Dog Company: A True Story of American Soldiers Abandoned by Their High Command by Roger Hill & Lynn Vincent

Author:Roger Hill & Lynn Vincent [Hill, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2017-04-10T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

A COUPLE OF days into the jingle truck recovery, Hill was waiting for the last of the lowboy trailers to show up when MAJ Smith called him into the temporary TOC. There had been a distress message, Smith indicated, from American vehicles sixty kilometers away, deep in the treacherous Tangi Valley.

The message was simple: S.O.S.

Hill’s heart sank.

He rallied a QRF and briefed a short concept of operations: He and HQ Platoon would roll out with 3rd Platoon and a counter-IED RCP11 unit that had been helping with the jingle truck recovery. They would connect with Hidalgo and the Alpha Dawgs at the Tangi turnoff and do a face-to-face over a map. Hill included some enemy analysis and two warnings: One, the narrow road into Tangi wound along the edge of a deep gorge, and maneuverability was severely limited. Two, the QRF would travel near Salar, a village in Sayed Abad where an Echo Company resupply mission had fallen under heavy fire a few weeks before.

From the COP, the QRF moved north on Highway 1 for about twenty-five clicks. Heat shimmered off the pavement; the outside air temperature was in the midnineties. SGT Eric Pierce drove for Hill with Sammy in the left rear seat and SGT Andrew Doyle on the gun. Most of 1st Platoon was back at Airborne resetting, but Dudley rode ahead with 3rd, in Carwile’s truck.

The RCP was a unit from the 206th Combat Engineers. They had just returned from Nawa in support of Charlie Company where they had faced significant enemy action alongside Charlie Company. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX(XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX)XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Hill admired the bravery of men who served in an RCP. They were cowboys at heart, triggering bombs on purpose, taking the hit so that others didn’t have to.12

Moving down the highway, Hill could smell a cocktail of dust, motor oil, and sweat. He grew more watchful north of Salar, where the road was peppered with IED potholes that had been filled and refilled with earth and gravel. The truck commanders scanned for suspicious, newly disturbed patches, but the element cruised through Sayed Abad unscathed.

Minutes later, an IED erupted beneath an RCP MRAP traveling just behind Hill’s truck. The MRAP’s M240B was blown off its turret, but the vehicle itself sustained only minimal damage.

Hill paused and breathed a prayer of thanks. Had his Humvee been hit instead of the heavily armored MRAP, he and his crew might be dead. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The lost patrol could simply be waiting for the cavalry to arrive, but something in Hill’s gut told him it was worse. Urgency fluttered in his chest.

Hill’s patrol made the mouth of Tangi. From the gun, Doyle saw a checkerboard of fields and orchards, brilliantly green. As per Hill’s brief, the road into the valley skirted the edge of a steep gorge. It was almost impossibly narrow, barely wide enough for a Humvee to keep its outboard tires from slipping over the edge. As each truck rounded the first turn, its gunner let loose stones of fire. The big guns boomed at least a dozen times, echoing back as each round shattered against the mountainside.

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