The Outpost: an Untold Story of American Valor Pdf, Epub, Ebook

THE OUTPOST: AN UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN VALOR PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

At a. That Tapper mentioned way too many people to be able to keep them all straight. The one the U. Yet he was willing to let them continue risking life and limb to try. Average rating 4. When I was still in, I was devastated that my friends were dying and I was just a state-side POG with no power and no control. Had there truly been gross negligence? They entered a four-building complex across the valley from where Hawes was hiding. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. This was no small thing, the fact that the enemy had a Dushka: it meant that besides having the territorial advantage, they might be able to outgun the Americans, too. After Keating, he received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during battle. Again, the uncomfortable history of empires in this land hung like a noose. I would highly recommend this book but not an easy read. Only one of the Afghan soldiers chose to fight; all the others either fled or hid. Certainly does not glamorize their world. Tapper would have included a formal list of the individuals who died and on what date they died. The Outpost presents John Nicholson, then an Army colonel, as the father of this wartime tragedy. That air can build up and eventually interfere with the functioning of the heart. To make me. Yet it is written with a gripping and fast paced narrative that makes it an easy read, other than the fact you will get so angry sometimes you have to put it down and walk away. The end of CO Keating came on October 3, , with a dawn attack by hundreds of insurgent fighters. A decision to close it is delayed until the final attack reveals the vulnerability of the site. Netzel was about to call in corrections to the rounds when on the radio he heard his lieutenant calling for a grid correction that would have dropped the rounds right on top of him and his men. Instead, he told the story of The Outpost - the genesis and the demise of the camp in Kamdesh. He was just one brave man among many brave men who came to Combat Outpost K This is a vivid depiction of our professional military in combat and in confused, difficult counterinsurgency situations. The mountains of Afghanistan are dangerous, with bad guys for sure, but also with a people who live pretty much the same way they did 5, years ago and don't have any desire for anything different This book drained me. He was right about the aircraft. The ruse commenced. Because the Chowkay was so remote, Berkoff had anticipated that the Taliban fighters there would be armed at most with assault rifles, RPG launchers, and a few light machine guns—certainly not with a seventy-five-pound heavy machine gun that could take down a Chinook. Three days later, U. After a decent interval, the outpost was abandoned and bombed to smithereens by American planes. Reading this book seems to convey about as accurate a picture of what life is like on the front line of the Afghanistan war as words might convey. The enemy had assumed they were going to take the same route back. The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor Writer

On March 12, , hours before the first leg of the convoy pulled out and began its nearly four-hundred-mile trek north from Forward Operating Base Salerno, in southeastern Afghanistan, insurgents had already made their presence known. The road they took followed the Kunar River, which bestowed life on the surrounding country, transforming it from a dusty brown into a lush green. Hekmatyar had left the village hours before. Error rating book. In this book, the SF and GP Army forces a few times were at odds with the former and many Afghan troops making it clear that they did not have to listen to Army GP commanders. A lieutenant colonel had ordered the transfer of a nine-ton truck from the outpost to a bigger base. Dokalam, Afghanistan, was adjacent to Arandu, Pakistan. My limited military experience lines up with most of what this reporter wrote — including inept command, stupid personality conflicts, crappy gear, and ridiculous orders that you absolutely cannot dispute or refute. In Cav, he was widely admired and considered a true gentleman, though he was perhaps best known for his fanatical physical discipline—the supermarathons he ran, his 3 percent body fat. The Chowkay Valley was the most popular exit route used by the Korangali Taliban to escape over the border into Pakistan; indeed, Berkoff had briefed Fenty and the Cav troop commanders that when confronted by the consistent presence of U. To make me. All aspects are looked at as the author puts a face and story to the many injured and killed troops that daily fill the news reports as statistics. Start to finish — as much an emotional experience as a thought-provoking intellectual one - an education in the reality of war and the people who fight it. Byers had the same feeling. Tapper could have gotten the point across about the futility of the US Army's presence in Nuristan and the senseless loss of human life that achieved very little without having to exhaustively recount every single detail of the YEARS spent there. Our soldiers are so brave and professional and deserve our respect. I highly recommend the book but do prefer a soldiers account for the personal touch that memoirs typically exhibit. Nicholson, who commanded the parent brigade, ordered Cav to flank around the valley to the east while Infantry blocked the valley from the north. A soldier who is bleeding internally needs to be evacuated and delivered to a surgeon immediately if he is to have any hope of survival. The Americans fought. My opinions on this book come primarily as an American citizen with a little flavor of former military POG through in. To feel that after three years of mistakes, political agendas and inflated egos, not much was accomplished. Tapper also doesn't show much interest or empathy for the Nuristanis or the Afghan National Army soldiers. Fenty had Cherokee Company commander Swain fire repeated illumination rounds—basically giant flares—into the valley from the base at Naray. That mistake played out over and over again in this book. Fenty decided that this level of enemy aggression dictated that the Americans should fly only after sundown, since U. Gallegos and several others are pinned down inside an armored vehicle, and Romesha is wounded trying to reach them. Sergeant Michael Hendy was on guard duty; he sat behind a rock wall in the pitch black, staring at the path. Troops clung to one another for body heat. Tapper could have edited much of it out. Fenty made it his job to know about his troops and their lives. He made a great effort to educate himself, reading three newspapers a day when he was at home, taking graduate courses, ordering professional journals, attending lecture series, reading books on military history and critical thinking. In change, he was handed a Russian five-ruble bill from But there was something devastating about the combination of the deep snow, the chill, and the lack of oxygen to be found here on the roof of these mountains. The sight—through which scouts would look for the enemy—was as bulky as a medium-sized safe or a s-era living-room television set, at seventeen inches high, twenty-seven inches wide, and thirty-one inches deep. Staff Sergeant Adam Sears, of Able Troop, had missed most of the action during Operation Mountain Lion, having caught a wicked stomach bug that —combined with the thin air atop the mountain—required him to be evacuated back to a temporary logistical base that Timmons had rented for this mission, an empty compound surrounded by twelve-foot walls, just south of the Chowkay Valley. Gooding then went down to meet with the Chalas elders a third time. Some progress is made, however halting, toward improving basic living standards. The Dushka raked the entire hillside with bullets, the rounds hitting the building that the Barbarians used for cover with a deadly thud. He thought about what he would do if he were a commander of one of the local insurgent groups. There the Americans were attacked by insurgents, who killed three of the four team members and also shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing even more SEALs as well as the special-operations Nightstalker crew and pilots, for a total of nineteen U. If staying dry was a priority, the only other option was to brave the steep cliffs, but that involved no small risk. Apr 08, Brandon rated it it was amazing. For a time, cooperation between the units at Outpost Keating and the locals starts to coalesce. It is, to the contrary, an ambitious work, pages in length, and covers not simply a single battle in the mountains of Afghanistan, but an entire three-year period in the Kamdesh Valley. The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor Reviews

With all of that, on top of the stress and the dust that coated everyone and everything in Jalalabad, he figured he must resemble a mentally ill homeless person. The mountains of Afghanistan are dangerous, with bad guys for sure, but also with a people who live pretty much the same way they did 5, years ago and don't have any desire for anything different but it is also made clear that money, equipment, and other soldiers were being used in Iraq a moronic war that someone, somewhere, came up with Netzel knew Moquin could potentially be a good soldier; he would always ask questions. His driving skills were not needed up here; there were no cars or trucks. He jumped back and bellowed for the lowest-ranked private, Taner Edens, to get the snake. A hot meal was served once a day. They decided to call it a night. Fenty was relentlessly focused, even compulsive. After an exercise in which the troops had to disassemble and reassemble their weapons, everyone else in the platoon dispersed, but Moquin remained, repeating the drill. For a time, cooperation between the units at Outpost Keating and the locals starts to coalesce. Help — whether that was more men, more ammo, or a medevac — were not close by. Jan 19, Donna rated it it was amazing. But nighttime flight in the mountains, of course, carried its own set of significant risks. Read this book and better understand the longest war that the United States has ever been involved in. This all amounted to no less than fifty pounds per man, and that was before adding a rifle, a supply of water, or an assault pack, not to mention the things they carried, the letters and photographs, the chewing tobacco, the cigarettes, the talismans. It does no disservice to the men who gave their lives — or who had their lives changed — to say that clinging to CO Keating was not worth the price that was paid. And what of the elders of the Kotya Valley? Only when one heroic officer was killed trying to prove to his superiors just how treacherous the road really was did the Army stop attempting to supply the outpost by truck. The next day, the local Afghan police would confirm that U. The gripping tale of the final brutal battle to prevent a foolishly placed US Army outpost from being overrun by enemy fighters occupies the last quarter of the book. He looked down and saw that under his gear, he was wearing only an undershirt. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. For the most part, though, I think Jake Tapper did a pretty good job of representing what the soldiers went through during the events he writes about. He knew it put people off and made them less likely to listen to him when he had something especially important to say, but he was still young and had not yet learned how to check his behavior. The Obama Administration is taken to task for promising to make Afghanistan a priority, but then getting distracted by public fights with the Pentagon. A soldier could be killed just driving on that road, without ever coming into contact with a single enemy fighter. We need. So the main reason they build the outpost where they did was obsolete early on. A small settlement missing from most maps, Urmul was home to fewer than forty families of Nuristanis, or roughly two hundred people, who lived in houses made of wood and rock and mud sealant. Outnumbered and outgunned, they managed to hold and repulse the enemy. Tapper singularly recognizes and thus honors these incredible Americans throughout his historical narrative by naming them. Error rating book. He never stopped running, whether back at the home of the 10th Mountain Division, at Fort Drum, New York, where he and Command Sergeant Major Del Byers had run five to ten miles together daily, or on this deployment in Afghanistan, where the two men took advantage of any opportunity to do the same on U. Other young men now bolted out of the complex and began scrambling over the mountain. It was an unusual way to fall in love, but it was their only option at the moment. Consider first reading "Red Platoon" by Clinton Romesha.

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My opinions on this book come primarily as an American citizen with a little flavor of former military POG through in. The timing is awful. Frankly, none of those things mattered. The mortars fired again. May 14, Dewayne Stephens rated it it was amazing. I do not understand how these men were not provided the full support with all the resources that the United States military has at is disposal. Then they grabbed their guns and got into position to attack the Kamdesh outpost. They were said to have been among the first to take up arms against the Communists who brought down the Afghan government in Jan 04, Christopher rated it it was amazing Shelves: history , middle-east-central-asia , united-states , asia. The next day, the lieutenant colonel, Timmons, Berkoff, and other officers huddled in a small brigade operations center to brief their commanders on the plans to extract their men from the Chowkay Valley. But it was done and the madness kept it open for the next four years, but only by the great sacrifice and loss of the troops deployed there. I would give it 10 stars if I could. Netzel knew Moquin could potentially be a good soldier; he would always ask questions. More specifically, they would be establishing a camp in Nuristan Province. The LRAS in and of itself made obsolete other systems that required scouts to position themselves within the range of enemy fire. This was no small thing, the fact that the enemy had a Dushka: it meant that besides having the territorial advantage, they might be able to outgun the Americans, too. They were both surprised by how strong their feelings were for each other. View all 7 comments. Start to finish — as much an emotional experience as a thought-provoking intellectual one - an education in the reality of war and the people who fight it. Anyone who is interested in the politics at the federal level involving our military the budget our military gets, the missions it goes on, the efforts it supports needs to read this book to have a better understanding of just what those numbers and column-inches in the local newspaper really mean. Retrieved July 13, It is a very zoomed in narrative, meaning larger context is often missing. Hamid Karzai and Hekmatyar were longstanding enemies, but Hekmatyar initially extended an olive branch to the new Afghan leader. He cites the name and rank of virtually every soldier whose actions are part of the four-year story — and there appear to be hundreds of them. Consider first reading "Red Platoon" by Clinton Romesha. https://files8.webydo.com/9583102/UploadedFiles/B94E6779-D246-BC02-2E65-69997822D4CA.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583839/UploadedFiles/D0E120D2-5DEA-D778-5E7C-E0436B3184AC.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583732/UploadedFiles/E6701097-C17C-E4D2-13FC-C8B3091297FF.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583574/UploadedFiles/EC748B29-DE5B-F28D-1465-2351981D505F.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583067/UploadedFiles/12CCA036-53D1-74A2-113B-7588645ACC1A.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9582868/UploadedFiles/E3B13C49-B807-C773-7EAA-CE9465D77825.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9583290/UploadedFiles/545C6D82-4D6D-B349-C371-98A7C5E3C65E.pdf