Those who serve in the Armed Forces are people prepared to fight and to die for what they believe in. Fight for values, fight for freedom, fight for the soldier standing next to them, or sometimes, fight purely because they are ordered to do so. But fight bravely they always do.

This post recognises and honours the heroes of Operational Detachment Alpha 3336, 3rd Special Forces Group in Afghanistan. An excerpt from the Washington Post:

After jumping out of helicopters at daybreak onto jagged, ice-covered rocks and into water at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the 12-man Special Forces team scrambled up the steep mountainside toward its target — an insurgent stronghold in northeast Afghanistan.

“Our plan,” Capt. Kyle M. Walton recalled in an interview, “was to fight downhill.”

But as the soldiers maneuvered toward a cluster of thick-walled mud buildings constructed layer upon layer about 1,000 feet farther up the mountain, insurgents quickly manned fighting positions, readying a barrage of fire for the exposed Green Berets.

A harrowing, nearly seven-hour battle unfolded on that mountainside in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province on April 6, as Walton, his team and a few dozen Afghan commandos they had trained took fire from all directions. Outnumbered, the Green Berets fought on even after half of them were wounded — four critically — and managed to subdue an estimated 150 to 200 insurgents, according to interviews with several team members and official citations.

Today, Walton and nine of his teammates from Operational Detachment Alpha 3336 of the 3rd Special Forces Group will receive the Silver Star for their heroism in that battle — the highest number of such awards given to the elite troops for a single engagement since the Vietnam War.

I know that the views of some of my loyal readers vary on the various wars happening at the moment but please give thought to the bravery of these fine men, and also to the courage of their wives, girlfriends and children who wake every day in fear that they may receive the worst news.

There is a poem woven into the fabric of the military and is always worth re-reading: Rupert Boooke’s The Soldier. “If I should die…”

This blog salutes these men.