A first person perspective of Soldiers from B Co 1-26 Infantry reacting to contact in the snowy mountain terrain of Korengal. This footage was recorded in February of 2009.

Looking at the situation now, it's easy to think that maybe we wasted our time in Afghanistan. The failures of the Biden administration and top U.S. Military Officials did indeed hand control of the entire nation of Afghanistan back to the 8th century barbarians we spent a majority of our youth fighting. Regardless of the political picture however, it's important to remember that we spent the last twenty years of our lives fighting in Afghanistan to keep insurgent and terrorist organizations from being able to bring the fight back to American civilians here in the United States.

This footage shows the reality of that conflict. It's taken from the first person perspective of a Soldier on patrol in the Korengal Valley. The mountains are high, the snow is thick, and just looking at the grainy 2009 footage shows you that this patrol was absolutely miserable all the way up to and through the point at which the Taliban ambushed these men from behind, wounding one of them in the opening salvo of gunfire.

Regardless of any of that though, the Soldiers did what Soldiers do best. They reacted with an immediate action drill gaining them fire superiority. They treated their casualty off the X, and then repositioned to continue the firefight from a more tenable position, immediately putting the Taliban on the back foot in their own backyard.

Twenty years of fighting wasn't for nothing, even if our own military leaders and politicians pissed it all away. We proved that in any clime and place where you can take a gun, America and her allies will be victorious on the battlefield. It doesn't matter if the politicians tie our hands behind our backs. It doesn't matter if our top generals have zero moral courage and even less integrity. The battles won are something we can always keep with us, and we won those battles in spite of the handicaps instilled on us by our own leaders.