One of
the most critical battles of the Afghan War is now revealed as
never before. Lions of Kandahar is an inside account from the
unique perspective of an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces
commander, an unparalled warrior with multiple deployments to the
theater who has only recently returned from combat
there.
Southern Afghanistan was slipping away.
That was clear to then-Captain Rusty Bradley as he began his third
tour of duty there in 2006. The Taliban and their allies were
infiltrating everywhere, poised to reclaim Kandahar Province, their
strategically vital onetime capital. To stop them, the NATO
coalition launched Operation Medusa, the largest offensive in its
history. The battlefield was the Panjwayi Valley, a densely packed
warren of walled compounds that doubled neatly as enemy bunkers,
lush orchards, and towering marijuana stands, all laced with
treacherous irrigation ditches. A mass exodus of civilians heralded
the carnage to come.
Dispatched as a diversionary force in
support of the main coalition attack, Bradley’s Special Forces
A-team and two others, along with their longtime Afghan Army
allies, watched from across the valley as the NATO force was
quickly engulfed in a vicious counterattack. Key to relieving it
and calling in effective air strikes was possession of a modest
patch of high ground called Sperwan Ghar. Bradley’s small
detachment assaulted the hill and, in the midst of a savage and
unforgettable firefight, soon learned they were facing nearly a
thousand seasoned fighters—from whom they seized an impossible
victory.
Now
Bradley recounts the whole remarkable story as it actually
happened. The blistering trek across Afghanistan’s infamous Red
Desert. The eerie traces of the elusive Taliban. The close
relations with the Afghan people and army, a primary mission focus.
Sperwan Ghar itself: unremitting waves of fire from machine guns
and rocket-propelled grenades; a targeted truck turned into an
inferno; the death trap of a cut-off compound. Most important: the
men, Americans and Afghans alike—the “shaky” medic with nerves of
steel and a surgeon’s hands in battle; the tireless sergeant who
seems to be everywhere at once; the soft-spoken intelligence
officer with laser-sharp insight; the diminutive Afghan commander
with a Goliath-sized heart; the cool maverick who risks all to
rescue a grievously wounded comrade—each unique, all indelible in
their everyday exercise of extraordinary
heroism.
關於作者：
Major Rusty Bradley was wounded during the Battle of Sperwan
Ghar in command of a Special Forces A-team, on his third combat
tour as a Special Forces team leader. A native of North Carolina,
he graduated from Mars Hill College and enlisted in the Army in
1993, serving as an infantryman for six years before earning his
commission from Officer Candidate School in
1999.
Kevin Maurer has been embedded as a reporter with the U.S.
Special Forces and 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan and Iraq
more than a dozen times in the last five years.
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