Urban Warfare Center®

Welcome to the Urban Warfare Center®

2010-12-31T20:11:00.046-07:00

"No good plan survives first contact with the enemy"

There is NO room in the REAL WORLD for mistakes. But if you have to make them the Urban Warfare Center® is the place to do it.

At the Urban Warfare Center® we help you develop principle based skills that are flexible and will help you adapt and dominate a constantly changing environment whether you're on the city streets or in a combat zone.

Click here to see what a recent graduate said about the training.

The Urban Warfare Center® is a premier force-on-force training facility that is modular in design, attacks the five physical senses and provides the most realistic human versus human training in the world. The Special Operations veteran instructors have prepared thousands of police, military and federal agents for the reality of combat.

Its dynamic environment and proven tools enable both civilian and operator alike the opportunity to be tested at the highest levels. Beginner to advanced skill sets are taught and reviewed using stress inoculation and introspective evaluations that both shorten the training cycles and increase retention.

High risk warrants to full blow hostage rescue and vehicle assaults can be done inside this classic less than lethal shoot house.

Urban Combat (3 Days)

2010-11-06T10:32:00.000-06:00

The Urban Combat Course is designed for Military and Police Agencies only (no civilians unless you are vetted by state department as a contractor). During this three day course you will be given instruction at the highest levels and be tested through force-on-force scenarios in our world class facility.

More to come...

Executive Traveling High Risk Areas

2010-11-06T10:09:00.014-06:00

COST = $199.00 per person

DURATION - 1 Day

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center® or on Location

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military, Police and Civilians

Are you an executive that travels abroad to High Risk Areas? If so this course was developed for YOU! Learn from Certified Body Guards for High Risk Areas, Military and Police Special Operations Veterans how to avoid trouble and if you get caught up into the middle of it to survive.

This course is designed to address to current methods and tools than can be used to avoid conflict in high risk areas. Many executives travel daily to areas of the world that are flagged as high threat/risk. This course is held at the Urban Warfare Center® and is some lecture and lots of hands on.

This course is open to all civilians (pending background), Military and Police.

Through our one day program you will learn:

Models to avoid conflict
Threat analysis and risk assessment
The study of human behavior and what to do if you are captured
Methods to escape from captivity
Techniques on how to get out of many restraints
Methods to disable an attacker quickly and quietly
Self Defense Combatives and Improvised Weapons
Travel tips, tools and models for a safe trip and return

This course has many other elements that cannot be posted here and that will require you so pass a simple background check included in the tuition. If you are already vetted by the state department and hold a government or local/State Identification you need no other clearance.

NOTE: During this course you will NOT be taken or harmed in any way.

read what a recent student said about the training...

2010-08-27T11:04:00.005-06:00

The Defensive Handgun Course was top notch. Some of it was a reinforcement of what I already new, but its always good to go over the basics again. The best part of the class was doing the different scenarios that you might find yourself in real life and how you would react. To include getting the feedback from Jager/David and Bravo/John.

The longer I look back at the feedback and go over the drills the more I take away from it. In Utah you don't even have to own a gun to get your concealed weapons permit, so starting off with this under your belt would be a great asset. You can always talk the talk, but its not until you really find yourself in that situation do you know what your going to do under stress. For Ops Gear, http://www.opsgear.com/, that is their entire mission at the Urban Warfare Center, http://www.urbanwarfarecenter.com/.

I am really looking forward to doing another class taught by Jager and Bravo. Another part of their philosophy that I liked was that was always about breaking contact as much as possible. I have looked at other instructors and schools and I can't tell you how little I heard that statement. Using your firearm is always your last resort, even at that point, its stop the threat and break contact. Again it was great class.

Oh and if Jager tells you to stop you really ought to do just that. He asked me to come at him to demonstrate using your voice to help deter people coming at you. I however didn't stop, so he pulled his training knife, rubber, and stabbed me in the belly. Had it not been a training environment I'm pretty sure I would have stopped. Didn't mean to hit me that hard, however he got well enough to leave a good bruise that is still healing. Doesn't help that I have Buddha belly! LOL. Thanks Jager for pain reinforcement. Next time I WILL stop!

Thanks guys!

Keith Twohill

Escaping Captivity - High Risk Areas

2010-08-25T22:00:00.018-06:00

COST = Half Day $99.00 per person Full Day $199.00 per person

DURATION - Half Day or Full Day

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center® or on Location

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military, Police, Government and Contractors

This course is designed for military, contractors or executives that travel to high risk areas. It teaches the mindset and skills needed to avoid and escape captivity.

A background check, military or POLICE ID is required.

Subjects covered include:

Attitude and behaviors for abduction
Escaping handcuffs
Escaping Ropes
Escaping flex cuffs and tape
Using a knife to kill a terrorist
Using hands to disable a terrorist
Close Contact Combatives and Improvised Weapons
Taking handguns
Taking rifles

The course fee is $99 which includes 4 hours of training and a background investigation if necessary. We reserve the right to refuse to train any individual for any reason. Refunds will be subject to a 15% processing fee, and must be done more than 48 hours before the course date.

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

Military Combatives

2010-08-25T21:57:00.016-06:00

COST = $199.00 (Full Day $99.00 (Half Day) per person

DURATION - Full or Half Day

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center® or on Location

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military and Police ONLY

Learn the techniques that will allow you to dominate a fight including offensive strikes, knife fighting and grappling. This course is for Military and Police personnel ONLY.

Course outline includes:

Disabling an attacker
Stealth techniques
Surprise-speed-violence of action
Using edged weapons
Unarmed combatives
Combat mindset
Observe Orient Decide Act (OODA) model

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

Urban Warfare Center® Open house

2010-08-25T21:54:00.006-06:00

Defensive Carbine

2010-08-25T21:43:00.008-06:00

COST = $99.00 per person

DURATION - Half Day Normally in the Evening

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center® or on Location

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military, Police and Civilian

This course is designed to provide law enforcement, military and civilians with the knowledge and skills to effectively deploy a carbine (e.g. AR-15, Mini-14, AK-47, etc.) during a defensive situation in a close-quarters environment. Participants are encouraged to bring their own unloaded firearm with two empty magazines in order to learn the nuances of their own weapon. This course, designed with a “see then do” approach, covers such topics as: shooting positions, navigating high-risk areas, room clearing and controlling space, firearm retention, and much more. You will use Airsoft and/or .68 caliber rubber balls for the shooting portions of the training. You will also be subjected to scenarios that will test your judgement and skills. When you complete this course you will know more about yourself and your rifle. This course is a must have if you use a rifle in your work or for home defense.

Course material will include such topics as:

Real life scenarios
Professional role players
Realistic environment
You will learn by experience
Rifle manipulation
Rifle presentation techniques
Controlling space
Shooting drills
Discretionary shooting
Shooting positions and posture
Threat analysis and model
Conflict resolution skills
Much more...

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

Defensive Handgun

2010-08-25T20:39:00.015-06:00

Course material will include such topics as:

Real life scenarios
Professional role players
Realistic environment
You will learn by experience
Handgun concealment options
Handgun presentation techniques
Controlling space and breaking contact
Drawing a handgun from concealment
Shooting positions and posture
Threat analysis and model
Conflict resolution skills
Much more...

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

Defensive Tactics (Self-Defense)

2010-08-25T20:30:00.022-06:00

COST = $199.00 (Full Day $99.00 (Half Day) per person

DURATION - Full or Half Day

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center® or on Location

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military, Police and Civilians

Defensive Tactics is an intensive, hands-on course that provides students with a solid grounding in basic self-defense, from mental mindset and preparation to defensive techniques. This course is taught by Military Combative instructors and Special Operations Veterans and is open to military, police and civilians.

Course includes the following PRINCIPLES and TECHNIQUES:

Choosing prevention
Breaking contact
Anatomy of An Attack
Brain theory
Fine motors skills versus Gross motor movements
Color Code of Mental Awareness
Combat Mindset
How to Win a Fight
Walk, Talk, Block and Fight Defense System
Commando Close Combative System
Center of balance
Joint manipulation
Inside outside principles
Changing levels
Hard vs soft striking
Key Attacks defense
Escape a grab
Escape a choke
Escaping from the ground
Escape from a corner
Jamming the attack
Redirecting energy
Observe Orient Decide Act (OODA)
Body position
Blocking
Striking
Defending edged weapons and sticks
Weapon options i.e. Pepper spray, guns, knives etc...

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

We also offer FREE women's seminars - call to schedule your group

Urban Warfare Center® Introduction

2010-07-13T23:41:00.002-06:00

OPSGEAR® Founder and CEO Message

2010-07-13T23:27:00.017-06:00

I am a Veteran of the United Stated Air Force where I worked in Combat Communications, Close Air Support, and many other focus areas. Much of my time was spent with U.S. Army units as well as U.S. and NATO Special Operations Forces. I taught close combat in the military and had a diverse career with many powerful experiences.

During my military career and spanning my civilian life I became a professional Search and Rescue Instructor and water Rescue/Recovery Instructor. I participated in some very complex recoveries and hundreds of rescues. We performed vehicle extrication's, fast water rescues, under ice recoveries, mine, cave and trench rescues, vertical rescue/recovery and many more diverse services.

I am a Certified Professional Body Guard for High Risk Areas through Counter Terror International (CRI) and have all my life been an avid student of conflict resolution.

In 2010 I was the Chief of Security for Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts. I was responsible for 120 Doctors and Nurses that provided medial aid to the quake stricken Haitians. We arrived on the heels of this event and worked tightly with the 82nd Airborne. We were armed in country and participated in many diverse missions to provide relief, protection, orphan evacuation and the recovery of abducted children.

David Burnell
CEO and Founder
OPSGEAR® and The Urban Warfare Center®

OPSGEAR® Volunteers Train Deplying Unit

2010-07-13T23:24:00.005-06:00

The Color Code of Mental Awareness

2010-07-13T23:19:00.004-06:00

By Lt. Col Jeff Cooper
USMC, Retired

CONDITION WHITE

White is the lowest level on the escalator. In Condition White one is unaware, not alert, oblivious. This state can be characterized as "daydreaming" or "preoccupied". People in White tend to walk around with their heads down, as if watching their own feet. They do not notice the impending danger until it literally has them by the throat.

You see examples of this frequently. When was the last time you saw someone in traffic roll right up to a barricade or stalled vehicle, then expect you to stop and let them into your lane? They're operating their vehicle in Condition White. When a motorist runs over a motorcyclist and kills him, what are the first words out of their mouth? "I didn't see him." They're not lying. They were so inattentive and complacent that they did not notice a 200-pound man on a four hundred pound machine right in front of them. When this same guy runs past a stop sign and broadsides your car, killing your child, he will say, "I didn't see it."

These same guys will be the victims of violent crime, because the criminal targets the inattentive, the complacent, the lazy, the distracted, the preoccupied. Why? Because the criminal wants to get to him, get what he wants from him, and get away from him, without being hurt or caught. Who would be the easiest person to do that to? Someone in Condition White.

QUESTION: When would it be acceptable to be in Condition White?

ANSWER: When in your own home, with the doors locked, the alarm system on, and your dog at your feet. Then, you can turn off your mind, if you wish, because you have sufficient layers of protection and warning to enable you to get up, get your gear, and get your head running. If you leave your home, you leave Condition White behind.

CONDITION YELLOW

This is a relaxed state of general alertness, with no specific focal point. You are not looking for anything or anyone in particular; you simply have your head up and your eyes open. You are alert and aware of your surroundings. You are difficult to surprise, therefore, you are difficult to harm. You do not expect to be attacked today. You simply recognize the possibility.

EXAMPLE: You are on a small naval patrol vessel in the middle of the Mediterranean. You are not at war with anyone today, so you do not expect to be attacked. You do, however, recognize the possibility, so you have your radar on twenty-four hours a day, making a continuous 360 degree sweep of the area, looking for potential problems. Suddenly, there is a blip on your radar screen. You cannot tell by looking at the small, greenish-yellow dot on the screen whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, so you ask a fighter plane to intercept the blip and check it out. If it is an Al Italia airliner a hundred miles off course, the fighter pilot will wave at it. If it's a Libyan MIG headed toward your boat, he will shoot it down. He won't know whether to wave or shoot until he first assesses the blip as a threat. This is exactly the same process you go through on the ground. When you leave home you turn on your radar, and it continually sweeps the area around you for potential hazards. When something catches your attention, you assess it. If it's not a threat, dismiss it. If it is a threat, start getting ready mentally to deal with it.

Anything or anyone in your immediate vicinity that is unusual, out of place, or out of context, should be viewed as potentially dangerous, until you have had a chance to assess it. Someone who looks out of place, or someone engaged in activity that has no obvious legitimate purpose, should be looked over carefully. When your mental radar picks up on a blip, you immediately escalate one level on the scale, to Condition Orange.

CONDITION ORANGE

This is a heightened state of alertness, with a specific focal point. The entire difference between Yellow and Orange is this specific target for your attention. Your focal point is the person who is doing whatever drew your attention to him. It might be the fact that he is wearing a field jacket in August. It might be that he's standing by a column in the parking garage, instead of going into the building, or getting in a car and leaving. It might be that you have been in five stores at the mall, and saw this same guy in every one of them. His actions have caused you to take note of him, so you must assess him as a potential threat, just as the fighter pilot assessed the blip earlier.

How do you assess someone as a threat? You have to take into account the totality of the cues available to you. His clothing, appearance, demeanor, actions, anything he says to you, are all cues. The single most important cue is body language. About 80% of human communication is through body language. Predators display subtle pre-aggression indicators, which are obvious once you learn to look for them.

When you shift upward to Orange, you begin to focus your attention on this individual that caught your eye, but do not drop your general over-view. You don't want to be blind-sided by his associates. You begin to watch him and assess his intentions, again looking at all of the cues available to you. Nine times out of ten, after a few seconds of observation, you will be able to see an innocuous reason for his behavior and then dismiss him. Once you figure out he's not a threat, dismiss him and de-escalate right back down to Yellow. NINE OUT OF TEN... Who is TEN? He is the predator, who would have got you if you had been inattentive. Now that you are aware of him, you are in far less danger.

As you assess this individual, and you see things that convince you he has evil intent, you start to play the "What if…." game in your mind, to begin formulating a basic plan. This is how we get ahead of the power curve. If he acts suddenly, we must have at least a rudimentary plan for dealing with him already in place, so that we can react swiftly enough. By saying to yourself, "That guy looks like he is about to stick me up, what am I going to do about it?", you begin the mental preparation vital to winning the conflict. With even a simple plan already in place, your physical reaction is both assured and immediate, if the bad guy presses his intentions. If, after assessing him, you believe he is an actual threat, you then escalate to the highest level, Condition Red.

CONDITION RED

In Red, you are ready to fight! You may not actually be fighting, but you are MENTALLY PREPARED to fight. In many, or perhaps even most, circumstances where you have gone fully to Red, you will not actually physically do anything at all. The entire process of escalating from Yellow, to Orange, to Red, then de-escalating right back down the scale as the situation is resolved, occurs without any actual physical activity on your part. The key is that you were mentally prepared for a conflict, and thus could physically act if the situation demanded.

CONDITION BLACK

The fight is on. Your outcome will depend upon your preparation. Muscle & mental memory from training is recalled. You will fight how you trained.

Motor Vehicle Police at the UWC

2010-07-13T23:17:00.002-06:00

OPSGEAR® Training Soldiers PART 2

2010-07-13T23:15:00.002-06:00

OPSGEAR® Training Soldiers PART 1

2010-07-13T23:14:00.000-06:00

Combat Stress Program U.S. Army

2010-07-13T23:12:00.001-06:00

OPSGEAR® Employee as a "badguy"

2010-07-13T23:10:00.002-06:00

Training Schedule

2009-08-25T10:03:00.023-06:00

Unit, Agencies, and Private groups can schedule a private class anytime.

To Book a class PLEASE contact us:

Monday - Friday 8am-5pm Saturday 9am-5pm

Click HERE to sign up for Training Information

Email uwc@opsgear.com  (801)936-2322

U.S. Army Training Photos

2009-03-20T19:54:00.004-06:00

SWAT Training Photos

2009-03-20T19:48:00.005-06:00

U.S. Marshals Training Photos

2009-03-20T19:39:00.003-06:00

Army ROTC Training Photos

2009-03-20T19:27:00.003-06:00

Air Force ROTC Training Photos

2009-03-14T20:05:00.002-06:00

Civilian Training Photos

2009-02-14T15:02:00.003-07:00

Opposing Force (OPFOR)

2009-02-02T20:44:00.002-07:00

Our diversified staff includes a powerful Opposing Force (OPFOR) cadre. These individuals set the tempo of the force-on-force scenarios and make the training experiential. Laying their egos down they have been instrumental in teaching hundreds of soldiers and police the value of human vs human training, and the benefits of stress inoculation.

We have deep respect for these role players, and thank them for "taking rounds" in order to teach the dynamics of battlefield domination.

Instructors Comments

2009-02-02T20:41:00.012-07:00

Founder and CEO of OPSGEAR® and the Urban Warfare Center®

Senior Instructor and Special Forces Veteran

Explosive Breaching

2009-02-02T20:19:00.003-07:00

Our staff Instructors were invited to a breaching day at a condemned school with SWAT for two days. We blew it up, smashed it, FLASH banged it, broke it, and shot each other... good times :)

For Law Enforcement ONLY

2009-02-02T19:59:00.006-07:00

If you are Law Enforcement, please contact us for a FREE copy of the DVD Shots Fired. Please contact us at (801) 936-2322 or email us at uwc@opsgear.com.

You MUST provide the following:

Name
Official agency address
Government Email Address
Contact Number

Combat Stress Program

2008-12-12T14:10:00.075-07:00

COST = $199.00 per person

DURATION - Full Day

LOCATION - Urban Warfare Center®

WHO CAN ATTEND? - Military and Police ONLY

Get the URBAN SOLDIER and URBAN AIRMAN DVDs to see this program in High Definition!

In the spirit of the quote, “he is best who is trained in the severest school,” the Combat Stress Program teaches participants the principles that will ensure their ability to survive and thrive in the fiercest combat engagements.

This day long course exposes participants to an environment as near as possible to the real thing. By using principle based tactics, facilitated debriefs and force-on-force scenarios, the participants are not only challenged, but learn to adapt to a constantly changing environment. One of the greatest benefits of this type of training is shorter training cycles and increased retention.

Using state of the art marking gun technologies that reward success and punish failure, this method of teaching inspires the students to learn the critical lessons needed to dominate the battlefield.

This cutting edge course has received acclaim from both deploying and returning troops who have described their experience as being as close as it gets to actual combat.

In the spirit of the quote, “he is best who is trained in the severest school,” the Combat Stress Program teaches participants the principles that will ensure their ability to survive and thrive in the fiercest combat engagement. This day long course exposes participants to an environment as near to real as possible, reinforcing principles through force-on-force scenarios using marking gun technology that both reward success, and punish failure. This cutting edge course has received acclaim from both deploying and returning troops who have described the experience of the program as being as close as it gets to actual combat. This program has also been used by patrol and SWAT trainers as a primer for training with great success.

The program is focused on using the five physical senses to overwhelm the participants. It was developed by recognizing the fight, flight and freeze responses of units under going training while significant amounts of stress were heaped upon them. As the stress was reduced and identification of the stress responses understood by the participating units, mission success increased and the ability to react quicker to the threats became more apparent.

At times units have come into the facility thinking they were going to play “paintball”. Within the first few minutes of the first scenario, and after receiving several thousand rounds on or in proximity to them, those notions are gone. They are now in survival mode trying to figure out if the best response to the over stimulation is FIGHT, FLIGHT or FREEZE.

After the stress has been induced it is time to establish benchmarks for the individuals and teams as a whole. We talk about “how did you feel” during the fight. What physical symptoms did you experience? Humility is the normal conclusion to the first event. The remainder of the day is spent talking about principles of dominance in the urban setting, then running more scenarios focused on driving home important conclusions related to those very principles they are struggling with.

An example of a correct principle would be to stay out of “funnels” defined as windows and doorways. We reinforce this principle through firepower. Well placed shots by well trained and ego absent opposing forces (OPFOR) teach the principle clearly.

As the day progresses so do the missions, until at the end of the day the unit is ready to repeat a mission similar to the first one.

Because of this unique process of INDUCING, IDENTIFYING, and INDOCTRINATING stress, the symptoms and tools to overcome this life threatening condition in battle are retained. Principles learned are retained quicker, and the training cycle is reduced.

In a very real way we can accomplish in one day what most elite units pride themselves on doing over a sustained period of time. We are never trying to induce stress to “wash” someone out of a program as elite units may do out of selection necessity. However, we are heaping large amounts of pressure on them, which will require them to work together or fail. Success is determined by teamwork, communicating, doing your job under pressure, and accomplishing the mission.

Click here for class schedule and contact information.

Methodology

2008-11-24T22:00:00.004-07:00

Training at the Urban Warfare Center® is unlike any other place. NO LIVE FIRE all the training is designed to create the most realistic environment possible. Using rubber guns, 6mm Airsoft, .68 caliber paint/rubber rounds, and simunitions makes the training completely experiential.

Instead of shooting two dimensional targets you get a three dimensional environment that reacts to your decision processes and real-time reactions.

Attacking the Five Physical Senses

Touch: Out of all the technologies around for shooting people in less than lethal ways, off the shelve paintball guns with modifications made by OPSGEAR® became our premier solution. .68 caliber rounds are large and filled with thick water based paint. When you get hit you know it, and when you shoot another person the big SPLAT, and often the flinch of the person being shot gives you positive feedback that you engaged and hit the target successfully. It is also a clear friendly fire indicator as we use unique colors for good guys and bad guys. The psychological effect of paintball technology is intense. We have fired hundreds of thousands of rounds, and there is nothing that matches its impact on the shooter or the victim. At a cost of a few cents per ball you can’t beat the economics of it either. We have since switched to a clear .68 caliber round as well as .68 caliber rubber balls and Airsoft weapons. VERY effective at confirming shots.

Smell: As specifically produced shotgun shells and simulators explode, the smell of powder, dirt, sweet and debris fill the air. Smell is one of the most powerful reminders of a stressful experience we have had, and we use it.

Sight: The absence of or light in its extremes are used to overwhelm the sense of vision. The safety gear worn will often fog up, or when hit with paint become milky and unclear. This produces the desired results of confusion. Some people become totally incapacitated while others grab on to a partner and ask “what can I do to help”.

Sound: We use multiple channels of pure high definition sound. As you move from one location to another the sounds shift. Examples are babies crying, Mid East music, dog’s barking, with women screaming and of course the sounds of battle mingled with helicopters. These sounds make it hard to verbally communicate and require units to use hand signals or touch to get the job done.

Taste: This sense is combined with smell in that when they get shot or rocked by the simulators, they can taste the smell, the paint from the rounds and the dirt. All these combine to make life very uncomfortable for an unspecified period of time.

Training at the Urban Warfare Center® has set the standard for thousands of participants!

Contact us at uwc@opsgear.com for questions.

Raid at Cabanatuan

2008-11-01T21:14:00.001-06:00

The Great Raid on Cabanatuan in the Philippines on 30 January 1945 by US Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas resulted in the liberation of more than 500 prisoners of war (POWs) from a Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan and was a celebrated, historic achievement involving Allied special forces during World War II.

Edward Dmytryk's 1945 film "Back to Bataan" starring John Wayne opens by retelling the story of the raid on the Cabanatuan POW camp. The raid was re-created, with great attention to historical accuracy, in the 2005 John Dahl film The Great Raid.

Background

By late 1944 Imperial Japan's fortunes of war experienced a complete turnaround from its previous dominance. Defeat after Raid at Cabanatuandefeat met the Japanese Imperial Army facing the British in the China-Burma-India theater, and against the US and Australians in the Pacific islands. The increasing superiority of the Allied war machine was due largely to the successful US submarine campaign against Japanese merchant shipping.

In August, the War Ministry in Tokyo apparently was piqued by the US State Department's communique concerning Japan's war crimes against Allied POWs, and issued the Kill-All policy to annihilate the principal witnesses — the last surviving POWs.

On 20 October 1944, General Douglas MacArthur's forces landed on Leyte (Battle of Leyte), paving the way for the liberation of the Philippines. On 14 December 1944, as the Americans consolidated their forces to prepare for the main invasion of Luzon, nearly 150 Americans were executed by their Japanese captors in a POW camp at the island of Palawan. These Americans were herded into air raid shelters, sealed in, doused with gasoline, and burned alive. One of the survivors escaped; Pfc. Eugene Nielsen recounted his tale to US Army intelligence on 7 January 1945.

Two days later, MacArthur's forces landed on Luzon, and began a rapid advance towards the capital, Manila. During this time Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger, the US Sixth Army commander, was notified of the Cabanatuan camp's existence by Major Robert Lapham, the senior USAFFE guerrilla leader in Luzon.

By 26 January, with Sixth Army forward units nearing Cabanatuan, Gen. Krueger became increasingly concerned of the situation at the camp, and with his intelligence officer, Col. Horton White, called in the special reconnaissance unit attached to his Sixth Army - the Alamo Scouts - for a briefing. The next day, Krueger assigned Lt. Col. Henry Mucci and his 6th Ranger Battalion the mission to raid Cabanatuan and rescue the POWs.

Behind enemy lines

On the evening of 27 January, two teams of Alamo Scouts, led by 1st Lts. William Nellist and Thomas Roundsville, infiltrated behind enemy lines to attempt a reconnaissance of the prison camp. The next morning, the Scouts linked up with several Filipino guerrilla units at the village of Platero, two miles north of the camp.

In the early afternoon, Mucci and a reinforced company of 127 Rangers under Capt. Robert Prince slipped through Japanese lines near Guimba. Guided by the guerrillas, the Rangers hiked through forests and open grasslands, narrowly avoiding a Japanese tank on the national highway by following a ravine that ran under the road.

The following day at Balincarin, five miles north of the camp, Mucci met with USAFFE guerrilla Captain Juan Pajota, whose intimate knowledge of enemy activity, the locals, and the terrain proved crucial. Upon learning that Mucci wanted to push through with the attack that evening, Pajota resisted, insisting that it would be suicide. After consolidating information from Pajota and the Alamo Scouts about heavy enemy activity in the camp area, Mucci agreed to postpone the raid for 24 hours. The Rangers withdrew to Platero.

At 11:30 A.M. on 30 January, Alamo Scouts First Lt. Nellist and Pvt. Rufo Vaquilar, disguised as locals, managed to gain access to an abandoned shack above the camp where they were rewarded with a view of the prison compound. They prepared a detailed report on the camp's major features and the best attack routes. Shortly thereafter they were joined by three other Scouts, whom Nellist tasked to deliver the report to Mucci.

Strategy

Lt. Col. Mucci received Nellist's report at 2:30 p.m. and forwarded it to Capt. Prince, whom he entrusted to figure out how to get the Rangers in and out of the compound quickly, with all the sickly prisoners, and of course, with as few casualties as possible.

He sent two groups of guerrillas, one under Capt. Pajota and another under Capt. Eduardo Joson, in opposite directions to hold the main road near the camp. The Rangers were split into two groups as well: C Company, led by Capt. Prince, would attack the main camp and escort the prisoners out, while thirty members from F Company commanded by Lt. John Murphy would signal the start of the attack by firing into various Japanese positions. He predicted that the raid would be accomplished in thirty minutes or less.

One of Prince's primary concerns was the flatness of the countryside. He knew his Rangers would have to crawl through a long, open field on their bellies, right under the eyes of the Japanese guards. Pajota and Mucci arranged for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) to have a P-61 Black Widow night fighter buzz the camp while the men made their way across the field. It proved to be the biggest factor in achieving the element of surprise.

Prince gives a great deal of credit for the success of the raid to others: “Any success we had was due not only to our efforts but to the Alamo scouts and Air Force. The pilots (Capt. Kenneth R. Schrieber and Lt. Bonnie B. Rucks) of the plane that flew so low over the camp were incredibly brave men.”

About 45 minutes before the attack, Capt Schrieber cut the left engine at 1,500 feet over the camp. He restarted it, creating a loud backfire, and repeated the procedure twice more, losing altitude to 200 feet. Pretending to be a crippled plane, Schrieber headed toward low hills, clearing them by a mere 30 feet. To the Japanese observers, it seemed the plane had crashed and they watched, waiting for a fiery explosion. It created a much-needed diversion for the Rangers inching their way toward the camp on their bellies.

Liberation by fire

Two hours after Mucci approved Prince's plan, the Rangers departed from Platero. Approaching the camp by stealth was relatively easy — Pajota had prevailed upon the villagers to muzzle their barking dogs during the night. Meanwhile the P-61 had taken off at 6:00 p.m., piloted by Kenneth Schrieber and Bonnie Rucks, to provide distraction for the next hour, while the Rangers at the camp's rear crawled toward the barbed wire fences. The others, under Prince, made their way nearer to the main gate.

At 7:40 p.m. the whole prison compound erupted into the largest volume of small arms fire ever heard, as described by one POW. The Rangers at the main gate maneuvered to bring the guard barracks under fire, while the ones at the rear eliminated the enemy near the prisoners' huts and then proceeded with the evacuation. A Bazooka team from F Company ran up the main road to a tin shack which the scouts had told Mucci held tanks. Though a truck moved in with a dozen Japanese soldiers, the team was able to destroy the shack and the truck. The surviving Japanese were mowed down by F Company.

When the Rangers yelled to the POW's to come out and be rescued, many of the POWs feared that it might be a trap so the Japanese could mow them down. Also, a substantial number of the POWs resisted because the Rangers' weapons and uniforms looked nothing like those from a few years prior. Many of them hid, forcing the Rangers to go barracks to barracks. The Rangers were challenged by the POWs, and asked who they were and where they were from. Many Rangers had to resort to physical force to remove the prisoners, throwing or kicking them out. Once out of the barracks, they were told by the Rangers to proceed to the main, or front gate. Prisoners were disoriented because to them, the 'main gate' meant the entrance to the American side of the camp. Many of the POWs collided with each other in the confusion but were eventually led out by the Rangers.

Zero Ward was a makeshift hospital where the sick and weak were placed (zero being the chance of survival). Rangers carried the prisoners out, and many were so light that some Rangers carried two men on their backs.

A lone Japanese soldier was able to fire off three mortar rounds toward the main gate. F Company located the soldier and took him out. Several Rangers and POWs, including battalion surgeon Capt. James Fisher, were wounded in the attack.

The alerted Japanese contingent now poured over the bridge in the nearby Cabu River and into the waiting guns of Pajota's USAFFE guerrillas. Pajota had sent a demolitions expert several hours earlier to set charges to go off at 7:40 PM. The bomb went off and did not destroy the bridge, but blew a hole over which tanks could not pass. Squad after squad of Japanese troops rushed the bridge in a suicidal frenzy, and the Filipino guerrillas repulsed all attacks. One guerrilla, who had been trained to use the Bazooka only a few hours earlier, destroyed or disabled four tanks which were hiding behind a clump of trees.

Prince checked all parts after the raid but he missed a deaf British soldier hiding. This man was found later on by passing guerillas.

Long Trek to Freedom

At 8:15 p.m. the camp was secured and Capt. Prince fired his flare to signal the end of the assault. The Rangers and the weary, frail and disease-ridden POWs made their way to the appointed rendezvous at the Pampanga River, a mile away. The Alamo Scouts stayed behind to help with casualties and survey the area for enemy retaliatory movements. Meanwhile, Pajota's men continued to resist the attacking enemy until they finally could withdraw.

Thirty minutes later, the Rangers and POWs reached the river. A caravan of about a dozen water buffalo carts waited there, driven by local villagers organized by Pajota.

During one leg of the return trip, the men were stopped by the Hukbalahap, a group that hated both American and Japanese. They were also rivals to Pajota's men. One of Pajota's lieutenants confered with the Hukbalahap, and came back and told Mucci that they were not allowed to pass through the village. Angered by the message, Mucci sent the lieutenant back to insist that pursuing Japanese forces would be coming. The lieutenant came back and told Mucci that only Americans could pass, and Pajota's men had to stay.

The agitated Mucci told the lieutenant that both Rangers and guerrillas were passing through, or he would call in an artillery barrage and level the whole village. (Actually, Mucci's radio wasn't working). The Huks, as they were called, agreed to let both groups through. Mucci, now a little paranoid, worried that the lieutenant might be working with the Huks. He took out his .45 pistol, cocked it, and asked the lieutenant if the road was clear. The lieutenant answered yes and Mucci responded, "It's like this. It better be clear. Because you're going to head the column. I'll be right behind you. If there's even a hint of trouble, I'll shoot you first."

As the forces moved through the village, the unharmed Mucci apologized to the Lieutenant. At 8 o'clock, Mucci's radioman was able to get Sixth Army headquarters on the line. The Sixth Army had captured Talavera, a town ten miles from Mucci's current position. Mucci was directed to go there. At Talavera, the POWs were ordered to board trucks for the last leg of their journey home.

Outcome and historical significance

The raid was a tremendous success — 512 POWs were liberated. A deaf and almost blind British citizen who could not hear the gunshots, and did not see the tracers, was missed in the final sweep of the camp. He had a bad case of dysentry and was in the outhouse all night long, and went back into his barracks to sleep at night, unaware to the carnage surrounding him. He was later brought to American lines the next day by Capt. Pajota's men.

Four Americans died. One prisoner apparently had a heart attack while a Ranger was carrying him out of the camp. Another prisoner died of tuberculosis just after reaching American lines. Battalion surgeon James Fisher succumbed one day later from his mortar wounds. Corporal Roy Sweezy of F Company was shot by a fellow Ranger who mistook him for an enemy soldier. (The U.S. Army would state in the After Action Report that Sweezy was killed by a stray Japanese bullet.) Twenty-one Filipino guerrillas were injured.

An estimated 523 Japanese troops were killed or wounded.

This feat was celebrated by MacArthur's soldiers, Allied correspondents, and the American public, for the raid had touched an emotional chord among Americans concerned about the fate of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

Two hundred seventy-two former Cabanatuan POWs left Leyte on 11 February 1945, aboard the transport USS General A.E. Anderson bound for San Francisco via Hollandia, New Guinea. The Japanese were dealt a great propaganda blow and their radio announcer Tokyo Rose announced that Japanese submarines, ships and planes were hunting the ship. Fortunately, her threats proved to be a bluff, as the General Anderson safely arrived in San Francisco Bay on 8 March 1945.

General Douglas MacArthur presented the following awards on 3 March 1945: Lt. Col. Mucci and Capt. Prince both received Distinguished Service Crosses. The other American officers received Silver Stars. The American enlisted men and the Filipino guerrilla officers were awarded Bronze Stars.

The raid marked the high point of cooperation between Rangers, Alamo Scouts, Filipino guerrillas, and conventional American ground and air units. Without the assistance of Filipino citizens the whole operation would have been even more difficult, if not impossible.

Raid on Entebbe

2008-11-01T21:08:00.001-06:00

At approximately 1230 on Sunday, June 27, 1976, Air France flight number AF 139 was hijacked by four terrorists...

Operation Jonathan

The plane, of which nearly one-third of the passengers were Jewish, was flown to Benghazi. After a six and a half hour delay, the plane took off again and began flying east. It changed course and began flying south east; by 0300 the next morning it had arrived at Entebbe, Uganda.

Upon arrival, the four terrorists (two of which were members of the German Baader-Meinhof Gang) were joined by three others, bringing the total up to seven. The passengers were kept on the aircraft until 1200, at which point they were transported to the airfield's old terminal building.

Then President of Uganda, Idi Amin, visited the hostages in the terminal and told them he was working to achieve Rescued Hostagestheir release, and that Ugandan soldiers would remain at the terminal to ensure their safety. The next day at 1530, the leader of the terrorists, a Palestine nick named the Peruvian released the specific demands the group of terrorists were seeking. 53 terrorists: thirteen held in prisons in France, W. Germany, Kenya, and Switzerland and 40 in Israeli prisons were to be released. If they were not, hostages would be executed starting at 1400 July 1.

The Unit

Sayeret Matkal was placed on alert shortly after the Israeli government learned about the hijacking. Members of the Unit assembled at Lod Airport In Israel (The origin of flight 139), but were stood down temporarily when the aircraft landed in Benghazi. Separately from Sayeret Mat'Kal, Lt. Col. Joshua Shani of the Israeli Air Force's only C-130 squadron began conducting basic flight planning for his aircraft to fly to and back from Uganda.

When the Peruvian announced the terms for release and impending execution if they were not met, Israel's Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, convened a group of cabinet ministers; one of them was IDF Chief of Staff Motta Gur. There were serious complications in using military forces (Uganda was 2,200 miles away, the flight was from a French Company, and only 1/3 of the passengers were Jewish, and not all of these were from Israel) but the military began reviewing options.

Throughout Wednesday, June 30, intelligence information began to filter in. Idi Amin was not seeking the release of the hostages and was actually collaborating with the PFLP. This made an early plan requiring marine commandos to rescue the hostages and then surrender to Ugandan soldiers undesirable. Motta Gur reported that the IDF had no viable plan to rescue the hostages. On Thursday, July 1, Rabin's government agreed to release their prisoners.

Earlier that day, the PFLP terrorists had released 100 passengers, leaving only the Jewish population of the aircraft and the flight crew. Upon receiving word that Israel had agreed to the exchange, the terrorist moved the day of execution back, to Sunday July 4. Intelligence agents were told by the released passengers that the Ugandan soldiers were fully cooperating with the terrorists, and that the Jewish passengers were segregated from the rest. The real purpose of the hijacking was beginning to be made clear. Once again, the military was asked for options.

Jonathan Netanyahu, commander of Sayeret Mat'kal, was briefed on the roles and missions of the units in the plan that was then under development. It called for three ground elements, The Unit, members of the Elite Golani Infantry, and paratroopers. Netanyahu and others argued for a smaller, more flexible force. Brigadier General Dan Shomron, who would ultimately command the raid, decided to go with Netanyahu's recommendation.

By Friday, July 2, a basic plan of attack had been created. Even though the military had not yet been given the mission to rescue the hostages, members of the Unit began to run through the mission. A pole and burlap mock-up of the terminal had been constructed at their base and members of the unit practiced entering and clearing it. Members of Mat'kal now new exactly how many terrorists there were and what they were armed with; a pregnant hostage who had been released had been debriefed and had given Israeli intelligence the information. 8mm film footage taken by a sergeant major formerly stationed in Entebbe was shown to familiarize the commandos with the airport.

Drivers from the Unit met with crews from the Israeli Air Force to practice off-loading all of the vehicles that were to be brought along for the mission. As further intelligence and information came in, the plan was further refined and improved. Members of The Unit continued to practice all throughout Friday as the Israeli government pondered what to do. Friday evening, a full dress rehearsal was performed for IDF Chief of Staff Motta Gur. After witnessing a successful "operation", Motta Gur told the senior officers in the unit he would recommend to the Prime Minister that the mission be approved. The Commandos, their practice session complete, attempted to rest for the mission the next day.

The Mission

The members of Sayeret Mat'Kal participating in the assault met at Lod Airport at 1130 on Saturday, July 3, six days after the terrorists had hijacked the aircraft and passengers. A final briefing was conducted and last minute details between the C-130 crews and commandos were addressed. At 1320 the aircraft took off (Heading in different directions to fool potential spies) and headed south at low levels to avoid radar detection by Russian ships and Egyptian Radar.

The timing of the assault was critical; in order to slip their large C-130 transports into the airport undetected by radar the force was to land closely behind a British Airways flight that was scheduled to land for refueling. The aircraft made a brief stop at Sharm-a-Sheikh to top off their fuel tanks and feed the troops before the four aircraft formation headed south on their 7.5 hour flight to Entebbe.

By 2230 the aircraft had reached Lake Victoria, just a short distance from Entebbe by air. The last three C-130s broke formation and circled as the lead aircraft made its approach. At 2300 on July 23 (Israeli time) the lead aircraft touched down. The commandos on board immediately sprang into action. Aircrew quickly undid the tie-downs and prepared to lower the ramp as the commandos started their vehicles. As the aircraft slowed, ten members from the elite Golani Infantry jumped out and set up landing beacons for the remaining aircraft. As the aircraft turned onto the taxiway leading to the old terminal, the rear cargo ramp was lowered and a black Mercedes and two land rovers drove out. Ugandan flags flew from the Mercedes and all 35 commandos were dressed in Ugandan uniforms.

The three vehicle convoy proceeded towards the old terminal with their lights on at a steady 40 Mph (64 KPH). The vehicles drove towards the terminal for a full minute before being challenged by two Ugandan sentries. Lieutenant Colonel Netanyahu slowed the vehicles as if to stop and, when the sentries were within range, ordered his men to fire. Israeli commandos opened fire with silenced Berettas, killing one sentry and missing another; who who stumbled backwards and began to raise his rifle. An Israeli commando quickly opened fire, killing the sentry with his AK-47, but piercing the night with the weapon's loud report. Realizing that the element of surprise was lost, Netanyahu immediately ordered the drivers to head for the old terminal at full speed. As they approached, several soldiers and a terrorist could be seen milling about outside in confusion.

The vehicles quickly parked by the control tower adjacent to the old terminal and the commandos jumped out and began their attack. The lone terrorist seen outside ran inside yelling, "The Ugandans have gone nuts--they're shooting at us!" The Israelis had truly achieved the element of surprise.

During the initial phase of the assault, Muki Betser's (the second in command) element ran into a problem when a door that had been included in the plans was not there. Netanyahu ran past him and resumed the assault while Betser's group found other entry to the building. A Ugandan guard jumped up from behind some wooden crates and began to fire but was cut down. Another fired from within the terminal, spraying glass and bullets about. He too, is killed by Mat'Kal commandos now entering the building. The Commandos began to clear the building. Some members were darting about independently while others were clumping together, but the basic plan was being followed. Somewhere in this initial assault phase, Johnathan Netanyahu is shot and mortally wounded.

Within THREE minutes of landing, four of the seven terrorists had been killed. The troopers continued to clear the building. By this time, events have been happening so quickly that some of the Mat'kal soldiers are disoriented. Some men are out of position or in the wrong hallways. A little girl suddenly jumped up in on of the rooms they were clearing. The commandos were able to recognize in time that she was not a terrorist and hold their fire, but two other passengers who also stood up were not so lucky and are badly wounded.

The team assigned to assault the VIP lounge in the terminal found the outside door locked. One of them threw a grenade at the door; it bounced of and exploded, wounded one member slightly. They went inside the terminal and entered from an open door there. Inside were two men. As the members of the Unit entered, the two men stood up and began moving towards the commandos, hands raised. Unsure as to the two men's intentions, the commandos withheld their fire until one noticed a grenade belt around the waist of one of the men. Their commands to halt unheeded, they opened fire and killed the two men. As they did, one of the terrorist dropped a grenade he had been hiding in his hand.

All the terrorists were now dead. Only the Ugandan soldiers stood in the way of a safe escape. Several soldiers were holed up in the tower next to the old terminal and were firing at the Mat'kal soldiers remaining in the landrovers. The mortally wounded Netanyahu was evacuated to a C-130 at this time. The second C-130 landed six minutes after the first and two armored personnel carriers offloaded and headed to the secured terminal. When they arrived they took it under fire and temporarily silenced it.

Two more APCs arrived on the third C-130 and joined the first two. One split off and destroyed eight MiGs stationed at the base. Members of Sayeret Golani arrived and set up a defensive perimeter. Within Fifteen minutes of the first C-130 landing, the hostages had been freed and the area secured.

Mat'kal commandos began evacuating the rescued civilians to a waiting C-130. They were hampered by passengers returning to the terminal to try and find lost property and darkness. Several of the passengers were also in shock or hysterical. Getting an accurate headcount was difficult in the darkened aircraft. At 2352, less than an hour after the first Hercules landed, the C-130 with 106 rescued hostages took off and flew into the night.

With the hostages safe, the rest of the force began to withdraw to their aircraft. Their movements were covered by smoke and timed explosives devices. The last C-130 left Entebbe at 2429, 99 minutes after the first one had landed. The cost, one commando killed (Netanyahu) and one hostage dead (she had been moved to a local hospital after a choking incident and was not present during the rescue. She was subsequently executed in retribution for the raid).

The rescue at Entebbe is a classic example of a successful special operations. The Israelis used surprise and superior training to overcome their enemies and gain their objectives with a minimum loss of life. It was a logistically difficult mission. Thirty-five commandos in two Landrovers and a Mercedes with four APCs for firepower had to be transported over 2,200 miles and back again with over 100 hostages. The building the hostages were kept in was guarded by seven terrorists and an unknown number of Ugandan soldiers and was reported to be wired with explosives.
Originally, the Israeli military wanted to use a large force and secure the entire airfield. Netanyahu argued for, and got, a smaller force that would take only the terminal. Speed and surprise would be their main advantages. Using information about the old terminal, a mock-up was built allowing the commandos to practice beforehand, allowing them some familiarity with the terminal.

The Israeli assault of Entebbe achieved it's goals with stunning success. Any study of successful counter-terror operations would be remiss in not including this operation.

Battle of Mogadishu

2008-11-01T21:03:00.001-06:00

The Battle of Mogadishu or for Somalis Ma-alinti Rangers (The Day of the Rangers) was a battle that was part of Operation Gothic Serpent that was fought on October 3 and 4, 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia, by forces of the United States (by order of U.S. President Bill Clinton) supported by UNOSOM II against Somali militia fighters loyal to warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

Task Force Ranger, which consisted of an assault force made up of Army Delta Force (some US Navy SEALs) and Ranger The Battle of Mogadishuteams, an air element provided by the 160th SOAR, and members of the Air Force Pararescue/Air Force Combat Controllers, executed an operation which involved traveling from their compound on the outskirts of the city to capture leaders of Aidid's militia. The assault force was composed of nineteen aircraft, twelve vehicles and 160 men. During the operation, two U.S. MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by rocket propelled grenades, and three others were damaged. Some of the soldiers were able to evacuate wounded back to the compound, but others were trapped at the crash sites and cut off. An urban battle ensued throughout the night. Early the next morning, a joint task force was sent to rescue the trapped troops. It contained soldiers from Pakistan, Malaysia, and U.S. soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division. They assembled some 100 vehicles, including Pakistani tanks and Malaysian Condor armored personnel carriers, and were supported by US A/MH-6 Little Bird, AH-1 Cobra and MH-60 helicopters. This task force reached the first crash site and led the trapped soldiers out. The second crash site was overrun; the lone surviving American was taken prisoner, but later released.

Somali casualty figures are unknown, but American estimates are that between 1,000 and 1,500 Somali militiamen and civilians lost their lives in the battle, with injuries to another 3,000-4,000. The book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War estimates more than 700 Somali militiamen dead, and more than one thousand wounded. Eighteen American soldiers died and 73 were wounded (another American soldier, Delta team leader SFC Matt Rierson was killed in a mortar attack two days later). One Malaysian soldier died, and seven were wounded along with two Pakistanis, all part of the UN forces.

Background to the battle

In January 1991, the leader of Somalia, Mohammed Siad Barre, was overthrown by a coalition of opposing clans, called the United Somalia Congress. After this revolution, the coalition divided into two groups. One was led by Ali Mahdi, who became president; and the other, by Mohammed Farah Aidid. In total, there were four opposing groups: the United Somali Congress (USC), Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), and Somali Democratic Movement (SDM), which continued to fight over the domination of Somalia. In June, 1991, a ceasefire was agreed to, which failed to hold. A fifth group, the Somali National Movement (SNM), had already seceded from the northwest portion of Somalia in June. The SNM renamed it the Somaliland Republic, with its leader Abdel-Rahman Ahmed Ali as president.

In September 1991, severe fighting broke out in Mogadishu, which continued in the following months and spread throughout the country, with over 20,000 people killed or injured by the end of the year. These wars led to the destruction of the agriculture of Somalia, which in turn led to starvation in large parts of Somalia. The international community began to send food supplies to halt the starvation, but vast amounts of food were hijacked and brought to local clan leaders, who routinely exchanged it with other countries for weapons. An estimated 80 percent of the food was stolen. These factors led to even more starvation, from which an estimated 300,000 people died, and another 1.5 million people suffered, between 1991 and 1992. In July, 1992, after a ceasefire between the opposing clan factions, the United Nations (UN) sent 50 military observers to watch the distribution of the food.

Operation Provide Relief began in August, 1992, when the Bush White House announced that U.S. military transports would support the multinational UN relief effort in Somalia. Ten C-130s and 400 people were deployed to Mombasa, Kenya during Operation Provide Relief, airlifting aid to remote areas in Somalia, to reduce reliance on truck convoys. One member of the 86th Supply Squadron was deployed with the ground support contingent, USAFE's only contribution to the operation. The Air Force C-130s delivered 48,000 tons of food and medical supplies in six months to international humanitarian organizations trying to help the over three million starving people in the country. When this proved inadequate to stop the massive death and displacement of the Somali people (500,000 dead and 1.5 million refugees or displaced), the U.S. in December, 1992, launched a major coalition operation, Operation Restore Hope, to assist and protect humanitarian activities, under which the United States would assume the unified command of the new operation, in accordance with resolution 794 (1992).

Mission shift to nation-building

A key moment in the operation was when the mission shifted from delivering food supplies to nation-building.

On March 3, 1993 the U.N. Secretary-General submitted to the U.N. Security Council his recommendations for effecting the transition from UNITAF to UNOSOM II. He indicated that since the adoption of Council resolution 794 (1992) in December 1992, the presence and operations of UNITAF had a positive impact on the security situation in Somalia and on the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance (UNITAF deployed some 37,000 personnel over forty percent of southern and central Somalia). However, there was still no effective government, police, or national army with the result of serious security threats to UN personnel. To that end, the U.N. Security Council authorized UNOSOM II to establish a secure environment throughout Somalia, to achieve national reconciliation so as to create a democratic state.

At the Conference on National Reconciliation in Somalia, held on March 15, 1993 in Addis Ababa, all fifteen Somali parties agreed to the terms set out to restore peace and democracy. Yet by May it became clear that, although signatory to the March Agreement, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid's faction would not cooperate in the Agreement's implementation.

UNOSOM II's attempts to implement disarmament led to violence. On June 5, 1993, twenty-four Pakistani troops in the UN force were killed in heavy fighting in an area of Mogadishu controlled by Aidid. It was widely reported that the bodies of the UN peacekeepers had been mutilated. Some were skinned. Any hope of a peaceful resolution of the conflict quickly vanished. The next day, the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 837 calling for the arrest and trial of those responsible for the ambush.

One of the most unfortunate results of this occurred on July 12, 1993 when a United States-led operation was launched on what was believed to be a safe house in Mogadishu where members of Aidid's Habr Gedir clan were supposedly meeting to plan more violence against U.S. and U.N. forces. In reality, elders of the clan, not gunmen, were meeting in the house. According to U.N. officials, the agenda (which was advertised in the local newspaper) was to discuss ways to peacefully resolve the conflict between Aidid and the multinational task force in Somalia, and perhaps even to remove Aidid as leader of the clan.

What eventually took place that day was a 17-minute combat operation in which U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound. When the operation was over and the smoke had cleared, more than 50 of the clan elders, the oldest and most respected in their community, were dead[1]. Some in Mogadishu believe that this was a turning point in unifying Somalians against the U.S. and U.N. efforts in Somalia. It would also lead to the deaths of four journalists, Dan Eldon, Hos Maina, Hansi Kraus and Anthony Macharia, who were killed by angry Somali mobs when they arrived to cover the incident. A fifth journalist, Scott Peterson, was injured but was rescued by his driver.

Battle

On October 3 1993, Task Force Ranger, a U.S. Special Operations Forces composed mainly of Rangers, Delta Force (1st SFOD-D) operators, and aviation support from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers), attempted to capture Aidid's foreign minister, Omar Salad, and his top political advisor, Mohamed Hassan Awale. The plan was to fast rope from hovering MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, capture the targets, and load them onto a ground convoy for transport back to the U.S. compound. Four Ranger chalks, also inserted by helicopter, were to provide a secure square perimeter on the four corners of the operation's target building.

The ground extraction convoy was supposed to reach the captive targets a few minutes after the beginning of the operation. However, it ran into delays. Somali citizens and local militia formed barricades along the streets of Mogadishu with rocks and burning tires, blocking the convoy from reaching the Rangers and their captives. A five-ton truck, part of the convoy, was struck by a rocket propelled grenade.

Other complications arose. A U.S. Army Ranger was seriously injured during the insertion. PFC Todd Blackburn fell while fast roping from a helicopter hovering 70 feet above the streets. Minutes later, a MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, Super Six One piloted by CWO3 Cliff Wolcott, was shot down by a rocket propelled grenade. There was confusion between the ground convoy and the assault team. The assault team and the ground convoy waited for twenty minutes just out of sight of each other, ready to move, but each under the impression that they were to be first contacted by the other. During the wait, a second Black Hawk helicopter, Super Six Four piloted by CWO3 Michael Durant, was downed. Most of the assault team went to the first crash site for a rescue operation. Upon reaching the site, about 90 Rangers found themselves under siege from heavy militia fire. Despite air support, the Rangers were effectively trapped for the night.

At the second crash site, two Delta Force snipers, Sgt. First Class Randy Shughart and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, were inserted by helicopter (at their own request; permission was denied twice by Command but granted when they persisted and made a third request) to protect the injured crew from the approaching mob. Both snipers and three of the Black Hawk crewmen were later killed when the site was overrun by Somali militiamen. The Black Hawk's pilot, CW3 Mike Durant, who was seriously injured in the crash, was taken hostage. For their actions, Shughart and Gordon were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Repeated attempts by the Somalis to mass forces and overrun the American positions were neutralized by strafing and rocket attacks from U.S. aircraft. Reinforcements from the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, aided by Malaysian and Pakistani U.N. forces, arrived in the early morning. No contingency planning or coordination with U.N. forces had been arranged prior to the operation. This lack of planning significantly complicated and delayed the recovery of the surrounded U.S. soldiers.

The battle was over by 4 October at 6:30 AM. American forces were finally evacuated to the U.N. Pakistani base. In all, 18 US soldiers died of wounds from the battle and another 79 were injured. The Malaysian forces lost one soldier and had seven injured, while the Pakistanis suffered two injuries. Casualties on the Somali side were heavy, with estimates on fatalities from 500 to over 2000 people. The Somali casualties were a mixture of militiamen and local civilians, who were often used as human shields. Two days later, a mortar round fell on the US compound, killing one U.S. soldier, SFC Matt Rierson, and injuring another twelve.

Order of battle

Units involved in the battle:

Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment

Air Force Pararescue

1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Airborne)

Navy SEALs (attached to the ground convoy)

160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)

Units involved in the joint Task Force:

19th Royal Malay Regiment

U.S. 10th Mountain Division

Consequences of the operation

In a national security policy review session held in the White House on October 6, 1993, President Clinton directed the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral David E. Jeremiah, to stop all actions by U.S. forces against Aidid except those required in self-defense. He also reappointed Ambassador Robert B. Oakley as special envoy to Somalia in an attempt to broker a peace settlement and then announced that all U.S. Forces would withdraw from Somalia no later than March 31, 1994. On December 15, 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin stepped down, taking much of the blame for President Clinton in what was deemed a failed policy. For all intents and purposes, President Clinton was now determined to militarily disengage from Somalia as quickly as possible. Most of the American troops were out of Somalia by March 25, 1994. A few hundred Marines remained offshore to assist with any noncombatant evacuation mission that might occur regarding the 1,000-plus U.S. civilians and military advisers remaining as part of the U.S. liaison mission. All U.S. personnel were finally withdrawn by March 1995.

The Battle of Mogadishu led to a profound shift in American foreign policy, as the Clinton administration became increasingly reluctant to use military intervention in Third World conflicts, (such as failing to halt the machete-hacking deaths of an estimated 1,000,000 civilians by Hutu militia groups in Rwanda in 1994), and affected America's actions in the Balkans during the later half of the 1990s. President Clinton preferred to use the "air power alone" tactic and hesitated to use U.S. ground troops in fighting Serbian military and para-military ground forces in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, out of fear of losing American soldiers in combat, as well as fear of repeating what happened in Mogadishu in 1993.

"Black Hawk Down"

In 1999, writer Mark Bowden published the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War which chronicles the events that surrounded the battle.

The book was adapted into the 2001 film Black Hawk Down, directed by Ridley Scott. The film describes the events surrounding the operation and some of the acts of bravery seen on that day. There are obvious differences between the book and the movie, which left out central sections and themes of the book, such as the involvement of civilians in the battle, and de-emphasized the key decision to stay in the area after the initial operation was completed, among others.

When the film premiered in Somalia in 2002, thousands went to see it. Many people in Mogadishu were angered by the film, calling it propaganda that focused on the 18 Americans killed and 73 wounded in the 18-hour battle, when an estimated 500 to 2,000 Somalis were also killed. When it was learned that the battle has been turned into a game for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, Somalis said it made a mockery of a real-life tragedy.

Mike Durant told his own story in his 2003 book In the Company of Heroes.

Later, in 2005, Matthew Eversmann, leader of chalk 4 during the battle, wrote a book called "The Battle of Mogadishu".

Links with Al-Qaeda

There have been allegations that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement was involved in training and funding of Aidid's men. In his 2001 book, Holy War, Inc., CNN reporter Peter Bergen interviewed Bin Laden who affirmed these allegations. Bin Laden confirmed that "Arabs affiliated with his group were involved in killing American troops in Somalia in 1993, a claim he had earlier made to an Arabic newspaper (Al-Quds Al-Arabi)." According to CNN, Al-Qaeda claimed to have supplied a large number of RPGs (Soviet-designed rocket-propelled grenade launchers) to Aidid's fighters and instructed them on a way to modify the RPGs to make them more effective against helicopters.[citation needed]

Four and one half years after the Battle of Mogadishu, in an interview in May 1998 [2], bin Laden disparaged the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia, after eighteen American soldiers were killed and two of them had their bodies dragged through the streets. Some interpret his statements to mean that these events inspired his elaboration of later large-scale terrorist actions such as the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Khobar Towers, USS Cole, and the 9/11 attacks.

Robert's Ridge

2008-11-01T21:01:00.001-06:00

7 Americans Died in Rescue Effort That Revealed Mistakes and Determination...

A call had come in to headquarters just before daybreak: A Navy SEAL team was taking fire on an Afghan mountain ridge and needed help. As they raced in helicopters toward the site, Capt. Nathan Self and his platoon of Army Rangers were excited about the prospect of engaging al Qaeda. They'd spent more than two months in Afghanistan without a firefight. Roberts Ridge

They didn't know how many enemy fighters to expect. They didn't know exactly where the enemy might be. They didn't know exactly where the SEALs were, either. They did know that they were losing the advantage of darkness, flying by dawn's early light.

Two U.S. helicopters already had taken fire while trying to land on the ridge during the previous three hours, and two U.S. soldiers had been killed. Around 6:15 that morning, March 4, Self's chopper, a black, 52-foot Chinook, reached the ridge and started to descend.

The chopper was still about 20 feet off the ground when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into its right engine, knocking it out. Enemy machine-gun fire ripped through the fuselage. Bullets started punching holes in the cockpit glass.

The chopper shook and dropped, landing hard enough to send the Rangers and aircrew sprawling across the floor. Within seconds, four men on the helicopter were killed, and the survivors were fighting for their lives.

By day's end, a seventh soldier, an Air Force search-and-rescue specialist, would bleed to death as Self's appeals for urgent evacuation were rejected by his superiors, who wanted no more daylight rescue attempts.

What became a 17-hour ordeal atop a frigid, desolate and enemy-ridden mountain ridge cost seven American lives, more combat deaths than any U.S. unit had suffered in a single day since 1993, when 18 Rangers and Special Operations soldiers died in battle in Mogadishu, Somalia. How the operation was conducted revealed serious shortcomings in U.S. military coordination and communication in Afghanistan. How it unfolded highlighted the extraordinary commitment of American soldiers not to leave fallen comrades behind: The entire episode spiraled out of an attempt to rescue a single SEAL, who had fallen out of the initial helicopter and was quickly shot by the enemy.

The firefight at Takur Ghar mountain came on the third day of Operation Anaconda, a three-week-long U.S. sweep against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shahikot valley in eastern Afghanistan. The Mogadishu battle nine years ago precipitated the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia. This one, Pentagon officials credit with reinforcing the Bush administration's commitment to pursue the war even in the face of U.S. military casualties. Efforts are underway to award some of the military's highest decorations for valor to those who fought on the mountain.

Even so, the circumstances that led to the firefight on the ridge have been subjected to extensive review in the Special Operations Command, which has responsibility for some of the elite U.S. military forces, including the Navy SEALs. Special Operations commanders ran the star-crossed rescue effort.

Close examination of the effort indicates that U.S. intelligence sources failed to detect enemy fighters on the ridge, leaving commanders to assume it was safe. Even after learning otherwise, U.S. military officials dispatched the SEALs back to the ridge where they had first come under fire, rushing them headlong into another ambush. Self and his Rangers then ended up going to the same spot unaware, because of communications equipment glitches, that the SEALs had retreated from the ridgetop.

An AC-130 gunship that could have provided covering fire for the Rangers was pulled from the scene just as they arrived because rules prohibited use of the low-flying, slow-moving warplane during daylight. An unmanned Predator drone took live video of the unfolding battle, giving commanders at the operation's command post at Bagram air base about 100 miles to the north and as far away as U.S. Central Command in Tampa real-time images of the firefight. But little of the information it initially gleaned was passed to the troops.

The episode has prompted some changes within Special Operations intended to improve communications and the flow of information to rescue teams. Commanders also have taken steps to promote closer coordination between conventional and Special Operations units in Afghanistan, which have separate chains of command.

This account is drawn from extensive interviews with the Rangers, who are back in the United States, as well as Air Force air controllers, Air Force para-rescuemen, and the Army helicopter crews who flew the Special Operations team and Rangers to the ridge. The chopper crews asked that only their first names be used; one Ranger requested his name be withheld.

Those who survived the battle are reluctant to criticize the decisions of superiors. But some senior military officers familiar with the rescue operation have raised questions about how it was managed. Could aircraft have attacked the al Qaeda positions before the rescuers set down? Could the communications glitches that hampered the rescue effort have been avoided? Could the Rangers have been dispatched sooner, allowing them to maintain the advantage of darkness?

"Instead, it was the shootout at the OK Corral in the broad morning light," one Ranger officer said.

The first signs of trouble came about 3 a.m., when an MH-47E Chinook carrying Navy SEALs and an Air Force Special Operations combat controller tried to land on a ridge on the eastern side of the Shahikot valley, on a mountain the U.S. military dubbed "Ginger."

U.S. military commanders launched Operation Anaconda on March 2 against members of al Qaeda and their allies in the Taliban militia. It was still winter in Afghanistan's forbidding eastern mountains, where night-time temperatures dipped into the twenties and the snow on ridgelines was knee-deep.

Military planners had intelligence that enemy forces were concentrating in the Shahikot valley. The plan was for friendly Afghan troops to lead an assault from the northwest, pushing the enemy fighters into U.S. blocking positions along the eastern ridge.

Instead, the Afghan advance stalled and the eastern ridge itself was found to be teeming with al Qaeda fighters. As U.S. 10th Mountain Division troops tried to get into position to seal off valley exit routes in the south, they came under heavy mortar and machine-gun fire from around Ginger.

Elements of the 10th Mountain regrouped with plans to insert additional forces north of Ginger and move south to attack. At the same time, on the night of March 3, U.S. commanders sought to gather a firsthand picture by placing a reconnaissance team on the ridgetop.

"It was a dominating piece of terrain, and if we had observation up there, it gave us a 360-degree look across several trails as well as Shahikot," explained Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, who was commanding Operation Anaconda from his headquarters at Bagram.

The ridgetop, at 10,200 feet, was thought to be uninhabited. U.S. warplanes had repeatedly bombed the area, and overhead surveillance had produced little sign of life on top. Commanders chose a reconnaissance team of seven Special Operations troops, all but one of them Navy SEALs, to go to Ginger.

Helicopter maintenance problems and a B-52 bomber strike that night forced a delay in the reconnaissance mission. This raised concerns that the SEALs, who were to be dropped off at the base of the mountain and climb to the ridgetop, might not make it up before daylight. A decision was made to fly them directly to the top.

The Chinook carrying the reconnaissance team, code-named Razor 3, left a staging area in Gardez with a second helicopter, Razor 4, which was to drop another Special Operations team elsewhere in the valley and then rendezvous with Razor 3 for the return trip. The choppers were flown by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a special Army unit known as the Night Stalkers. Its pilots are accustomed to operating on covert missions behind enemy lines. The 2nd Battalion of the 160th had been in Afghanistan since October, flying some of the war's most sensitive missions.

"Before we went in there, the plan was for an AC-130 to recon the area and make sure it was all clear," recalled Alan, the pilot of Razor 3. "With a recon mission like this, you don't want to land where the enemy is."

The helicopter touched down in a small saddle near the top of the ridge, and the SEALs moved into position at the rear door to get off. At the head of the line was Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Neil C. Roberts.

The chopper's crew reported the presence of a heavy machine gun about 50 yards off the nose of the aircraft. But the gun appeared unmanned, a not uncommon sight in Afghanistan, whose mountain ridges and caves are littered with seemingly abandoned tanks and antiaircraft guns. The SEALs announced they were leaving.

At that moment, machine-gun fire erupted from several directions, ripping into the chopper. A rocket-propelled grenade came flaming in from the left, tearing through the cargo bay and exploding.

"I saw a big flash," said Jeremy, a crew chief. "By the time I got my senses back, we were flying down the mountain."

Dan, the crew chief on the rear right, shouted to the pilot: "We're taking fire! Go! Go! Go!" The pilot applied full throttle, but the grenade had short-circuited the aircraft's electrical power and damaged its hydraulic system. The machine-gun fire had punctured oil lines and wires. The chopper wobbled and jerked as it lifted off.

As it lurched, Roberts went flying off the back ramp.

Alexander, one of the chopper's rear crew chiefs, tried to grab him. But Alexander lost his own balance on the ramp, slipping on draining oil and hydraulic fluid. He dangled off the edge, saved only by his safety harness. Dan yanked him back inside.

The pilot, thinking an engine was out, sent the chopper into a dive, hoping to gain airspeed. Quickly realizing both engines were working, he leveled the chopper and tried to climb.

"The thing was shaking like a washing machine out of balance," he recalled. "There were holes in the rotor blades, and the hydraulics were doing some funny things."

Told that Roberts had fallen out, the pilot tried to turn back. But with no hydraulic fluid, the controls locked up. Dan, having just hauled Alexander to safety, grabbed the handle of a hand pump and started furiously pumping spare quarts of hydraulic fuel into the system.

The helicopter touched down in a small saddle near the top of the ridge, and the SEALs moved into position at the rear door to get off. At the head of the line was Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Neil C. Roberts.

The chopper's crew reported the presence of a heavy machine gun about 50 yards off the nose of the aircraft. But the gun appeared unmanned, a not uncommon sight in Afghanistan, whose mountain ridges and caves are littered with seemingly abandoned tanks and antiaircraft guns. The SEALs announced they were leaving.

At that moment, machine-gun fire erupted from several directions, ripping into the chopper. A rocket-propelled grenade came flaming in from the left, tearing through the cargo bay and exploding.

"I saw a big flash," said Jeremy, a crew chief. "By the time I got my senses back, we were flying down the mountain."

Dan, the crew chief on the rear right, shouted to the pilot: "We're taking fire! Go! Go! Go!" The pilot applied full throttle, but the grenade had short-circuited the aircraft's electrical power and damaged its hydraulic system. The machine-gun fire had punctured oil lines and wires. The chopper wobbled and jerked as it lifted off.

As it lurched, Roberts went flying off the back ramp.

Alexander, one of the chopper's rear crew chiefs, tried to grab him. But Alexander lost his own balance on the ramp, slipping on draining oil and hydraulic fluid. He dangled off the edge, saved only by his safety harness. Dan yanked him back inside.

The pilot, thinking an engine was out, sent the chopper into a dive, hoping to gain airspeed. Quickly realizing both engines were working, he leveled the chopper and tried to climb.

"The thing was shaking like a washing machine out of balance," he recalled. "There were holes in the rotor blades, and the hydraulics were doing some funny things."

Told that Roberts had fallen out, the pilot tried to turn back. But with no hydraulic fluid, the controls locked up. Dan, having just hauled Alexander to safety, grabbed the handle of a hand pump and started furiously pumping spare quarts of hydraulic fuel into the system.

The SEALs and aircrew got off the chopper to take up fighting positions. Mike, the flight engineer, grabbed a picture of his 2-year-old as he got off, wondering whether he would ever see his child again.

Razor 3 soon received word that Razor 4 was on the way to pick them up. It arrived within 30 to 45 minutes. The two teams discussed returning immediately to Ginger to rescue Roberts, but with the crew of Razor 3 also on board, Razor 4 would be too heavy to reach the ridge. Leaving the Razor 3 crew on the valley floor while Razor 4 ferried the SEALs back also would not work: Reports were coming across the radio of enemy forces about 1,200 yards away and closing in fast.

So the only option was to go to Gardez, drop off Razor 3's crew, then take the SEAL team in Razor 4 to hunt for Roberts.

Two of Razor 4's crewmen had gone over to Razor 3, which was about 60 yards away, to do a final sweep of the aircraft. Suddenly in a rush to leave after getting word of the enemy fighters nearby, those on Razor 4 tried, using laser signals and other means, to get the attention of the crewmen on the other helicopter -- in vain.

"It was just a moment of pure panic," the pilot of Razor 4 recalled.

Lifting off in a hover, Razor 4 landed in front of Razor 3, loaded the other crewmen and hustled to Gardez. There, it dropped off the other crew and -- with the SEALs and Air Force Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman, the air controller, on board -- set out back to Ginger, and Roberts.

At Bagram air base outside Kabul, the command staff was trying desperately to gather some sense of Roberts' condition and location. U.S. military officials say no one knows exactly what transpired during the next few minutes on the ridge. There were no surveillance aircraft over the mountain at the time Roberts fell from the helicopter.

Based on forensic evidence subsequently gathered from the scene, officials with the U.S. Special Operations Command concluded that Roberts survived the short fall, likely activated an infrared strobe light and engaged the enemy with his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a light machine gun known as a SAW.

"He was there moving around the objective for a period of time, at least half an hour," Hagenbeck said. An AC-130 gunship moved over the area and reported seeing what the crew believed to be Roberts surrounded by four to six enemy fighters. As a Predator drone arrived to provide a video picture, the strobe light went out.

Hagenbeck says the imagery taken by the drone appeared to show him being taken prisoner. "The image was fuzzy, but we believe it showed three al Qaeda had captured Roberts and were taking him away around to the south side of Ginger and disappearing into a tree line," Hagenbeck said. "That was 15 to 20 minutes before the first rescue team arrived."

The SEALs and aircrew got off the chopper to take up fighting positions. Mike, the flight engineer, grabbed a picture of his 2-year-old as he got off, wondering whether he would ever see his child again.

Razor 3 soon received word that Razor 4 was on the way to pick them up. It arrived within 30 to 45 minutes. The two teams discussed returning immediately to Ginger to rescue Roberts, but with the crew of Razor 3 also on board, Razor 4 would be too heavy to reach the ridge. Leaving the Razor 3 crew on the valley floor while Razor 4 ferried the SEALs back also would not work: Reports were coming across the radio of enemy forces about 1,200 yards away and closing in fast.

So the only option was to go to Gardez, drop off Razor 3's crew, then take the SEAL team in Razor 4 to hunt for Roberts.

Two of Razor 4's crewmen had gone over to Razor 3, which was about 60 yards away, to do a final sweep of the aircraft. Suddenly in a rush to leave after getting word of the enemy fighters nearby, those on Razor 4 tried, using laser signals and other means, to get the attention of the crewmen on the other helicopter -- in vain.

"It was just a moment of pure panic," the pilot of Razor 4 recalled.

Lifting off in a hover, Razor 4 landed in front of Razor 3, loaded the other crewmen and hustled to Gardez. There, it dropped off the other crew and -- with the SEALs and Air Force Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman, the air controller, on board -- set out back to Ginger, and Roberts.

At Bagram air base outside Kabul, the command staff was trying desperately to gather some sense of Roberts' condition and location. U.S. military officials say no one knows exactly what transpired during the next few minutes on the ridge. There were no surveillance aircraft over the mountain at the time Roberts fell from the helicopter.

Based on forensic evidence subsequently gathered from the scene, officials with the U.S. Special Operations Command concluded that Roberts survived the short fall, likely activated an infrared strobe light and engaged the enemy with his M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a light machine gun known as a SAW.

"He was there moving around the objective for a period of time, at least half an hour," Hagenbeck said. An AC-130 gunship moved over the area and reported seeing what the crew believed to be Roberts surrounded by four to six enemy fighters. As a Predator drone arrived to provide a video picture, the strobe light went out.

Hagenbeck says the imagery taken by the drone appeared to show him being taken prisoner. "The image was fuzzy, but we believe it showed three al Qaeda had captured Roberts and were taking him away around to the south side of Ginger and disappearing into a tree line," Hagenbeck said. "That was 15 to 20 minutes before the first rescue team arrived."

The pilot of Razor 4 had never flown into a hot landing zone. The briefing he had received from Razor 3's pilot gave him some confidence that he wouldn't be caught by surprise. He figured all he had to do was put the chopper on the ground long enough to let the SEALs dash out.

About 40 feet above the ground, the pilot saw the flash of a machine-gun muzzle off the nose of the aircraft. "I thought, 'Oh, this is going to hurt,' " he said. "And then the second thought was, 'How do I get myself into this?' But we had to go. We had to put these guys in."

Rounds of gunfire started hitting the aircraft, "pinging and popping through," in the words of one crew chief.

Hagenbeck, watching the Predator's pictures, saw Razor 4 land and the SEALs and Chapman rush off toward the enemy positions. He had little view of the enemy fighters, who were hidden under trees, dug into trenches and obscured by shadows.

"They didn't take cover, they just started moving immediately to where they thought that Roberts was located, right off the nose of the helicopter," Hagenbeck said of the U.S. commandos. "They moved straight out and took withering fire and they returned it as well."

The most prominent features on the hilltop were a large rock and tree. According to the Special Operations Command review, Chapman saw two enemy fighters in a fortified position under the tree. He and a nearby SEAL opened fire, killing both fighters.

The Americans immediately began taking fire from another bunker position about 20 yards away. A burst of gunfire hit Chapman, mortally wounding him, the review said. The SEALs returned fire and threw grenades into the enemy bunker directly in front of them.

As the firefight continued, two of the SEALs were wounded by enemy gunfire and grenades. The SEALs decided to disengage. They shot two more al Qaeda fighters as they moved off the mountain peak to the northeast, according to the official review.

As they moved down the side of the mountain, a SEAL contacted the AC-130, code-named Grim 32, and requested fire support. The gunship responded with covering fire.

As the SEAL team battled, Capt. Self and the 19 other Rangers in the "quick reaction force" took off from Bagram in two Chinooks -- code-named Razor 1 and Razor 2 -- and headed for Ginger, about an hour away. It was shortly after 5 a.m.

The Rangers left Bagram with only sketchy information about where they were headed and what they were to do. Initially, they had been told only that a helicopter had been hit by enemy fire and forced to land; later, they learned that someone had fallen out. A lightly armed infantry unit, the Rangers specialize in behind-the-lines evacuation and reinforcement missions. They work frequently with SEALs and other Special Operations teams.

More specific guidance arrived as the Rangers flew toward the scene. They received orders to link up with the embattled SEALs and extract them, along with the commando who had fallen. Beyond that, many details were lacking.

"You have this dilemma: Hold guys on the ground longer so they know exactly what they're going to do, or push them ahead so we can affect the situation sooner," said Self, 25, a Texas native and West Point graduate who had commanded the platoon for 17 months. "A quick reaction force is never going to know everything that's going on. If they did, then they wouldn't be quick."

At headquarters, commanders tried to notify the Rangers that the SEALs had retreated from the ridgetop and to direct the helicopters to another landing zone further down the mountain. Due to intermittently functioning aircraft communications equipment, the Rangers and aircrew never received the instructions, according to the official review. Communication problems also plagued headquarters attempts to determine the true condition of the SEAL team and its exact location.

"As a consequence, the Rangers went forward under the false belief that the SEALs were still located on top of Takur Ghar and proceeded to the same location where both Razors 3 and 4 had taken enemy fire," the review said.

Nearing the mountain, Razor 2 went into a holding pattern. Self flew ahead on Razor 1 with his "chalk," nine young men in body armor over desert camouflage fatigues. In Afghanistan since December, the platoon -- Part of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry Regiment -- had been scrambled a number of times, but it had not seen combat in the country, or anywhere else.

"The force flew to the place they knew the folks were in trouble," said a senior officer who monitored the battle. "They didn't know where the enemy or the Americans were. They were committed relatively blindly."

As they approached the landing site, the Rangers quickly found out how blind they really were. A rocket-propelled grenade knocked out the right engine, and enemy gunmen opened up on the damaged chopper.

Sgt. Philip J. Svitak, one of the forward gunners, fired a single burst of his 7.62mm gun from the copter's right side before being struck and killed. The other forward gunner, a flight engineer named David, was hit in the right leg.

"It basically just pissed me off," David said. "And I just pushed the trigger on my minigun and started sweeping fire on the left. I didn't know where the fire was coming from, I just knew we were taking fire. I wasn't going to let that happen without shooting back."

The chopper slammed to the ground. David collapsed in a corner and used a lanyard from his 9mm pistol to tie a tourniquet on his leg. He knew it was broken -- every time he tried to move it, the whole thing would twist.

Bullets were zooming through the cockpit glass. A round shattered one of the pilot's legs below the knee, another knocked off his helmet. The pilot, Chuck, popped open his emergency side door and flopped onto the snow. A bullet or fragment ripped a chunk out of the left wrist of the other pilot, Greg. Another bullet cut into his thigh. He staggered out of the cockpit toward the rear of the aircraft, holding his wrist as it spurted blood.

The incoming machine-gun fire was turning the aircraft's insulation into confetti. An RPG shot through the right forward window, hit a high-altitude oxygen console on the wall and started a fire.

"It's chaos at that point. Nobody has a grip on what's going on," said Cory, the chopper's medic. "I took three rounds in the helmet. It knocked me down," he recalled. "I was on my back. Somehow the impact caused a small laceration in my eyebrow. But it was bleeding a decent amount. I was on my back, and the blood was running down my face, and it took me a second to gain my senses and I realized I was okay."

Sean, the crew chief on the right rear side, shouted to Cory, "You need to put that fire out." But the forward fire extinguisher was missing. Brian, the other rear crewman, passed an extinguisher forward. Cory put out the fire, but the rest of the chopper was pure hell. The air was laced with smoke and bullets, and the enemy seemed to be everywhere.

In 15 years in the service -- including combat in Panama in 1989 and the Persian Gulf in 1991 -- Cory had never seen fighting so intense.

The Rangers were supposed to exit down a back ramp in an order they had practiced countless times. Those on the left would assemble outside on the left side of the chopper. Those on the right would assemble right.

But the moment had turned into a mad scramble to get out in whatever order they could. One Ranger, Spc. Marc A. Anderson, was shot and killed while still in the helicopter. Two others -- Pfc. Matthew A. Commons and Sgt. Bradley S. Crose -- were gunned down on the ramp.

At 21, Commons was the youngest in the group, with a reputation as a good-humored, enthusiastic soldier. Crose, 22, a leader of one of the platoon's four-man teams, was a quiet professional. Anderson, 30, was a former high school math teacher who had awed his fellow Rangers with his knowledge of weaponry. Now they were dead.

The surviving soldiers peeled off in different directions, wheeling around in the knee-deep snow, scurrying for cover behind whatever rocks they could find and firing on enemy positions.

The enemy was concentrated in two spots 50 to 75 yards away, looking down on the chopper from dug-in, fortified positions atop the ridgeline. Two or three fighters were shooting from the left rear side of the Chinook -- at about the 8 o'clock position. Staff Sgt. Raymond M. DePouli, the first Ranger out, began blasting away at them with his M-4 assault rifle.

"I saw the guy shooting at me, I saw the tracers. I got hit in my body armor," said DePouli, a squad leader. "I turned and dumped a whole magazine into him. Then I just got down prone . . . to make sure nothing else came over the hill."

Another cluster of enemy fighters was behind a boulder and under a tree to the front of the helicopter, off to the right at about 2 o'clock. They were firing machine guns and RPGs at the Americans. One slammed near the right side of the copter.

Spc. Aaron Totten-Lancaster, a long-distance runner considered the fastest in the battalion, took shrapnel in his right calf. Shrapnel also cut a wound in Self's right thigh and put a small hole in the left shoulder of Air Force Staff Sgt. Kevin Vance, a tactical air controller attached to the Ranger unit.

Another RPG soared over the Rangers' heads, skipping off the helicopter's tail. Self could see the torso of the man who fired it suddenly exposed above a boulder. DePouli, moving around from the other side of the helicopter, saw him, too, and shot him in the head.

Nearly all the Rangers were hit. A machine gun belonging to Spc. Anthony Miceli got shot up. A bullet slammed into helmet of Staff Sgt. Joshua Walker, another team leader.

Only Pfc. David Gilliam, the newest member of the platoon, avoided a hit to either his body or his equipment. He had jumped to the right side of the chopper, then scrambled to reassemble scattered ammunition belts for his M-240B heavy machine gun.

Self thought that the bullets flying past sounded different from what he had expected, almost like a clicking instead of a crack. The smell, too, was something he hadn't imagined, a mixture of cedar from the trees dotting the ridgeline, fuel, gunpowder, metal, sweat, blood and something faintly like strawberries. It all seemed so strange. "You see something happening and it doesn't seem real," Self said. "We understood we were getting shot. But it just seemed like a bad movie."

Disorienting and frightening as the first intense minutes of combat were, a sense of anger and indignation quickly took hold.

"Who do these guys think they are?" Walker shouted. He bounded forward, firing his M-4 and taking up a position behind a rock on the chopper's right side. Self and Vance joined him.

Totten-Lancaster started to move toward them. "I didn't really know I had been hit until I got up to run and couldn't," he said. His right leg disabled, Totten-Lancaster rolled several yards to the rock.

Slightly behind this group and farther to the right, DePouli and Gilliam, the machine gunner, took cover behind another rock. There they found the bullet-ridden body of an enemy fighter with an unused RPG.

Miceli, the seventh surviving Ranger, remained on the left side of the chopper, guarding that flank.

Several Rangers tried hurling grenades toward the enemy position about 50 yards away, but the farthest they could throw was about 35 yards. Enemy fighters heaved fragmentation grenades at the Rangers, only to have them land short, their explosions muffled by the snow.

The Rangers enlisted two of the helicopter crew members in the fight. Don, the air mission commander, and Brian, a rear crew chief, were told to fetch more ammunition from the helicopter, as well as an M-203 grenade launcher that Commons had been carrying when he was shot on the ramp.

"I'd like to say we were out of our element, as we're aviation and the Rangers are ground guys," said Don, a 26-year veteran. "So when they tell us, 'We need you to do this,' I'm in their element, I'm going to listen to what they say."

With the Rangers providing covering fire, the two crewmen dashed back and forth to the chopper. But the thin air quickly left them spent.

"I found it easier to roll across the snow," Don said. "If I could roll within 10 feet of them and throw it, I would."

For all the surprise and confusion of the early minutes, the Rangers fought by the book. Reacting to the attack, they sought cover and returned fire. Next, their training taught them to try to take the fight to the enemy, to look for flanking positions and consider avenues for assault.

On the right, the terrain dropped off steeply, ruling out a move that way. On the left was high ground. Moving there would leave them exposed to enemy fire.

"That's when we made the decision that the only way to assault would be straight at them," Self said.

Gilliam was told to provide covering fire with his heavy machine gun. Brian was assigned as assistant gunner -- "AG" for short -- to feed ammunition belts into Gilliam's M-240B. "I didn't know what he was talking about when he said AG," Brian said. "Then he explained it to me, and I said, 'Okay, I can do that.' "

As Gilliam opened fire, Self, DePouli, Walker and Vance charged, guns ablaze, grenades at the ready. Halfway up the hill, about 25 yards from the enemy, Self spotted a fighter pop his head from around a tree.

"All I could see was from chest up because he was dug down into the ground," Self said. "He shot at us and then disappeared."

Self suddenly realized that the enemy fighters were better protected than he had thought, shielded by a built-up cover of leaves, logs and branches. An assault on such a fortified position would require more than four soldiers.

"Bunker! Bunker! Bunker!," he shouted. "Get back."

The Rangers retreated to the rocks.

Watching Predator imagery of the Chinook's landing, military commanders in Bagram were stunned by the ferocity of the ambush.

"It was gut-wrenching," Hagenbeck said. "We saw the helicopter getting shot as it was just setting down. We saw the shots being fired. And it was unbelievable the Rangers were even able to get off that and kill the enemy without suffering greater losses."

Although Hagenbeck was the senior U.S. military commander in Afghanistan with responsibility for much of Operation Anaconda, he did not control the Ranger mission. That authority fell to Air Force Brig. Gen. Gregory Trebon, who ran a separate unit overseeing special operations. Trebon's command post also was at Bagram, but set apart from Hagenbeck's. A liaison officer who reported to Trebon sat next to Hagenbeck. Trebon declined to be interviewed.

"Literally, we were spectators watching," Hagenbeck said. "We did not know what the [SEAL] rescue squad on the ground had been reporting. I still don't know to this day what they reported to the commander here and what was transmitted to the Rangers on board the helicopter -- whether they said there's no other way to get here, or if they said we can suppress the enemy fire, or if they said we're going to lose some guys but it's the only way to do it. We were just looking at a screen without any audio to it."

While the Rangers were in the firefight, a Special Operations combat controller traveling with them, Air Force Staff Sgt. Gabe Brown, set up a communications post about 25 yards behind the helicopter, down a slope and behind a rock. He established a radio link with the SEALs.

That was how Self and his team got the news: The SEALs they had come to rescue were not even on the ridgetop any more. They had moved some distance down the mountain before the Rangers had arrived.

"They had two wounded, and I was led to believe they were going to stay" down the mountain, Brown said. "I believed they were holed up for the duration of the day."

Brown worked furiously to make contact with U.S. fighter jets in the area, frustrated by communications glitches. About 20 minutes after the chopper crashed, he managed to reach headquarters and ask for air support. Controllers gave him additional frequencies for talking with the incoming jet fighters.

"We have F-15s inbound on station," Brown shouted.

The first question for the besieged ground force was: bombs or bullets? Should the jets start unleashing bombs or begin with 20mm cannon fire? The Rangers decided on bullets, to minimize the chance of getting hit themselves.

After emptying their cannons in several runs, the F-15s were joined by a pair of F-16s, which had been about 180 miles away over north-central Afghanistan when the call came to go to Ginger. Swooping over the ridgetop, the F-16s unloaded 1,000 rounds.

But the enemy bunker continued to menace the Rangers, so the order was given for bombs. With Brown working the radio, and Self and Vance shouting back targeting adjustments based on where the bombs were hitting, the ground team tried to walk the bombs toward the bunker.

The first bomb, a 500-pound GB-12, dropped down the hill behind the helicopter. The next struck on the ridge crest, in front of the chopper. The third scored a direct hit on the bunker, splitting a tree.

Piloting the lead F-16, Air Force Lt. Col. Burt Bartley, commander of the 18th Fighter Squadron, was uneasy about how close to their own position the ground troops were calling for strikes.

"When I dropped one of those bombs, the ground controller said, 'Whoa, you almost got us with that one. Can you move it a little closer to the tree?' " Bartley said. "And in my mind, and what I called to my wingman was, 'No, I can't.' In my mind, that was as close as I dared get or I would kill him."

Military rules allow ground troops, under exceptional circumstances, to authorize airstrikes inside standard safety limits.

"If it's that close, they generally ask for the initials of whoever is in charge on the ground," Self said. "I was passing my initials over the radio because we were dropping that stuff within 50 meters of us."

The airstrikes suppressed the enemy fire and took out one critical bunker. But at mid-morning, the ridgetop was still in enemy hands.

Inside the helicopter, Cory, the aircrew medic, and two Air Force para-rescuemen -- Senior Airman Jason D. Cunningham and Tech. Sgt. Cary Miller -- tended to casualties in the cargo bay.

The wounded included three members of the aircrew: Chuck, the pilot, who had been pulled around to the back of the helicopter after being shot in the leg and falling out his cockpit door onto the snow; Greg, the co-pilot, who had received a tourniquet to stop the bleeding from his left wrist; and David, the flight engineer, who had been shot in the leg.

Cory kept the casualties on the aircraft to try to shield them from enemy fire and from the cold. He knew that anyone who had lost a significant amount of blood was more susceptible to hypothermia. But the cargo bay was itself still a fire zone. From their elevated vantage off the nose of the aircraft, enemy fighters could see into the right side of the aircraft and shoot at anyone moving. "So the only way we could move was to crawl on our bellies," Cory said.

The enemy shooting subsided after the bomb dropped by the U.S. jet hit the bunker, and Cory shifted the wounded to an area behind the helicopter. All three had suffered life-threatening injuries, but the bleeding had stopped, and Cory considered their conditions stable. Even so, they needed more extensive care, and Cory was eager to get them evacuated.

"We knew at that point that until we took the hill, there was no way they could get out of there," said Don, the air mission commander.

For that, the Rangers would have to wait for more help, which was on its way.

A Wintry Ordeal at 10,000 Feet

Sgt. Eric W. Stebner knew something about snow and cold, having grown up in North Dakota. He also knew something about mountain trekking, having trained as an Army Ranger and climbed rocks in the Shenandoah Mountains.

But neither Stebner nor any of the other nine U.S. Army Rangers struggling behind him on the morning of March 4 had encountered anything like Takur Ghar, the mountain in eastern Afghanistan on which they found themselves.

They faced a climb up a steep, forbidding slope, with upwards of 80 pounds of military gear, wearing inappropriate clothing and boots, and under sporadic enemy fire. They also were in a race against time.

The other half of their unit was stranded at the top of the ridge, their helicopter shot down shortly after sunrise. They had flown in to rescue a Navy SEAL team, only to be ambushed by enemy fighters. Four of the quick-reaction force were dead, three aircrew members were seriously wounded and the rest of the contingent was pinned down.

The ordeal had begun around 3 a.m., when the SEALs had come under attack as their helicopter landed on the ridge for a reconnaissance mission. One, Navy Petty Officer First Class Neil C. Roberts, fell off the damaged chopper as it took off. The SEALs returned to rescue Roberts and were ambushed again, losing the Air Force combat controller in their group, Tech. Sgt. John Chapman.

It was day three of what the U.S. military called Operation Anaconda, a three-week-long offensive against members of al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Shahikot valley. Over the course of 17 hours, seven Americans lost their lives, the highest number of combat deaths in a single day by any unit since 18 Rangers and Special Operations soldiers had been killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.

As their comrades began the climb, the Rangers on the ridgetop had made one uphill attempt to assault enemy positions on a crest line 50 to 75 yards away. They were forced to retreat behind boulders near their downed MH-47E Chinook. Although airstrikes had silenced some enemy fire, the Rangers lacked sufficient manpower and weaponry to try again.

They were worried about an enemy counterattack. They saw enemy fighters moving in the distance toward their rear, and U.S. military spotters and aircraft picked up other signs of enemy reinforcement efforts.

Mortar shells fell around their chopper. The first landed ahead of the nose, the next one down the hill to the rear, suggesting the enemy was attempting to zero in on them. The whooshing of the shells sent shivers through the Americans, especially the helicopter crewmen, who were unaccustomed to ground combat.

Concerned about the condition of the three wounded aircrew members, some of the chopper team pressed the Ranger platoon's commander, Capt. Nathan Self, to mount a new assault to clear the way for an evacuation. Self told them he needed reinforcements first.

"They didn't understand the timetable that we were really on," Self said. "They expected things to happen quick, quick, quick: 'You guys run up there and kill the enemy.' "

But Self shared their sense of urgency. He worried they all would be in trouble unless the rest of his unit got up to the top soon.

That half of the Ranger force, designated Chalk 2, had been in a helicopter over the Shahikot valley when Self took his Chalk 1 team to the ridge. Shortly afterward, communication with the chopper carrying Chalk 1 was lost, and Chalk 2 flew to Gardez, a town northwest of the valley that was a staging area for the larger U.S. offensive. As time ticked by with no information about the lead Ranger group, Chalk 2 grew anxious.

"At one point, I had a crew chief by the collar," said Staff Sgt. Arin Canon, the ranking Ranger in Chalk 2. "I'm screaming at him that regardless of what happened, the first bird only had 10 guys on it. That's the bare minimum package. If something happened to them, they need us. We complete the package."

Then word came in that the chopper carrying Chalk 1 had gone down. Within 30 to 60 minutes -- accounts vary -- Chalk 2 was back in the air and heading toward the ridgetop.

The first challenge was finding a place to set down. "It's the side of a mountain, so there are not a whole lot of places to land," said Ray, who piloted the chopper. "You basically hunt and peck around."

At about 8:30 a.m, the crew found a space just big enough to get all the wheels on the ground. The aircrew had advised the Rangers that Chalk 1 would be straight ahead of them, about 250 to 300 yards away. After they got off, the Rangers learned that Chalk 1 was actually about 2,000 feet up the mountain, at an altitude of 10,200 feet. The plan had changed, but no one told the Rangers.

The Chalk 2 Rangers surveyed the landscape. Towering before them was a rocky slope angling as steep as 70 degrees in places and covered with snow as deep as three feet. They also could see, off to the right and about 1,000 feet up, another small cluster of Americans -- members of the SEAL unit the Rangers had been sent to rescue.

The SEALs were edging their way down the mountain with two wounded. Two other members of their original team -- Roberts and Chapman -- had been killed on top.

A SEAL who had flown in with Chalk 2 to link up with the Navy unit asked whether the Rangers could hike over to help the SEALs before beginning their climb. Canon forwarded the request to Self up on the ridgetop.

"I've got casualties up here, and I need you now more than they need you," Self radioed back. The SEAL headed across the mountain alone to join his team members. The Rangers of Chalk 2 headed up.

"It was kind of like a merry-go-round," said Chalk 2's medic, who asked that his name not be used. "We were trying to go up and they were coming down."

With no trail to follow, the Rangers blazed a path of their own. One route to the right looked promising but would take them close to an enemy bunker on top. They chose a course to the left that appeared to provide some cover from enemy fighters and bring them around to the rear of Chalk 1's position.

Canon, who is qualified in Army mountain warfare, thought that if this had been a planned route of attack, scouts would have eased the way with fixed rope lines. The Rangers struggled for traction on the loose shell rock.

"Just the grade of the ridge made it an unbearable walk, not including the altitude," Canon said. "It was enough to where my guys' chests felt heavy and my joints were swollen."

The Rangers at times got down on all fours -- "kind of like a bear crawling up," in the words of the medic. Enemy mortar attacks punctuated the climb, although they were sporadic and poorly aimed.

"Everyone would stop and look to see where they were coming from," said Stebner, one of the squad's two team leaders. "I would say, 'You can't stop. It's not going to do us any good to stop. We have to keep moving.' "

Their weighty gear only made things worse. The Rangers' body armor alone totaled 22 pounds a set. Most of the soldiers carried an M-4 assault rifle, seven to 12 magazines of ammunition, two to four grenades, a pistol, knives, lamps, radios, night vision gear, a first aid kit and 100 ounces of water. Their helmets added another three to four pounds.

"There were some places where I had to throw my weapon up ahead of me, then climb up and pick it up again," said Spec. Jonas O. Polson, who carried one of the squad's two 17-pound M249 light machine guns, called SAWs for Squad Automatic Weapons.

Spec. Randy J. Pazder, the heavy machine gunner, probably had the biggest load, with a 28-pound M240B gun plus 30 pounds or so of ammunition. His assistant gunner, Spec. Omar J. Vela, carried a spare barrel and another 30 pounds of ammo.

"You need to get to the top of the hill, where we'll be in a static position and can rest," Canon told them. "We've got to go, our guys need us."

When they were scrambled for the mission, most of the Rangers had been under the impression that they were being sent on a quick, in-and-out rescue. "My understanding originally, when they woke me up, was that a helicopter had been forced to land and we were going to pick up the crew -- basically, just a taxi-ride type of thing," the medic said.

Anticipating a lot of sitting in cold, drafty helicopters or in stationary ground positions, many put on thermal underwear and bulky parkas that were now impeding their movement and causing them to sweat profusely. Others were wearing suede desert boots instead of cold-weather footgear. The desert boots soaked up the snow like sponges.

About halfway up, as the Rangers shimmied around a rock and hoisted themselves past a tree that jutted from the mountain face, Canon figured something had to give. "I took a look around and everybody had the, you know, 'Man, this sucks' face -- just a long face," the staff sergeant said.

The Rangers began to shed their heavy clothes, and Canon relayed permission from Self that they could take off the back plate of their body armor. Getting rid of the $ 527 plates was a risky move. The basic Kevlar vest worn by troops protects against 9mm bullets; ceramic plates, placed in front and back, offer an additional layer to stop 7.62mm bullets -- the kind fired by AK-47 assault rifles used by al Qaeda.

Removing the back plate would save only six pounds, but would allow greater mobility and comfort. Most elected to take them off. But to avoid leaving them for the enemy, the soldiers shattered the plates by heaving them onto the rocks below.

"It's the most expensive Frisbee you'll ever throw," Canon told the men.

As they continued climbing, many of the Rangers thought of their buddies on the ridge. They knew there were casualties, although they did not know who or how many had been hurt or killed.

Many assumed that at least one of the casualties had to be Spec. Anthony R. Miceli, a SAW gunner considered the most accident-prone in the group. So legendary was Miceli's tendency to injure himself that the platoon had a saying about him: "No one could kill Miceli except Miceli."

Coming over the final rise, the first thing Canon glimpsed was the casualties spread out on the ground near the helicopter's rear ramp. Miceli's luck had held. His SAW had been shot up, but he had picked up another weapon and was still in the fight. Even so, Canon was shocked to see so many dead or wounded.

A climb Canon had estimated would take about 45 minutes lasted more than two hours. Chalk 2 was joined with Chalk 1, but the Rangers would have little time to rest.

The Rangers moved quickly to organize an assault on the ridgetop. The chief objective would be the one enemy bunker they could see -- off to the right of the nose of the helicopter and about 50 yards away. An airstrike had appeared to silence the bunker, but the Rangers were not sure whether enemy fighters were still in it -- or beyond.

The heavy machine gun team from Chalk 2 -- Pazder and Vela -- moved to a rock beside the helicopter, joining Chalk 1's machine gunner, Pfc. David B. Gilliam. Canon hunkered down between the two machine guns.

"Sergeant, I don't know if I'd get right there," Gilliam said in his thick Tennessee drawl. "I about got shot there a while ago."

"Well, I don't plan on getting shot today, Gilliam, so you just keep the fire on," Canon replied.

The assault team, composed largely of members of Chalk 2, got into position behind another rock slightly ahead and to the left of the machine guns.

The machine gunners let loose with supporting fire. Stebner, Sgt. Patrick George and Sgt. Joshua J. Walker pushed forward along with Polson, Spec. Oscar J. Escano and Staff Sgt. Harper Wilmoth. The Rangers moved at what they call the "high ready" -- weapons on their shoulders, eyes focused directly over gun sights. They tossed grenades as they advanced.

Rangers train to use two four-man teams for an assault, with the teams focusing on maneuver while other elements provide supporting fire. In this case, the Rangers had only a team and a half.

"When the supporting fire opened up, everybody just went for it," Wilmoth said. "The snow was so deep, and the terrain under it was rocky, so our footings weren't too good. We pretty much had to lead by gunfire."

The Rangers were pouring on so much fire that some of the chopper crew worried they were overdoing it. The crew yelled at the Rangers to "slow down, they're going to run out of ammo," Self said.

The assault group made it to a boulder about 40 yards up the hill, near the enemy bunker that was just around to the right. Stebner, approaching the boulder first, stumbled across a body lying face down in the snow. It was a dead American -- he couldn't tell who and didn't have time to stop.

From the boulder, Wilmoth, George and Escano went for the bunker, finding two dead enemy fighters. Sandwiched between the fighters -- amid the debris left by an earlier airstrike -- was the body of another American. Stebner and Polson went left, then circled around right, blasting at other enemy positions over the crest.

The end, when it came, was strangely anticlimactic. The Rangers did all the shooting during the 15-minute assault. At the top, they found a network of enemy positions dug next to trees or behind rocks and connected by shallow trenches. A canvas tent sheltered one position.

The area was strewn with Chinese-made 30mm grenade launchers, sheaves of rocket-propelled grenades, a 75mm recoilless rifle, a Russian-made DShK heavy machine gun, long bands of machine-gun ammunition and assorted small arms.

The Rangers say they are not certain how many they killed. Self credits his men with killing at least two during the assault, and there were bodies of other enemy fighters scattered around the ridgetop. But the Rangers say it was difficult to determine how many had died from airstrikes or in firefights with SEALs earlier in the day. A U.S. military team that visited the site days later counted eight enemy bodies.

After the shooting stopped, Canon went to identify the two dead Americans. Near the boulder lay Roberts, the SEAL who had fallen out of the chopper eight hours earlier. Some of his military gear was later recovered elsewhere in the area, and a dead enemy fighter was found wearing Roberts's jacket. In the bunker, Canon identified Chapman.

It was about 11 a.m. Chalk 1 had been on the ridge nearly five hours.

Feeling more secure and a bit more relaxed, the Rangers shifted their command and communications post to the ridgetop. They made plans to move the dead and wounded from behind the chopper to the other side of the crest, where there appeared to be a suitable landing zone for evacuation.

Canon, the most senior noncommissioned officer on the mountain, sat down beside Self, who told him the names of the Rangers who had died. "It hit me pretty hard, and I remember having to take a second and pause," Canon said.

Self could not afford to have Canon -- or any of the other men -- lost in mourning, not with all that still needed to be done to get them all off the mountain.

"He said, 'Arin, there's nothing we can do about it now,' " Canon recounted. "He pretty much reminded me to get my head back into the game -- 'Let's get the rest of these guys out of here alive, and we'll deal with what we have to deal with when we get back.' "

Down behind the chopper, Greg, one of the two wounded pilots, was taking a turn for the worse. "I hesitate to say he was close to dying. But he had a definite change in his level of consciousness," said Cory, the chopper's medic. "He was starting to speak to me as if he was going to die."

On the radio, Headquarters was asking whether the ridgetop was "cold," meaning no longer vulnerable to enemy attack.

"Controller asked me if the pick-up zone [PZ] was cold and how many guys we were going to lose if we waited to be exfiltrated," Air Force Staff Sgt. Kevin Vance, a tactical air controller attached to the Ranger unit, said in a sworn statement to Air Force authorities three weeks later. "I asked the medic, 'If we hang out here, how many guys are going to die?' The medic said at least two, maybe three. I reported to controller, 'It is a cold PZ, and we are going to lose three if we wait.' "

But just as he said that, three or four enemy fighters on a knoll to the south, 300 to 400 yards behind the chopper, opened fire.

Machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades started ripping into the casualty collection area. Bullets also ricocheted around the feet of Rangers and aircrew members carrying the first of the casualties up the hill -- David, the flight engineer, who had been shot in the leg.

The group dropped the litter and ran for cover, leaving David on his back on the hillside. Stebner, one of the carriers, twiced dashed out to try to drag David behind some rocks, only to abandon him again. "I stayed out there a good 15, 20 minutes, just watching stuff go over us," David said.

The third time, Stebner reached David and pulled him out of harm's way.

Down behind the chopper, Cory and an Air Force para-rescueman, Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, had just inserted a fresh IV into Greg when they came under fire. Their position left them exposed.

"We realized we were just going to have to sit there and shoot it out with them," Cory said. "Neither Jason nor I were going to leave."

One rocket-propelled grenade came straight at them and zoomed over their heads, exploding above the helicopter. One bullet struck about three feet in front of Cory, kicking snow over him.

"We were shooting back and forth," Cory said. "And I can remember getting down, thinking, 'I have only two magazines left -- something has to happen here pretty soon.' "

That's when he and Cunningham were hit.

"I had turned over on my stomach and crawled up a hill about five feet, thinking this might do something," Cory said. "I turned back on my back to shoot, and it was just shortly after that that Jason and I got shot at the same time. We were sitting no more than five or six feet apart."

Two bullets hit Cory in the abdomen, but the impact was cushioned by his ammunition pouch and belt buckle.

"It took me a little while to get up enough courage to check myself out," he said. "As a medic, you realize that a penetrating wound to the abdomen can be absolutely the worst thing. So I reached my hand down there and tried to see how much blood there was. I pulled my hand back initially and it was wet with water. That was a very reassuring sign." The water was from his punctured canteen.

Cunningham was in worse shape: He was hit in the pelvic area and bleeding profusely. Although still lucid, he was in considerable pain.

Good-natured and enthusiastic, Cunningham, 26, was popular with his fellow para-rescuemen, known as "PJs," for parajumpers. He had been a PJ for all of eight months. It was his first time in combat.

Rangers down the hill from the copter shot at the enemy position with a heavy machine gun, a SAW light machine gun, a grenade launcher and several M4 assault rifles. They watched some of the enemy fighters maneuvering around the backside of the hilltop, shooting at the Rangers from two directions.

"We could see the tops of their heads, barely," said Staff Sgt. Raymond M. DePouli, a member of Chalk 1.

Pazder, spotting an enemy fighter pop up to the left, let loose a burst from his M240B heavy machine gun and killed him.

Off to the east, about 700 or 800 yards away, the Rangers noticed four or five other enemy fighters walking up. Canon figured he could reach them with the heavy machine gun but he needed more ammunition. He sent Vela, the assistant gunner, back to the helicopter about 150 to 200 yards away.

As Vela dashed back, more enemy fire erupted and Vela dove for cover behind a rock with Stebner. "You might not want to be by me, because for some reason the enemy doesn't like me," said Stebner, who had been dodging bullets trying to pull Dave to safety.

"What are you talking about?" Vela said.

Just then, a rocket-propelled grenade soared over their heads.

"That's one thing I'm talking about," Stebner said. "Every time I get up and move, they shoot at me. And now I'm laying here and they're shooting at us."

Vela crawled to another rock outcropping, joining DePouli. He wrapped the machine-gun ammunition in a bag normally used to hold the spare gun barrel and tossed it to Canon, reaching only halfway.

Canon scrambled out on all fours and dragged the bag back to the spot behind several boulders where he and Pazder were set up. Pazder passed the heavy gun to Canon, who had a better angle on the enemy below.

"We poured machine gun fire onto every tree or bush where they may have been hiding," Canon said. "I don't remember seeing them again."

The enemy fighters on the knoll kept shooting at the Rangers for more than 20 minutes. Then Navy F-14 fighter jets arrived and dropped about a half-dozen 500-pound bombs on or around the enemy position, silencing it.

"With one three-pound burst, shrapnel could be heard traveling through the air," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Gabe Brown, a Special Operations combat controller with Chalk 1 who was radioing directions to the jets. "We could see the bombs go down the hill below us, and we heard the material rising up past us, whizzing through the air."

The force of one bomb blast pushed back the helmet on DePouli's head. He called Self on the radio. "Can we get a little bit of a head's-up down here the next time we're going to make a bomb run like that?" Canon asked the platoon leader.

Self replied, "Yeah, sure, no problem."

With the enemy's southern knoll position eliminated and the northern ridgetop secured, the Rangers resumed carting the casualties -- five wounded and six dead -- to the other side of the ridge crest. The move, 80 to 100 yards up a snow-covered rocky incline, required four to six men to transport one casualty.

Again turning to the question of evacuation, the Rangers felt an even greater sense of urgency because of the two fresh casualties. The Ranger medic listed them both in the gravest category, "urgent surgical." He was not entirely sure just how serious Cory's injuries were, but he was definitely worried about Cunningham.

The medic had stopped Cunningham's external bleeding, but he had little idea what was happening inside. Only days before, Cunningham had been lobbying commanders to allow PJs to carry blood packs on missions and had won permission to do so. Now he received one of the blood packs he had brought to Takur Ghar.

As worrisome as Cunningham's condition was, commanders were wary of attempting another daylight rescue, knowing that this was part of what had gotten them into trouble that morning.

Also occupying the commanders' attention was the rest of the battle, with about 1,200 to 1,400 troops of the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne divisions spread throughout the valley and swarms of U.S. fighter jets, bombers, helicopters and other aircraft in the skies above.

Earlier in the day, military intelligence sources had reported as many as 70 enemy fighters converging on the ridgetop. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jim Hotaling, a combat air controller who had a commanding view of enemy positions atop Takur Ghar from a ridge about two miles to the south, never saw anything approaching 70 enemy reinforcements. But he did see small groups of several fighters each maneuvering up the mountain during the day.

"Most of the enemy I was engaging was a good 1,500 to 2,000 meters away from their position, down on the bottom of the mountain and in the creek beds," Hotaling said.

At least some of the Rangers believed a daylight evacuation could be carried out and was worth the risk.

"If we had CAS [close air support] on station dropping bombs, we could have gotten out of there at that time," Vance said in his statement. "Just having the planes nearby kept the enemy away."

Vance added: "I kept telling controller that we lost another one, cold PZ: When are we getting exfiltrated? Controller said to hold on. After asking him three times, PL [platoon leader, meaning Self] expressed urgency at getting the team out of there. I continued to tell controller but he just kept telling me to hold on. After the third time, I handed the hand mike to the PL and asked him to tell controller the same thing.

"I tried to keep a monotone voice. There were times that I tried to throw some words in there to make controller realize that we have to get out. It became a personal conversation, and we kept saying we have to get out of here," Vance said.

Once, the Ranger medic got on the radio and tried to convey to headquarters the gravity of the injuries. "I felt as though if I started making a big deal about their condition, then it would worry my patients," the medic said. "You want to be open and honest, and I was, but I wasn't jumping up and down, ranting and raving, that this guy was going to die if we don't get him off this mountain.

"I said, 'Listen, here's the story. I've got two urgent surgical patients, and we need to be evac-ed.' And their response was, 'Roger, we understand.' "

The medic repeatedly assured Cunningham and the others that help was on the way. But the aircrew, especially the pilots, knew the commanders' preference for nighttime evacuations.

"I kept coming back to them saying, 'Hey guys, listen, they're going to come get us, we're going to be out of here soon, hang in there,' " the medic said. "And it was the helicopter pilots who were pretty upfront about it, and they said, 'We know we're not leaving until dark because that's just the way it is.'

"I knew in the back of my head that the chances of them coming during daylight hours were slim to none, but I was trying to be positive about it," the medic said.

Cunningham's reaction? "For the most part, he listened."

As the sun sank around 5 p.m., the wind kicked up and the ridgetop turned frigid.

"You couldn't get enough oxygen," Wilmoth said. "Everyone's throat was bleeding, coughing up some blood. Everyone had bad sore throats and dehydration."

The soldiers searched the chopper for items -- crew bags, equipment kits, anything that could provide warmth or something to eat.

"We probably found enough food for everybody to have a bite of something and put something in their stomachs -- whether it was a pack of crackers or a Power Bar or sharing half of a cold meal" from military rations, Canon said.

Don, the chopper's air mission commander, peeled off the aircraft's sound insulation liner for blanketing the casualties. Some of the men built a lean-to out of wood from a bombed tree to keep the wind off the wounded.

"Pants, sweat shirts, jackets, blankets, sleeping bags -- anything we could find that would retain heat was given to the casualties," the medic said. "Some had upwards of a foot of stuff on top of them to keep them warm."

Seated on the ridgetop, admiring the stunning vistas, Stebner told Wilmoth about how strange it was to be in such a beautiful place amid such dire conditions.

The evening before their mission, some of the Rangers, attending a Bible study group at Bagram air base to the north, had read a passage about mountains and deliverance. It was Psalm 121, which begins, "I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from?"

The psalm held particular meaning for Self, who thought of it during the first moments of the firefight that morning as he rushed off the helicopter. The passage had stuck with him since a day on a road march as a West Point cadet, when he passed a chaplain standing on a hill reciting the psalm.

But as he and his men waited to be evacuated, Self did not want them getting too contemplative, and especially too mournful. Not yet.

"There were a few times here and there where guys would start to reflect on what had just happened, and their minds started to affect them a little bit," Self recalled. At those points, he would tell them, "Hey, you've got tomorrow and the rest of your lives for that."

Shortly after nightfall -- at 6:10 p.m. local time, according to Self's records -- Cunningham perished.

"I could tell you that we did everything that we could do up there," the medic said. "He had hung on for hours, and it was simply his time."

Two hours later, at 8:15 p.m., three evacuation helicopters began lifting everyone off the ridgetop. A fourth picked up the SEAL team on the side of the mountain.

The first helicopter landed with its tail ramp at the opposite end of where the troops had planned for it to go. The Rangers once again had to carry the casualties across icy, rocky terrain -- this time 40 or 50 feet, the length of the chopper.

"It was more than once that we had to stop and set down, or one guy slipped on the ice," the medic said. "We never dropped a casualty. But I know it was uncomfortable for the casualties, even with the pain-control stuff they were given. I know they were hurting. They made it pretty vocal."

Within an hour, all the troops, their wounded and dead, were loaded and gone.

All told, seven Americans died on Takur Ghar that day and four were seriously wounded. In honor of the first to perish there, many among the Special Operations forces now refer to the place as Roberts' Ridge.

As for the number of al Qaeda killed, military officials do not have an exact count. The Rangers figure they shot at least 10 enemy fighters during the course of the day. Other tallies, based on accounts of the firefight involving the SEAL rescue team and U.S. airstrikes, have put the total enemy killed at as high as 40 or 50.

"It really wasn't our concern to have a good enemy body count when we left," Self said. "If they were dead, they were dead."

Operation Anaconda ended inconclusively 19 days later. The military disrupted al Qaeda in the Shahikot valley, but an unknown number of enemy fighters slipped away to regroup over the border in Pakistan.

In the end, the Rangers accomplished their mission. They retrieved the bodies of all U.S. servicemen on the ridgetop, leaving no one behind.

Don, the air mission commander on the downed helicopter, said he was later told by a member of the SEAL rescue team that if the Rangers had not arrived when they did, the SEALs would not have lasted much longer. Although the SEALs had already started down the mountain by then, they were still under attack.

"The fire had been focused on them, and when we came in, it got diverted," Don said.

The events of March 4 have underscored the U.S. military's commitment to doing whatever is necessary to prevent any U.S. soldiers -- alive or dead -- from being left on a battlefield. But the episode also has provoked debate among at least some military officials familiar with the details about the need for establishing minimal thresholds for dispatching rescue teams -- thresholds that would balance the need for urgent response against the risks of going in with incomplete information.

Releasing an official report yesterday on the battle on Takur Ghar, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief responsible for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, dwelt on the bravery and tenacity of the American troops involved. As for the intelligence lapses, communications breakdowns and questionable command judgments, he suggested they were simply part of the "fog" and "uncertainty" that are "common to every war."

Other military officials said the battle has led to improved communications and other changes in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan that cannot be discussed publicly. Efforts also have been made at the field level to advance coordination between conventional and Special Operations forces.

"There was no reason to believe from history that we should have been doing it any differently than we had been up to this incident," said Army Maj. Gen. Franklin L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, who commanded Operation Anaconda from his headquarters at Bagram air base. "But we've just decided that we'll always know what each other are doing at any given time."

If the Rangers who fought on the mountain find fault with the way the mission was mounted, they are keeping any criticism to themselves. They say they knew, when they signed up, that duty on quick-reaction forces would be hazardous.

"At our level, everyone did his job superbly that day," DePouli said. "We did everything we could do. We were in a crappy situation, and we came out on top."

The Rangers, and the Army helicopter crews and Air Force members who were with them, cite a number of actions that they believe kept the casualty tally lower than it might have been.

Reflecting, for instance, on his decision to break off the Rangers' first attempted assault on the northern bunker, Self noted that the assault team included the most senior Rangers on the ridge at the time. If they had died, Self said, the others would have stood little chance of survival.

"We could have tried it again and had a couple of guys get some posthumous Medals of Honor," Self said. "But I don't know if anybody else would have gotten out of there."

Self also observed that if Chalk 2 had not made it up the mountain when it did, and then quickly assaulted the ridgetop, Chalk 1 would likely have been more exposed to the enemy's counterattack from the southeast.

"We would have had the whole force laying on the side of the hill, getting shot from behind," Self said.

Still, the Rangers remain haunted by other decisions, especially to delay their evacuation until dark. Could an earlier evacuation have saved Cunningham's life?

"It's something we've been asking ourselves now for the better part of a month and a half," Capt. Joseph Ryan, the commander of Alpha Company, which includes Self's platoon, said in an interview in early May. "But there's no right answer to that question."

Said Self: "So many decisions we made that day that could have gone the other way. A lot of what-ifs. That was one of those decisions. It was a dilemma, and there were consequences."

All in all, it was a day of both tragedy and courage, of bad luck and fortuitous timing, of poor coordination and true grit. The Ranger medic spoke about the "positives" and the "negatives" of the experience.

"The positives are, we got to play the game and everybody did exceedingly well," he said. "Everybody did what they were trained to do, everybody performed well above the standard. It's negative because, in getting to play the game, losing is very final, it's very ugly. And until you really see it like we got to see it, it's kind of this mysterious thing.

"Quite frankly," he added, "I think that if guys with our job dealt with it or thought about it quite a bit, there would be a lot fewer of us."

Sheep, Wolves & Sheep Dogs

2008-11-01T20:58:00.000-06:00

By LTC (RET) David Grossman, author of "On Killing"

...It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me:

"Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."

Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. - Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.

Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling."

Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself...

"Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

The Newhall Incident

2008-11-01T20:55:00.003-06:00

The words Newhall and tragedy became forever synonymous on April 6, 1970.

On that day four young California Highway Patrol officers lost their lives in a 4-1/2 minute gun battle that left four women widows and seven children, ranging in age from 9 months to 4 years, without fathers. The tremor that rolled through the CHP - and in fact, all law enforcement - spoke of grief for lost comrades and their suffering families, of organizational concern with the urgency of rethinking high-risk stop procedures, of humility imposed by such a catastrophic event, and then, the iron resolve to prevent a recurrence.

The 25th anniversary of this sad day was observed in April, 1995, at the present Newhall Area office, where a brick memorial pays tribute to Officers James Pence (6885), Roger Gore (6547), Walt Frago (6520) and George Alleyn (6290). The memorial once stood at the former Newhall office, but was rebuilt at the new site, about one mile from the scene of the slayings, which occurred in a restaurant parking lot just before midnight.

Officers Frago and Gore had been alerted by radio of a vehicle carrying someone who had brandished a weapon. They spotted the car, fell in behind, called for backup, and began the stop procedure. When the subjects' vehicle had come to a halt in the parking lot, the driver was instructed to get out and place his spread hands on the hood. Gore approached him and Frago moved to the passenger side. The right-side door suddenly swung open and the passenger sprung out, firing at Frago, who fell with two shots in his chest. The gunman, later identified as Jack Twinning, then turned and fired once at Gore, who returned fire. In that moment the driver, Bobby Davis, turned and shot Gore twice at close range. Both officers died instantly.

When Pence and Alleyn drove in moments later, they could see neither suspects nor downed officers, but immediately came under fire. Pence put out an 11-99 call ("officer needs help") then took cover behind the passenger door. Alleyn grabbed the shotgun, and positioned himself behind the driver-side door. Both officers were mortally wounded in the ensuing exchange, and one subject was hit.

Suspects Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis escaped, later abandoned their vehicle and then split up. For nine hours, officers blanketed the area searching for the killers. Twinning broke into a house and briefly held a man hostage. Officers used tear gas before storming the house, but the suspect killed himself using the shotgun he had stolen from Officer Frago. Davis was captured, stood trial and convicted on four counts of murder.

Bobby Davis was sentenced to die in the gas chamber, but in 1972 the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment and in 1973, the court modified Davis's sentence to life in prison. For many years, he was incarcerated at Folsom State Prison, but was last known to have been moved to Pelican Bay State Prison, the home of California's most notorious criminals.

In the weeks immediately after the four deaths, the emotionally charged follow-up investigation sometimes lingered on fault-finding, but ultimately achieved the desired catharsis - a completely revamped set of procedures to be followed during high-risk and felony stops, with emphasis at every step on officer safety. If there can be such a thing as a silver lining in a cloud this dark, it would be the renewed focus on officer safety - a concern still uppermost even thirty years later.

Firearms procedures have changed fundamentally, physical methods of arrest have been perfected, the police baton has become a more integral element of enforcement tactics, and new protective tools (such as pepper spray) have become part of the officers' standard equipment. Along with these have come far more comprehensive training - all combining to make uniformed personnel more alert and better prepared for the inevitable dangers faced by CHP officers.

At the 1995 memorial ceremony, family members and colleagues of the dead officers joined dignitaries and Highway Patrol officers who didn't know the four men, but whose lives have been influenced by that fateful night in 1970. Officers Walt Frago, Roger Gore, James Pence and George Alleyn will live forever in that special place of memory which the Highway Patrol reserves for those who have given their lives while on duty. These four remain unique, because their memories evoke a sorrow never quite put behind us, and the knowledge that their sacrifice ultimately made the Highway Patrol stronger, wiser, more resolute.

North Hollywood Shootout

2008-11-01T20:48:00.001-06:00

At 9:15 a.m. that morning Phillips and Matasareanu robbed the Bank of America branch office in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California.

They were armed with illegally-owned and illegally modified assault rifles and wore body armor covering their torsos, as well as home-made Kevlar protection wrapped around their arms and legs. The pair emerged from the bank and encountered responding LAPD patrol officers, and the firefight began.

After five minutes, three civilians and nine police officers had been wounded, and a TAC (tactical) alert was issued. Ultimately, 370 LAPD officers, including SWAT team members, were present at the scene. The suspects fired approximately 1,500 rounds of ammunition in one of the most violent shootouts in U.S. law enforcement history.

Weapons

LAPD patrol officers and detective

Beretta 92FS 9mm pistols
.38 Special revolvers
Remington and Ithaca 12-gauge pump-action shotguns

LAPD SWAT

Colt M16A2 rifles
Colt XM177E2 carbines

Bank Robbers

3 AKM rifles
1 G3A3 rifle
1 M16A1 rifle with 100 round C-Mag
Beretta 92F pistol

Outcome

Larry Phillips was shot 11 times
Emil Matasareanu was shot 29 times.
Both Phillips and Matasareanu were weightlifters.
Total amount stolen: USD $303,305.
Approximately 370 LAPD officers were called to the scene.

Other than the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and units of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded to the scene. In the MVP documentary film, the LAPD sergeant being interviewed discusses the roles of those agencies as well as LA Airport PD, Burbank PD and LA School PD. Off-duty LAPD officers came in prior to the announcement of city-wide TAC-ALERT, which activates all personnel on duty. Members of the LAPD training at the Valley area police academy as well as the main LA police academy located in Elysian Park also responded. SWAT officers also responded from the police academy. One response was from Chief Willie Williams, who came from either Parker Center or LAPD HQ located downtown.

The following year, seventeen LAPD officers were awarded Medals of Valor from the department for their actions and bravery during the shootout.

They were:

Police Sergeant I. Medina
Police Detective T. Angeles
Police Detective V. Bancroft
Police Detective T. Culotta
Police Detective K. Harley
Police Officer Class III D. Anderson
Police Officer E. Brentlinger
Police Officer Class III A. Cabunoc
Police Officer Class III J. Caprarelli
Police Officer E. Dominguez
Police Officer Class III S. Gomez
Police Officer Class III R. Massa
Police Officer C. Perriguey
Police Officer T. Schmitz
Police Officer C. Torrez
Police Officer J. Zboravan
Police Officer R. Zielinski

Aftermath

The incident highlighted the growing divergence between the means available to the police and the offensive and defensive technologies employed by criminals. Video footage of the incident clearly shows police pistol bullets striking the suspects with little or no effect, largely due to the body armor worn by the suspects. Their body armor was able to stop the .38 caliber and 9mm projectiles fired by the officers' service handguns.

The ineffectiveness of the pistol rounds in penetrating the suspects' body armor led to a trend in the United States towards arming selected police patrol officers with .223 caliber/5.56mm M16 Rifles altered to prevent automatic fire. This provided first responders with greater ability to effectively confront and neutralize heavily armed and armored criminals.

Advocates of gun control in the United States cited the incident as evidence that U.S. gun control laws were inadequate to prevent military-class weaponry ending up in the hands of prior felons. They argue that without adequate gun regulation there is no gun enforcement, leading to easier access by criminals.

They further argue that weapons move with money; and that without any deterrence against gun manufacturers and distributors, simple economics dictates that guns will be supplied to those with a demand for them, including those who wish to use them illegally, ultimately giving criminals an advantage over law enforcement in the street arms race.

The LAPD patrol officers were not adequately armed or protected to deal with such criminals. The gunmen were firing rifle rounds from illegally-modified fully-automatic assault rifles while being protected by full body armor. The officers' handguns and shotguns could not penetrate through the suspects' armor, while the suspects' weapons were capable of severely wounding officers and bystanders even through cement walls and automobiles.

Opponents of gun control counter that as the weapons had been obtained illegally; the incident did not indicate that criminal use of legally registered fully-automatic firearms was a problem. To date there has been no recorded commission of a crime with a legally-registered fully automatic firearm by the legal owner although a few stolen weapons have been used by criminals. They also point out that during the shootout, LAPD patrol officers acquired more powerful rifles and shotgun ammunition from a nearby gun shop, which had the potential to penetrate body armor or at least fracture bones through armor. The borrowed weapons and ammunition were never deployed, as SWAT had arrived on the scene first.

In addition, the opponents of gun control argue that more and stricter gun control laws are not required, as these would mostly affect law-abiding citizens without reducing the illegal use of firearms by criminals (who, by definition, do not obey the law.) They state that what is required is more stringent enforcement of existing laws against possession of firearms by criminals. Also of note is that the incident happened during the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban (since expired), which to some opponents of gun control, is further proof that such bans don't work and instead show inherent flaws in gun control.

Movies

44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out at The Internet Movie Database
2005 documentary Shootout! North Hollywood Shootout created by the History Channel describing the event in detail with interviews from the involved police officers.

North Hollywood Shootout documentary by Music Video Productions (MVP) (mostly interviews).

In the opening scenes of the action film S.W.A.T.. Weapons, location, events, TV footage, and dialog from LAPD radio communcations of this shootout were all closely mimicked. (A deleted scene in the movie also included police officers running into a gun store to purchase M16 assault rifles citing the ineffective weaponry they had been supplied).

A video was produced by the POST training association that contained the entire video of the shootout; however this video is not available to the public.

Testimonials

2008-11-01T20:40:00.015-06:00

Veteran U.S. Army Special Forces, SWAT and Contractor

Veteran Navy SEAL, U.S. Army Special Forces Commander

Emergency Services EMT/SAR

Active Shooting Survivor

Physicians Assistant

PHD in Psychology

Afghanistan Combat Veteran

Iraq & Kosovo Combat Veteran

Corporate CEO

Who Trains Here?

2008-11-01T19:56:00.007-06:00

These are some of the folks we have had in our facility. There have been many other agencies and groups.

SWAT
Police
Federal Agencies
U.S. Army
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Marines
Special Forces
National Guard
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
Homeland Security
Sheriffs
Highway Patrol
C.E.R.T. Teams
Emergency Services Teams (EST)
Office of Special Investigation (OSI)
USAF Security Forces
Private Contractors
Private Security
Bail Bondsmen
U.S. Customs
U.S. Marshals
Airport Police
Courts

Training Weapons

2008-11-01T19:47:00.016-06:00

Less than lethal munitions are all that is used in this facility. We have innovated many training tools over the years. The video represents a short sampling of the type of systems we have created. Among the tools used are Simunitions, .68 caliber paint/rubber rounds and 6mm Airsoft.

Click here to see a comprehensive list of weapons used in the Urban Warfare Center.

Purpose

2008-10-31T23:29:00.003-06:00

Clausewitz an 1830's Prussian general said “no good plan survives first contact with the enemy”. If Clausewitz is right, and we think he is, then tactical training must include, not only tactics but dynamic principles that are flexible under stress.

The ability to adapt to an ever changing battlefield and adjust mentally and physically are some of the fundamental keys in winning today’s conflicts.

Live fire Range skills are important. The ability to transition form primary weapons to secondary are essential. We also believe that force-on-force skills are critical. Training with less-than-lethal munitions with skilled opposing force (OPFOR) who are moving, thinking and communicating are the building blocks for good operators.

The Urban Warfare Center® is the perfect space to not only experience force-on-force training, but to evaluate it based on principles that as Clausewitz suggested are flexible under a shifting battlefield.

Military Training

2008-10-31T23:29:00.002-06:00

Military Units can train for FREE in the Urban Warfare Center®. Weapons and safety gear will be provided as needed.

The COMBAT STRESS PROGRAM is also available to Military Units.

Please call to schedule by calling (801) 936-2322.

History

2008-10-31T20:10:00.023-06:00

"We must remember that one man is much the same as another, and that he is best who is trained in the severest school... "  Thucydides

Established in 2002 as a less-than-lethal shoot house to test GEAR the Urban Warfare Center® (UWC) really became an official training center after a SWAT team came in to by some equipment. They noticed the "shoot house" and asked if they could use it. We readily agreed and the first of many less than lethal rounds and flash bangs were thrown that day. Since that time thousands of Military and Law Enforcement personnel have been trained in FORCE-ON-FORCE and stress inoculation inside the UWC.

We soon discovered (again) that training in a 360 degree environment where other humans think, move, communicate and shoot back is an essential part of training for real would fights.

The methods of “teaching” correct principles and behaviors in a tactical environment are some of the key attributes of the UWC. We believe tactics alone are not enough on today’s battlefield or the urban setting. Therefore we focus more on principles of success under stress than specific tactics. This can become “mental memory” just like repeating physical activities can produce “muscle memory” a common technique for tactical training.

Examples of some of these principles are:

Two into danger
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
Leave no one behind
Nose and muzzle
You do not have to look at someone to communicate
Building strong points
Probe to contact
Tempo of the fight
Any many more...

The facility has all the hallmarks of a classic shoot house with multiple stair ways, doors, windows, long lanes and dynamic room building capabilities. One of the unique features is sliding windows and modular shoot-through walls.

Another important consideration regarding this method of teaching is the fact that Special Operations units will get large doses of stress during selection and subsequent training. This enables them to dominate more quickly on the battlefield and respond with educated motor skills more rapidly to threats. Line soldiers, sailors and airmen do not get the type of training that normally brings stress levels to the brink of Fight, Flight or Freeze like special operations units do. Therefore they have to learn about these responses in the field and are subject to the “other” forces imposing their will upon them during this learning curve. For units to hit the ground running, they must be stress induced, have the responses identified and be given tools to overcome the negative responses. Furthermore they must build motor skills that reward the proper responses to stress and threats. I.e. engaging and eliminating the threat, taking cover, communicating etc…

In a very real way we can accomplish in one day what most elite units pride themselves on doing over a sustained period of time. We are never trying to induce stress to “wash” someone out of our program as elite units may be doing out of selection necessity. However, we are heaping large amounts of pressure on them, which will require them to work together or fail. Success is determined by teamwork, communicating, doing your job under pressure, and accomplishing the mission.

At the end of the story, the Urban Warfare Center™ was born out of adversity and a never ending hunger for the best, most stimulating and flexible facility, methodology and technologies that will shorten learning and increase retention. It teaches life saving principles related to combat operations and Urban Warfare.

We have had virtually every federal agency you can think of, thousands of soldiers and hundreds upon hundreds of police officers experience the Urban Warfare Center®.
 This facility saves lives and is a direct result of two critical life lessons I have learned. First, I feel the need to prepare people to become effective under stress, because I had to develop these skills in the field and on the streets. Second, I wanted to remove every barrier to entry for warriors to experience these programs. That is why they are and have been free since its inception. If we do it right in the Urban Warfare Center® many fathers and mothers will be able to hug their own children when they return from duty on the streets or abroad.

As one Lt. Colonel said while watching his unit perform in the Urban Warfare Center®. “I am sure glad I got to see the strong and the weak in my unit before we deploy”. What a tool for commanders to “benchmark” soldiers before they hit the field. Where more training is needed on tactical skills they can then get those skills before they need them for real. Where more training is needed to overcome stress quicker and respond more effectively, that can be dealt with through practice under limited duress, and by building skills.  One veteran of our program and subsequently Iraq found us at a trade show and made a simple, but powerful statement to us about the effectiveness of the facility and program. He said that “he and his unit were able to get into the fight quicker and be more productive under pressure as a result”. What more can you ask for?