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The Story of a Fight Against All Odds
Bantam
July 2011
On Sale: June 28, 2011
304 pages ISBN: 0553807579 EAN: 9780553807578 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
One of the most critical battles of the Afghan War is now
revealed as never before. Lions of Kandahar is an inside
account from the unique perspective of an active-duty U.S.
Army Special Forces commander, an unparalled warrior with
multiple deployments to the theater who has only recently
returned from combat there. Southern Afghanistan was slipping away. That was clear to
then-Captain Rusty Bradley as he began his third tour of
duty there in 2006. The Taliban and their allies were
infiltrating everywhere, poised to reclaim Kandahar
Province, their strategically vital onetime capital. To stop
them, the NATO coalition launched Operation Medusa, the
largest offensive in its history. The battlefield was the
Panjwayi Valley, a densely packed warren of walled compounds
that doubled neatly as enemy bunkers, lush orchards, and
towering marijuana stands, all laced with treacherous
irrigation ditches. A mass exodus of civilians heralded the
carnage to come. Dispatched as a diversionary force in support of the main
coalition attack, Bradley’s Special Forces A-team and two
others, along with their longtime Afghan Army allies,
watched from across the valley as the NATO force was quickly
engulfed in a vicious counterattack. Key to relieving it and
calling in effective air strikes was possession of a modest
patch of high ground called Sperwan Ghar. Bradley’s small
detachment assaulted the hill and, in the midst of a savage
and unforgettable firefight, soon learned they were facing
nearly a thousand seasoned fighters—from whom they seized an
impossible victory. Now Bradley recounts the whole remarkable story as it
actually happened. The blistering trek across Afghanistan’s
infamous Red Desert. The eerie traces of the elusive
Taliban. The close relations with the Afghan people and
army, a primary mission focus. Sperwan Ghar itself:
unremitting waves of fire from machine guns and
rocket-propelled grenades; a targeted truck turned into an
inferno; the death trap of a cut-off compound. Most
important: the men, Americans and Afghans alike—the “shaky”
medic with nerves of steel and a surgeon’s hands in battle;
the tireless sergeant who seems to be everywhere at once;
the soft-spoken intelligence officer with laser-sharp
insight; the diminutive Afghan commander with a
Goliath-sized heart; the cool maverick who risks all to
rescue a grievously wounded comrade—each unique, all
indelible in their everyday exercise of extraordinary heroism.
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