with the help of air support, they d freed brad larson and two others from the humvee where they d been pinned down for hours. you thought larson was gone. i remember just giving him a hug. i ve known larson since he had come into the service. i mean, we ve been together forever. by now, most of the camp was on fire, but larson was alive and equipped with vital supplies from the barracks. he brought the platoon drink with him, knowing that our barracks might be the next that catches on fire and burn them to the ground. so he grabbed his 12-pack stash that he had kept in the barracks on his way out and a carton of my camel lights. it was a rare moment of relief during one of the worst fire fights in the afghan war.
surrounding them, attacking them from the high ground. three americans had already been killed in the onslaught, five more were pinned down in a humvee, and three were trapped in the mortar pit. and now the taliban fighters were inside the camp. staff sergeant clint romesha was taking stock. i was trying to get an assessment of who we still had left and what our ammo situation was looking like because we were getting pretty critically low. sergeant joshua lahart approached him with a plan. hart came up to me in the barracks and said he was going to get a group of guys and they were going to grab one of the extra humvees. hart said he and a few others would run to a different truck outfitted with a 50-caliber machine gun, drive it towards the humvee where the five troops were pinned down, and provide cover for them to escape.
the 20 or so afghan soldiers had fled it or were hiding. taliban sniper fire was keeping air support at bay. and clint romesha was wounded. as i was finally making it right back to the barracks to where there was some cover, raz had stopped me. i think he said something to the effect of, dude, you have a hole in your arm. there was blood coming out of his arms. i asked him what happened. he said he got hit with an rpg. i asked him if he wanted me to put a pressure dressing on it. he said, yeah, go ahead. it was still bleeding at the time. i just took a minute to put a pressure dressing on it and to stop the bleeding. and we kept going on. at some point, the worst possible thing that could happen, happened. the taliban were inside the camp. yes. the call went out on the radio enemy in the wire. the last four words the soldiers at combat outpost keating wanted to hear.
bitch back. watched raz and delaney and jones, miller, they just followed, you know? didn t hesitate. didn t question. i d rather go out there and let them kill me and i kill a few of them than just sit here and let them do it. you ran right into places where others had been killed. you weren t worried? you weren t afraid? there wasn t time to be. there s few people i would follow to hell and back, and romesha s one of them. romesha and his men pushed out of the red platoon barracks with the ultimate goal of makin to the sherp ra building. they would follow this route and the enemy would unleash intense fire. the americans returned fire in
private thompson ran a machine gun and was immediately killed. from that moment, manning the mortars was impossible. the enemy knew what our reaction plan was. they understood our weapon systems and our capabilities. and initially right at first they disabled one of our more capable ones to fight back. oh, yeah, it was definitely coordinated. you could tell immediately that they knew what they were doing. several guys had their, you know, weapons shot out of their hands. the taliban snipers embedded on the mountainside aimed at soldiers as they scrambled out of their barracks to start defending the base. sergeant joshua kirk was killed while trying to return fire. specialist michael skuza as he ran to deliver ammunition. staff sergeant romesha continued rallying his troops against the onslaug onslaught. bombs just kept coming in,