Restrepo Page #2

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you know, not this guy.

Not this guy. Not this guy.

You know, your heart just sank.

You were like, f***.

I mean, it was Doc Restrepo.

He was shot in the neck twice...

but he was stable,

so that was a relief for us.

We say, okay, he's going to be okay,

because we looked at him.

when he gets on the aircraft,

he's still breathing.

But he, it hit his, um, artery in his neck,

and he bled out.

He bled out on the helicopter ride

to the emergency room

where they take you when you get shot.

- This is the big danger area right now.

- Okay.

Because if we're here

and they start opening up on us...

You're in between.

But if we clear down, you guys could

use my weapons squad as an indicator

for where they are,

and that's your right limit of fire, man.

Shoot anything up the mountain.

I would say since we haven't been down here

and we don't know what's in here,

I'm going to f***ing assume the worst,

because it's near Kalaygal,

and that they have fortified fighting

positions throughout here.

Okay.

What were we doing in the Korengal?

Our purpose in the Korengal--

they had a road,

and the intent was this road to go through

the Korengal and go out to Chowkay Valley

to be able to connect the locals

where they can have an easy route

up towards the Pech River Valley.

And our job there was to try

to sustain the security for the personnel,

to allow them to build that road.

You know, five, ten years from now,

the Korengal Valley is going to have

a road going through it that's paved.

And we can make more money,

make you guys richer,

make you guys more powerful.

What l need though,

is l need you to join with the government,

you know, provide us with that security

or help us provide you guys

with that security.

And I'll flood this whole place

with money and with projects

and with healthcare and with everything.

Remember last week when we said that

everything that happened in the past

when Captain McKnight was here--

we're kind of, like, wiping the slate clean.

Captain Kearney's got a new slate.

Let's put it behind, and let's get on

with what we've got to do now.

Growing up in Oregon, I wasn't allowed

to have sugar 'til I was, like, 13,

because my mom was a f***ing hippie.

And she's always have us doing, like,

little hippie children things, I guess--

making, like, homemade paper or painting

something or going, like, on nature walks.

It was a nice childhood.

I just wasn't allowed to have toy guns

or anything like that,

like boys should have, l guess--

little toy guns or, like, violent video games

or watch any violent movies at all.

Like l had a toy squirt gun that was

a turtle, and my parents took it away

because it said "squirt gun"--

it had "gun" on there.

Fire!

Right now priority...

For the first few months of the deployment...

we'd get rocked hard. They'd hit us from...

They'd ambush us at 360 degrees.

I remember thinking, you know, holy sh*t,

did everybody from the entire country

come to this valley?

Is nobody else fighting anymore?

ls every bad guy in my face?

Oh, sh*t!

Motherfuckers.

In the entire country of Afghanistan,

we dropped something close

to 70 percent of all the ordinance.

All the bombs that were dropped

at that particular time

were dropped in the Korengal Valley.

As CNN dubbed it one day

when Bush saw it

and said, you know,

the ugliest place on Earth--

the Korengal Valley.

But to my family,

I never really told them much

until about halfway into the deployment.

I didn't tell them when Vimoto died.

I didn't tell them

when Sergeant Padilla lost his arm.

I didn't tell them when Pisec got shot.

I didn't tell them when Restrepo got killed.

And then when Restrepo got killed was

a few days before my mom's birthday also.

So I had to... I had to suck it up

when I called my mom on her birthday

and act like everything was okay and say

"Hey, Mom, happy birthday," you know,

like, "Yeah, I am doing really good out here,

everything's fine."

The change came when we in OP Restrepo.

In the middle of the night we put up

a firebase on top of the place

that they had used as their enemy kinetic,

you know, point of attack,

or of origin of their attack,

for the last 15 months.

We walked up the Spur

with shovels and picks.

We worked all though the night just

to make a small semicircle to chill in.

We slept for maybe a couple hours each,

started doing it again.

That day we got in five, seven firefights.

Everybody good?

- Yeah, we're gonna--

- Yeah!

We'd dig. They'd shoot at us.

They'd see us digging,

building this new place. They'd shoot.

We'd shoot back. Once it lulled down,

we started digging again.

When the boys built that base,

the Taliban, or the AAF forces in the valley,

they were completely in shock.

It was like a middle finger sticking out.

And they realized once they could not knock

off OP Restrepo, we had the upper hand.

They started becoming afraid.

Eat some, turban head!

Hey, hit the bottom right.

Hit the bottom right of the village.

- Get this!

- Bottom right. Go right more.

Hey, Solo, that's you.

I'm not shooting over everybody.

- Let's go, let's go!

- He's down in the draw!

- He's down in the draw.

- Down in the draw.

How close?

Buno, get your coms up.

Make sure you got f***ing SAW

and a.203 with you.

- You're taking Wilson, Cortez.

- Cortez.

Don't worry, I'll...

Don't worry. There's very few

that l just straight up hope don't make it.

A month or two into it, it was still

a shitty place. We were covered in dirt,

digging all the time, getting in firefights,

like four or five firefights a day.

And so we-- the majority of us really didn't

feel like it should be called OP Restrepo.

it was just a shitty place. It was just...

It just didn't resemble

the type of person that he was.

Scuffing up my notes.

Feels like longer than forever, yeah

My home is now a distant land

If l had one wish, I wish I could be

Back on that rock

in the middle of the sea

My heart is calling me to the islands

Blue skies and tropical breeze

I want to go back home

Swim in the Pacific sea

You can take the boy from the island

But not the island from the boy

The island stays in your heart

I'll never forget where l'm from

Oh, no, I'll never forget

Where l'm from

Sir. How you doing, sir?

Good to see you again.

Good seeing you again.

Welcome to the KOP.

I'd like to take you up over there, sir,

maybe just try to give you

the once over the world here.

This is the southern Korengal.

This is, uh, l guess you could call it,

this is the war zone.

This is where it's all happening.

This is where the majority of the population

of the Korengal lives

and probably about 90% of the fighting.

If you look just to the south here

to that third spur that you see down there,

which is called Honcho Hill, that is like

the enemy-- I guess you could say--

limit of advance for us.

Like, we can't go

any further south than that.

- What do you call it-- Honcho?

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