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The song, which begins with a spoken introduction by Kris Kristofferson, tells the tale of Niles Harris, a soldier in the 173rd Airborne Brigade of the United States Army during Operation Hump in South Vietnam on November 8, 1965. The intro mentions that Harris was "the guy that gave Big Kenny his top hat", and that he was among the wounded who were saved by Army medic Lawrence Joel, the first living African American to receive the Medal of Honor since the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Nine Funerals for Nine Warriors by Steve Mraz and Jeff Emanuel Three days before the attack, 45 U.S. paratroopers from the 173d Airborne [Brigade Combat Team], accompanied by 25 Afghan soldiers, made their way to Kunar province, a remote area in the northeastern Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and established the beginnings of a small Combat Outpost (COP). Their movement into the area was noticed, and their tiny numbers and incomplete fortifications were quickly taken advantage of. A combined force of up to 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters quickly moved into the nearby village of Wanat and prepared for their assault...

WE TUMBLED OUT of two Black Hawks onto a shrub-dusted mountainside. It was a windy, cold October evening. A half-moon illuminated the tall pines and peaks. Through night-vision goggles the soldiers and landscape glowed in a blurry green-and-white static. Just across the valley, lights flickered from a few homes nestled in the terraced farmlands of Yaka China, a notorious village in the Korengal River valley in Afghanistan’s northeastern province of Kunar. Yaka China was just a few villages south and around a bend in the river from the Americans’ small mountain outposts, but the area’s reputation among the soldiers was...

The Afghan National Army and ISAF soldiers successfully repelled a complex improvised explosive device ambush at approximately 9 a.m. today in Kunar Province. Acting on credible intelligence that insurgents were planning a complex ambush on an ISAF vehicle patrol in the Korengal valley, ...

Exclusive: The Other War -- Vanity Fair And ABC's Brian Ross Team Up To Report On The Untold Story Of The War In Afghanistan, On "Nightline," Monday, November 12...In a special Veterans Day edition of "Nightline," Vanity Fair and ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross partner to take a harrowing look at the 'other' war, seldom talked about, in eastern Afghanistan. Over a six month period, Vanity Fair's Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington were embedded with the Second Platoon of the 173rd Airborne and given unprecedented access to the ongoing ground war. They witness first-hand the daily physical and...

April 13, 2003 Paratroopers Find Suspicious Warheads and Rocket Parts in KirkukBy C. J. CHIVERS IRKUK, Iraq, April 12 — American paratroopers tonight discovered what they described as suspicious warheads and rocket components outside the former Iraqi governor's office here, a tantalizing but inconclusive find on the first day of a large-scale American presence in the oil capital of northern Iraq. The officers said the warheads appeared to be the lethal ends of surface-to-surface rockets, but they could not immediately determine if they were of a design prohibited by United Nations resolutions, or whether they were built to hold chemical...