, he served as the 5th Special Forces Group (A) commander. "If there was any fear that we had, it was that we would be worthy of the American people ... the people of New York, the people of Washington, the people of Pennsylvania, the people of our great country and all those ... who lost people that day. So that was with us constantly, the fear that we would not be worthy of the American people."
After almost two weeks of bombings, which kicked off Oct. 7, 2011, the first insertion was set for mid-October. As with any covert, nighttime flying operation, the dangerous mission was assigned to the Night Stalkers of the 160th Special Operations Regiment (Airborne), "the finest aviators in the world, bar none" according to Mulholland. They're certainly the toughest, at the forefront of every combat action since Grenada.
But the mission to insert the Green Berets into Afghanistan, flying from Uzbekistan over the Hindu Kush mountains (which could reach some-20,000 feet and caused altitude sickness) when they had trained for maybe half that elevation, was something else. The weather, sandstorms and a black cloud of rain, hail, snow and ice, was atrocious, so bad it delayed the first insertion by two days until Oct. 19 -- an eternity for men who pledge to always arrive at their destination on time, plus or minus 30 seconds. The weather could change from one mile to the next, from elevation to elevation, and continuously caused problems throughout Task Force Dagger.
"Just imagine flying when you can't see three feet in front of you for a couple of hours, landing or hoping the weather would clear so you could refuel, and then flying through the mountains all the while getting shot at and hoping our (landing zone) was clear," recalled Command Sgt. Maj. Mark Baker, now of the SOAR's Special Operations Training Battalion. Fifteen years ago, he was a young, brand-new flight engineer on his first combat mission.
"I was proud and scared. ... There was a lot of stuff going on. There was bad weather. A lot of people compared those first missions to Lt. Col. (James) Doolittle in World War II because we were doing stuff no one had ever done before. ... We had a mission to make sure these Soldiers got in. ... It was my first time ever getting shot at. That's a pretty vivid memory. ... It was war. I don't think I've ever been any closer to my fellow brothers-in-arms than I was then. All we had was each other."
Indeed, special operators have a famously tight bond. They have to. As the Green Berets stepped off the SOAR's highly modified MH-47 Chinooks, they stepped back in time, to a time of dirt roads and horses. They stepped into another world, one of arid deserts and towering peaks, of "rugged, isolated, beautiful, different colored stones and geographical formations, different shades of red in the morning as the sun came up," said Maj. Mark Nutsch, now a reservist in special operations, but then the commander of ODA 595, one of the first two 12-man teams to arrive in Afghanistan. The world was one of all-but-impassable trails, of "a canyon with very dominating, several-hundred-feet cliffs." It was a world of freezing nights, where intelligence was slim, women were invisible, and friend and foe looked the same.
They arrived in the middle of the night, of course, to the sort of pitch blackness that can only be found miles from electricity and civilization, at the mercy of the men waiting for them. "We weren't sure how friendly the link up was going to be," said Nutsch. "We were prepared for a possible hot insertion. ... We were surrounded by -- on the LZ there were armed militia factions. ... We had just set a helicopter down in that. ... It was tense, but ... the link up went smoothly."
The various SF teams that were in Afghanistan or would soon arrive split into smaller three-man and six-man cells to cover more ground. Some of them quickly found themselves on borrowed horses, in saddles meant for Afghans much lighter and shorter than American Green Berets. Most had never ridden before, and they learned by immediately riding for hours, forced to keep up with skilled Afghan horsemen, on steeds that constantly wanted to fight each other.
But that's what Green Berets do: They adapt. They overcome. "The guys did a phenomenal job learning how to ride that rugged terrain," said Nutsch, who worked on a cattle ranch and rodeoed in college. Even so, riding requires muscles most Americans don't use every day, and after a long day in the saddle, the Soldiers were in excruciating pain, especially as the stirrups were far too short. They had to start jerry rigging the stirrups with parachute cord.
"Initially you had a different horse for every move ... and you'd have a different one, different gait or just willingness to follow the commands of the rider," Nutsch remembered. "A lot of them didn't have a bit or it was a very crude bit. The guys had to work through all of that and use less than optimal gear. ... Eventually we got the same pool of horses we were using regularly."
Nutsch had always been a history buff, and he had carefully studied Civil War cavalry charges and tactics, but he had never expected to ride horses into battle. In fact, it was the first time American Soldiers rode to war on horseback since World War II, and this ancient form of warfare was now considered unconventional.
And there were military tactics involved. Even the timing of the attacks was crucial. Nutsch remembers wondering why the Northern Alliance wanted to go after the Taliban midafternoon instead of in the morning, but it accounted for their slower speed on horseback, while still leaving time to consolidate any gains before darkness fell. (They didn't have night vision goggles.)
Supported by the Green Berets, Northern Alliance fighters directly confronted the Taliban over and over again. Some factions, like Nutsch's, relied on horses for that first month. Others had pick up trucks or other vehicles, but they usually charged into battle armed with little more than AK-47s, machine guns, grenades and a few handfuls of ammunition. Meanwhile, the Taliban had tanks and armored personnel carriers and antiaircraft guns they used as cannons, all left behind by the Soviets when they evacuated Afghanistan in the late eighties.
It took a lot of heart, a lot of courage. "We heard a loud roar coming from the west," said Master Sgt. Keith Gamble, then a weapons sergeant on ODA 585, as he remembered one firefight. "We had no clue what it was until we saw about 500 to 1,000 NA soldiers charging up the ridge line. I called it a 'Brave Heart' charge. What the NA didn't realize was that the route leading up the ridgeline was heavily mined. The NA did not fare too well, as they received numerous injuries and had to retreat. We continued to pound the ridge line with bombs until the NA took it that evening."
"They weren't suicidal," Nutsch, who worked with different ethnic groups, agreed, "but they did have the courage to get up and quickly close that distance on those vehicles so they could eliminate that vehicle or that crew. We witnessed their bravery on several occasions where they charged down our flank (to attack) these armored vehicles or these air defense guns that are being used in a direct fire role, and kill the crew and capture that gun for our own use."
One of the primary and most important functions of the Special Forces teams, supported by combat controllers from Air Force Special Operations Command, was calling in air strikes. The U.S. military had been bombing the Taliban for a couple of weeks, but in a land of caves and mountains and small villages, it was difficult to distinguish targets. To help level the field and give the resistance forces a chance, the U.S. had to get rid of those tanks, armored carriers and antiaircraft guns. Once they got on the ground, Soldiers identified enemy targets and skilled Airmen called in those targets and quickly began picking off the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They also called for resupplies and humanitarian assistance drops. 152ee80cbc
download rfs real flight simulator free
epson rc+ 5.0 software download