Word: commandant
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...Sergeant!" he yelled at Platoon Sergeant Tom Abbott, his second-in-command. "They're getting close. We need to get out of here...
...explosion had taken out the leaders of the 1st Platoon. With both the lieutenant and sergeant out of commission, command fell on the shoulders of Perez, the senior soldier left standing. "Sergeant Perez!" Kraft yelled over the roar of war to Perez, around 75 yards away. "You're now the platoon leader...
Thirty minutes after the devastating mortar blast, with the sun rising overhead, 1st Platoon's wounded had taken cover in what some called Hell's Half Pipe, a natural trench, already protecting the command post, that shielded them from al-Qaeda's eyes. By chance, the enemy fire kept them where they wanted to be, guarding the escape paths from the southern end of the valley that al-Qaeda might want to use. But the Afghans, repelled by rocket and mortar attacks elsewhere in the valley, never showed. All the searching and destroying would have to be done...
...were there," says Grippe, the top enlisted man in the 1st Battalion of the 87th Infantry Regiment, "we would have landed someplace else." The U.S. troops didn't have the men or firepower to scale the rocks and wipe out the enemy fighters. But Perez and the others in command remembered the 1993 Somali fire fight--a panicky retreat in which 18 Americans were killed--and they decided to dig in. "We didn't run from the fight," says Grippe. "It wasn't a Mogadishu...
...Army agreed. On March 18 in Bagram, Army General Tommy Franks, who runs the war as head of the U.S. Central Command, awarded Perez the Bronze Star for valor. Franks declared Operation Anaconda "an unqualified and absolute success," despite claims by some Afghan allies that most of the enemy got away during the 11 days of fighting. Perez and his men dismiss the charge. After the initial fire fight, they returned to the Shah-i-Kot for another week of combat--hunting down al-Qaeda in their most secure redoubt and, they say, killing hundreds of the enemy while losing...