Word: kot
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...early morning, and a group of men are squatting on stones by the trickle of a river that runs through Tanali, a village outside Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province in south-central Afghanistan. Some wear turbans; some do not. A few have long beards; others a few days' growth or none at all. The differences are trivial, though, given what unifies them. This village is their home. And, says Mullah Muramza, a slight, young man gently cradling a small bird in his hands: "Everyone here was with the Taliban...
With 40 other soldiers and their 80-lb. rucksacks crammed into the rear of a Chinook helicopter--a space designed for 33--Randel Perez barely had room to breathe. As they thundered through the darkness toward the Shah-i-Kot Valley in eastern Afghanistan, the dim cabin lights cast pink and purple shadows on Perez and his fellow infantrymen from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division. Some chattered about the fight to come, while others managed to catch a last-minute nap. Perez was far away, hugging a baby he had never met. It was early March...
Barely two months later, following the mortar blast in the Shah-i-Kot, Perez found himself in charge of his platoon. With nine of his 26 men wounded, his immediate concern was getting them to safety without making a bad situation worse. "I'm the quarterback now," Perez thought. "Whatever I decide, I'm going to have to live with it, right or wrong." His wounded comrades knew they had to move. "We just needed to get the hell away from where we were," Maroyka says. "Even those of us with leg injuries had a simple choice...
...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 just eight Americans during the campaign. The al-Qaeda survivors--no one knows how many--fled across the porous border into the tribal zone of Pakistan...
...accustomed to the sound of his dad's voice. "I've told him why I wasn't here for his birth and how it was something that I just had to do as a soldier," Perez says. Someday he'll tell what he did in the Shah-i-Kot Valley to earn the Bronze Star that sits on his dresser. "I'll tell him war isn't as glamorous as some people think it is," Perez says. "And I'll tell him I hope he doesn't join the infantry...