My nephew’s a Blackhawk pilot over there right now. Prayers up for his safety, and all our service members!
My nephew is a PJ, been to Afghan, going back again soon enough this summer. They fly around in updated blackhawks picking up wounded & dead, downed pilots, and other members of our armed forces. He was telling me in certain areas, they take fire from local villagers pretty regular, they hate us bad. Anyway, last April, they flew into a village to pick up a dead and another pilot hiding out in the rocks while the villagers were looking for them, (I guess the Afghans were going to throw them a party). The one team got the live one out, nephew's team was winching up deceased pilot they pulled outta little bird when local Afghan Villagers opened up. They cut cable and drug pilot's body down into some rocks to hide out. The Afghans shot off three RPG's but kept missing blackhawk. Their flight engineer who was running winch got hit in black hawk which was also hit with small arms and had to leave the area & leave my nephew and his buddy there, then the Afghans started looking for them. Nephew told me that was the first time he actually thought he was going to die right there. He said training takes over and ain't so bad. He was there 5 1/2 hours until friends showed up rocketing the Afghans outta there. He said every 20 minutes or so, the Afghans would locate them and start shooting at them, they kept moving, dragging dead pilot's body down this ravine to keep hidden from villagers. The nephew said the Afghans ain't scared of Americans but do respect our air power and was glad when AF showed up with A-10's, and Apatches chased off Afghans and got them outta there. There was a 4 page write up in AF times last May outta Baghram; said some nice things concerning our troops.
Nephew comes up hunting with us, got some bear & moose last year, but his 4 month mission coming up pretty quick ruins his fall hunting trip with us this year.
More Americans should know and realize what price is being paid by our troops for our country, especially the President and he just keeps cutting the military further putting Americans in more danger.