Find Fix Finish – Ben Mckelvey

The insurgents had been waiting. The commandos returned and suppressed that fire with heavier weapons, using their distinct advantage of night-vision optics. The commandos successfully covered the extraction as the Australian helicopters flew back to FOB Graceland (also known as Camp Gecko), the home of the Canadian Special Forces in Kandahar, without incident. But the mission was far from over. There were still 30 Australians in seven vehicles left in a maelstrom. The Australians intercepted a conversation between an Afghan commander and his men, calmly telling them to kill most of the foreigners, but also to capture a few.

In a straight line it was little more than a 20-minute bush-bash back to Tarin Kot, but it took the commandos hours to return. They made their way through a labyrinth of dirt roads and compounds, resolving ambush after ambush, with the enemy fighters leapfrogging ahead of the Australians on motorbikes and setting up machine-gun posts from which they could attack. Throughout the fight, the AC-130, with an Australian commando plans officer aboard, gave intelligence updates and offered fire support, as did the Apache gunships.

Eventually the AC-130 announced it was ‘Winchester’— meaning every piece of ammunition on the plane had been expended—and the plane was replaced by a US Air Force B-1 Lancer, which smashed 500- pound bombs into the Tarin Kot bowl ahead of the Australians. At around 7.45 am, the Australian commando element limped back into their base, Reverend Rob greeting them at the gate of Camp Russell—the start of a tradition. Both the vehicles and the men bore the signs of battle: one Bushmaster had been disabled by enemy fire and was being ‘skull- dragged’ back in, while many other vehicles were bullet-scarred, inside and out, and blackened and dented from impacts and blasts.

Some of the vehicles would never be the same, but the men were all alive, having killed approximately 150 Afghans. The Australian commandos had acted with extreme valour and utility in resolving an incredibly dangerous situation without any Australian casualties—but had the mission been a success? For the commandos and for SOCOMD it undoubtedly had been. The commandos had been largely sidelined in Iraq, and so were untested in battle.

Now they had introduced themselves to Afghanistan and to the coalition as a force whose training, equipment, composition and mettle was well suited to battle there. For the SFTG, too, the mission was considered a military success. Their task was to kill or capture an insurgent commander and he was dead. Many other insurgents had presented themselves for elimination too, without needing to be hunted.

‘Go tell to Sparta, thou who passest by, that here, obedient to her laws, we lie’ – Epitaph on the destroyed Cenotaph of Thermopylae, observed by Herodotus The sound of drums is pleasant from a distance.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 29cc1e37ac0bcb94
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 4,288,247 bytes (4.09 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 385
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 619.42 minutes
• Total Words: 123,885
• Total Characters: 747,369
• Average Words per Page: 321.78
• Average Characters per Page: 1941.22

Most Frequent Words

australian (501), afghanistan (499), one (398), forces (359), sasr (335), war (317), also (305), taliban (293), said (290), special (283), force (281), says (275), afghan (258), men (250), person (245), roberts-smith (243), uruzgan (242), killed (241), military (223), soldiers (223), two (201), ben (201), intelligence (182), people (179), many (176), mission (171), government (170), time (166), patrol (164), kot (163), tarin (158), australia’s (154), like (153), australians (153), man (152), karzai (148), first (147), later (138), target (136), back (136), part (135), against (133), another (133), jpel (131), iraq (131), defence (129), australia (127), soldier (127), enemy (122), now (120), way (120), united (120), element (115), new (112), minister (111), found (110), fighting (109), group (108), kill (105), states (105), killing (104), told (103), between (102), operations (101), number (100), valley (99), commander (99), even (99), command (98), officer (98), asked (97), afghans (96), became (96), area (95), dutch (95), known (94), made (94), bin (94), kandahar (92), within (91), battle (91), general (90), day (90), army (89), including (89), regiment (88), three (88), country (87), going (87), position (87), laden (87), didn’t (86), security (85), compound (84), sotg (83), came (82), saw (82), missions (81), task (80), evidence (79).

PDF Download