Green Berets’ work to free Afghans comes with a personal cost

It didn’t take long for Carrie Elk to realize something was different with the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. A psychotherapist who specializes in war-related psychological trauma, Elk was at Bragg Sept. 12 to deliver PTSD resilience training to Green Berets preparing to transition out of the military.

She was invited by an NCO she had worked with for years to discuss caring for special forces soldiers who struggle to cope with the aftermath of exposure to brutal combat and the other miseries of protracted conflict. “As I walked in, he felt different,” Elk said of the Green Beret NCO, who were both authorized to talk about the situation. The Green Beret NCO spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive nature of the Afghanistan rescue efforts. “His presence was very different than I’ve known. Something was off.”

Later, Elk noticed another sight that made her wonder. “We walked by the offices, to the conference room, and I saw a couple of cots set up,” said Elk, founder and CEO of the Elk Institute for Psychological Health & Performance. “I thought that was awfully strange, and was wondering if that is how they do things at this unit or was something going on?”

Having worked with special operations units around the country for years, Elk knew better than to ask questions. But she overheard snippets of desperate conversations, observed a high level of tension on the faces of those in the room and saw things that seemed out of place.

There were cots. A whiteboard with maps and photographs of people. Afghans on cell phones, having furious conversations in Dari with people back home. A Green Beret was at his computer. His hands were on his forehead as he had a hushed conversation with the man next to him. “What if I miss one?” she recalled him saying. “What if I miss the name? Dude, what if I miss a name?”

The Green Beret tried to reassure him. “Dude, your job is to do the best you can to keep track of what you can and do as much as you can with what you’ve got. Their souls are not your responsibility.”

The souls, Elk learned, were U.S. citizens and Afghan allies trapped by rapid advance of the Taliban. Their lives hung in the balance and 7,000 miles away, there was nothing the Green Berets at Fort Bragg could do by way of direct action to help them.

But despite the admonishment, the men felt a responsibility. Moderator's Note: Something Joe Biden, nor the top Generals, apparently didn't feel when he deserted them, sentencing them to horrific deaths at the hands of the brutal Taliban.

So day after day, night after night, with the implicit approval of their command, the small group of five Green Berets at Fort Bragg spent their off hours working to find and guide American citizens and Afghans to safety. They took turns spending nights in the office transformed into a tactical operations center. And for men used to responding, Elk could see that as the Taliban captured district after district, the pervasive feeling of helplessness and hopelessness was taking a mental and emotional toll, even as they managed to help hundreds escape. Hundreds more are still on their waiting list, a small portion of the tens of thousands wanting to get out.

The command is aware of the toll the rescue effort has taken on the Green Berets. “Some of our people experienced a range of powerful emotions over the last few months because Army Special Operations is more than a job, and our soldiers care deeply about the people they have worked closely with on deployments,” said Army Maj. Dan Lessard, a spokeman for the 1st Special Forces Command said in an email to Military Times. “We implement U.S. Army Special Operations Command’s Human Performance and Wellness program to provide our soldiers and families a holistic array of resources to build resilience, improve performance, and mitigate the acute effects of stress over their careers in Army Special Operations.”

Elk’s visit to Bragg, arranged long before the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated, was part of that program. “Their hands are tied everywhere they go,” Elk said of the Green Berets. “And then they’re still watching all these people dying, that saved them half of the time, looked out for them, gave them information they needed, some interpreters for them. And now they feel they’ve left these guys in harm’s way. And that’s opposite of their ethos and just soul crushing.”

Send us

A day before Kabul fell on Aug. 15, the small group at Fort Bragg appealed to the chain of command to head to Afghanistan. “We made a promise to these people that we’d get them out, and we knew exactly what would happen to them if they were left there,” said the Green Beret NCO. “It is happening. And so that’s what killed us the most. Because we knew if we were on the ground, we could speed those processes up. We actually tried to go over there. We want to go over there.”

But leaders rejected the idea. “It’s just like, ‘hey it’s never gonna happen,’” he said. “The Department of Defense doesn’t want any more people to be responsible for over there, you know? It’s a Department of State thing. They do immigration, not the military and so they didn’t want anyone getting in the way of that. Our command supported it, but it was just never going to happen, especially in such a short timeframe. By time we got there. It would have been over anyway. It was just so frustrating.”

Instead, the Green Berets began working in an unofficial capacity because what they were seeing was anathema to their motto, said the NCO. “What we saw happening over there was the opposite of De Oppresso Liber,” he said, referring to the Green Beret’s Latin motto meaning “to free the opressed” in English. “I’ll say it over and over again, it was De Liber Oppresso. It was legitimately undoing everything we have done for 20 years. Just all of a sudden it was, we oppressed all the people that we’ve been trying to free from oppression. And it was like a light switch. “It’s been mentally challenging for a lot of people because, you know, how many people we buried,” he said. “And because of that place, because of going to war for 20 years all the funerals we went to, all the family members we had to say sorry to and notify, just think about that. I’ve been going there since 2005, and I’ve been to memorials every single year.”

The Green Berets were operating with the knowledge of their command. “1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) is aware of the informal efforts by soldiers within the command to assist former Afghan partners and their families with evacuation from Afghanistan,” Lessard said. “Our soldiers have built lasting relationships with partners during deployments over the last 20 years, and some soldiers have used their previous relationships and networks to provide unofficial assistance to those partners in their time of need.”

Taking action

“If you put a curtain over the window and not know where you were, you’d think you’re in Afghanistan running a mission,” said the Green Beret NCO. The effort started with attempts to rescue family members of two Afghans. One of those Afghans is a Green Beret, the other a contractor who worked with the team. It became even more difficult after the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15.

“That was one of the horrifying things,” said the Green Beret NCO. “One of the Afghans that’s working with us, his wife is stuck over there. He’s an American citizen. So imagine him helping us get all these people out and his wife can’t. Right? Because she has pending [special immigrant visa]. I have to look at his face every day. Not being able to go get her, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t walk away every day, and go home and sleep knowing that. It was crushing.”

So the Green Beret NCO reached out to a friend in Kabul. “He was like, ‘hey man, this is, this is how it works. These units are controlling these access points.’ And he said, ‘you know, reach out to see who’s there, build contacts with them, and then see if they’ll vouch for your people and get them in and that’s what we did.”

Soon, the Green Berets were in contact with the family members, offering advice and helping guide them past Taliban checkpoints, toward contacts at Hamid Karzai International Airport who would let them in. They helped move people to safe houses and transport them when the time was right. But it wasn’t easy and not every attempt to reach the airport worked. Eventually, though, the families of the Afghan team members made it out of the country.

News of the initial success quickly spread. “Once we were successful getting those people out, it started,” said the Green Beret NCO of a torrent of requests for help. “Everyone else was like, hey, my friend’s family is there. Or, some general or colonel would be, okay my interpreter is stuck there. And they just kept asking me if you can get these people, and the other people, and it just became the larger operation overnight.” It wasn’t easy at first “because they were overwhelmed,” said the Green Beret NCO. “Everybody was doing the same thing. So it just happened to be like, who could get there? How we can identify them? And who would vouch for him. And we did that.”

Helping hands

The Green Berets at Fort Bragg also worked with friends in several private organizations trying to rescue American citizens and Afghan allies. They worked, directly and indirectly, to help move people to safety with veteran-run volunteer groups like Pineapple Express, Digital Dunkirk and Team America, said the Green Beret NCO.

The pleas have become increasingly desperate. “Those people are stuck in a bad situation because they can’t do it the legitimate route through the Taliban or they’ll be hunted,” said the Green Beret NCO. “And they’re currently being hunted and killed. “We’ve got videos of it, proof of like all the atrocities happening, these people being, you know, shot with their families in their homes or [the Taliban] going door to door looking for people,” he said. “It’s happening 24/7. What I had to look at for the last two weeks, you know, it was eating me alive.”

Duty still calls

Even as all this was going on, the Green Berets had their day jobs. For the NCO, it was running the transition workshop. Elk was there to talk to the group about post-traumatic stress disorder and resilience, and then set up individual sessions for anyone wanting additional help. For the Green Berets at Fort Bragg, the timing could not have been better, and 17 Green Berets came forward. “That’s unheard of to have that many people, during a couple-day period, reach out for help for behavioral health,” said the Green Beret NCO.

That response, he said, was the result of steadily building pressure on the force, exacerbated by the rescue effort. “It was just like everything at once,” he said. “Transitioning our military is one of the most stressful points of your entire life. And then you had a pandemic and Afghanistan on top of it. So imagine that it’s just one relentless catastrophe after another, stacking up and all the other crap you’re already dealing with prior to it also. It definitely sent a lot of people over the edge.”

Elk treated those she could, but the slots quickly filled, which she said is typical for the SOF units she has been working with over the past decade. “I am going to go back to help the others,” she said.

A very bad day

Meanwhile, there was more misery to come. At Fort Bragg, as in so many other places, Aug. 26 was a day of sadness and grief as an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. troops and 169 Afghans. It was especially tense at Bragg, because there were families being rescued at the Abbey gate, the site of the bombing. And Marines who were working with the Green Berets. Two families at Abbey gate made it into the airport, but a Marine they were working with was killed. “You feel helpless and hopeless that, you know, you can’t be there do something and like you know contribute and then you’re just sitting on the other side of the world, on a phone going out, you know, should have would have could have, so it was, it was horrible,” said the Green Beret NCO.

The mission continues

To date, the Green Berets at Fort Bragg helped rescue about 400 people, said the Green Beret NCO. But as the sleepless nights wear on, and the ability to effect change diminished with the withdrawal of U.S. troops on Aug. 31, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are hitting hard. “I feel good getting the families we got out,” he said. “We did our part but now it’s like, there’s humanitarian crisis.”

There are still another 500 people on the Green Beret’s waiting list. But with no U.S. presence on the ground in Afghanistan, the messages are still coming, while the evacuation effort has wound down “to a slow trickle,” said the Green Beret NCO. “It is finding any way necessary” to help them escape, he said. “Whether it was across land or by any type of aircraft that could fly out of Afghanistan, And we’ve only got probably about a dozen people out after that date, and then now it’s just like coming to a standstill.”

The challenge now is working under the legal framework for evacuation while still trying to help and not putting people at risk. “You can’t support illegal immigration,” he said. “So, you have to do everything by the book. And we don’t want to be playing chess with other people’s lives over there. I mean it’s not a video game, it’s real life. So you’re not on the ground, you can’t see what’s happening so you have to trust what the people over there are telling you, and then give them the best advice possible but let them make the decision. We facilitate their decision making based on what we know and understand that come together with a unified decision of, are you willing to accept this risk but we’re not telling them what to do.”

The Green Berets have vowed to continue to help. Elk says that’s one reason she is going to return to Bragg. “Their values are ‘never leave a comrade behind,’ and ‘to free the oppressed’ but the situation created the opposite scenario,” she said. “It is easy to understand why things were different. Daily operations were being carried out at a high level of performance as always while in the background an existentially heavy 24-hour sustained mission weighed on the human hearts and minds. “This incongruence, living against their ethos/motto, coupled with the understandable feelings of helplessness and hopelessness to directly act on or ‘right’ the situation, has potential to greatly impact their psychological and emotional health,” she said. “So it’s more important than ever to equip them with straightforward, operator-friendly resilience training to maintain their high level of performance.”

Article from the Army Times

Losing Afghanistan

Taliban insurgents control about half of Afghanistan’s district centers, the senior US general said on Wednesday, indicating a rapidly deteriorating security situation. Insecurity has been growing in Afghanistan in recent weeks, largely spurred by fighting in its provinces as US-led foreign troops complete their withdrawal and the Taliban launch major offensives, taking districts and border crossings. “Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

Milley said more than 200 of the 419 district centers were under Taliban control. Last month, he had said the Taliban controlled 81 district centers in Afghanistan. While the insurgent group had not taken over any provincial capitals, they were putting pressure on the outskirts of half of them, he said.

The government has accused the Taliban of destroying hundreds of government buildings in 29 of the country’s 34 provinces. The Taliban deny accusations of extensive destruction by their fighters. Fifteen diplomatic missions and the NATO representative in Afghanistan urged the Taliban on Monday to halt its offensives just hours after the rival Afghan sides failed to agree on a ceasefire at a peace meeting in Doha.

Biden has set a formal end to the US military mission in Afghanistan for Aug. 31 as he looks to disengage from a conflict that began after al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. Almost all US troops, except those protecting the embassy in Kabul and airport, have left the country.

‘Ashley’s War’ and the story of the women of special operations is coming to the big screen

In August 2011, Lt. Ashley White Stumpf joined an entirely female Army cultural support team, or CST, that would soon deploy to Afghanistan into combat alongside various elite elements of the military’s special operations community.

As a member of the specialized CST-2, White’s job, highly confidential and done during an era when women were barred from combat arms professions, was to build and improve relationships with Afghan civilians, an especially pertinent role due to cultural limitations placed on Afghan women that prevented them from speaking with men who were not family members.

But going on the same missions as Green Berets, Army Rangers, and Navy SEALs meant the women of CST-2, while not under the umbrella of combat arms, were encountering the same type of intense risks as their male counterparts.

On Oct. 22, 2011, while conducting a patrol of a compound in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, an Army Ranger accompanied by White and other members of CST-2 stepped on an improvised explosive device that triggered a daisy chain of IEDs.

Ashley White died in the blast, the first member of CST-2 to be killed in combat. The Ohio native, just 24 at the time, would be posthumously awarded the Bronze Star.

In 2015, best-selling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon brought Ashley’s story to life in “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield.” Now, more than five years later, that story is in development for a big screen adaptation courtesy of a production team that includes Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon, director Lesli Linka Glatter (”Homeland”), screenwriter Molly Smith Metzler (”Shameless,” “Orange is the New Black”), and producer Bruna Papandrea (“Gone Girl”).

Lemmon, whose upcoming book “The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice” documents an all-female Kurdish militia that battled ISIS in Syria, spoke with Military Times about the process of writing “Ashley’s War,” the role of CSTs, and shattering previously held stigmas of women in combat.

How did you first learn about CST-2 and what transpired on Ashley’s deployment? It actually started with hosting an event at the Council on Foreign Relations. I was full-time there at the time. There was a Marine veteran who was talking about these young women who were on night raids and operations in 2011.

And I knew Afghanistan, but I somehow didn’t realize that there were women on special operations missions. I became absolutely focused on finding out more, so I started searching. There was very little out there — a press release, maybe five or six short clips, and an obituary that mentioned the Ranger Regiment. I wanted to know more about who these people were, what they were doing on these operations, and how we didn’t know more about them as a country.

Can you touch on what CST-2′s mission entailed, as well as what the team members thought of the initiative? Over the course of writing the book, “Ashley’s War” ultimately became a story of friendship, love and valor, and that was a result of spending hours and hours with a group of young women who simply answered when their country asked.

As you know, in conservative and traditional societies, where men cannot speak with women who are not related by blood or marriage without giving offense, if you want to understand what was happening and wanted to access the entire population, you had to have women. And so, this team was recruited from across the Army Guard and Reserve to go on some of the most important — and most dangerous — missions the military was undertaking. These women were recruited in March 2011, they trained in the summer, and by August, those who were on direct action missions were seeing the kind of combat experienced by less than 5 percent of the entire U.S. military.

There are many long-established, misguided stigmas when it comes to women in combat. What did your experience teach you about the nature of those perceptions? How did you see them evolve? What it taught me was that those who were closest to these women had enormous respect for them. It was about serving with purpose and accomplishing the mission. The men I met — Rangers who had done 13, 14, 15 deployments post-9/11 — made it clear that it was only about who can help you accomplish the mission and make it back home.

In the book there were certain special operators who were skeptical in the beginning, but then they take one of these CST members out with them and this woman helps find the thing or person they’ve been looking for because they can access quarters that would never have been within reach. This was a group of women, who, when officially banned from ground combat, were seeing intense combat experienced only by a small fraction of the military — all while serving with valor and with enormous respect to the people with whom they went out every night. America had no idea they existed and no idea what to do with them when they came home — the combat ban was still in place. So, I just felt compelled to tell a story that illuminated the world that these young women had built for themselves.

It’s been a journey to get this project done, so we’re absolutely thrilled — over five years later — to be here, with America that much closer to seeing this story.

Article from the Military Times

Fallen Ranger died freeing Taliban’s prisoners last year

An Army Ranger killed in action last winter was fatally wounded during a raid on a Taliban detention facility in Badghis province, Afghanistan, that freed 34 people, including a dozen children and six women, according to an investigation released through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Sgt. Cameron A. Meddock, 26, was fatally wounded by small-arms gunfire Jan. 13, 2019, as multiple combatants fled from a concealed position that he and other Rangers were approaching during the nighttime raid, the investigators wrote. Meddock died four days later at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Despite the loss, investigators praised the surgical team that medically evacuated Meddock from the battlefield and kept him from succumbing to his wounds on three occasions when his pulse dropped mid-flight.

Anticipating Meddock’s pulse would drop again, the surgical team aboard a helicopter placed a balloon catheter in his aorta, which was then inflated to push blood to vital organs. The challenging procedure prevented Meddock from experiencing another dangerous drop in blood pressure during the flight to Bagram Airfield.

During the raid itself, Meddock was assigned to a quick reaction force. He was on his second deployment to Afghanistan as a member of 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.

The Rangers departed Bagram on the night of Jan. 12, 2019, cross-loading aircraft at an unnamed waypoint, and infiltrated via helicopter very early the next morning. Upon landing in Badghis province’s Jawand district, the team received small-arms fire and the guards at the Taliban detention facility released their prisoners. The QRF element that included Meddock was asked by the main assault force to help round up the people who were “egressing from the prison, including prisoners and combatants,” the investigation reads.

The QRF also was tasked to pursue a group of six people who ran 500 meters northwest of the target compound. The group of six appeared to be hiding between a tree and the steep banks of a river. As the QRF closed in, they performed a “callout” intended to get “the Afghan personnel hiding to come out peacefully,” the investigation reads.

After the callout, the QRF soldiers began walking toward the six Afghans, only to be met by gunfire that ultimately struck Meddock in his head. The Rangers returned fire and called in a danger-close fire mission, though the type of munitions used were redacted in the investigation. The gunfight ended in six enemy fighters killed in action, the investigation stated. Eight other enemy fighters were killed elsewhere during the raid.

Meddock was immediately swept for injuries and a medic performed a cricothyrotomy to establish a clear airway for him to breathe. The soldiers were unable to find a pulse but dressed his head wound and alternated doing chest compressions on their gravely wounded comrade. They wrapped him in a hypothermia blanket and secured him to a litter.

It took roughly 25 minutes for a medical evacuation helicopter to land and whisk Meddock off the battlefield, according to the investigation’s timeline. Following the MedEvac, the QRF continued the mission, linked up with the assault force and escorted a group of six women and 12 children off the objective area, the investigation stated. Two Taliban fighters were also detained. Whether the women and children were detainees or family members of the guards was not stated in the investigation, but they were listed among the more than 30 non-Taliban fighters released.

Aboard the MedEvac helicopter, a surgical resuscitation team found that Meddock was not experiencing a great deal of blood loss, but his heart rate could not be measured. They used a slew of techniques, including chest compressions, blood transfusions and epinephrine to resuscitate him, ultimately normalizing his vital signs and bringing his pulse back.

Critically, the investigation noted, the surgical team anticipated the blood pressure would continue to be an issue and placed an endovascular balloon in Meddock’s aorta that could be inflated to regulate his blood flow. The surgical team inflated the balloon as they gained and lost altitude during their flight to Craig Joint Theater Hospital at Bagram Airfield, a Role III treatment facility, the investigation stated.

Upon landing, an unconscious Meddock was transferred to an ambulance on the flight line and brought into the hospital for a CT scan to determine the extent of his head injuries. A decision was made to further evacuate the young Ranger to Germany, where he would ultimately pass away four days later.

At the time of his death, media outlets reported that Meddock and his wife were expecting their first child, a boy, to be born in May. Meddock’s death came just months after another 2-75 Ranger, Sgt. Leandro Jasso, was killed during a nighttime raid on al-Qaida senior leader associates in November 2018.

Article from the Army Times

RIP Ron Shurer MOH

Green Beret SSG Ronald J. Shurer II, who earned the Medal of Honor during a chaotic firefight on an Afghan mountain, died Thursday at the age of 41 after a long struggle with cancer.

Mr. Shurer was a Special Forces medic in 2008, on Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 3336, Special Operations Task Force-11, when his team was ordered to helicopter into the Shok Valley, near the Pakistan border, climb 1,000 feet up a sheer incline and kill or capture a top leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group.As the ODA navigated through the valley, a series of insurgent sniper fire, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms and machine-gun fire forced the unit into a defensive fighting position. Around that time, Shurer received word that his forward-assault element was also pinned down at another location, and the forward team had sustained multiple casualties.

With disregard for his safety, Shurer moved quickly through a hail of bullets toward the base of the mountain to reach the pinned-down forward element. While on the move, Shurer stopped to treat a wounded teammate’s neck injury caused by shrapnel from a recent rocket-propelled grenade blast.

After providing aid, Shurer spent the next hour fighting across several hundred meters and killing multiple insurgents. Eventually, Shurer arrived to support the pinned-down element and immediately rendered aid to four critically wounded U.S. Soldiers and 10 injured Afghan commandos until teammates arrived.

For the next five and a half hours, Shurer braved enemey fire and received gunshot wounds moving from wounded to wounded all along helping keeping the large insurgent force at bay while simultaneously providing care to his wounded teammates. Overall, Shurer’s actions helped save the lives of all wounded casualties under his care. Shurer also helped evacuate three critically wounded, non-ambulatory teammates down a near-vertical, 60-foot cliff – all while avoiding rounds of enemy gunfire and falling debris caused by numerous air strikes.

It was this action against over whelming enemy forces fighting from superior positions of advantages that led to SSG Shurer's Medal of Honor Award.

Ronald J. Shurer II born in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Dec. 7, 1978 (Pearl Harbor Day). Moving to Washington State then following his high school graduation in 1997, Shurer attended Washington State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business economics. Later that year, he enrolled in a master’s degree program at Washington State. But after the cowardly terrorist events of Sept. 11, 2001, Shurer was inspired to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, grandfather and parents by serving in the U.S. armed forces.

Shurer entered the U.S. Army in 2002, began the Special Forces Qualification Course and after earning his green beret, Shurer was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group in June 2006. Shurer deployed to Afghanistan from August 2006 to March 2007, and again from October 2007 to May 2008.

After separating from the Army in May 2009, Shurer was hired by the U.S. Secret Service and was stationed in Phoenix, Arizona, to investigate financial crimes, perform advance work and protect the president, vice president and high-level dignitaries. In May 2014 he moved to Washington, D.C., as part of the U.S. Secret Service Counter Assault Team, the tactical team that works to suppress, divert and neutralize any coordinated attack against the president of the United States.

Shurer’s awards and decorations include the Medal of Honor, the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal with Bronze Clasp and two Loops, the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with two Bronze Service Stars, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon with Numeral “2,” the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the NATO Medal, the Valorous Unit Award, the Meritorious Unit Commendation, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Parachutist Badge and the Special Forces Tab.

Green Beret Killed in Afghanistan - RIP SFC Mike Goble

Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Goble, 33, a senior intelligence sergeant assigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group died 23 December 2019 from injuries sustained during combat operations the day prior, Army Special Operations Command said in a statement. This was his third deployment to Afghanistan, in addition to deployments to Argentina, Guatemala, Colombia and South Korea.

“Sgt. 1st Class Goble was more than just a member of the 7th Special Forces Group, he was a brother to us, and a beloved family member to the Northwest Florida community,” said Col. John W. Sannes, 7th Group commander, in a prepared statement. “We will honor our brother’s sacrifice and provide the best possible care to his family. We ask that you keep his family and teammates in your thoughts and prayers," Sannes added.

SFC Goble was on an operation seizing a Taliban weapons cache when he was killed. He was with his unit when its members discovered an undisclosed amount of Taliban weapons in Kunduz province, said Eric Pahon, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Pahon said Goble and others were clearing out the cache when an explosion happened. Pahon said the Taliban wrongly claimed that the service members were in a convoy and targeted by a roadside bomb during a raid.

There have been 17 American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan this year, of which 14 belonged to the Army, according to Defense Department figures. The number of wounded in action exceeds 180. U.S. and Taliban representatives are engaged in ongoing peace negotiations, which President Donald Trump previously ended in September following another Taliban attack that killed an Army paratrooper near Bagram Air Base. The talks were restarted earlier in December.

Goble was born on Jan. 13, 1986, and raised in Westwood, New Jersey, according to the Army. He enlisted directly into the service as a Special Forces candidate in July 2004. After completing basic training and Airborne School, Goble attended and later graduated from Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in February 2007. Goble also deployed to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. During those deployments, he served as a weapons sergeant. Goble then served as a sniper instructor from 2012 through 2016, before returning to 7th Group as an intelligence sergeant.

Over the course of his career, Goble attended a variety of Army schools, including Special Forces Sniper Course, basic and advanced Military Freefall Course, Military Freefall Advanced Tactical Insertion Course, Joint Armorer Course, Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant Course and Special Operations Force Surveillance Operator Course. His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Commendation Medal with Valor device, the Valorous Unit Award, the Special Forces Tab, Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Basic Airborne and Military Free Fall Jumpmaster badges.

President Trump awards Medal of Honor to Master Sgt. Matthew Williams

President Donald J. Trump awarded the nation’s highest combat medal to Master Sgt. Matthew O. Williams during a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. Williams, a Green Beret weapons sergeant from 3rd Special Forces Group, was presented the award for his actions “going above and beyond the call of duty” during an April 6, 2008, mission in Nuristan province, Afghanistan, that came to be known as the Battle of Shok Valley. “Matt’s heroism ensured that not a single American died in the Battle of Shok Valley,” Trump said during the ceremony. “Matt is without question and without reservation one of the bravest soldiers and people I’ve ever met.”

Trump commended Williams for his “unyielding service” and “unbreakable resolve” during the battle, as well as the five other deployments he made to Afghanistan and the one he made to Africa. Throughout the 2008 battle, Williams exposed himself to enemy fire multiple times on steep and challenging terrain. His team was pitted against an overwhelming enemy force that held the high-ground and was able to rain rocket propelled grenades, sniper rounds and small arms fire onto the Green Beret team and their Afghan National Army Commando partners.

Williams carried wounded teammates down the mountainside, including his team sergeant, and “shielded the injured from falling rubble as American warplanes bombed insurgent positions above and rocked the mountain from top to bottom," the president said at the ceremony.

At one point, while dropping casualties off at a collection point, Williams engaged and killed two insurgents he spotted advancing on the position to take advantage of the wounded and disoriented friendly forces.

Over the course of a seven-hour firefight, Williams “valiantly protected the wounded," Trump said, until the team was able to completely evacuate from the target area inside CH-47 Chinook helicopters. His Medal of Honor citation states that Williams’ actions helped save the lives of four critically wounded soldiers and prevented the lead element of the assault force from being overrun when they were ambushed at the outset of the mission.

Members of Williams’ Green Beret team from that 2008 operation, as well as one of their Afghan interpreters, were present at the White House ceremony. Williams will continue to serve in the Army on active-duty after Wednesday’s ceremony, a prospect that he’s looking forward to, he told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday. The medal, he said, represents something much bigger than himself. “The medal itself is more of a story of teamwork, never quitting, trusting in one another and doing what is right, what needs to be done,” Williams said Tuesday. “As far as the day to day goes, I am hoping to return back to the unit — get back to my team — and continue training and get my current team ready for whatever comes next for us," he added.

Article from Army Times

Latest Green Beret Casualty - SFC Joshua Beale, 3rd Special Forces Group

The Pentagon on Wednesday released the name of an Army Green Beret who was killed Tuesday 22 January 2019 during combat operations in central Afghanistan. Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Joshua “Zach” Beale, 32, died in Uruzgan Province after succumbing to wounds sustained from small arms fire. He was assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group, out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This was Beale’s fourth overseas tour, and his third tour to Afghanistan.

“Joshua was a smart, talented and dedicated member of 3rd SFG (A) and the special operations community," Col. Nathan Prussian, 3rd Group’s commander, said in a statement provided to Army Times. “He will be greatly missed by everyone who had the fortunate opportunity to know him.” Beale was a native of Carrollton, Virginia, and had more than seven years of service in the Army. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in criminal justice from Old Dominion University in 2008 and enlisted in 2011. He attended basic training and airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Beale then graduated from the Special Forces Qualification Course in 2013 and was subsequently assigned to 3rd Group.

His awards and decorations include three Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart, a Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the NATO Medal, the Special Forces Tab, Ranger Tab, Parachutist Badge and the Combat Infantry Badge. Beale was posthumously promoted to sergeant first class. He is survived by his wife and two children.

Beale’s death comes less than a week after Sgt. Cameron Meddock, an Army Ranger, died from wounds he suffered while conducting combat operations in Afghanistan’s Badghis province. The Taliban are also currently holding peace talks with an American diplomatic team in Doha, Qatar, in order to reach a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan.

Article from the Army Times

Green Beret Charged with Murder

After eight years, two investigations and the intervention of a congressman, Maj. Matthew Golsteyn is being charged with murder in the death of an Afghan man during a 2010 deployment. Golsteyn’s commander “has determined that sufficient evidence exists to warrant the referral of charges against him,” U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Lt. Col. Loren Bymer told Army Times in a brief email statement Thursday. “Major Golsteyn is being charged with the murder of an Afghan male during his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan,” Bymer wrote.

The major’s attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, told Army Times that he and his client learned of the charges on Thursday as well, and that the murder charge carries with it the possibility of a death penalty. Stackhouse called his client a “humble servant-leader who saved countless lives, both American and Afghan, and has been recognized repeatedly for his valorous actions.”

Bymer confirmed that Golsteyn has been recalled to active duty and is under the command of the USASOC headquarters company. An intermediary commander will review the warrant of preferred charges to determine if the major will face an Article 32 hearing that could lead to a court-martial. That commander has 120 days to make that decision. Golsteyn had been placed on voluntary excess leave, an administrative status for soldiers pending lengthy administrative proceedings, Bymer said. He is not being confined at this time.

The path to these charges has been a winding one. Golsteyn, a captain at the time, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 with 3rd Special Forces Group. During the intense Battle of Marja, explosives planted on a booby-trapped door killed two Marines and wounded three others who were working with the major’s unit. During those heated days, Golsteyn earned a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor, when he helped track down a sniper targeting his troops, assisted a wounded Afghan soldier and helped coordinate multiple airstrikes.

He would be awarded that medal at a 2011 ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The award was later approved for an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor. But both the medal and his coveted Special Forces tab would be stripped from him due to an investigation that eventually closed in 2014 without any charges.

An Army board of inquiry recommended a general discharge for Golsteyn and found no clear evidence the soldier violated the rules of engagement while deployed in 2010. This would have allowed Golsteyn to retain most of his retirement benefits under a recommended general discharge under honorable conditions. Though he was cleared of a law of armed conflict violation, the board found Golsteyn’s conduct as unbecoming an officer.

Golsteyn was out of Special Forces and in a legal limbo as he awaited a discharge. That could have been the end of it, but in mid-2015, Army documents surfaced, showing that Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers during a polygraph test that he had killed an alleged Afghan bomb-maker and later conspired with others to destroy the body. Those documents were part of a 2011 report filed by an Army investigator, Special Agent Zachary Jackson, who reported that Golsteyn said after the Marines were killed in the February blast that his unit found bomb-making materials nearby, detained the suspected bomb-maker and brought him back to their base.

A local tribal leader identified the man as a known Taliban bomb-maker. The accused learned of the leader’s identification, which caused the tribal leader to fear he would kill him and his family if released. Trusting the leader and having also seen other detainees released, Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers that he and another soldier took the alleged bomb-maker off base, shot him and buried his remains. He also allegedly told the interviewers that on the night of the killing, he and two other soldiers dug up the body and burned it in a trash pit on base.

Stackhouse has previously called this alleged admission a “fantasy” that his client confessed to shooting an unarmed man. Then, in late 2016, during an interview with Fox News, Golsteyn admitted to a version of the incidents involving the killing of the alleged Afghan bomb-maker. The Army opened a second investigation near the end of 2016.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, himself a Marine veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, stepped in on Golsteyn’s behalf, writing a letter to the Army secretary and making scathing public comments about the case, calling the Army’s investigation “retaliatory and vindictive.” The congressman called on Army leadership to “fix this stupidity,” describing Golsteyn as “a distinguished and well regarded Green Beret.”

Taliban Ambush Kills 3 Czech Soldiers

A Taliban suicide bomber killed three Czech soldiers as they were patrolling the Parwan’s provincial capital of Charikar today. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack, and said it occurred after Afghan and Coalition forces conducted a night raid. Resolute Support, NATO’s command in Afghanistan, confirmed that three Czech soldiers were killed, and one American and two Afghan National Army soldiers were wounded in the attack. The Czech Republic, one of 29 NATO nations, joined the Alliance, March 12, 1999. The Czech Republic contributes more than 280 service members to the Resolute Support mission.

The Taliban, in a statement released on its official website, Voice of Jihad, claimed that 15 US soldiers were killed “following a nighttime raid.” The Taliban routinely inflates the number of Afghan and foreign casualties that are inflicted during its operations. The Taliban has successfully targeted Czech soldiers operating in Parwan in the past. In July 2014, a Taliban suicide bomber killed four Czech troops in an attack in Charikar.

Parwan province hosts Bagram Air Base, the largest NATO facility in Afghanistan. The Taliban has teamed up with al Qaeda to attack Bagram Air Base several times in the past. The Taliban remains active in Parwan. Of Parwan’s 10 distrcts, five (Kohi Safi, Sayd Khel, Shinwari, Sia Gird/Ghorbund and Surkhi Parsa) are currently contested. The Taliban uses areas that it controls in these contested districts to launch attacks in both the provincial capital and Bagram Air Base. Late last year, the Taliban occupied the Fanduqistan Valley in Parwan’s Ghorbund district after Afghan forces fled following a brief firefight. The area is only 30 miles north of Kabul City, Afghanistan’s capital.

Article from the Long War Journal

Fallen Air Force combat controller to receive Medal of Honor for 2002 Battle of Roberts Ridge

Tech Sgt. John Chapman, the combat controller who was killed during the fierce Battle of Roberts Ridge in Afghanistan in 2002, will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the White House announced Friday. President Donald Trump will present the medal during a White House ceremony Aug. 22. Chapman’s wife, Valerie Nessel, and his family will attend the ceremony.

Chapman will be the first airman to receive a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, for actions since the Vietnam War. He will be honored for his actions on March 4, 2002, on Takur Ghar mountain in Afghanistan, according to the White House. Chapman’s award comes just three months after retired Navy Master Chief Britt Slabinski, a former Navy SEAL, received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the same battle. The award for Slabinski stirred some controversy when it was announced, as news reports surfaced that the SEALs left the badly wounded Chapman on the mountaintop, thinking he was dead.

On March 4, 2002, during a helicopter insertion, Chapman’s aircraft came under heavy enemy fire and was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, according to the White House. One teammate was ejected from the aircraft, and the crippled helicopter crash landed in the valley below. Chapman and the remaining joint special operations team members voluntarily returned to the snow-capped mountain, into the heart of a known enemy stronghold, in an attempt to rescue their stranded teammate, according to the White House. Chapman charged into enemy fire through harrowing conditions, seized an enemy bunker, and killed its enemy occupants.

He then moved from cover to engage a machine gun firing on his team from a second bunker. While engaging this position, he was severely wounded by enemy gunfire. Despite severe wounds, he continued to fight relentlessly, sustaining a violent engagement with multiple enemy personnel before paying the ultimate sacrifice, according to the White House.

Chapman is credited with saving the lives of his teammates, according to the White House. “Tech. Sgt. John Chapman earned America’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor, for the actions he performed to save fellow Americans on a mountain in Afghanistan more than 16 years ago,” Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said in a statement. “He will forever be an example of what it means to be one of America’s best and bravest airmen.”

Chapman originally received an Air Force Cross, the second-highest valor award an airman can receive, for his heroism during the March 4, 2002, battle against al Qaida fighters. But newly enhanced video from a Predator drone showed more evidence that Chapman was not dead, but instead unconscious, when the team of Navy SEALs withdrew from the battle under withering fire. Slabinski told the New York Times in 2016 that he crawled to Chapman but detected no response and thought he was dead before he retreated down the mountain’s face.

The Air Force’s video analysis suggested Chapman regained consciousness and resumed fighting al Qaida members approaching on three sides. Chapman is believed to have crawled into a bunker, shot and killed an enemy fighter charging at him, and killed another enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat. This new evidence prompted former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James in 2016 to recommend his Air Force Cross be upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

Retired Delta Force commander Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell was quoted by the Times saying that if anyone thought Chapman was still alive, “we would have been trying to move heaven and earth to get him out of there.” Harrell also cautioned anyone against armchair-quarterbacking the harrowing events, or the men who endured them. “It’s easy to say, ‘well, I’d never leave someone behind,’” Harrell was quoted as saying. “It’s a lot harder when you’re getting your ass shot off.” Chapman joined the Air Force in September 1985 as an information systems operator, according to the White House. He later volunteered to be a combat controller and was an expert in reconnaissance operations, air traffic control, and terminal attack control operations.

“Tech. Sgt. John Chapman fought tenaciously for his nation and his teammates on that hill in Afghanistan,” Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein said in a statement. “His inspiring story is one of selfless service, courage, perseverance, and honor as he fought side by side with his fellow soldiers and sailors against a determined and dug-in enemy. Tech. Sgt. Chapman represents all that is good, all that is right, and all that is best in our American airmen.” The Medal of Honor for Chapman is a “huge deal” for the Air Force special tactics community, Master Sgt. Robert Gutierrez, an Air Force combat controller who himself was recognized with the Air Force Cross, recently told reporters. “We are very fortunate to even have someone who’s already up for the Medal of Honor: John Chapman — huge deal for us," he said.

Article from the Air Force Times

USAF Combat Controller TSgt John Chapman, approved for MOH

Tech. Sgt. John Chapman, the combat controller who was killed during the fierce Battle of Roberts Ridge in Afghanistan in 2002, will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Chapman would be the first airman to receive a Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, for actions since the Vietnam War. Chapman originally received an Air Force Cross, the second-highest valor award an airman can receive, for his heroism during the March 4, 2002, battle against al Qaida fighters.

But newly-enhanced video from a Predator drone showed more evidence that Chapman was not dead, but instead unconscious, when a team of Navy SEALs withdrew from the battle under withering fire. The video analysis suggested Chapman regained consciousness and resumed fighting al Qaida members approaching on three sides. Chapman is believed to have crawled into a bunker, shot and killed an enemy fighter charging at him, and killed another enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

This new evidence prompted former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James in 2016 to recommend his Air Force Cross be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. The video analysis suggested Chapman regained consciousness and resumed fighting al Qaida members approaching on three sides. Chapman is believed to have crawled into a bunker, shot and killed an enemy fighter charging at him, and killed another enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

This new evidence prompted former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James in 2016 to recommend his Air Force Cross be upgraded to the Medal of Honor. The helicopter left the area and made an emergency landing seven kilometers away, the citation said. Chapman contacted an AC-130 gunship to secure the area and provide close-air support for the team, and then directed the gunship to look for the missing SEAL.

Chapman also “requested, coordinated and controlled the helicopter that extracted the stranded team and aircrew members,” the citation said, which limited how much hostile fire the aircrew and team were exposed to. “Without regard for his own life, Sergeant Chapman volunteered to rescue his missing team member from an enemy stronghold,” the citation said. Chapman killed two enemy fighters, and continued advancing to the enemy position. He then engaged a dug-in machine gun nest, at which point the rescue team came under fire from three directions, the citation said.

Chapman exchanged fire with the al Qaida members at close range, with little cover, “until he succumbed to multiple wounds,” the original Air Force Cross citation said. “In his own words, his Navy [SEAL] team leader credits Sergeant Chapman unequivocally with saving the lives of the entire rescue team. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, aggressiveness in the face of the enemy, and the dedication to the service of his country, Sergeant Chapman reflects the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.”

But it now appears he did not die at that point in the battle. The New York Times reported in 2016 that the Air Force’s autopsy analysis found evidence that Chapman woke up and continued fighting. The bullets that killed Chapman struck him at an angle that would have been impossible if he had been lying dead in the position where the SEALs thought he fell. The autopsy analysis also found he had bruises on his forehead, which he could not have received if he was dead, bolstering the theory that he was instead knocked unconscious.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, also sent James a letter in 2016 urging Chapman be awarded the Medal of Honor. “Sgt. Chapman is an American hero who demonstrated courage and selflessness against extraordinary odds and certain death,” Hunter said in the 2016 letter.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein has a framed tribute to Chapman hanging in his Pentagon office, as well as a propeller from Wildfire 54, the MQ-1 Predator that flew over Roberts Ridge during that battle. Chapman was the first combat controller in history to earn the Air Force Cross.

Article from the Air Force Times

The 'Legion of Brothers' that routed the Taliban

The documentary feature film "Legion of Brothers" tells the stories of the handful of US Special Forces soldiers who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, went into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and within a matter of weeks overthrew the Taliban regime. In the public's mind, Special Forces are often confused with the "door kickers" of Special Operations Forces -- such as SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force -- who are the United States' elite counterterrorism operators. In fact, the primary mission of Special Forces, in particular the Army's Green Berets, who are profiled in the film, is to work "by, with and through" local forces on the ground to act as force multipliers. That means that Special Forces embed with local forces and work with them to achieve their common goals.

The Green Berets of US Special Forces 5th Group -- known as "the Legion" -- who led the anti-Taliban campaign represent a textbook case of a successful Special Forces campaign. Five weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a 12-man Green Beret team led by Capt. Mark Nutsch was dropped into Afghanistan where they attached themselves to the army of the Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum. Riding horses into battle -- in a scene that could have played out during the American Civil War -- Nutsch and his team helped lead Dostom's forces to victory against the Taliban forces in the north of Afghanistan. Together, they rode into the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on November 10 where they were greeted as liberators.

Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, Capt. Jason Amerine and his 12-man Green Beret team linked up with an obscure Afghan diplomat named Hamid Karzai. In mid-November 2001, as they moved toward the city of Kandahar, the Taliban's de facto capital in southern Afghanistan, Amerine's team called in airstrikes against advancing Taliban units and more or less obliterated a Taliban column of a thousand men that had been dispatched from Kandahar. It was the Taliban's final play to remain in power. The Taliban surrendered Kandahar on December 5 and the same day, Karzai was appointed to be the next leader of Afghanistan. Few saw then that the United States would still be fighting wars of various kinds a decade and a half later, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq and Syria.

Special Forces continue to play a key role in these wars, in part, because there is no demand signal today from the American public to send large conventional armies into the greater Middle East to fight wars against ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban. This means American involvement in the wars in these countries must be conducted "by, with and through" the local forces on the ground, such as the Afghan army, Iraqi military and Syrian militias allied to the States. And that means a large role for US Special Forces, whose specialty is working with those local forces.

But this raises some serious questions about how much the American public is asking from its Special Forces, who are facing repeated deployments. In "Legion of Brothers," Scott Neil, a Green Beret who was part of a sniper team in Afghanistan in the months after 9/11, explains: "You used to go into a VFW and you had one guy who had one tour. You were like 'Oh, wow.' You hear one guy had two tours. You're like 'Oh, he's a little crazy.' Somebody had three tours -- they're out of their minds. And what you see now is people have five, seven, nine, 10 tours. And they're still going."

This not only puts pressure on Special Forces but also, of course, puts much strain on their families. As Nutsch's wife, Amy, a special needs teacher and mother of four, puts it: "I've had some trying times at home, but managed to get through it. And then I yell at him later, going, 'This is what I have to deal with'." There are no easy answers for how to reduce the pressures on the force and families in an era when there is a great demand for the skills that Special Forces bring to the battlefield.

Special Operations Command -- first under Adm. Eric Olson and then under Adm. Bill McRaven, the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden -- put in place polices that emphasized more predictable deployments, allowing for more predictable blocks of time for servicemen to be with their families. They also started providing more support services for servicemen and their families.

Story from CNN

Green Beret Earns Silver Star for Afghanistan Action

On Feb. 1, U.S. Army Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Brian Seidl was presented the Silver Star, becoming the third member of his 59-man team to be awarded the medal for actions during the Battle of Boz Qandahari, which began on the night of Nov. 2, 2016, and cost the lives of two of Seidl’s teammates.

The battle was fought in a village surrounded by steep cliffs in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan. One team member later described the heavily fortified village as “something like a castle.” The team and its Afghan army counterparts arrived in the village after an hour trek through waist-high mud and were clearing compounds when they came under attack.

“We heard a distinctive thud,” Seidl recalled in an Army press release. “That’s when the first grenade detonated.” The blast, which injured several Afghan soldiers and two Americans, one mortally, was followed by a barrage of enemy fire from all directions. Seidl and his team leader, Capt. Andrew Byers, sprinted toward the casualties and pulled two of them out of the kill zone. Meanwhile, a Green Beret went down elsewhere in the village with five gunshot wounds to his legs, hip, hand, and wrist.

The team’s final objective was a compound blocked by what Seidl described as a “huge metal gate.” As casualties mounted, Seidl and Byers first attempted to breach the gate with grenades. When that didn’t work, Byers tried kicking the gate open, at which point he was mortally wounded. The Green Berets and their Afghan allies managed to enter another compound, but with one-third of the team either killed or wounded, they were forced to hunker down and hold their ground until a quick reaction force arrived. Small arms fire and grenades continued to rain in from everywhere. “For two hours we fought in that compound,” Seidl said. [We] fought for our lives.”

The fighting continued even as the team exfiltrated the objective across approximately 800 meters of open territory and a medevac helicopter landed to retrieve the wounded. Byers died from his wounds during the flight out and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star. Due to the intensity of the enemy fire, the second medevac helicopter was unable to land and the operators were forced to push forward another 300 meters to another landing zone. Seidl and another teammate found a donkey and loaded it with Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Gloyer, the soldier who had been mortally wounded by the initial grenade blast. “I know we’ve taken losses in the past,” Seidl told the Army. “But I don’t know that we’ve ever taken a loss like this in quite some times, where a team is hit this hard.”

The mission concluded the following morning, on Nov. 3, after every member of the team had been evacuated. According to the release, 27 Taliban insurgents and three Taliban commanders were killed in the battle. In addition to the three Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars with Valor, four Army Commendation Medals with Valor, and six Purple Hearts were also earned during the fight.

“For his efforts taking charge of a severely injured and depleted force, leading them out of a kill zone and establishing a defensive posture that repelled every subsequent attack, for making the tough call on multiple danger-close air strikes near his own position in an effort to eliminate an overwhelming enemy force, and for leading every man under his charge out of a hostile city after inflicting catastrophic damage on multiple Taliban enemies, Seidl was recognized and awarded with the Silver Star Medal,” reads the press release.

Article from Army Times

Two 10th SF Group Green Berets Killed in Afghanistan

A Special Forces soldier from North Carolina was one of two Americans killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, according to the Pentagon. Capt. Andrew D. Byers, 30, of Rolesville, was killed in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the Department of Defense announced Friday. Byers and Sgt. 1st Class Ryan A. Gloyer, 34, of Greenville, Pennsylvania, were killed while trying to clear a Taliban fighting position.

According to reports, more than 30 civilians and four Afghan Special Forces soldiers were also killed. Byers and Gloyer were assigned to Company B, 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colorado.

In a statement Thursday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the news of their deaths and the injuries of fellow American soldiers deeply saddened him. "The two service members killed and the four who suffered injuries were with Afghan forces as part of our train, advise and assist mission," Carter said. "Some of our Afghan partners also died. Our service members were doing their part to help the Afghans secure their own country while protecting our homeland from those who would do us harm.

"On this difficult day, please keep their families, friends and teammates in your thoughts and prayers. We will honor their sacrifice by finishing our important mission in Afghanistan."

Byers had served in the Army for more than eight years, according to officials. He was on his third deployment. He had previously earned the Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart Medal, among other awards and recognition.

Gloyer had served in the Army for more than 11 years, including time spent with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, and was on his fourth deployment, officials said. He had previously earned the Bronze Star Medal with Valor device, Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart Medal, among other awards and recognition.

God Speed Brothers. John 15:13 "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Article from the Fayetteville Observer

RIP Staff Sergeant Michael V. Thompson, KIA Afghanistan

Professor Ken Ebel used to sit on his porch with Matthew V. Thompson and three other students discussing life, books, girlfriends and love over beers.

Such a dialogue continued even after Thompson graduated from Concordia University Irvine and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2011, said Ebel, who retired from the school last year as a biology professor. Thompson hosted a Bible study for his fellow soldiers, discussing with them how to be a man of God while fighting in a war, he wrote in an email to Ebel dated Aug. 9, 2016. "He was dealing with violence, dealing with evil, and how do you bring love in that situation," Ebel said. "He wanted to be a man of God in the situation where he found himself in a violent world. That's been Matt ever since I knew him."

That email would be the last time Ebel heard from Thompson. The 28-year-old Green Beret was killed by a roadside bomb on Aug. 23 in Afghanistan.

Ebel was among more than 100 people who gathered at the Concordia campus Monday morning for a flag-lowering ceremony. Campus security guards raised the flag to the top and then slowly lowered it to half-staff. The flag will remain there for the rest of the week to remember and honor Thompson.

Thompson, a Green Beret (Special Forces) Medical Sergeant, was patrolling in Helmand province as part of Operation Freedom Sentinel when an improvised explosive device detonated. Thompson died from his injuries. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

Thompson, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in theological studies in December 2010, is believed to be the first Concordia University Irvine alum killed in military service, said Steve Leader, the school's veterans resource center manager.

Thompson came to Southern California in 2008 after he transferred to Concordia from Marquette University in Wisconsin. Josh Geisinger has known him since the first day Thompson arrived at Concordia. He was among those who used to chat on Ebel's porch and called Thompson by his nickname, Tito. "Tito's a kind of guy that if you'd never met him before, he would come and sit with you and have a meal with you, even if you didn't know him," Geisinger said. "He wanted to love people as they needed to be loved -- not what was convenient, not what was easy, but what took sacrifice, what took courage. He was very good at loving people."

Life was always an adventure for Thompson, Geisinger said. One time, they took a group of students on a hike up Mount Whitney after the first snow. Thompson led the group, with Geisinger right behind him. Without any proper gear, Thompson slipped on ice every few steps for about two miles, but Geisinger caught him each time until they reached the summit. There was only joy in Thompson's eyes and no fear, Geisinger said.

Their friendship was about pushing each other, he said. "Whenever I was going through a decision, it seemed difficult at the time, but you talk to Tito and he's like, 'You know what to do, you know what's important. You just don't want to do the hard thing,'" Geisinger said. "It was like, 'You're right.'"

Thompson chose to serve in the special forces because he wanted to try something he wasn't sure he could accomplish, challenging himself physically, mentally and emotionally, Geisinger said. Thompson met his wife, Rachel, at Concordia. The two got married five years ago just before Thompson started his military training. "He knew it would be difficult, but he wanted that growth, he wanted that challenge so that he knew what it meant to have pain and knew what it meant to sacrifice," Geisinger said.

Thompson's wife lives in Washington state and couldn't attend Concordia's ceremony on Monday.

Thompson was posthumously awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, according to the U.S. Army. Other decorations he had earned included the Army Commendation Medal and National Defense Service Medal. The deployment was Thompson's first to Afghanistan. He had previously been in Iraq for Operation Inherent Resolve.

Upon hearing of Thompson's death, Ebel, Geisinger and the other members from the porch dialogue got together to talk about their friend over beers and Wisconsin bratwursts. "I hope that we all become more like Matt," Geisinger said.

Article from Military.com

U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan was an ‘exceptional Green Beret’

The service member killed in Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province earlier this week has been identified as Staff Sgt. Matthew V. Thompson, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Thompson’s patrol triggered a roadside bomb Tuesday, wounding another American and six Afghan soldiers.

According to a statement released by the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, U.S. troops were accompanying their Afghan counterparts near the province’s capital of Lashkar Gah when their unit came under attack.

Thompson, 28, of Irvine, Calif., was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces group, according to an Army release. The incident is under investigation. “He was an exceptional Green Beret, a cherished teammate, and devoted husband. His service in Afghanistan and Iraq speak to his level of dedication, courage, and commitment to something greater than himself,” said Lt. Col. Kevin M. Trujillo, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations task force in Afghanistan.

According to the Army release, Thompson enlisted in the Army in 2011 and reported as a medical sergeant to 1st Special Forces Group in 2014. He was on his first stint in Afghanistan when he was killed and had previously deployed to Iraq in support of the U.S.-led war against the Islamic State there. Thompson was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star with a V for valor in combat and the Combat Infantry Badge.

Helmand province has been the site of heavy fighting in recent weeks as Taliban forces have used the summer months to launch multiple offensives across the country. The group is estimated to control well over 50 percent of Helmand, and its pressure on the provincial capital has forced U.S. and NATO troops to shuttle resources to help prop up the embattled Afghan security forces. Despite their gains around the periphery of Lashkar Gah, the Taliban has been unable to enter the city limits in the face of near-constant U.S. and coalition airstrikes.

On Monday, the NATO-led mission announced that 100 U.S. troops had been moved to Lashkar Gah to primarily advise Afghan police in the area. Col. Mike Lawhorn, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Thompson was not a part of the 100-troop detachment. U.S. Special Operations forces have been operating in and around the city since the Taliban began its offensive in the province earlier this summer.

Thompson’s death marks the second combat death in Afghanistan this year. In January, Army Special Forces Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock was killed in a pitched firefight alongside Afghan commandos in Marjah, a city in a fertile area just west of Lashkar Gah.

Helmand province, known as the birthplace of the Taliban and nicknamed Marine-istan following President Obama’s 2009 surge into the country, is an opium-rich area that has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting of the nearly 15-year-old war.

While conflict continues unabated in Helmand province, Taliban forces have also recently made gains in the northern part of the country. In the last few days, Kunduz — the city that briefly fell to the Taliban in October 2015 — has been the site of combat between Afghan security forces and the Taliban.

U.S. helicopter gunships and the small prop-driven aircraft of the fledgling Afghan air force have since helped repulse attacks on the city, and officials from the NATO-led mission were optimistic that the Afghan forces would be able to hold their ground.

Article from the Washington Post

Green Beret denied the Medal of Honor. Will the new Army secretary intervene?

A year after a Special Forces soldier was denied the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top award for valor in combat, a congressman has appealed to the new Army secretary to review the case.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning was sworn in as the service’s top civilian leader last week, and almost immediately received a letter from Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R.-Calif.) about Sgt. 1st Class Earl D. Plumlee. The Green Beret soldier was nominated for the Medal of Honor for his role in repelling a brutal ambush in Afghanistan in 2013. He received recommendations for the prestigious award from several of the military’s most powerful officers, but was ultimately denied last year by then-Army Secretary John McHugh. Plumlee instead received the Silver Star, which is two levels below the Medal of Honor in recognizing combat

The case has been investigated by the Defense Department inspector general’s office and pressed by Hunter, who became a vociferous critic of McHugh in his last year in office. Hunter is looking to resurrect Plumlee’s case now in part by noting that McHugh chose to approve the lower award after learning that Plumlee faced a criminal investigation in the Army for allegedly selling a rifle scope online illegally. That raised questions about whether the service only wants recipients of its top awards who have a sparkling overall record. Plumlee has since been cleared of any charges.

“As a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and having worked many valor cases, I can state that Plumlee’s actions most certainly meet or exceed the criteria for the MoH,” Hunter wrote in a May 19 letter to Fanning. “Further, I encourage you to compare his actions to other MoH recipients — I am confident that you will agree that Plumlee’s actions are significantly underrepresented by the Silver Star award.”

Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, said the service has received Hunter’s letter and “will respond accordingly.” He declined to make additional comment. Plumlee could not be reached for comment.

The inspector general examined the case at the request last fall of Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, and determined that McHugh followed all Army rules in awarding the Silver Star, according to a copy of a May 18 letter from the inspector general’s office to Hunter newly obtained by The Washington Post. But the IG also found that while senior commanders in the field recommended the Medal of Honor — often the largest hurdle to getting approval — the Army’s Senior Army Decorations Board at Fort Knox, Ky., suggested March 28, 2014, that a Silver Star was more appropriate.

The IG found no evidence that officials on the decorations board knew at the time about the investigation by Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID). Plumlee’s brigade commander gave him an administrative letter of reprimand Oct. 20, 2014, for undisclosed misconduct in connection with the rifle scope case, but nonetheless advocated for him getting the Medal of Honor afterward, according to the letter from the IG to Hunter. McHugh decided against that in March 2015, and the service awarded Plumlee the Silver Star two months later.

The new letter from the inspector general’s office to Hunter said that Plumlee told investigators he did not feel cheated by not getting the Medal of Honor and had “no real expectations” about which valor award he might receive. But Plumlee acknowledged that others he serves with believe the criminal investigation “played a significant role in the award recommendation process.” A criminal background check of all potential Medal of Honor recipients is carried out by the military, according to the IG’s letter to Hunter.

Plumlee, a former reconnaissance Marine, was an Army staff sergeant Aug. 28, 2013, when about a dozen insurgents launched an attack on Forward Operating Base Ghazni in eastern Afghanistan. It was initiated with a 400-pound car bomb that battered the eastern side of the installation, allowing enemy attackers to rush onto the base with suicide vests, rifles, grenades and other weapons.

Plumlee had a leading role in blunting the attack, braving enemy fire repeatedly after rushing to the site of the blast in an unarmored pickup truck. It was hit with a 30mm rocket-propelled grenade along the way, but miraculously did not explode. Plumlee exited his vehicle afterward and killed several attackers using his pistol and a hand grenade after his 7.62mm assault rifle wouldn’t work, according to a narrative of his actions that day obtained by The Washington Post.

From there, Plumlee provided suppressing fire to allow fellow Americans to take cover. At least four insurgents detonated suicide vests during the attack, with one peppering Plumlee and another Special Forces soldier with fragmentation from the explosion. Plumlee continued to brave enemy fire afterward to apply tourniquets after a suicide vest wounded Army Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, 24, who ultimately succumbed to his injuries, and a Polish officer, who survived.

Plumlee was nominated for the Medal of Honor about three months later. As his nomination package made its way through the approval process, it received positive recommendations from Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, who is now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; then-Army Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, who is now the four-star Army chief of staff; and then-Army Maj. Gen. A. Scott Miller, who is now believed to be the three-star commander of the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command.

Dunford, the top commander for all U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the time, wrote that Plumlee’s actions “clearly meet the standard” for the Medal of Honor.

Plumlee, a member of 1st Special Forces Group, spoke with pride during his Silver Star ceremony last year about the final moments of the incident, in which he and three fellow soldiers swept through the area to make sure the base was clear of insurgents.

“We were moving as a really aggressive, synced up stack, moving right into the chaos,” Plumlee said, according to an Army news release. “It was probably the proudest moment of my career. Just to be with those guys, at that time, on that day was just awesome.”

Article from the Washington Post

Green Berets honored with Silver Star and eight other valor awards

As the bullets rained down around him, Staff Sgt. Michael Sargent dragged a fallen Afghan soldier to safety. Then, without hesitation or concern about his own safety, the Green Beret entered the courtyard in southern Afghanistan again to recover the body of a second fallen Afghan soldier and help a wounded teammate get to cover.

For his actions on that day in December, Sargent was awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor. Sargent and several other members of A Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group were honored last Friday for their actions during their recent deployment to Afghanistan. 

In all, the soldiers earned the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V device, six Army Commendation Medals with V device, and one Purple Heart. “These men are heroes, plain and simple,” said Maj. Gen. Bret Daugherty, adjutant general of the Washington National Guard, during the ceremony, according to information released by the Army. “They don’t boast. They don’t draw undue attention to themselves. They just get the job done.”

The men of A Company deployed to Afghanistan in July, and they were tasked with developing and partnering with members of the Afghan National Security Forces. Their teammate, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew McClintock, 30, was killed Jan. 5 in hours-long fighting near the city of Marjah, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. McClintock was posthumously promoted and awarded the Silver Star for his actions on that day; McClintock’s wife, Alexandra, has said her husband’s teammates told her he left a compound, under fire, to find a new landing zone so a helicopter could land and evacuate a wounded teammate.

Many of the awards presented last week were to McClintock’s teammates for their actions during that same battle. “The men we honored today, including those who were unable to be with us, represent the best of what is inside all of those who serve this great nation,” said Maj. Aron Horiel, commander of A Company, according to the Army. “It is truly an honor and a privilege to be their commander.”

Sargent, a Special Forces engineer sergeant, was awarded the Silver Star for his actions on Dec. 17. On that day, Sargent was an assault team leader during a clearing operation in Khan Neshin Valley in Helmand province, according to the narrative accompanying his award. Early that morning, Sargent and his fellow Green Berets were accompanying a team of Afghan commandos as they entered a courtyard adjacent to their objective, according to the narrative. A brief firefight broke out, and two Afghan soldiers were killed.

The remaining commandos reported back to their Green Beret mentors. Initial reports were unclear if the two Afghan casualties were killed or wounded, but the Afghans informed the Americans that the courtyard was clear, according to the narrative.

Sargent and three others entered the courtyard to help recover the two Afghan soldiers. After confirming the two men were dead, “the element came under intense automatic weapons fire at very close range from firing positions in a structure adjacent to the courtyard,” according to the narrative.

Two Americans were wounded in the initial burst of fire. That left Sargent and another soldier alone in the courtyard, according to the narrative. “With total disregard for his safety, SSG Sargent moved to the casualty closest to his position, retrieved the body and dragged the deceased [Afghan] soldier out of the courtyard under a hail of gunfire,” the narrative says. “Upon exiting the courtyard to relative safety, SSG Sargent returned into the courtyard without hesitation and recovered the second body and aided the remaining teammate still under fire.”

During this time, a fire to the structure containing the enemy firing position began to burn, setting off “large secondary explosions,” according to the narrative. “Again with total disregard for his safety, SSG Sargent moved through intense enemy fire and secondary explosions and employed two hand grenades into the fighting position to cover the withdrawal of his team members,” the narrative says.

When the enemy tried to “assault out of the fighting positions,” Sargent and his remaining teammate killed five of them, according to the narrative. Sargent “distinguished himself by exceptional heroism,” and “his actions proved critical in achieving relative superiority over determined enemy forces,” Sargent’s Silver Star citation reads.

Article from Army Times, 6 May 2016