Man down

NARRATOR: A search and destroy mission... ...unleashes hell in an Afghani graveyard. And when their best friend takes a bullet... ...soldiers must race the clock to save his life. SOLDIER: You just don't tell him the truth, you know, if they lost a limb, you're like, "No, man, it's right there, it's connected." NARRATOR: In southern Afghanistan, a surprise attack... SOLDIER: Where's it at? NARRATOR: ...puts a marine squarely in the crosshairs.. SOLDIER: They were aiming at me. I was the only thing to shoot at. NARRATOR: ...forcing his team into a kill-or-be-killed shootout. SOLDIER: You swing, we're gonna try to destroy you. NARRATOR: Their footage. Their words. SOLDIER: This way! NARRATOR: Their war. SOLDIER: This is 1-3 Roger. We're just south of that road here shooting smoke bombs. JESSE HATTESOHL: Search and destroy patrols is exactly what it sounds like. Our mission that day was to check out key areas where Taliban had been operating, pin 'em down, call for fire, and destroy 'em. ZACH FRAKER: The feeling of not really knowing where the enemy is all the time, it makes you worried. Anywhere you go is dangerous. RYAN JOHNSON: The moment you leave the FOB, they've got eyes on you. I mean, even if it's a local making a phone call saying hey. HATTESOHL: Our platoon was broken down into 22 guys. We had two rifle squads out and a weapons squad. And that day, also we had ANA counterparts. Total boots on the ground including the Afghan National Army Forces, we probably had about close to 35 to 40 individuals on the ground. I'm the Alpha team leader, and I'm the one of two team leaders in our squad. Zach, he was the Bravo team leader. FRAKER: My job that day was to lead the patrol. You're kind of like the first eyes. And you got to be the one to pick the route, but you never want to take the easy route, 'cause that's usually where the IEDs are. HATTESOHL: The grape fields had been harvested, it was very open, and the Taliban could probably see us from a mile away, just because you cannot not see 40 individuals walking. You know there's Taliban operating and you probably know something's going to happen. For me, there's an excitement. Because I'm 80% sure that I'm going to get to do my job today. JOHNSON: We approached this hilltop and we started pushing out our security. Then that's when we realized it was a cemetery. HATTESOHL: That particular cemetery was on a very large hill. And we knew if we could get on top of that cemetery and that hill, we'd have great oversight and overview of what's going around that area. JOHNSON: Same time, though, when you're higher up, you're just as easy to be seen by the, you know, the Taliban. HATTESOHL: You know, the threat of suicide bombers is very high, especially in that area. We never let anybody near our formation. Because you never really know who the bad guy is, or your enemy, when you're over there. SOLDIER: Tell him to take that with him. Tell him to go. SOLDIER: Hey! HATTESOHL: We baited them, we'd get up slowly, and we'd move a smaller element of our platoon at a time, just to kind of see what the, what our enemies are gonna do. SOLDIER: You get that grid, sir? HATTESOHL: Zach picked up his team and started moving out. JOHNSON: And as I was moving down the hill, we heard a single pop shot come from the southeast. SOLDIER: You [bleep], [bleep] come here! [gunfire] JOHNSON: It was about 500, 600 meters away. It's scary, you know, they have a gun, you have a gun. It's all about who's been trained better and who wants to accomplish their mission more. HATTESOHL: We used a tactic called the Death Blossom. If they shot one round at us, we'd shoot a thousand at them. During battle, the one thing you always got to worry about is keep track of your guys. SOLDIER: North! Push north! HATTESOHL: If you don't have accountability of your gear or your men, you're gonna lose the fight. SOLDIER: Covering fire! SOLDIER: Covering fire, go! FRAKER: It's definitely pretty crazy. The Taliban are not scared of anything. And they're very accurate, too. SOLDIER: Hey, is everybody good? HATTESOHL: Gain that fire superiority. If you don't gain that superiority over the enemy, they're just going to keep coming with it, and you never know when they're gonna get that lucky shot. FRAKER: The Taliban were maneuvering on us, getting closer and closer. The enemy was probably 150, 200 meters away. HATTESOHL: It was really kinetic. SOLDIER: This way! SOLDIER: What? SOLDIER: This way, go! HATTESOHL: We were calling in for rounds, and calling in for helicopters coming in to support us. It was kinetic to the point where our medic had to start shooting back. Usually the medic won't shoot back unless he's doing it to seriously protect himself. FRAKER: The air support finally came in. The Taliban definitely fears anything in the sky. It's kind of like a kick in the nuts to the enemy, and basically drew them away. SOLDIER: Alright, you good? HATTESOHL: We knew that we had superiority as soon as we stopped hearing AK rounds coming by our head. JOHNSON: After a firefight, and you're winded, you're tired, and you just had your adrenaline, you know, rushing. At that point, you just kind of want to go back home. But we only had one more checkpoint, so we all just agreed, hey, let's go check it, just finish the mission. FRAKER: When you're in a firefight or any type of battle, you form strong bonds with the guys in your platoon. JOHNSON: I would definitely classify me, Zach and Jesse as brothers. HATTESOHL: We're best friends. I even introduced Zach to his wife. You know, that's how close we are. JOHNSON: You become really protective for the safety of your buddies. You just do what you have to do to come home safe. We had made it down to this compound. Me and Zach, we rounded the corner to this 50-meter open field. They had about an eight-foot wall to the south, and then a little pasture for this farmer's cow that was off to the southeast. Me and Zach are walking through the field. That's when we heard the gunshots. [gunfire] You know, you hear Zach, you know, try to yell, "Contact," at the same time, you know, he just yells, [bleep]! And he goes down. SOLDIER: Hey, ANA. HATTESOHL: The feeling of like one of your best friends getting shot is something that can never be explained. Zach's position was probably only about 40, 30 meters from the Taliban. He was definitely in the kill zone. SOLDIER: Come on, we need him back here! SOLDIER: Bravo team, let's move! HATTESOHL: The only thing that was going through my head is to get him back to cover. You know, you get this strength inside you that, that nothing could stop you from getting him back to where he needs to be. SOLDIER: Hole 1-7. Tell Mike to send one. JOHNSON: After we got Zach back behind the house, I helped see, you know, exactly where he was hit and any kind of treatment he needed. SOLDIER: You all right? SOLDIER: I need the grid! HATTESOHL: You want to get medical aid and attention to him as fast as possible. It takes seconds for someone to bleed out from being shot. MEDIC: I'm gonna give you a shot, alright? FRAKER: What? MEDIC: I'm gonna give you a shot! FRAKER: Alright. JOHNSON: Your adrenaline's going, everything else, and a minute, it feels like it's ten minutes. HATTESOHL: Seeing your best friend shot like that, you don't think about the kill zone, you don't think about the rounds that are coming near you. JOHNSON: And until a surgeon can actually get in there and look, you don't know if there's actually nerve damage or if a blood vessel was struck or an artery. HATTESOHL: You know, I saw the three gunshot wounds in his legs, and my main thing was the femoral artery. SOLDIER: Tell Mike to send one. JOHNSON: Zach was shot in the lower part of his leg, about midway between his shin. SOLDIER: Alright, he's urgent! JOHNSON: He had a good size bullet hole. HATTESOHL: He had more serious injuries than what we know. And when a personal friend or someone you've worked with for multiple years gets shot, it's a feeling you never want to have. MEDIC: Hole, hole, one-seven. JOHNSON: How you doing, buddy? HATTESOHL: We had to put a tourniquet on him real quick and treat him as fast as possible while still under fire. If the Taliban know that there might be a medical aircraft coming in, they might set up another attack to attack the helicopters. SOLDIER: One Bravo, more 18. JOHNSON: I start thinking, okay, what else, is there anything else that could be wrong with him, you know, is he going into shock at this point? SOLDIER: Wrap that tourniquet tight. JOHNSON: You sit there and you tell him, "Hey, man, everything's gonna be all right, you'll be okay, don't worry about it, it's just a flesh wound, don't worry about it." You just don't tell him the truth, you know, if they lost a limb, you're like, "No, man, it's right there, it's connected." You're relying on your platoon to make sure they're calling up to 9 Line medevac to your location as quick as possible. You don't know if the helicopter is off picking up another casualty somewhere else. So it's kind of the luck of the draw. I couldn't see the enemy. You just don't know if there's ten more Taliban behind that corner of the house, you just don't know. There was a little creek bed just on the north side of the house. All of our guys got in, and as we were treating Zach, they were doing covering fire. MEDIC: Alright, I need you to relax. Relax your left arm, okay? HATTESOHL: I immediately walked back towards our squad where they were shooting back at the enemy. The more time we wait, we're just expecting to get attacked again. All these measures that we take and then doing things as fast as we possibly can, and you know, and get him the medical aid can be the difference between life or death. And we just want to get him out of the battlefield as soon as possible. 'Cause when we have a wounded soldier on the ground, you're practically open to more attacks. You never know exactly what's going on through your enemy's head. SOLDIER: Hey, how long did they say? HATTESOHL: And we already called the 9 Line medevac. 'Cause I want to get Zach out of here, I want to get him out of danger. SOLDIER: There's the cavalry to the rescue. JOHNSON: Some pilots don't like when they fly into a hot zone, the firefight's still going on, they don't want to be another casualty that you've got to treat. MEDIC: Alright, hey, we're gonna turn him, we're gonna rotate him around. HATTESOHL: I gave an order for our guys to start laying rounds downrange. The Taliban, they love to take down aircrafts if they can. JOHNSON: The bird, where it landed actually, it wasn't directly behind the house to block the bird from any kind of insurgent fire. HATTESOHL: They're right at the wall, no more than 50 meters, or also known as hand grenade range, and definitely way too close for comfort. And when the Taliban started firing, it's as dangerous as it can get. [indistinct yelling] Those first few seconds when the bird's first taking off, you're kind of worrying a little bit about what could happen. As soon as I saw it was a ways out there, I knew that he was safe. [helicopter firing] SOLDIER: That's right. JOHNSON: We saw the Taliban egress into the south. We usually sit there for another couple minutes, and if we don't hear anything or see anything, then we'll pick up and move on out. HATTESOHL: It sucks to see a team member like that go. I just lost my right-hand man, you know, the guy that I worked with all deployment the last few years. He's a piece of a pie you can't replace. In an instant, you know, things change. We got back into formation, and we started heading back towards the combat outpost. You can "what if" a situation all day, but the past ain't going to change. You can't mourn, you have no time to mourn, you've still got a job to do. You've got to get back to work, you've got to start prepping for the next day's mission. FRAKER: I thought that was it. Your time has come. It felt like if you were to take a steaming hot poker and just basically stuck it into your leg, and then it felt like your leg was put into a trash compactor. Once I'm on my way to the hospital, I felt like, alright, you know, I'm definitely making it. Once I'm actually in the hospital, you get to call the wife. Her brother just got blown up by a suicide bomber and was wounded and sent to Walter Reed. That was only ten days prior, so, you know, then this happens to her husband. Today my leg is pretty much back to where it was before. I'm definitely, definitely lucky. It just felt like God was looking out for me. I'm very grateful for what all my platoon members did. HATTESOHL: The biggest thing I fight for over there is to keep my soldiers alive. If I were to have to, you know, lose my life in the process, that's a sacrifice I was willing to make. JOSH VANCE: We were in charge of holding the entire southern line. JAMES ANDREWS: The Taliban pretty much had free reign in southern Afghanistan. We were the first ones to actually go down there and stay that far south. VANCE: We needed to set up a defensive perimeter. I was bored on post. I decided to walk down and talk to my buddy. About that time, a guy steps around the building, 300 meters south of us, and launches an RPG. A rocket-propelled grenade. They are nothing like they are in the movies. They are extremely fast-moving with boosters on them that can be launched from over 600 meters away. If you're an accurate gunner with one, they're very deadly. I am the only thing standing up. I am the only target standing there. RPG zips straight over top of us and hits the mosque behind us. That is about where the video picks up. [gunfire] Where's it at? SOLDIER: Hey, get it, get it, Louie. VANCE: Where's it at? I don't know where the [bleep] it's at. SOLDIER: Eleven, eleven, eleven. Woo! A.J. MANGLONA: You hear a shot go off. Everyone just turns and starts firing back. SOLDIER: Where are you shooting? On top of... SOLDIER: Yeah. SOLDIER: Alright. Got me? SOLDIER: Yeah. ANDREWS: The Taliban just started doing some pop shots here and there. SOLDIER: Hey, that's that compound straight ahead. That's that compound straight ahead. SOLDIER: Right here or right there? SOLDIER: Huh? SOLDIER: Which one? SOLDIER: To the left, right there. Hold up, hold up. SOLDIER: Blue door. MANGLONA: We were taking fire from multiple positions. You step outside the lines, and all you can really say is [bleep] it. Let's do it. SOLDIER: Blue door! SOLDIER: Hold still. MANGLONA: And that's how you cope. VANCE: We were shooting at that gentleman who was holding the RPG, another guy with an RPG. and the guy driving, which was on a motorcycle, he was sitting on the back with an AK-47, came rolling about 300 meters to our southwest. And we start engaging them. SOLDIER: Nobody knows. Everybody is down this way. SOLDIER: That's it, that's incoming. SOLDIER: That's not us. SOLDIER: Yes, right there. SOLDIER: Where?! SOLDIER: Inside that [bleep] tree line, right there, that's where that's coming from. VANCE: They were shooting RPGs and a lot of AK-47 fire at us. There was two individuals that were clearly armed with AK-47s. They kept popping in and out of the tree line. We focused on him and his Taliban buddy next to him. MANGLONA: During firefights, there's a lot of noise going around. And it can get confusing if you don't know what you're looking for. SOLDIER: Ask him. SOLDIER: Is that friendly?! VANCE: The Taliban was moving back and forth. SOLDIER: That's the guy in the white, right? SOLDIER: He was [bleep] sprinting like a ***. MANGLONA: They're smart, smart, resourceful, they hide amongst the populace. SOLDIER: Hey, was the guy in the white shooting? Earlier? VANCE: That guy in the white shirt was directly south of us. He was watching us while we were watching him. We'll fight you if you're armed and you're facing us. SOLDIER: That's coming near the bell tower. SOLDIER: Is it? SOLDIER: Those shots are coming from the bell tower. SOLDIER: Look for a muzzle flash. SOLDIER: Not the bell tower itself, but... VANCE: They had crawled up into the bell tower. It was close to two stories with an open point at the top. They normally use them as chimneys, but this one had obviously been modified to allow someone to get up there and start shooting at us. Our machine gunner jumped on our 240 machine gun. SOLDIER: To the left! To the left! VANCE: I told him bell tower, second story, engage. He laced the entire top of it with 762 fire. SOLDIER: Bell tower! [gunfire] VANCE: Those buildings are built out of straw, and one of the tracer rounds obviously had hit the inside of the building. SOLDIER: Bell tower. Hey! VANCE: A tracer round with a magnesium burner on it, which creates a lit projectile. It caught the inside of the bell tower on fire with that Taliban inside of it. What's going through your head is the guys next to me are out of danger for now. And we don't have to worry about that one anymore. We watched it burn for the next two hours. MANGLONA: You do what you need to do to win that battle. SOLDIER: Alright, we're moving. MANGLONA: Instinct kicks in to take care of the situation and handle it the best way you were trained. You swing, we're gonna swing back. We're gonna swing back with a combo, we're just gonna try to kill you. VANCE: We would not back down. We drew a line in the sand and said, "We will not take any more. You will not cross this line. This is ours."