Anatomy of an ambush

COMBAT OUTPOST MIZAN, Afghanistan — This combat outpost is a village in itself, with a platoon each of American soldiers, Afghan soldiers and Afghan police nestled in a verdant valley surrounded by high peaks, barren and forbidding.

The American unit at Mizan — 3rd Platoon, Fox Company, 2/2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment — has been here for four months and have about eight to go before they head back to their base in Germany.

It’s easy to tell who is the incoming platoon leader and who is the outgoing — at breakfast 2nd Lt. Dave Anderson is wearing a clean, complete uniform, while 1st Lt. Troy Peterson, who has been with 3rd Platoon for a year, is wearing a T-shirt, shorts and a cap, as most of the men are.

Peterson carries himself with the confident swagger of a man who is responsible for a difficult mission and the lives of 30 men. Anderson looks younger and weighs less than almost all of the soldiers under his command. The Fox Company commander, Capt. Charles Wall, is along but makes it clear that it is the lieutenants’ mission.

The mission begins

At 3 a.m. on a pitch-dark night, Anderson and Peterson led nearly everyone at Mizan over “Route Goat” — a relentlessly steep gravel slide leading to the high pass looming over the outpost to the south.

In the quiet darkness, soldiers carrying radios, machine guns, grenades, trauma bags, belts of grenades, gallons of water, body armor and tremendous amounts of ammunition scramble up the mountain grunting, cursing, sliding on the gravel and crashing through low brambles that stab through pants and boots.

Read the full story at GlobalPost.