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101st Airborne Turns The Tables On Taliban Ambush
Published 3 years ago
Firefight footage from Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) shows infantrymen of the 101st Airborne Division, along with their Afghan National Army (ANA) counterparts, turning the tables during a Taliban ambush and getting the upper hand.
The ambushed men react violently by immediately returning fire to known or suspected enemy locations. Squad leaders and team leaders refine their actions by maneuvering machine-gunners and grenadiers to better avenues of fire while still working out distance, direction, and descriptions of their targets and trying to minimize the chance of friendly fire.
In this instance, the enemy fighters tried a hit-and-run attack, but the US soldiers are able to get them pinned down before they can escape. The squad leader uses his radio to call up to platoon and company level leadership to orchestrate some sort of flanking movement in order to wipe their foes out for good.
I think people tend to gloss over the impact of these conventional units in favor of the "elite" special troops, when it is these infantrymen that did most of the fighting on year-long (minimum) deployments, often without close air support overhead, or even on standby. These are the heavy lifters of that era of the GWOT.