The Last Patrol

This is one of the better articles I've read in awhile. Very sad and poignant.

The paratroopers figured that the Talibs had zeroed in on the compound’s two entrances, at the southeast and southwest corners, and would shoot at the soldiers when they exited. To distract them, the soldiers would detonate a Claymore mine, which they had set up 30 feet outside the door—and, if the gunmen were close enough, maybe hit them with a few of the mine’s 700 ball bearings. Sgt. Dale Knollinger, a 22-year-old team leader in Gerhart’s squad, thick with muscle from daily workouts in Combat Outpost Tynes’s outdoor gym, picked up the clacker and squeezed it three times, sending a current down the wire. The mine roared, the ground shook, a dust cloud floated through the compound, and the soldiers whooped. But the laughter stopped a moment later. Mike, the platoon’s Afghan interpreter, intercepted a transmission over a handheld radio similar to those used by the Taliban. “Was that your bomb?” an insurgent asked, confused by the explosion. “No,” another answered. “I don’t know what that was.” So the area around the compound already contained at least one bomb, and probably many more.

Gerhart sighed, cursed, then sucked in a deep breath. He hugged Knollinger. “If I don’t have any legs, don’t let them save me,” he said, their faces close. Knollinger, seven other 82nd paratroopers, and one 101st soldier would be the quick-reaction force if the patrol found trouble. “I’m serious,” Gerhart said.

The men lined up at the southwest door and Gerhart charged out, firing his M-4 rifle. Lachance and 12 others followed, disappearing into the tangled greenery that lay outside the compound’s walls.

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