nbc pentagon correspondent jim miklaszewski joins us now. describe his actions that brought him to the recognition of superiors. reporter: contessa, sergeant j unta s story leaps off the pages. he joined the army straight out of high school in cedar rapids in the heart of the nation s farm belt and three years ago he was involved in an action, platoon was on patrol about midnight on a bright moonlit night and they were ambushed by taliban fighters. he himself was knocked to the ground knocked in the chest by two enemy bullets and leaped to his feet to run right into the hail of gun fire. throwing grenades and shooting all the way. he found one of the fellow soldiers wounded being dragged away by two taliban fighters. he killed one of those taliban the other taliban made a flight
clairy was the two and three gunner and then followed by a portion of the headquarters element so the platoon, the platoon, the medic, the rto of the platoon leaders, radio guy and forward fire observer so someone to call in you know, mortars if need be or direct the helicopters that are flying around. so we have those assets available to us and the troops on the ground can call them in. following the headquarters element was a team from weapons squad which is the 240 bravo consisting of a three-man team, tripods, extra rounds and then after them we had attachment of scouts so a couple different weapons systems within to over watch, have a little bit more magnification on the p withes and add people to the patrol seeings how we were pushing out into an area we didn t really
it was the end of the october. the end of the october in afghanistan is it s cold in the mornings. it s cold at night. it gets warm in the daytime. our particular piece of the mission that day was to overwatch the our group of 1st platoon to over watch 2nd platoon who was down in the village of us and engaged the elders and you know, let them know we re there for them and to do that safely, we set up on the ridge line above the village to provide security for them down in the village and then security for ourselves on the backside and did a 360. we ended up moving out at just before daybreak from the outpost and it was only maybe two-hour walk to get to our set-up location and set up before dawn. and we set up in our 360-degree
won t change the mission. so we sat there all day. and second platoon engaged the villagers. they came out of the village. the sun s just going over the mountains. night s falling. we have apa che attack helicopters covering us, covering the ground. we are preparing to move out so we re breaking down, we re bringing in the clay mores we have set up. we re, you know, given handing arm signals. letting everyone know we re going to move back to the outpost and then there s always a specific order of movement we re moving in so sergeant brennan took alpha team 1st squad an moved out first followed by the saw gunner at the time specialist eckroad. myself, specialist casey was my saw gunner and then specialist
good firefight. yeah. [ bleep ]. packing up rounds? that s fun, though. that was fun. you can t get a better high. it s like crack, you know. you skydive or bungee jump or kayak. but once you ve gone shot at, you can t come down, you can t top that. how do you think you ll do in the civilian world, then? i have no idea. a scene from the new documentary restrepr in afghanistan. we re joined by the journalists who embedded with the 2nd platoon at combat outpost restrepo who shot that film. thanks for your time. congratulations on the film. thank you. thank you. i won t direct this to either one of you, but you can jump in. why document one long deployment by one small group of soldiers? why not contextualize this valley and fighting amid the overall war? so many great journalists have provided the context. the war is nine years old now.