On a Mountain in Afghanistan: A Soldier's Experience

By SSG Whitney Houston

The sound of boots trudging through loose gravel and muffled vibrations from quiet conversations among U.S. and Afghan Soldiers, were the only things heard during the early morning hours on a small combat outpost they called Sweeney in remote Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

No man-made light could be seen anywhere in the mountain valley, which allowed the Milky Way to stretch its majestic lights clear across the sky in a gorgeous heavenly arch. It was so beautiful and calming, that it was hard to believe anything violent in nature could exist in the area.

 

The Soldiers on the landing zone performed their pre-combat and accountability inspections before the Chinooks arrived to take us to a pre-determined location where the 2nd of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, would later conduct a joint air assault mission with the Afghan National Army.

We dropped into the area quickly, and used the cover of night to get to our observation posts on both sides of what is called the Darwazgay Pass, which is a major facilitation route used by the Taliban to traffic weapons into Afghanistan.

The ANA’s responsibility was to fixate a traffic control point in the valley to search whoever came through the area, to gather intelligence, and to essentially stop the flow of weapons coming into the country.

During our ascent up the mountain to the west of the pass, we saw two guys run down the mountain to a village that laid south, which made us suspicious that there were Taliban in our immediate vicinity.  

Throughout the day many vehicles stopped and turned around once they saw the traffic control point. Locals passing through confirmed intelligence, that the Taliban did often use the route, but the TCP had deterred any flow of weapons coming into the country that day.

After twenty hours of securing the pass, and baking in the sun. We descended off of the mountain into a wheat field in a nearby valley, and waited for the helicopters to come and take us back to the COP.