Lest We Forget by leo jenkins Page B

have been walking for hours.  The temperature on my buddies cool guy watch says 102.  We find the set of huts that we suspect was the home of some of the Taliban members that were involved in the firefight.  We find a decent spot to set up over watch and a team goes into the house.  It's more of a shack really.  It has dirt floors and only 3 walls made of sticks and mud.  There is a fireplace and a couple of utensils.  There is a section of the hut designated for chickens.  This guy definitely wins the award for lowest carbon footprint.  I will say this, the view more than made up for his lack of appliances.  It was breathtaking.  You could see terraces across the ravine and mountains in the distance that were snow covered.  No one was there, well besides the chickens.  We do a quick search that comes up pretty flat.  As we are searching a near by ravine I hear a call come over the radio.
    "There's monkeys."
    "Repeat last."
    " Ummmm, there is a pack of big ass baboons staring at us.  And so help me God if they get any closer I am going to open up on them with the 240!"
    It was Josh on over watch.  Now I know what you're thinking, "There aren’t any baboons in Afghanistan."  Well listen here: that shit happened!  There are a dozen Rangers that will confirm it.  It was a pack of huge, fang-toothed baboons!
    We keep our distance and patrol the area in small teams looking for any signs of a firefight.  One of the patrol teams finds several 5.56 shell casings so we know that this is where shit went down but there was no sign of the Seals. 
    Four guys with very impressive beards, wearing shorts walk up to our over watch position.  They are members of Seal Team 10.  My first thought was, look at these shit bags wearing shorts.  Then I realized that it's over 100 degrees out and shorts would be pretty awesome!  Wait, why the fuck are we wearing pants?  And long sleeve DCU tops?  Damn I should have gone to BUDs.  We exchange information.  They tell us that they have Intel that one of the local goat herders has information on one of the missing Seals.
    We move out to the houses in the valley below.  A couple of our guys accompany the Seals while myself and the other half of our platoon pull security.  They find out that the body of one of the Seal operators was nearby.  One of the locals agrees to show us where for a price.  I'm not sure what they paid the man but I imagine that it was difficult for those guys to not pay that guy with a throat punch.   
    We recover the body of Matt Axelson, a Navy Seal from California who turned 29 just 3 days prior. They must have anticipated what had happened, one of the Seals pulls out a black body bag.  Throughout my time in the military I have been exposed to countless acts of absolute professionalism, this moment ranks among the top.  Those four men refuse our help.  They will carry their brother out themselves.  A decision that I hold in the highest regard.
    It's just starting to get late and we begin to move away from the shacks.  As we set up another patrol base we call for another resupply drop.  This one doesn't come quite as close as the last one did.  It impacts the side of the mountain with the force of a Mac truck striking a Jetta on the freeway. The palate explodes, which really wouldn't be an issue if it hadn't impacted on a portion of the mountain that featured about a 20% grade slope.  This caused a diarrhea like explosion of water bottles and MRE's scattering our supplies all the way down the mountainside.  By this point, we were pretty fatigued and definitely dehydrated.  The thought of having to climb down that mountain to recover our water was a little heartbreaking.  A team is assigned to do the recovery.  There are a couple of body bags in the supply drop.  We use one of them to carry our food and water back up the mountain to our patrol base.  We are able to recover about half a bags worth for our entire platoon.  It would