 So Operation Anaconda was six months after 9-11. My team's mission that day was to put in an overwatch position supporting conventional forces in the valley below. Through a series of changes to our mission, we landed on top of the mountain. And as soon as we landed, our helicopter came under RPG, rocket-progranate, fire, and heavy machine gun fire. One of my teammates during that, when all that commotion was going on, fell from the helicopter, and that was Neil Roberts. Our helicopter was airborne when he fell out, and we, the helicopter, through a great effort of the air crew, we crashed, landed in enemy territory in the valley below. After we secured that helicopter, made it safe, I made the decision that we're going to make an immediate rescue attempt to go back and get Neil. And it was then that I led the team back up on top of that mountain, made several attempts, several assaults on enemy fighting positions, using hand grenades, and other bombs from aircraft, very close to my position to affect that rescue. So the battle in all in total was about 23 hours. The actual combat piece of that was probably about 14. We crashed, landed in the valley, had to call another helicopter to come pick us up, and my mission at that point, I had my first mission was observation post, second mission then becomes rescuing. My teammate's third mission was now the rescuer of that air crew. So that's what I did first. I rescued that air crew, got them to a safe location to do that, had to get another helicopter. From that safe location, then I could turn my attention towards Neil. And I had some information that Neil was still, he was alive. So thinking through this, you know, of those people that are in command, that you have to, you have a burden of responsibility towards your people. And I knew Neil was in trouble. I knew he was in the midst of the enemy, a numerically superior force, a numerically superior to me. They had me outgunned. They were at extreme altitudes. They were in extreme temperatures and pretty much operating at the extreme end of all our aircraft capabilities. So a lot of things were not going in our favor. But I didn't think that I could wait until that time when things were in our favor. I didn't think my teammate hadn't had that time. So as you can imagine, quite a very difficult decision to make. I knew at the time going back up there was going to be a one-way trip for me. So I'm sitting in this helicopter, my second helicopter of the evening, thinking through the process, the decision to go back. And I can imagine a lot of things going through my mind. And this one thought kept coming back to me. And this thought in my head was the opening lines of Boy Scout Oath. On my honor, I'll do my best to do my duty. On my honor, I'll do my best to do my duty. On my honor, I'll do my best to do my duty. Finally, I started listening to it that I have not done my best yet to go get my teammate. So I made the decision that I'm going to go get my teammate. And I briefed my team. I looked at all of them. I said, eyes on me, eyes on me. They all looked at me. I gave them the situation, gave them the orders, and we told them we're going. It was at that time that the pilot of the first aircraft that got shot volunteered to fly us. His name was Al, volunteered to fly us back. It's a very, very thing I needed. So grateful that he did a great amount of courage to take this guy. And he just got shot down. Now he's going to fly right back into exactly what he knows what he's getting into. And he did, flew us right back. So as soon as we lifted off, I remember things getting very quiet, at least in my mind anyway. We're lifted off. I'm on the back of the helicopter. And I can remember, I got my night vision goggles on and everything's green, looking through my goggles and looking back out the ramp, watching the countryside of Afghanistan going by. This is when, you know, the leader has time to be alone with his thoughts. You get a few moments. And this is when my thoughts were drifting back to home. And going, you know, they drift back to my son. And basically, basically I'm down on goodbye. So, yeah, I love you. Sorry for what's to come. That's the last I thought of it. I compartmentalized it and put it away in the back of my head. I put my mind back on task. And I'm looking out that ramp. I grab, we're sitting right next to me. The ramp has these pistons that are coming up and down. I reach over, grab that piston of that aircraft. I stick my head outside the aircraft to look at my mountain coming up. Then I'm getting ready to go fight on. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, wow, what a majestic mountain this thing looks like. We had a crazy thought about what we were about ready to go do, looking at this thing. But that's what I thought about it then. And we landed. We were taking heavy fire coming in and we landed. Upon landing, I remember that same helo pilot telling me over my head that I had a headset on and he tells me, team leader, good luck. That was the last thing I remember here in front of him. I took the headset off and the ramp was down. I ran off the ramp. As soon as I got off the ramp, the snow was much deeper up than I thought. So my first step off the ramp, first one off, first step, I took a tumble much like, you know, if you've ever been in snow, you step off your steps, right? You think that next step is there and it's not. You take a flight. I took a header right off the end of the plane. I got up off that, wiped the snow from my face and joined my guys and walked up next to one of my teammates, John. I asked John, he said, John, what do you have? He said, you know, I don't know. And then right away we started taking heavy fire from a bunker that was right in front of us. A dug-in position underneath the tree. We had to tarp on a heavy sustained machine gunfire coming out of there. That gunfire came right out of us. It hit John. The bullets went through my clothes, through my pants. It went through my gear. I dived behind by nearby rock. And I noticed John. John was down. So I took a look around at all my teammates. We were taking heavy fire from three sides. They were in front of us to my immediate left, further left and right behind us about 270 degrees. And as I look around there's all these muzzle flashes from everywhere. And I'm thinking there's a lot of people up here. I look at my guys because they have to keep track of all of them and they are, all of them, they're engaged in their own little battles with different positions. But certainly the one that's the heaviest fire is coming from the bunker. That's right in front of me. And I realize that, hey, we're all out in the open and there's bullets snapping by our heads, like little snapping. And you can see puffs of snow coming up all around us and the bullets, it's pretty heavy. We're out in the open. I know I got a silence, this gun, this bunker. So I pull a grenade out of my pocket and run right up to it as quickly as I can. Throw a grenade in there and it dies back behind the rock. The grenade goes off, shooting stops and then starts right up again. So this time I'm going to do it again with another grenade but make sure I'm a little bit more accurate. So I get up to the bunker that's shooting at me and I throw the second grenade in and I can literally see it in the air, hit. There's a tent underneath the tree that's there and the snow is on it. See the grenade hit? There's some snow puff up and see it roll down right into where the muzzle flashes coming from. Like, oh, this is going to be good. It goes off but the gun only stops for a second and starts shooting. So again, so this point I'm out of grenades so I use my rifle. I take rifle shots at the muzzle flashes there. I just put my laser on it and pull the trigger and shoot in that way. Then I use my 40 millimeter grenade launcher that I have and I use that to suppress the enemy fire that's coming at us from the left and behind us because I'm too close to the other bunker for it to work. So I use all those grenades that slow some of the enemy fire down a little bit and I throw that gun away. Now I need to readdress the bunker where we're taking all the heavy fire from. So to do this I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to take my M-60 gunner. It's right to my left. I put it up on top of that rock and I tell him to fire point blank down into that bunker and shoot left, right, inflating fire into it. I'm going to come around behind him from his left and he's going to shoot right in front of me. He hasn't come into the bunker. That's the plan. He starts shooting right away, he's got the flame coming out of his gun. I can feel some of the heat coming off his muzzle flash almost and then his brass coming out of the gun. It's coming out so fast it's really hitting me in the face and I got to get away from that. I roll off the rock and just as I start getting into position an enemy grenade comes out of that bunker, blows up and knocks my machine gunner down and he's wounded now. So this is a time I look around at all my guys again and I see there's still heavy amounts of fire coming in. I look over at John. I've seen no movement from John. He's in the exact same spot under the tree where I last saw him. I realize that because we're out in the open, life expectancy now is going to be measured probably in seconds. So I've got to do something a little different to secure this top of the mountain. I make the command to... So I realize I've got to do something different up here. So I make the command that we're going to reposition my force just over the side of the cliff. I'm going to consolidate my team, bring them all together and then we're going to use close air support from jets and another aircraft to suppress the enemy fire then I'm going to reoccupy the top of the mountain. To get over there we've got to crawl because the enemy fire is pretty heavy. So to do that I go and I crawl over the top of John looking for some sign of life from him and I didn't get anything from John. So we continue to relocate to another location. I get all my guys together and as we're getting the guys together I take another seriously wounded guy. He gets hit in the leg ironically from that very same machine gun where I was just fighting. Yeah, very same bunker. So now I got another wounded guy. So I get all our guys together in the trees and it's really no more than probably 30 feet away from where our first engagement was. It's just not have a little bit of terrain between me and the enemy guns. And I start calling in the close air support which is in the form of an AC-130 gunship and then eventually it was 500 pound bombs. Calling those in very close to our position. And by that time out of the sun the sun is starting to come up and we're starting to have incoming enemy mortar rounds are landing very close to us. They know they're enemy mortar rounds because the gunship reports that there's an enemy mortar firing on us. So we're in the trees so I have to move my guys to some rocks a little bit further down the hill just to give them a little bit of cover from that fire. So from that position I reach out the QRF the quick reaction force shows up and very surprised that they come around the helicopter comes around the side of the mountain and I remember them very suddenly flying right over the top of our position and I can look at the bottom of the plane and I can see I can still see all the rivets on the bottom of that plane and I have dawns on me that they're going to land right on top and so I'm trying to make radio contact with them and as soon as that I do that they themselves come under heavy fire from on top of the mountain. So now I have, there's contact, heavy contact again up on top of that mountain. So I'm able to contact the second helicopter from the quick reaction force and direct them to land at a safe location. From that location they unloaded the second half of that Ranger platoon and they proceeded up to the top of the mountain and then secured the top of the mountain. So with that mountain secured I could put my attention towards my guys and moving them to a location where I'd get my wounded evacuated and that's what we did for the rest of the day and then defended our position throughout remainder of the day and that evening we were extracted back to our base.