yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Outlasting the Enemy in Shok Valley | No Man Left Behind


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

On October 2nd of 2008, we received the mission to go conduct an operation in the northern province of Nurse T in Afghanistan. The mission was to conduct a raid on a high-value target. The plan was to infiltrate from the bottom of the valley and work our way up to this city that was built into the side of the mountain. With my level of battle experience, there were definitely red flags.

Once we hit the ground, we've got to be ready to fight. I actually start to see women and children, you know, leaving the village. So, I immediately got on the radio and called the detachment and told him, "Hey, you know, heads on a swivel; we're gonna have a gun party." Immediately, the bullets started coming in and the award bouncing off the rocks next to us. The entire valley just erupted in a volley of fire, and there was nowhere to hide.

I had never experienced that level of intensity in an initial draw from an enemy force. Today, you know, these guys are well-disciplined; they had a plan. We've fallen right into the ambush. At this moment, I was starting to feel that we were no longer in control of this. Then I get a radio call from Captain Wall that one of the attachment members had been hit. He said, "Hey, it's Bear; it looks pretty critical."

I'd never felt such excruciating pain in my entire life. At times, you would actually take your hand off the side of the mountain in amazement, look at your hand, and make sure your work was trying to get up another foot because you've got two of your attachment members that are injured. We were either all going to die there together or we were gonna get out of there.

I looked at my uniform, and I just saw the blood run down and just cover the entire left side of my body. My left leg—one guy's leg is amputated, another guy's been shot in the pelvis and the bicep, and another's been shot through his ankle. My triceps are hanging off.

I've been through a lot of adversity in my life; this was just another test. I knew if I could make it through, then I would be able to survive pretty much anything. Even though we know the odds are stacked against us, you've got the confidence that if we do the right things, we can come out of this thing alive.

I have the most gratitude to everyone on my team who pulled together to make sure that I made it down alive. Those I shed blood with will always be my brothers. The bond that you have with those guys is for life. It's a good feeling to know that you got every man out alive and you didn't leave any man behind.

More Articles

View All
Ancient Greeks and Persians | World History | Khan Academy
So where we left off in the last video, we have the Neo-Babylonians, the Chaldean Empire, being conquered by the Persians led by Cyrus the Great. That’s in 539 BCE that Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon, and they’re able to establish a significant Empire. …
How to Stop Worrying and Stressing about School
Hey, it’s Joey and welcome to Better Ideas! So, final exam season isn’t quite here yet, but it’s just around the corner. Students everywhere are just weeks away from entering crunch time, where all hell breaks loose, all-nighters are pulled, etc., etc. …
HOW TO MAKE EASY MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET
What’s up? Grandma’s guys here! So, after a year patiently waiting and getting hundreds of comments, DMs, emails, letters, and smoke signals asking me how my stock market investments are doing, the time has finally come to reveal exactly how much money I …
Amber Atherton of Zyper and Iba Masood of TARA on Raising a Series A as a Female Founder
All right, so today I have EBU Masood from Tara and Amber, assistant from Zai. How’s it going? Hello, good. So today we’re gonna talk about fundraising, but before that, let’s talk about your companies. So, Eva, what do you do? So, correct, it’s great…
Jeff Bezos: "Nerd of the Amazon" | 60 Minutes Archive
60 Minutes rewind. Who would have guessed that one of the hottest stocks of all time, one of the fastest growing companies in history, would be a bookstore? That’s right, books—one of the oldest products made by man. We didn’t. That’s because we didn’t pr…
Amy Buechler and Michael Seibel on Founder Coaching and Having Hard Conversations
Alright guys, welcome to the podcast. Thanks Frank, how’s it going? Great! Good! Amy, you are a founder coach. I think a lot of people don’t know what coaching actually is, so maybe you could explain it? Yeah, that’s actually a great question because wha…