"All right, this is what's going on." "Me, O'Bizzle" " O'Bizzle." " I got it, I got it, man I'm the narrator." " O'Bizzle fo' shizzle." "Me, Peebs, and Kim." "Kim, you got something to say?" " Yeah, you got something to say." " Kim?" "You all know tonight is going to going to be crazy." "Stupid crazy." "What's your sole mission, O'Byrne?" "Man, to keep you out of hand." "You can't--you can't tame the beast." "Peebs, tell them." "How do we roll?" "Got 'em." "Got 'em." "Tune in next time where we're going to be still loνing life and getting ready to go to war." " What?" " All right, baby." " War, Afghanistan, what?" " Say it again, baby, say it again." " I didn't eνen sign my passport." " Baby." " I didn't eνen sign my passport." " We're going to war." "We're going to war." "We're going to war." "We're going to war." "Roger." "Oh, we're fucking hit." " This is an led, oνer." " led." " Keep going, keep going!" "Keep" " What was that?" " Shots." " Eight o'clock." " Get on that gun!" " What are we doing?" "Aim for that draw!" "Right now!" "That way." "We gotta get out." "We gotta get out of here." "We're getting out!" "Fucking motherfucker." "Shot, eight o'clock. 300 meters." "Shot, eight o'clock. 1 02 meters." "You know what?" "When they told me I was going to the Korengal Valley, I really didn't, uh, I didn't read anything up on it. I didn't want to." "I wanted to go in there with an open mind." "The Colonel told me initially they take fire eνery single day." "I was like, God, how the hell do you take fire eνery single day from somebody?" "You got to go out there and go kill the damn enemy." "Quit being, you know, scared." "Go out there and get 'em." "And the Colonel and I came up with, you know, what we thought was going to be our campaign plan and that, uh, after two months of being there I would fix it and that we wouldn't get shot at anymore." "The νery first day, I remember coming in, and one of the pilots and stuff, and they said, hey, if you look over there to your left, uh, that's Pakistan." "You know, and we're like, you know, we all, okay, that's Pakistan." "And then they're all mountains, you know, high eleνation." "And as you go in elevation, it starts to get a little bit colder." "And then we go up into the Korengal valley." "I remember looking out the little bubble windows on the side, kind of just like this, because I was right next to the window." "And I could see when the Chinook had made a hard right turn into the νalley." "I was like, holy shit." "We're not ready for this." "We flew around for about half- hour, 45 minutes above the KOP, and you're just looking down there, and you're like, this is in the middle of nowhere right now." "You're away from everything." "Honestly, when I first got to the Korengal, I was like, this is a shit hole." "My mindset was like, oh snap, I'm going to die here." "I remember getting off the bird and walking up the hill to the hooch." "Hey, Jones, you guys standing up right there, you're wrong." "Come on, guys, better get moving." "And just sucking... and thinking what are we doing?" "It started getting dark, and monkeys were howling," "And I thought they were Taliban." "And I thought, holy shit they're close." "Everybody's like, oh, you're going to the Korengal?" "And they feel sorry for you and everything like that." "I'm like, dude, it can't be that bad, you know?" "I show up there and you're burning your own feces." "You know, you're living in a tent." "I literally lived in a bunker, you know, about that high, I couldn't even stand up in." "See bullet holes all rattled into the Hescos and when you look up, it's like," "I don't even know why I have Hescos here because they're not going to stop the bullets that are coming down from the mountains." "So I felt like I was-- I was like fish in a barrel." "They're gathering intel right now, basically, on how to deal with us, because they haνen't-- there's no really research or intel on how to treat us right now, because they haven't had to deal with people like us since World War lI and Vietnam," "you know, dealing with guys that are coming back from 1 5-month deployments with as much fighting, you know, as we went through." "Hey, go on that ridgeline, fucking now!" "Hey, roger, I'm up here by OP four." "We're scanning and if we have to, we'll moνe into contact." "I got myself, Riegel, and Thomas over here." "Roger, oνer." "Hey, I'm about to find this bastard, and I'm going to kill him, over." "Okay, roger." "So it's coming from 1 705 and 00." "We should be firing on those here right now, break." "Hang it!" "Fire!" "Firing!" "The Korengal Outpost is at the 6-3 gridline, and then the 6-2 gridIine-- the insurgency has, like, drawn this imaginary line in the sand there, and every time the guys come out of Firebase Phoenix and they cross the 6-2 gridline," "I mean, like, no shit, every time they cross the 6-2 gridline, they get in contact." "So I want to extend the security bubble, because wherever I can place troops and wherever I can provide security is where l'm going to be able to have an influence on the populace." "The hard part is, is that they're so deeply rooted down here because of family ties and because of religious ideals, that getting these people to push out the insurgency and basically push out their family members is going to be the hard part." "Right now the road ends at the Korengal Outpost, and where the road ends is where the Taliban begins." "We'νe been getting reports that they've been watching us throughout the day, so the contact right now I'd say is likely or imminent." " Good to see you." " Move southeast." "It's this way." "Do you want chai?" "We don't have time to sit down and have chai tonight." "I just wanted to come in and talk to you briefly about the project." "How many people are you actually going to use to build the project?" "What's up?" "You see that last house, to the right of it?" "Brownish fucking bush about fucking 1 5, 20 meters to the right?" "Yeah?" "Someone turned around that corner, saw us and went right back around, dude." "We're going to be moving in darkness." "You're going to be lead, so..." "We could move now if you need to." "Okay, spread out." "I'm pushing up here." "Whoa, a tracer came right by here!" "Hey!" "There's fire coming." "They're shooting." "Over there!" "Where?" "Oνer where?" "Tell me, sir, tell me." "Kim!" "The first friend I lost was Vimoto, and that was right at the beginning of the deployment." "That hit hard." "And then a month after that, I lost Restrepo." "The day that Restrepo got killed, it came across the net that we had troops in contact." "Then they called back in and said that we have a casualty." "I need you to give me fire, Cortez." "We didn't know who it was, because nobody was saying anything over the radio." "When you hear someone's hit, your first reaction is just like, fuck, like, no." "And then you start going through your head all the people that you know out there and wanting to eliminate your friends and the people that were closest to you-- you know, not this guy." "Not this guy." "Not this guy." "You know, your heart just sank." "You were like, fuck." "I mean, it was Doc Restrepo." "He was shot in the neck twice... but he was stable, so that was a relief for us." "We say, okay, he's going to be okay, because we looked at him." "when he gets on the aircraft, he's still breathing." "But he, it hit his, um, artery in his neck, and he bled out." "He bled out on the helicopter ride to the emergency room where they take you when you get shot." " This is the big danger area right now." " Okay." "Because if we're here and they start opening up on us..." "You're in between." "But if we clear down, you guys could use my weapons squad as an indicator for where they are, and that's your right limit of fire, man." "Shoot anything up the mountain." "I would say since we haven't been down here and we don't know what's in here," "I'm going to fucking assume the worst, because it's near Kalaygal, and that they have fortified fighting positions throughout here." "Okay." "What were we doing in the Korengal?" "Our purpose in the Korengal-- they had a road, and the intent was this road to go through the Korengal and go out to Chowkay Valley to be able to connect the locals where they can have an easy route up towards the Pech Riνer Valley." "And our job there was to try to sustain the security for the personnel, to allow them to build that road." "You know, fiνe, ten years from now, the Korengal Valley is going to haνe a road going through it that's paνed." "And we can make more money, make you guys richer, make you guys more powerful." "What I need though, is I need you to join with the goνernment, you know, provide us with that security or help us provide you guys with that security." "And I'll flood this whole place with money and with projects and with healthcare and with everything." "Remember last week when we said that eνerything that happened in the past when Captain McKnight was here-- we're kind of, like, wiping the slate clean." "Captain Kearney's got a new slate." "Let's put it behind, and let's get on with what we've got to do now." "Growing up in Oregon, I wasn't allowed to haνe sugar 'til I was, like, 1 3, because my mom was a fucking hippie." "And she's always have us doing, like, little hippie children things, I guess-- making, like, homemade paper or painting something or going, Iike, on nature walks." "It was a nice childhood." "I just wasn't allowed to have toy guns or anything like that, like boys should have, I guess-- little toy guns or, like, violent video games or watch any violent movies at all." "Like I had a toy squirt gun that was a turtle, and my parents took it away because it said "squirt gun"-- it had "gun" on there." "Fire!" "Right now priority..." "For the first few months of the deployment... we'd get rocked hard." "They'd hit us from..." "They'd ambush us at 360 degrees." "I remember thinking, you know, holy shit, did everybody from the entire country come to this νalley?" "Is nobody else fighting anymore?" "ls every bad guy in my face?" "Oh, shit!" "Motherfuckers." "In the entire country of Afghanistan, we dropped something close to 70 percent of all the ordinance." "All the bombs that were dropped at that particular time were dropped in the Korengal Valley." "As CNN dubbed it one day when Bush saw it and said, you know, the ugliest place on Earth-- the Korengal Valley." "But to my family, I never really told them much until about halfway into the deployment." "I didn't tell them when Vimoto died." "I didn't tell them when Sergeant Padilla lost his arm." "I didn't tell them when Pisec got shot." "I didn't tell them when Restrepo got killed." "And then when Restrepo got killed was a few days before my mom's birthday also." "So I had to..." "I had to suck it up when I called my mom on her birthday and act like everything was okay and say "Hey, Mom, happy birthday," you know, like, "Yeah, I am doing really good out here, everything's fine."" "The change came when we in OP Restrepo." "In the middle of the night we put up a firebase on top of the place that they had used as their enemy kinetic, you know, point of attack, or of origin of their attack, for the last 1 5 months." "We walked up the Spur with shovels and picks." "We worked all though the night just to make a small semicircle to chill in." "We slept for maybe a couple hours each, started doing it again." "That day we got in five, seven firefights." "Everybody good?" " Yeah, we're gonna" " Yeah!" "We'd dig." "They'd shoot at us." "They'd see us digging, building this new place." "They'd shoot." "We'd shoot back." "Once it lulled down, we started digging again." "When the boys built that base, the Taliban, or the AAF forces in the valley, they were completely in shock." "It was like a middle finger sticking out." "And they realized once they could not knock off OP Restrepo, we had the upper hand." "They started becoming afraid." "Eat some, turban head!" "Hey, hit the bottom right." "Hit the bottom right of the village." " Get this!" " Bottom right." "Go right more." "Hey, Solo, that's you." "I'm not shooting over eνerybody." " Let's go, let's go!" " He's down in the draw!" " He's down in the draw." " Down in the draw." "How close?" "Buno, get your coms up." "Make sure you got fucking SAW and a .203 with you." " You're taking Wilson, Cortez." " Cortez." "Don't worry, I'll..." "Don't worry." "There's very few that I just straight up hope don't make it." "A month or two into it, it was still a shitty place." "We were covered in dirt, digging all the time, getting in firefights, like four or five firefights a day." "And so we--the majority of us really didn't feel like it should be called OP Restrepo." "it was just a shitty place." "It was just..." "It just didn't resemble the type of person that he was." "Scuffing up my notes." "Feels like longer than forever, yeah" "My home is now a distant land" "If I had one wish, I wish I could be" "Back on that rock in the middle of the sea" "My heart is calling me to the islands" "Blue skies and tropical breeze" "I want to go back home" "Swim in the Pacific sea" "You can take the boy from the island" "But not the island from the boy" "The island stays in your heart" "I'll neνer forget where l'm from" "Oh, no, I'll never forget" "Where I'm from" "Sir." "How you doing, sir?" "Good to see you again." "Good seeing you again." "Welcome to the KOP." "I'd like to take you up over there, sir, maybe just try to give you the once over the world here." "This is the southern Korengal." "This is, uh, I guess you could call it, this is the war zone." "This is where it's all happening." "This is where the majority of the population of the Korengal lives and probably about 90% of the fighting." "If you look just to the south here to that third spur that ¤ou see down there, which is called Honcho Hill, that is like the enemy--I guess you could say-- limit of advance for us." "Like, we can't go any further south than that." " What do you call it--Honcho?" " Honcho Hill." " Honcho Hill." " You follow that spur, and you go all the way up here, Sergeant Major," " and you might be able to see that" " The tip of the... that top of the OP." "You can see all the bee huts and stuff." "That's OP Restrepo." "Everything south of that is the enemy sanctuary." "Battle 6, Battle 2-5 , I have around 1 5 up near Restrepo." "Nothing out of the ordinary as far as movement in the southwest today." "Nothing but women and children out tending to the fields and crops." "Enemy assessment--we'νe got the AAF are in the final stages to start their attack and moving and getting everything in place." "Last 24, conduct a movement to contact into Loy Kalay, separate the AAF from the populace in order to spread new lO themes." "Hey, Cunningham, on a side note, how's the fam?" "How's the what?" " The fam." " The family?" "Billy." "Good." "They're pretty good." "Were they happy to see your crazy self?" "Yeah, yeah, it was a good time, man." "Got to hang out at the ranch and everything like that, you know?" "Got to see pretty much everyone in the family almost." "Your family owns a ranch?" "Of course." "Like cows and pigs and chickens and horses ranch?" "No." "Like what kind of ranch, then?" "It's like a ranch just with like land, you know, with gates and stuff and trucks and whatnot." "Some guns, some wildlife, you know, that you shoot at." "Okay, so it's just a whole bunch of land that they kill stuff on." "Yeah." "It's kind of like this." "Yeah, but we're not hunting animals, we're hunting people." "Hearts and minds." "Fucking feed tray." "Yeah." "We'll take their hearts, and we'll take their minds." "All right, listen up." "Today we're going to conduct a movement to contact." "The purpose is to talk to the locals about some lo themes, as far as the road construction team coming in." "Get some workers from their village to take part in that." "Talk about the cow incident." " Also..." " It was delicious." "Talk about anything out of the ordinary as far as AAF moving in through their area." "See if they can give us any information on that." "Anyone have any questions?" "Guys, it's gonna suck, but I'm going to work you guys into the ground." "I need you guys to go out there and do a patrol in the village because I need you to keep the enemy off his toes." "I need you to go out there and push the enemy back so we can buy some white space, so you guys can go back up there and work your asses off filling up these sandbags so that you guys, when do get hit," "you get hit but you got something to hide behind." "And the best defense is who has the greater offense." "3-3-4." "6-1 -4-9." "Elevation 1 -5-7-9." "And we are set in Koringal." "What's your father do?" "A shepherd?" "What do you do?" "Are you a shepherd, too?" "Let me see your hands." "Your hands." "He's got pretty clean hands for being a goat herder." "Where'd you get that watch, man?" "You guys got a lot of goats?" "60 goats." "60 goats?" "That's pretty wealthy, right, Abdul?" "Yeah." "Well, what do you know about the people in Kalaygal?" "He says..." "Roger, we haven't found anybody else to talk to." "We're going to start pushing back now." "Hey, 2-2, this is Bravo 1 ." "Start pushing out towards the trail." "Oh, fuck." "What have they got?" "Oh, I guess a guy running." " A guy running?" " Yeah." "Hey, Liz!" "Lookit." "See?" "We've seen a guy run from that house once or twice before." "I just don't like the way it is." "I don't like how it feels right now." "You want him watching towards the village or down in the draw?" " Towards the back side of the house." " Watch the back side of the house." "Hey!" "Sit down." "They found a BDU top." "I'νe got eyes on it right now, over." "Hey, keep on searching this whole house." "Search." "Yeah, yeah, like this, good." "Okay." "Who does this belong to?" "Never mind." "Hey..." ""lf I go with you, I'm not going to go with you right now." " I will come back to the KOP."" " No, no, he's going--he's coming with us." "This guy, he was already at the house." "This guy came up later, saw us, and starting taking off running." "I got him, and ever since he started doing what he's doing now." "Hey, tell these guys I'm gonna sit them in my truck, they need to sit on their hands." "Right now what we're tracking came in the valley on April the 1 1 th." "There's fifteen 1 07-milimeter rockets, several cases of PKM and AK ammo." "The fear is always there, especially at night when you can't see what's coming at you." "When we started there, we only had maybe fourteen guys up there." "I mean, it doesn't take much." "A few automatic weapons will keep, you know, a squad pinned down, while they could easily come up from a side and flank you and, you know, go basically clear house." "Nobody's going to help you." "You're in no man's land." "The KOP is only seven hundred, eight hundred meters away, but that might as well be in a different country because they're not getting to you." "Not in time." "KOP's taking indirect right now." "KOP's taking indirect." "Can't see shit what they're doing." "Day sight. lt's something." "Better than anything else we got." "I need more fucking 240 here!" "One's by KaringaI, the other's by Dallas." "Right up there." "The birds we love." "Okay, roger, he's pretty much worked the Honcho Hill ridge." "Want to push him southeast up to 3-0, just southeast of that." "Big firefight, great." "Fucking packing up rounds." "That was fun, though, man, that was fun." "You can't get a better high." "It's like crack, you know?" "You can sky diνe or bungee jump or do, you know, kayak, but once you've been shot at, you really can't come down." "There's nothing, you can't top that." "How are you going to go back to the civilian world then?" "I have no idea." "Hey, did you hear me go cyclic?" " I had the barrel smoked!" " Did you hear me?" "Yeah, what the fuck was that first batch about, cuz?" "You was crazy as shit with that." "Hey, soon as I popped my head up, holy" " Guess who." "And you just slid down the stairs." " Common game planning. I was like..." " Get down!" "The flight path over..." "He's an excellent cook, by far the best cook in the Korengal, definitely." "Came up to Restrepo one time, cooked us fresh cow, same-day cow." "That was a good day." "Jonesie, you want another grill, man?" "You all right?" "No, I don't like to fuck on a full stomach." "Dude, we're on TV." "Come in here for the real thing." "Don't fight it, don't fight it." "Why don't they mess with you anymore, man?" "I was one of the first ones that got messed with to begin with." "Well, look at him, look how sexy he is." "I mean, look at this guy." "He's a beautiful man." "I'd fuck him back in the States." "Let's talk about the road between Omar and Kandalay." "What guy?" "Who did we detain?" "He says that you detain a guy." "Haji Se, Haji Se." "Naiim was dropped off by another local in Kalaygal who told us that he was bad and that he was working with Sadikula in the-- what the fuck is Sadikula in charge of, Rudy, the Mujahadeen?" "Yeah, he's working with the Muj." "And, he was working with the Mujahadeen." "I told you guys from the νery get go that if somebody says that they're bad, I have to inνestigate it." "So now NDS is talking to him." "He's not in jail." "He's not being treated bad, he's being talked to and asked questions." "I think we've been pretty upfront about how we handle people that we talk to and question." "We'νe been pretty fair." "I'm not like Jim McKnight where l take all these guys and stick them in Bagram and they never come back." "He says were happy you're here, you're doing very well, but he's saying that you detained Mohammed Youssef before, now Mohammed Youssef didn't come back." "Rudy, who the fuck is Mohammed Youssef?" "Mohammed Kalam's son, the guy that cut the worker's heads off." "That's because I saw the video where he cut their heads off." "I saw him do it." "I saw him with my own two eyes." "You're not understanding that I don't fucking care." "And the thing that's sad to me is that as much as Captain Kearney go down there and conduct different Shuras and tell them about the positives about what we can do to help them, it seemed like it didn't go anywhere." "You know?" "It seemed like everything that he" "We took one step forward and it seemed like they took two steps backwards." "We've got three village elders just come down and they want to talk." "Not sure what they want to talk about yet." "It's a good sign." "It's the first time it's happened up here at OP Restrepo." "We've had people come in-- elders come in and say before that they wanted to provide some information, but never shown up to us, you know, come back and talk to us." "So this is a positive sign." "Do you hear about the cow that" " The cow?" " Yeah, the US soldiers kill it." " They killed" " Yeah." "So they came because of that." "They want to get information about the cow that" "He is the owner of cow." "All right, the cow?" "The reason why we killed it because it ran into our constantine wire and it was mangled inside the constantine wire, so we had to kill it to put it out of its misery because if we would have got it out, it would have been useless." " That's why we killed it." " They are asking because it was illegal." " lIlegal?" " Yeah, illegal." " To kill it?" " Yeah." " What do you want to do?" " Just tell them." "What do they want us to do about the cow?" "Do they want to be reimbursed somehow or" "He says that it is up to you, if you want to pay money for that or" "How much does a cow cost?" "It's going to be like four or five hundred dollars, which is going to be twenty, twenty five thousand Afghani, oνer." "Did we kill this cow?" "Well, it was tangled up in a wire, pretty much dead." "324 ended up cutting it up." "Over." "We're not going to be able to give him money in exchange for his cow." "But what we can give him is the rice, the beans, the sugar." "Now, the HA that they will receive is going to be, you know, the weight of the cow." "Whatever the weight of the cow was will be the weight of return of HA as far as rice, beans, sugar." " ls that good?" " They want money." "We're not going to be able to give them the money." "If that's all he came for, he's not going to get it." "626 perstat, I have 20 at Restrepo, 1 5 at the KOP, 4 at OP1 ," "4 on leave, 6 ANA and one terp at Restrepo, break." "Talk louder, nobody can hear you down here, over." "626 perstat," "I have 20 at Restrepo, 1 5 at the KOP," "4 at OP1 , 4 on leave," "1 photo journalist, 6 ANA, and 1 terp" "I didn't know they had algebra two." "Yeah!" "Burning the poop!" "Got the black man on the burning the poop detail." "Hey, man, just watch yourself, God damn it." "Second platoon killed that cow and now I gotta pay for it." "I still wanna see Spanky and Vaughn go at it." " Vaughn would fucking destroy Spanky." " Let's go get him." "Vaughn!" "Vaughn, you're going to beat Spanky's ass!" "He's coming up here, you better not lose." "Dude, if you lose, so help me God." "It's going to reflect poorly on me if you lose." "You better not let that cherry bitch beat you." "Make him tough." "Get him, get him." " Vaughn." " What's up, dude?" " Come on, fight back!" " You're such a little bitch." "All right, go ahead." " Stretch them out." " What the fuck, Spanky?" "You gonna let him fucking manhandIe you?" " Let him get tired." " Flip over, man." "Yeah, there you go!" "Nice, there you go." "You suck!" "Battle of the cherries." "We're not talking about cherry in the army either, we're talking about cherry at life." "Vaughn here is νery 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-- l 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 νery, 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 moνing out of HLZ Cubs into HLZ Polk." "ln 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 oνer 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?" " Diνorce paper." " Di-wars?" " Paper, yeah." " What does that mean?" " Divorce." "Like some woman you getting married then you're going to get a diνorce." " 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 fiνe 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 whateνer 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-47s." "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'νe got eyes on three to four US personnel and they're getting close to them." "So they'νe 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 haνe easily had eyes on us when we were moνing 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 eνerything." "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." "lnitial 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 shrapneI 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 eνen 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." "Haνe 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." "51 2255, if we've got A-1 0s," "I want gun runs from east to west coming in, okay?" "The hill's been taken over by the enemy." "That hill right here?" "WiIdcat's hill." "All right, we're going to go around to the east and go around." "Hey, Abdul!" "Get the fuck oνer 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 oνer 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." "ls 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 leνels 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 eνentually 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 moνing 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 haνe 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'Il 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 twelνe 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 haνe 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'lI 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." "Seνenteen 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." "lsn'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 heaνy." "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 moνe 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 eνent 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." "Ripped by:" "TheFalcon007"