CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — Good morning, friends. Photographer James Lee and I are currently holding it down at this massive forward operating base and waiting on a few interviews. Over the next week or so, we’ll continue to offer up images and thoughts here on Battle Rattle from our time in Kajaki and Sangin districts with Marine infantry units. Up for discussion today: Taliban flags. Several times outside the wire, we observed that Marines pay attention to flags flown over compound buildings. They come in several colors, but the ones that draw the most attention are black or white. In…
Browsing: Upper Sangin Valley
SANGIN, Afghanistan – For a minute, it seemed like a manhunt in the hills of the Upper Sangin Valley was possible. Pushing out from Forward Operating Base Tabac early Saturday, Marines with Dog Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, noticed a man on a nearby hill holding a metallic black object that was glinting in the sunlight. The assumption: The stranger was carrying a radio, making it entirely possible a Taliban spotter was spying on the patrol. “I saw it glistening in his hand,” said Lance Cpl. Christopher Sanders, making his way through a green field of thigh-high wheat. “There isn’t…
FORWARD OPERATING BASE TABAC, Afghanistan – In just a few short hours, I saw both sides of Sangin. On one hand, photographer James Lee and I visited a shura, or meeting, that brought together 67 boys and 25 girls at the gates of this base, the headquarters of Dog Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. Most of the children sat obediently in straight rows on the ground as two interpreters and two Marines with a Female Engagement Team taught lessons about geography, civics and poetry. A few hours later, we heard our first gunshots fired in…
Swift, Silent, Deadly, the Marines of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion are back in Afghanistan. The unit, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., has taken over for 3rd Recon, out of Okinawa, Japan, in the Upper Sangin Valley. They’ll patrol land that remains some of the most treacherous in Helmand province. Insurgents in the area should remember 1st Recon well. The unit deployed to Helmand in summer 2010, initially taking on the Taliban on the fringes of Marjah district when it was still a violent and unforgiving place. They shifted their operations that fall to the Sangin area, and hammered away on the…
The Marine Corps released a combat correspondent story today with an immediate emotional punch: One of the Marines quoted in it died in combat two days after being interviewed. Lance Cpl. John Farias, of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, told combat correspondent Cpl. Benjamin Crilly on June 26 that 1/5’s new outpost in the Upper Sangin Valley, Patrol Base Faheem, was allowing them to push to the north more frequently, even as they took fire from insurgents regularly. He was buried last week in Texas. From the story: “We were too far south,” said Lance Cpl. John F. Farias, 20, an…
