Posted on 11/09/2007 9:35:56 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Navy Lt. j.g. Bradley Pate thought he was finished. Taliban fighters had ambushed the convoy of his humanitarian-aid team in an Afghan mountain pass, wounding half of the 30-member group Nov. 2, 2006.
Pate and the remaining team hunkered down that night, waiting for the next battle. As the sun rose, a mortar shell exploded in the middle of its encampment. Pinned down by rifle and mortar fire, Pate heard the screams of bleeding troops around him.
Then he spotted a badly wounded Air Force captain lying in the open. Pate raced out and dragged the captain to relative safety next to an armored Humvee.
Pate wrapped the captain's head with bandages while directing fire against enemy positions. A relief unit arrived later, allowing him to make it back to his base – and the rest of his team – alive.
“They were hugging us. They didn't know if we were going to get out,” Pate recalled almost a year later. “It was definitely a good experience to have walked away from.”
To honor Pate's service during his yearlong tour in Afghanistan – including his courage on that mountain – the military awarded him a Bronze Star. Pate received the medal in September in San Diego, where he now is stationed.
He could hardly have envisioned a battle like the one in Dowlet Shah, northeast of Bagram Air Base, when he joined the Navy. But it's the kind of action sailors are seeing more frequently, now that the Navy is using up to 11,000 sailors at any given time for ground roles in the Middle East.
Perhaps ground warfare is in Pate's genes. His father and two uncles served in the Army.
After a year and a half of college, he enlisted in the Navy in 1996 at the urging of his grandfather.
“My grandpa always thought the Navy had a better quality of life,” Pate said. “I wanted to see the world, and I liked the idea of being on the high seas.”
What gradually caught Pate's interest was the idea of winning hearts and minds by rebuilding nations where U.S. forces were at war. He volunteered for a one-year tour with a reconstruction team.
After arriving in Afghanistan in February 2006, Pate plunged into a job that coupled high reward with high risk. The team met daily with local elders and funded construction of new schools, playgrounds and hospitals, frequently in hostile countryside. The death in a car-bombing of two of his teammates that September only underscored the dangers.
On Nov. 2 of that year, Pate's team drove up a mountain to inspect a new district center built with military funds. The convoy encountered gunfire on the way up, but nothing like the ambush they confronted on the way down.
The Taliban's grenades and small-arms fire disabled an Afghan truck and a U.S. Humvee and wounded about half of the team. It's an ironclad rule that U.S. military vehicles must not fall into enemy hands, so the convoy's commanders sought permission to blow up the wrecked Humvee and get out of the dangerous pass in the remaining trucks.
Instead, Pate said, they were ordered to stay and guard it until a tow truck could crawl up the mountain the next morning.
“We thought we were dead,” Pate recalled, anger still in his voice. They just hung us out to dry.”
His group parked the remaining vehicles in a circle and camped inside, readying for the attack they knew would come. When the mortar hit after dawn, Pate avoided injury only because he and a soldier had walked off to push the Afghan truck over an embankment.
The Taliban attack continued even after reinforcements came. Pate and the other survivors managed to straggle back to their base.
Three months later, Pate wound up his deployment and was sent to the San Diego-based destroyer Benfold as an electronics warfare officer working on ballistic-missile defense.
Pate said he harbors no regrets about the civil affairs work he found so rewarding, but sometimes feels guilty to be among the few who escaped the mountain ambush uninjured.
“It was two days I don't want to relive,” he said.
We don’t deserve to even walk on the ground this guy (and many others like him) tread on.....
Absolutely....
There are so many brave and dedicated (not to mention deadly) military fighting for us and freedom.
You’d never know it from all the leftist baloney in so much of the press and media.
There are still lots of great Americans out there. So called “ordinary” guys and gals serving our country and the cause of freedom.
And they aren’t whining like all the leftist talkers and “peace” protesters, they’re just doing a hard and real job.
The story of their first 4 months will be shown Monday night on NIGHTLINE - 11;35pm eastern time...They had embeds with them - Kopel had NOTHING to do with the film, thank God.
What this brave Navy soldier went through is a nearly every occurrence for them - in the high mountains of the Kunar Province - up against the Pakistan border...
This is the unit -
"The Rock" - Battle co., 2/503rd 173rd Airborne Task Force
The other day, there were a handful of the scruffy, unwashed protesters on the corner in the middle of town...I couldn't help it, I rolled down the window (I'm a white-haired ole granny) as I drive by and yelled to them: "Thank God there's no draft!"
Misunderstanding my reasoning, they started to smile.
"Because," I continued, "I'll hate like he*l to think any one of our troops had to count on one of you to watch their back."
Wish you could have seen their faces...
One of my nephews was in Afghanistan for a year, after having served in Germany for several before that. He was an Apache Longbow D pilot, and was involved in the search for those Navy Seals in the mountains.
My brother, a graduate of the AF Academy, and formerly a C130 pilot, was SO envious of this, his youngest son. Gerry SO wanted to fly helicopters, and was even offered the opportunity when he graduated the AFA, because the Army was offering to train some Zoomies on rotary aircraft, but his commanding officer said no. He still would love to learn to fly helos, though!
*snort* You SO bad! ;o)
God Bless these guys.
Bump. At this time I cannot add anything to what you said, so I am just going to bump it.
Now there’s a bunch of steely eyed killers.
GET SOME!
I know it’s commonplace now, but note the soldier (back row, far right) with the M-14 (or whatever they’re calling it - M-21?).
Semper Fi,
When I watch the documentaries on WWII I’m always amazed at the daily courage and sacrifice of so many who went to war without question or doubt.
Thousands of guys flying in unpressurized B-17’s being shot down like fish in a barrel. Men on transport ships being torpedoed in mid ocean (I’ve been across both the Atlantic and Pacific by ship and they are VERY large, lonely and deep places.)
But in those days the press and Hollywood were behind our military.
Briol was wifey's uncle.
http://www.cloudnet.com/~jfb/
That had to be a real winner. Some memories are so great. I hope that one stays with you forever.
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