US treading in bloody footsteps

[unhappycamper]

US Marines take a break during a patrol in Sangin, south of Kabul, Afghanistan.


US treading in bloody footsteps
Miles Amoore
From: The Australian
December 13, 2010 12:00AM

THE platoon was 200m from base when lieutenant Robert Kelly, 29, hauled himself out of a ditch and on to a Taliban mine buried in the mud.

The force of the blast hurled him back into the ditch, slicing off both his legs above the knees. Corporals Travis Buckholz and Vatividad Silva dragged him out of the water.

Buckholz, 21, pulled out a tourniquet and rolled his commanding officer over. But when he saw Kelly's face he stopped still, the tourniquet clenched in his hand.

"I knew when I saw it there was nothing we could do for him. Half his face was missing," Buckholz says. "When we got back to base it was like someone had stolen the life out of everyone. All you could see were pale faces and blank looks."

Death has become a frequent reality for US marines in the Sangin district of Helmand, just as it was for British forces before them. The British suffered a third of all their Afghan war casualties in this valley.



unhappycamper comment: This reminds me of Vietnam. We had different weapons, different enemies and different climates but the end result is the same: dead American soldiers and dead civilians.

[Gravel Democrat]

1. schop en recommanderen

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"reminds me of Vietnam"