Новости за 11.06.2015

Ryan Pitts recites the nine names without pause. Abad, Ayers, Bogar. Brostrom, Garcia, Hovater. Phillips, Rainey, Zwilling. The 10 men are forever joined in history for their actions July 13, 2008, in the Battle of Wanat, one of the deadliest clashes for U.S. forces during the long war in Afghanistan.

Air Force Senior Airman Zachary Hoeh scanned the hard-packed hillsides of the Afghanistan desert on May 26, 2011, looking for enemy triggermen who had virtually wiped out a squad of U.S. Army Pathfinders with improvised explosive devices.

As Sgt. Maj. Viriato Ferrera tells it, the morning of Jan. 28, 2007, started off uneventfully.

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Frank Troiano had two injured men with him, was taking fire from insurgents with a superior position and was trying to get out of a village in Afghanistan’s Tagab district.

They were among the bravest who fought the Germans in the hellish War to End All Wars in Europe, but for nearly a century their legacy has been obscured by discrimination.

He felt the two objects hit him in the back. When he looked, he saw two grenades at the feet of one of his fellow Marines. Then-Lance Cpl. Joshua Moore, a Marine scout sniper, picked up one grenade and threw it out of the compound his unit was occupying. The second grenade was corroded and didn’t explode.

The view from the A-10 cockpits was troubling — low cloud cover and uncertain terrain below. The view from the ground was just plain grim.

The wounded U.S. servicemember was not far from Kandahar in Afghanistan. Three others were with him, but they could not get the injured man to safety because of an insurgent ambush. Nearby U.S. Army soldiers could not engage the enemy, and a close-air support coordinator on the ground was panicked and inexperienced.

With ammunition dwindling and insurgents closing in, three Air Force combat controllers dodged machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades to call for air support, grab supplies and carry out a critically wounded comrade during a two-day battle in a desolate, dangerous corner of Afghanistan.

More than four years after zipping down a steel cable to provide medical care to a chopped-up platoon of soldiers, Master Sgt. Roger Sparks still labors to make sense of that day in November 2010 when four men died in his arms.

First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing’s actions during the Battle of Gettysburg helped change the course of history. He was buried with full honors at West Point, and in 1887 his family and friends placed a stone marker at Gettysburg National Military Park commemorating his heroics.

Sgt. 1st Class Bennie Adkins had two unlikely saviors during 86 hours of hell in the mountains of central Vietnam: a North Vietnamese soldier and a tiger. He credits both with saving his life, though neither meant to.

When a man detonated a suicide vest at the morning bazaar in Khost, Afghanistan, more than two years ago, Staff Sgt. Andrew Braxton and Sgt. Benjamin Bullard were unscathed. Their fellow North Carolina National Guard soldiers were not as lucky.

When the bomb exploded, Navy Chief Petty Officer Justin Wilson didn’t run away. He ran toward it.

No U.S. forces had reached the area in eight years of war in Afghanistan. Marine Corps Cpl. Ethan Nagel, an embedded trainer, along with his platoon of Afghan National Army troops, another Marine trainer and a small Special Forces team, were moving up the Uzbin Valley to meet with village elders.