"Battle of the cherries." "We're not talking about cherry in the army either, we're talking about cherry at life." "Vaughn here is very cherry at life." "But we're making him into a man." "That's all that's important here." "...we talked about the road being built." "Continued to hear from the elders that they don't want to give up any workers, despite what it is that you all have been telling me." "So if you guys get these local..." "that are willing to do that to come and start getting them jobs immediately, to bypass all the elder..." "I don't think..." "I think they're just..." "If we really fucked them up like they said, then they are just chilling, trying to recuperate." "It's just like what we would be doing." "You know, seven..." "eight dudes wounded," "I mean seven dudes wounded, one dude dead, we wouldn't be going out strong." "We'd be resting at Blessing right now." "You know what I mean?" "That's what I think they're doing... resting." "Are you wondering why it is so quiet?" "Yeah, it's got me baffled right now." "Baffled or worried?" "Just confused." "I am at a loss for words right now." "He's worried." "He's worried." "He's scared." "Most scared." "Or worried." "Whatever." "Yeah." "I'd have to say Rock Avalanche." "If I had to pick a moment," "I'd probably say Rock Avalanche." "Operation Rock Avalanche was the low point for me personally." "I saw a lot of professional tough guys get weak in the knees." "I'll go ahead and orient you guys to the different LZs that are out there." "Up on Divpat where the C2 element will be located is LZ Cubs." "The Taliban or the AAF forces in the valley, they got very, very audacious and tenacious during Rock Avalanche." "Physically putting their hands on soldiers, able to get so close to us that they can kill my soldiers, steal the equipment, and still get away." "I mean... that's ballsy." "We'll be releasing with Wildcat One, somewhere between Busch and Coors." "Moving in on Rock Avalanche with going into areas like Yaka China or up on the top of the Talisar." "Those are areas we haven't previously been, you know, during the deployment." "North goes that way toward Sergeant Rougle, south is this way towards me and the First Sergeant." "To go in there not ever having laid eyes on the area, hearing the stories about guys who'd gone prior to us getting fucked up down, you know, in areas where they literally shouldn't have been in." "We're going to be moving out of HLZ Cubs into HLZ Polk." "In Rock Avalanche we knew the expectation that we was going to get engaged going up there, but we all knew that." "In the location where we was actually going to conducting this operation and stuff, was where the bad guys, their safe haven was at." "They wasn't coming to you." "Sometimes you had to go out there and reach out to them." "Go into program, go into your radio configurations, and then where it says SINCGARS or basic, change that to ANDVT." " Coming after you, motherfucker." " Right here, bitch?" "Let's do this, motherfucker!" "I'm coming back." "I'm coming back, don't worry." "Do you get nervous before something like this?" "I get nervous for the guys." "I get nervous for myself." "I mean, I just..." "I just called my mom and dad and I'll try calling my wife before I take off, just one last "I love you" to all of them." "And, you know, the guys, that's the hardest thing is like, you know, if something happens to me, there's not much I can do about it or anything like that." "But it takes a little bit out of you every time you see one of your boys get hurt or you lose one of them." "It's really like a big family." "We flew in the middle of the night." "Guess what, they're not quiet helicopters that we fly." "The enemy's awake now." "What the fuck are the Americans doing flying over us right now?" "So now everybody's on their radio's, I'm sure, you know, "Hey, the Americans are heading this way."" "So we got on the ground and we were already being told, be on alert, you know, everybody knows we're here." "If we could get one going from west to east into that draw, over." "It's real hot." " All right, break." " Coming out." "I'd like you to come in for one more re-attack." "Come down in elevation in that draw and fill right there in the center, over." "So you did hit the target." "This house right there." "This is the aftermath of what AH-64s do." "Good old attack helicopters." "He said that there is five guys already dead and ten of the females and kids already, they are injured, you know." "Show me which of them is the Taliban." "There is no Taliban." "Damn it." "You know?" "I need to know better." "I need to figure this stuff out better so that I can do this, so that I'm not killing these people and not making them mad." "I mean, first impressions are the lasting impression." "That's the first time anybody's been in Yaka China, and what do I do?" "I kill a bunch of bad guys, but in the same instance," "I'm killing five locals that may not have been the ones that pulled the trigger, but in some way shape or form, were connected to them." "There you go." "Dishka?" "Afghan dishka, not American dishka, right?" "This is divorce paper." " What?" " Divorce paper." " Di-wars?" " Paper, yeah." " What does that mean?" " Divorce." "Like some woman you getting married then you're going to get a divorce." " Divorce papers?" " Yeah." "Okay." "Who owns the house?" "Did you ask him where the pistol was?" "Eight RPG heads." "One, two, three, four boosters." "Got four boosters, three batteries, shotgun." "This is Colonel Ostlund, he's my boss, you know, the one I always tell you." "We brought the Colonel down there to talk to them, and we did that because basically we felt bad for the fact that we injured some of their kids and that we killed some of the locals." "The ACM that comes in and gives you five dollars to carry this stuff around the mountains and tells you that you're doing a jihad and go fight the Americans is doing nothing for you except making you a slave for five dollars" "as he hides on a mountain, because he won't fight my soldiers." "These foreigners, they don't fight my soldiers." "They hide on a mountain in a cave, under a rock and talk on a radio and pay your sons a small amount of money to go ahead and shoot at my soldiers and my soldiers end up killing your sons." "But this is the deal we'll make." "Everybody needs a job, and we're going to try to bring progress here and some jobs, and Captain Kearney will talk to the Shura on Friday about some job projects." "The whole time we were there, we were thinking, "Okay." "When's it coming?" "When's it coming." "They're going to hit us." "When's it going to happen?" " This sucks, dude." " I'm just going to double check it." "ICOM chatter right now coming out of Chappadara, a guy named Obed's talking to the elders, and apparently said that the elders are in charge of what's going on." "The elders basically want jihad down here in the Korengal, and whatever they want, they'll..." "they're here to assist, so we'll see what happens." "But it doesn't sound very good for us, huh?" "Hey, Sergeant Patterson," "I found four fighting positions over there, AK-47 s." "I'm going to push to this next hilltop." "I'm also getting ICOM traffic that there may be enemy close to us." "Getting intel saying that they've got eyes on three to four US personnel and they're getting close to them." "So they've got eyes on us and it can be anywhere, this high ground there, there's some more spurs back there, there's one we crossed to an open patch back there." "They could have easily had eyes on us when we were moving in." "What the fuck was that?" "Did you hear that?" "It might be the birds, sir." "Shooting?" "Am I just jumpy?" "Fucking Christ, monitor this." "Sergeant P... do we got guys in these pine trees right here?" "Do we?" "When the attack finally happened," "I remember it was myself and my team on the south eastern corner of basically the area that we were covering." "We got ambushed, like, just every single position got hit at the same time pretty much." "They placed a PKM a machine gun down into our position and one orientated into the scout position, and just rained down hell." "I just look over to my right and I see rounds breaking branches off the tree." "They were shooting RPGs at us, they were shooting pretty much everything." "When I got hit, it actually came with enough force that it rolled me forward." "You know, initial thought was, "What happened?"" "I felt pain, you know, placed my hand there just underneath my IBA because that's where I felt, you know, the initial pain, pulled my hand out, saw blood, knew I was hit." "I looked up in time from all fours to watch a guy come over the crest probably about 35-45 meters to fire an RPG directly at me." "Initial thought was, "Wow, this is the last thing I'm going to see,"" "because the guy was so close." "And, you know, the round came in, exploded." "Took shrapnel all throughout my body, but... kind of did..." "after the explosion, like," ""I'm still here, I'm still alive,"" "and then proceeded to basically roll down the mountain into the bushes." "And they were all up in position," "I could hear them talking to each other." "To our north we heard somebody yelling for a medic." "I was the first one that heard it." "I yelled back to Sergeant Hoyt, telling him if I could go and see who who it was." "Myself along with Cortez started moving... we started bounding towards where we heard the guy yelling from." "We didn't know who it was." "I got to the wounded and found out it was Vandenberge." "I yelled back it was Vandenberge that was wounded, bring a medic." "He was just bleeding real bad." "His whole left side of his body was this real dark red color." "And all he kept on saying was, "Hey, help me, guys." "Help me."" "Just rocking back and forth." "Saying "I'm bleeding out, you gotta save me." "I'm dying."" "Just stuff like that." "Started handing him gauze, tourniquet." "Just started packing the wound with gauze." "I had my finger knuckle-deep in his arm." "Ended up stopping the bleeding." "I'm asking, "Where are the guys at?" "Where's the Taliban at?" "Where's the enemy at?"" "Last time he saw them, they were 20 feet away." "And just was I was going to give him an IV," "Sergeant Stichter and Doc Old got there and carried on from there." "Sergeant Patterson and all them took over, and I pushed out with Cortez." "We didn't bound, we didn't do anything, we just ran in a straight line and got to Rice as quick as we can." "At that point I kind of realized, "Hey, I'm stable." ""You know, I been here ten, fifteen minutes." "I'm still breathing, I'm not going into shock."" "Kind of evaluating myself." "So basically just gave them orders to..." ""Hey, you need to maneuver your guys." "And push up and clear across that hilltop."" "As I went up, I didn't see anyone there." "I took a knee and set up security, and when I turned to my right," "I saw Sergeant Rougle just laying there." "I ran up and I saw Sergeant Rougle's body and it didn't even click." "I ran past him." "I saw his face, how it was, kind of messed up." "I wanted to cry, but didn't." "I was shocked, honestly." "I was shocked because I saw Sergeant Rougle just laying there." "It was..." "It was chaos." "And when we finally had a second to stop and think, that's when I realized that one of my good friends had gone, you know, and I started hearing about Sergeant Rice, Vandenberge." "I didn't even know that they had been hit at that point." "And..." "I need a..." "Yeah, time out." "Hold on." "I'm just trying to keep my train of thought." "Have that box ready." "Have the next goddamn box ready." "Hey, I need immediate suppression on 2251." "They enemy's pushed up on the high ground..." "We're not getting shit." "512255, if we've got A-10s," "I want gun runs from east to west coming in, okay?" "The hill's been taken over by the enemy." "That hill right here?" "Wildcat's hill." "All right, we're going to go around to the east and go around." "Hey, Abdul!" "Get the fuck over here!" "Tell these guys we're pushing up on this fucking ridge." "Hey, he wants us to go up over this hill and bum rush it." "There's fucking dudes right there." "If we do that, we're going to have to fucking lay down some..." "We're going to have to lay down fire first." " Yeah, but we..." " We can't get a hold of them." "We don't know where they're at." "That's why we have to lay down fire first." "Look, they took fire from right over here." "Okay?" "Hey, who's down?" "We got Sergeant Rougle and them up?" "Hey." "What?" "Where they at?" "Just keep down." " Get down." " What?" " What's going on?" " Just chill out, dude." " Chill the fuck out out." " Who's over there?" "Oh, my God." "Shut up." "Move, man." "Is Sergeant Rice still alive?" " He's alive?" " He's going to make it." " There's nothing we could do." " Where's everybody else?" "Hey, we've got friendlies here and friendlies to your six, right there." "Vandenberge all right?" "Vandenberge's already..." "He's stable right now." "That ain't Sergeant Rougle." "You're lying, right, man?" "Why would I lie about something like that?" "Where'd he get hit?" "I got to see." "Don't look at him." "Is it bad?" "Tell me, dude." "Tell me, dude." "It was quick." "It was quick." "There was nothing we could do, bro!" "Where the bad guys at?" "Battle Six Romeo, this is two-six." "I've pushed to the site of the KIA, break." "Right now we have the hilltop." "It's in the same vicinity as my last grid." "Right now we're going to move the wounded in action... there's two of them..." "back to LZ Eagles." "When Captain Kearney told me up by the LZ that Staff Sergeant Rougle was killed, it was gut wrenching." "You know, there's different levels to quality of fighters." "He was one of the best, if not the best." "And I think that was what was tough for a lot of people was, you know, kind of knowing that in the back of their mind, well, if the best guy we have out here just got killed," "where's that put me?" "What's going to happen to me?" "What's going to happen to the guy to my left, to my right?" "Hey, we're going down here to get the wounded first." " Hey, let's go." " Let's go." "It was a coordinated attack." "They drew all our attention over to there from here." "These guys over here also returning fire from there." "They fucking flanked them." "You can see where the path is here where the fuckers came up." "Okay, where's this fucking compound?" "I want it destroyed." "Let's go." " Stichter, destroy it now." " Yes, sir." "After we go ahead and get the KIA out of here," "I want gunmetal to search directly to my west." "Hijar believes that he has a blood trail," "I want them to be getting down low to try and PID and see where this guy's stopped." "It's likely that where we find this son of a bitch is where we find everybody else." "Hijar, make sure he understood that." "Watch the pine trees." "Just on the north side of that, you can see a house on the corner." "As it cuts like that?" "It comes almost like an L shape." " See the terraces right there?" " Got it." "Okay, now, the fucking far southeast side, there's a fucking... there's a dude on the roof down in that house." " About a thousand meters." " Roger." "Hey, Raeon's got a guy to our northwest on top of a building walking around, over." " Any other info?" " No." "He was looking up this way, and he just came off the roof, and he went back in his house." "Roger, acknowledge." "Raeon, next time you see that dude, take his head off." "Where's that range finder at?" "He was a good dude, man." "Sergeant Rougle?" " You want a real cigarette?" " Yeah." "I'm worried about the rest of the guys." "They've been taking it real bad." "One Alpha's kind of blaming it on himself because we couldn't push over the top, but the thing he's got to understand is they fucking..." "He was dead instantly." "There's nothing you can do right there." "Actually, I can't even sleep, honestly." "I've been on about four or five different types of sleeping pills and none of them help." "That's how bad the nightmares are." "I prefer not to sleep and not dream about it, than sleep and... just see the picture in my head is... pretty bad." "That actually stuck with me for the rest of the deployment." "Stuck with me through coming back here to Italy." "I still obviously haven't... figured out how to deal with it inside." "The only hope I have right now is that eventually I'll be able to process it differently." "I'm never going to forget it." "Never going to even let go of it." "I don't want to not have that as a memory because that was tone of the moments that makes me appreciate everything that I have." "Steiner?" "Steiner, come on!" "Not yet." "Not yet." "Still working to try to bring about the Korengal to get the road moving here." "Are you really drawing the Korengal Valley?" "It's the only thing I know how to draw." "I just send it home in letters." "Just draw." "So do you have a songbook or something, or an exercise book to practice with?" "You just fuck around?" "Yeah I'm just fucking around." "You need one of those books, with the charts on them." "Yeah, I need... that would be nice." "Restrepo was teaching me that stuff, but he... he taught me like a few, but I wrote just one, a C chord, but, you know, I don't know." "I still have his..." "I actually still have one of his Flamenco books or whatever it is." "How to play guitar flamenco, you know." "He was amazing on guitar." " It was just beautiful music." " It was amazing." "He used to grow his fingernails out real long, and put like nail hardener." "So we always used to get on him about that." "Yeah, but... with his teeth..." ""yeah, but can..." ""can you play the guitar like me, yo, son?" "Shun?"" "Twenty seven May, movement to contact west of Restrepo." "Task disrupt, purpose prevent AAF from building mass fires on Restrepo." "That concludes my report." "Over." " How long till he gets tired?" " Hump him, Walker." "Ow, my hip." "Is he squeezing you with his fucking mammoth legs?" " Heart punch, heart punch." " There you go, film Walker." "Walker!" "I think they just changed, didn't they?" "I just want to see." " Walker." " I'm bored." "Say something to your wife." "Dude, you know you want to." "Hey, babe, I miss you." "Can't wait to get home and..." "Hurry up, hurry up!" "Do you want to know when you're going home or not?" "All right, what's been told to the wives is we'll be back in Italy, not out of country, back in Italy between August 4th and 7th." "So look at your fucking watch." "Two months from today and counting down." "That's bad news if you're one of those dudes that's like," ""Fuck, I love it here and I wanted to wait till September and get an extra thousand dollars."" "And if that's you, I don't care." "Fuck you." "We're going home." "Today things were a little bit hectic." "We found out that one of our sister companies, Chosen Company, up north of Camp Blessing, starting a new base lost nine soldiers and had an additional twelve US wounded and an thirteen additional ANA that were wounded." "Hey, is this everybody?" "We got the Mortars?" "We got Second Platoon?" "Okay, hey, listen up." "I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about some of what happened up with Chosen Company." "I want you guys to mourn, and then I want you guys to get over it and do your jobs." "Okay?" "First..." "Hey, Proctor, why did you come in the army, man?" "To fight for my country, sir." " To fight for your country?" " Roger, sir." "Did you expect that you might get injured or die?" "Absolutely, sir." "Anybody join not knowing that that might be an option?" "We lose PFC Vimoto on June 5th, 2007." "What happens the very next day after that, Sergeant Buno?" "We go out on patrols, we get attacked again." "Right." "July 22nd, we lose Restrepo, right?" "What do we keep on doing after that?" "Fighting." "We keep on fighting and taking it to the enemy, right?" "What do you guys think would have happened if we had just stopped at Vimoto and acted like our predecessors before us and we stood our ground there, didn't go out there doing our aggressive patrolling, didn't go out there and build OP Restrepo," "which I think we'll all venture to say, like, pretty much changed the entire dynamics of the entire valley?" "You guys know what would have happened?" "The same shit that happened today up at Chosen Company." "Now with Chosen Company, they went into an area that they knew was going to be contested." "They knew what they were getting into." "They've been talking about going to Wanat since July of 2007." "We went there, they did it." "The fucking only way to bounce back from shit like this is to go out there and make the individuals that did this to us fucking pay." "It's not to sit back here and hide." "It's not to go back down to our fucking rucks and fucking feel sorry for ourselves and get snuggled up in our woobie." "We go out there, we find the motherfuckers that did this and we make them pay." "We make them feel how we feel right now." "For those of you guys that pray, let's go ahead and take a moment of silence in... in remembrance the ten... ten to nine soldiers that we lost today and the families of them and the families of those that were hurt," "and then I'll let you guys go ahead and get about your business." "Get down." "Oh, wow, you can't see shit now." "Hey, can I shoot Sergeant Mac?" "I'm I'm going to fucking get him." " Can I shoot?" " Wait till he engages." "Wait till he engages, then fucking fucking get him." "There he goes." "Low right, low right!" "Low right!" " Hey, that motherfucker's done." " Is he?" "Hey, Olson, he's done." "Yeah!" "A direct hit on that dude." "That motherfucker's done, man!" "That motherfucker's done, dude!" "Fuck you, bitches!" "Body parts falling apart." "The L-Ras, dude, it was him running and then him blasting into pieces." " Yeah?" " Yeah, dude." "There you go, motherfucker, shoot at us again." "By the end, like I was..." "I really didn't want to get overrun." "But I just wish they were closer so I could have actually seen them when I killed them." "626 perstat," "I have twenty Restrepo." "The only question I have is tonight, are we going to be doing an illum round for Doc Restrepo?" "Today's twenty two July." "Over." "Yeah, we're planning on doing the illum round." "One last thing, seventeen tonight they're shooting for Doc Restrepo." "Seventeen tonight." "He's fucking a little bit drunk." "I'm fucking..." "I'm a little bit drunk at this point." "And I see him..." "I see him just eyeing everyone up, just like this." "Who is that, Kim?" "No, Restrepo." "Eyeing everyone up." "I come up to him and I'm like, "What's wrong, bro?"" "He's like, "Yo, bro," "I'm going to stab these fools, yo."" "I'm like, I see it in his hand." "He's got the fucking Gerber out with the knife out, fucking closed up, just ready to fucking shank someone, dude." "I'm like... and this is after the night before we ended up down in the fucking the steps of Rome fucking train station, and I was peeing, in my pants." "What we did to mark the anniversary of our dead, we shot off flares, and where Restrepo died, we shot off flares." "You know, and kind of raise one up." "Say a prayer, say a few words in your head and you move on." "Did my last patrol hopefully." "Hopefully I don't get called back out for something." "Fly out of here in a few days." "It's kind of strange thinking you'll never come back to OP Restrepo again." "Yeah." "It's a good feeling, though." "It's been a long fucking deployment right there." "Leaving Restrepo?" "It's too good to be true, you know?" "We're going to die here." "Isn't that right, Henry?" " Roger, Sergeant." " But we're leaving instead." "God's going to fuck with our emotions and kill us on the bird out." "I'm never coming back, never coming back." "It's time to go." "That's heavy." "Goodbye, OP Restrepo." "I'm never going to have to be here again." "Not that I didn't enjoy my time here, but it's time to move on." " Yes!" " See you later." "The high point for us was going home." "Getting out of there." "Going home, seriously." "No doubt about it." "Each one of my soldiers' face, you can tell, going home." "We done our job." "We did what we were supposed to have been doing and we out of here." "The Korengal, as far as..." "What did we we achieve?" "I'm always going to think about Restrepo." "Building Restrepo was the single most important event for the Korengal." "And how... how the boys did it." "Fighting." "And then turning around and going back to working." "It makes us proud when we see the news... they still call it Restrepo... knowing that, you know, we painted it on the walls, this is for Doc Restrepo." "The name fit the place after a while, after it became built up, after it became a better place." "But when I hear Restrepo," "I still think of the person." "You can't..." "You can't tame the beast." "You know?" "Got him." "Yeah, he got him." "He got him." "He did get him." "Hey, Lex, what's going on tonight?" "Just tell us." "Break it down, break it down." "All I want to do is find a miniature zebra, put a little tiny saddle on it and ride it." "There ain't no zebras on the pub crawl." "I didn't..." "Miniature zebras." "My bad, there are miniature zebras." "What the fuck?" "Let's say goodbye, let's say goodbye." "Hey, tune in next time where we're going to be still drunk as fuck." "Saying goodnight to the bad guy, man." "The same time, the same dope rhyme, because we're going to be still loving life and getting ready to go to war." "Here or hea?" "H-E-A." "Hea." ""O'Byrne wuz hea."" "That's how we roll."