Korengal

1

Where I grew up, like,

in Oregon,

I was always up in Mount Hood,

snowboarding and skiing.

And when I was in Afghanistan,

whenever I looked

out at the mountains,

I didn't think, like,

"Afghanistan."

Oh, there's Taliban

roaming up there,

like, going into

their little caves,

"and they're about

to shoot at me."

Whenever I looked up there,

for the most part,

tried to think of back home,

something peaceful, you know,

something...

something nice.

For the last

Four and a half years,

the Korengal has been known as

Afghanistan's valley of death.

We're taking heavy fire from-

The valley was just too remote,

too difficult to resupply,

and too dangerous

like the isolated outpost

called Restrepo.

Fire in the hole!

Fire in the hole!

And from the bottom

of a mountain,

we watched Restrepo burn.

Is there anything

that you miss about Restrepo,

about the Korengal Valley?

Oh, yeah, I...

I'd rather be there than here.

I'd... I'd go back right now,

if I could.

I'd want to... I'd go back

the Korengal right now.

Get in the f***ing window.

Korengal Valley...

I always wondered why

I was in the Korengal.

But...

When you get told that

the bigger mission is that,

hey, you're not in the Korengal

to go and hunt the bad guys.

You're in the Korengal

so the bad guys come to you,

and you kill them.

It was just a valley.

It's a valley that is...

if you look from high above,

it looks like a quiet valley.

You look to your north,

your south, east and west,

it's just mountains,

it's rocks, you know,

and it was wooded.

Everybody thinks,

"you're over there?

Then you're in the desert."

No.

If you went a little north

of us, it looked just like...

like Colorado Springs,

like, Denver.

It was gorgeous.

But the minute I got there,

the minute I got off

the helicopter I got shot at.

I saw it from a distance,

it was beautiful.

Bullets came in,

"F*** this place.

I want to go...

I want to go home."

That day, when we took over,

our Command Sergeant

Major Vimoto, he was at the Kop.

And he asked,

"Hey, where's my son at?"

He said, "You don't have to...

just show me where he's at,"

and you know, and I go up

on this ledge and stuff,

and I point down.

"You tell him I said hello.

I came out here."

I know he's out there on patrols

and doing his thing,

"and stuff like that, but you

tell him your dad said hello."

As soon as it

came across the net

and said we had a K.I.A.

I looked at First Sergeant,

I was like, "it's Vimoto."

I just lost

the Sergeant Major's son,

the brigade Sergeant Major's son

in my company,

the very first day

that I go out there

and the very first thing

I told them to go do,

where I'm the only one

in charge,

and I get his son killed,

I was, like... at a loss.

I mean, what do I do from here?

You lose somebody

that quickly in a deployment,

it kind of hits home,

like, whoa.

When's my turn then?

If he got killed this quick,

how many people are we going to

lose by the end of this?

As bad as it may be,

we have to continue, you know?

We can't sit there, you know,

and just cry.

And the thing...

we'll do that, you know.

If you're gonna cry, you do it.

You know what I'm saying?

If you're going to go

in a corner

and do what you have to do,

you go do it, you know?

But when I need you back

to be part of the team...

because the bad guys

are still there.

Tomorrow we going to go

on a different patrol,

and someone else is going to

try to take another shot at you.

The Korengal was a major highway

for all sorts of Taliban

and enemy activity.

It's been that way for years.

It was in a deep part

of the mountains

where they were using

that area to traffic weapons

a lot, you know,

weapons and supplies.

And it was just finding

those trails and those guys,

you know, I think was, you know,

what we were supposed to do.

But honestly, like,

I don't know,

we just knew

that they were there

and that's where we're going,

and, you know,

it was a shithole and, you know,

we were there to deal with it.

Think about putting

into context...

somebody moves in and decides

to take your house over.

You're going to fight for it,

and that's exactly

what they did.

Hey, what you got?

Do you got it pided?

No, just from the southwest.

"TIC, " it, uh, stands

for "Troops in Contact."

And what it is is basically

anytime that we are engaged,

being the U.S. Forces,

are engaged by anybody

or we engage somebody else.

We were getting, you know,

anywhere from one

to ten to fourteen

sometimes a day.

Moreno, get the f***

outta there!

An ungodly amount

of TICs, I think 220...

225 TICs that Restrepo

was involved in

in some way, shape, or form.

We just f***ing got

f***ing rocked.

I mean, that's basically

365 days

that they could have shot

at them.

They shot at them

nine months straight.

We're getting fire from,

from one of these draws.

They think they're getting fire

from down there.

We're in the middle

of this valley

in sandbag huts that we built,

no running water.

No life.

Chinooks would come in,

helicopters would come in,

deliver our supplies

of food, water.

You know, think about

being alone for days on end,

you know, in an isolated area.

Even though you're

with people out there...

We had nothing.

That was as ghetto as it comes.

The hardest thing

was you just never knew

if you were going to start

getting shot at.

It's like,

I'd be laying there on my cot,

and all of a sudden you'd just

hear the cracks flying by

and RPGs going by, blowing up,

right on the Hescos,

on the other side of where

you're sleeping, you know?

You have to accept that fact,

that you could die

at any second.

This is the place to be.

There's a little secret

about second platoon...

everyone can play

the guitar almost.

You know what

I'm learning, dude?

Pass that up, man.

Came in here with no...

no cover, nothing.

And then we built this place up

into a resort,

and, uh, you know.

Oh, yeah. This is a real resort.

Yeah, resort.

This is Resort Restrepo.

I mean, in summertime,

we put a pool up here.

But in the winter,

we'll make it a ski lodge.

Base people right out of here.

Sergeant Simon was joking

he was going to get some skis

and, uh, ski down, you know,

get the whole...

uh, the Army feeling

into it, you know?

We'll have some bullet holes

in some walls and stuff.

Maybe, you know, a few rounds

come in once in a while.

I'm telling you,

you look out the door,

this place could be sports

heaven if they just...

if they just

stop shooting at us, you know.

This is nine-November,

roger, copy. Fire...

He's in the draw.

Shot two two zero six bullets.

The first thing

you hear when you get ambushed

or you get in a firefight,

or whatever it is,

the first thing you hear is just

a loud crack.

The bullets passing

by your head, the snaps.

You hear that snap

and your first...

exactly how were trained,

the snap is...

the first instinct is to,

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