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Two months after Sept. 11, 2001, in the early days of the war on terror, Amerine’s tiny band of Green Berets had been dropped into Afghanistan to organize and train friendly locals. A guerrilla leader, Hamid Karzai, was trying to mobilize local fighters to oust Taliban radicals from the entire region around Tarin Kowt.
The Taliban assault force rolled out of a mountain pass on Nov. 16, 2001, about 1,000 fighters headed toward a strategic town in south-central Afghanistan that had booted out local Taliban leaders. From a ridge outside Tarin Kowt, capital of Oruzgan province, a 10-man U.S. Special Forces team...
From a ridge outside Tarin Kowt, capital of Oruzgan province, the U.S. Special Forces team, accompanied by a few dozen guerrillas and commanded by Capt. Jason Amerine, directed Navy F-18 airstrikes against the approaching enemy convoy.
Suddenly, with American bombs blasting the enemy as it advanced, the guerrillas decided they’d had enough. They packed into their pickups, threatening to leave the Americans stranded atop the ridge.
“All of us were yelling, trying to get them to stop, but we couldn’t,” Amerine recalled. With no choice but to jump aboard the pickups, “It was just an awful ride for 35 minutes as we retreated all the way back into town.”
When they got back to town, Amerine told Karzai that the Americans needed to get back to the battle or the town would fall.
“So, we basically forced all the drivers out of their trucks, took the trucks, and we drove back out of town,”
Amerine said...
[Amazing...]
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