If you are a reader whose primary area of interest is non-fiction, as I am, then I recommend you read The Outpost, Jake Tapper's telling of the story of the beyond-brave American soldiers stationed at Combat Outpost Keating in Nurestan Province, Afghanistan. For reasons that remained as much a mystery to me when I completed the book as it had when began it, higher-ups in the United States Military chose to place Combat Outpost Keating in a valley, surrounded by high mountains, practically inaccessible by any road, and approximately fourteen miles from the Pakistan border.
Tapper's book is long (more than six hundred pages) and it at times equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating. From the time that COP Keating's creation was discussed, the men who were tasked with establishing it - and then defending it - pointed out (correctly, of course) how asinine a decision it was to place it in the selected location. From the time of its establishment, in 2006, until our decision to abandon it in 2009, the fifty or so American troops stationed there lived with the consequences of their superiors' asininity.
In early October, 2009, after the United States announced it was abandoning COP Keating and had already begun airlifting some of the COP's equipment off-site by helicopter, approximately 500 Taliban fighters descended from the mountains on all sides of COP Keating. Outnumbered ten to one, the American soldiers at COP Keating repelled the assault in a bloody battle in which more than one hundred Taliban fighters were killed and in which nine American soldiers were killed. Two American soldiers, Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha and Staff Sergeant Ty Carter, each received the Medal of Honor for their actions during that battle.
The story of the final battle is told in stark, vivid detail. However, what I found made Tapper's book exceptional and something I recommend to anyone and to everyone to read is the story he told of COP Keating's three-year-plus odyssey and of the men who served there at various times and who found themselves in harm's way essentially every day.
The book has been turned into a film, which is being released this year. From the trailer, it appears that the film focuses on the October, 2009 battle. If you see the film, then please understand that no matter how compellingly its story is told, it is telling only a piece of the story of COP Keating and the men who were posted there, who fought there, and who died there.
Hopefully, it shall inspire you to learn more of it. If you choose to, then do so knowing that you shall likely cry and scream throughout the process.
I did.
-AK
No comments:
Post a Comment