After 4 days of sleeping 4-5 hours (with guard shifts in between) on a mountain at night and getting in gunfights every day, I was starting to feel my age. The bad news was that all day long we were getting chatter and intel from the birds overhead that a big group was moving in on us and setting up mortar positions to hit us with. I hate mortars because there's no where to hide or anyone to directly shoot back at. It's a helpless feeling. The ANASF was going through villages kicking in doors trying to get information about where the stolen weapons and nods were. There were a few shots in the villages but nothing directly at us. With all the intel about the mortars and massive group headed our way, HQ did a good job of keeping Apache helicopters in the air to keep their heads down. In the afternoon, the birds had to go back to refuel. That was their chance and they took it. For the first time we started to take fire from two sides. The mountains lit up from the Southern and Eastern ridges. The bullets where flying everywhere. We started laying down our own fire…..60mm mortars, SACR's, SAS's, AK's, M240B, SAW's and M4's were all headed their way. That lasted about an hour until the calvary came in. FA 18's dropped GBU 500's (500lb bombs), Apache helicopters made gun runs and a Specter gun ship even showed up for the party. That put an end to that. Then it was time to count the bodies. I have no idea how none of our guys even took a scrape in that mess but we were all good. Fortunately we didn't get mortar'd either.
