'They Were Hunting and Killing Us': ABC News' Mike Boettcher Caught in Taliban Firefight With U.S. Troops in Afghanistan

May 30, 2011 — -- There was nowhere to run, so we dove into a muddy mountainside.

I tucked in with my camera next to U.S. Army Capt. Ed Bankston, Headquarters Company, No Slack battalion, 101st Airborne. He'd been shot in the legs nine months earlier, but fought to get back to the front and that's where he was now -- out front and exposed.

Bankston's mission was to hunt and kill the Taliban in a remote mountain valley near the Pakistan border, but the Taliban had struck first. They were hunting and killing us.

"I won't forget that day for the rest of my life. I'll question every piece for the rest of my life," said Bankston.

Just two days earlier, March 26, Bankston and his platoon leader, Kevin Mott, briefed their part of Operation Strong Eagle 3 on a huge battlefield mockup, called a sand table. They were a little nervous about it. Four hundred U.S. and 300 Afghan national Army soldiers would be airlifted into a remote mountain valley near Pakistan that served as the headquarters for a top Taliban and al Qaeda leader, Qari Zia Rahman.

No Slack's commander, Lt. Col. Joel Vowell warned his men that Strong Eagle 3 had the potential to be a very tough mission.

"This is Barawolo Kalay. This is his home. This is his sanctuary. This is his neighborhood. No one has ever dared to go in there. You think this is going to cause a ruckus? I think so," he told his soldiers.

But No Slack had been in a lot of ruckuses in the three months we spent with them. They were assigned perhaps the toughest area of Afghanistan, Kunar Province, known as "The Heart of Darkness."

Kunar's terrain consists of steep mountains and deep valleys. The mountainsides are honeycombed with caves that Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents use for ambush. Every invading army since the time of Alexander the Great has failed to completely conquer Kunar.

American forces are facing the same challenges as their historic predecessors, but have one advantage: helicopters. No other army had been able to seize the high ground. Not even the Soviets, who used their helicopters for strafing runs and missile attacks.

However, Vowell is an air assault specialist who was making military history by landing large numbers of troops on high-mountain ridges where they would immediately have the advantage of the high ground.

But as the 700-man force flew to their high-mountain landing zones early on the morning of March 28, a lot of soldiers had a gut feeling that this was not going to be an ordinary mission.

"From the second I got on the Chinook I had doubts," recalled Sgt. Eric Mendez, a squad leader for Bankston's Headquarters Company. "I had doubts that I wasn't going to make it back."

Mendez's platoon leader, Capt. Kevin Mott, already was acutely aware of Kunar's dangers. Ten months earlier, a Taliban bullet had grazed his head, causing him to fall several hundred feet down a mountainside. He should have died, but survived and after months of treatment returned to the front to be with his men.

"I don't think anybody was really prepared for exactly what it was going to be like," he said. "Some of us had the worst in mind."

Mike Boettcher at the end of Day 1 of Operation Strong Eagle 3. Boettcher dove into a muddy mountainside when the Taliban began their attack. Photo by Capt. Justin Roberts, 101st Airborne

Situated behind Headquarters Company commander, Capt. Bankston, I hugged the muddy mountainside as closely as I could. He was on the radio answering calls from headquarters, which wanted to know what the enemy situation was. His reply was direct.

"The f***ing enemy station right now," he said, "is that they are shooting at us from a bunch of different locations."

Capt. Mott's platoon was pinned down 50 yards to our right.

"It sounded like the whole valley had erupted in fire at the same time," he recalled.

Mott's men were taking fire from three different locations, and one of his squads, led by Staff Sgt. Ofran Arrechaga, situated another 50 yards to Mott's right, was trapped in an exposed draw and taking fire from all sides.

Arrechaga was adored by the younger men and respected by his officers. He was thought of as as a "soldier's soldier." In the opening minutes of the battle, he lay wounded on the mountainside. Spc. Steven Trimm was shot in the hand, but kept firing his M-4 rifle at Taliban positions. An Afghan soldier had been shot in the leg.

Mott transmitted the news. "6, 3-6, I have an unconfirmed report over my net. I have three casualties. I'll give you more information as I get it."

Immediately, two sergeants, Jeremy Sizemore and Eric Mendez, along with a medic, Spc. Jameson Lindskog, only on his second combat mission, pushed out to relieve the cut-off squad.

"I was not thinking at all," said Mendez. "I just heard we had casualties. My guys are down. My men need help. So, it just clicked into my head. It's like muscle memory. You just run. You just run to them. If the enemy pops up, you engage them and hopefully you just destroy them as you continue to move."

A week earlier, I had spent three days sitting next to Lindskog in the back of an armored truck, called an MRAP. We were on a convoy protection mission and were being jostled up and down as the truck moved along Kunar's rutted roads.

Lindskog had joined the Army after his California physical therapy business went belly up in the recession. He saw that I was wincing. My back hurt and he urged me to come to the medic station after the mission for some "back work." I never had time to take him up on the offer and now he was in trouble.

He, Sizemore and Mendez were running through a wall of bullets to reach their surrounded comrades. Sizemore shouted to a wounded Spc. Trimm that "friendlies" were approaching.

"As soon as we were coming in we could hear them: 'Hey, we're right here. Don't shoot. We're coming in. Let us know what's going on,'" Sizemore said. "Trimm said Sgt. AC [Arrechaga] is shot. He's hit in the back. We stopped the bleeding. Trim said, 'I'm shot, but I'm good. I can carry on.' The Afghan Army guy is shot. He's laying out in the middle of the draw."

A soldier watches as an Air Force jet drops a 2,000-pound bomb on a Taliban position during Operation Strong Eagle 3. Photo by Mike Boettcher

"I couldn't explain in words how I felt after helping them out," he said. "Having to run down there, all that effort and the only thing I could do is question myself: Could I have run faster? A piece of me falls when you see your men die, when you see your men hurt. I can't explain. It's just like your heart kind of just drops."

Everything changed when Capt. Bankston gave the order to his fire support officer. "Make stuff blow up" was the blunt order. And it did.

The weather had cleared and attack helicopters and fighter jets re-entered the battle. The three-day operation would stretch into nine days, but the 101st Airborne kept fighting as their predecessors had more than a half century earlier in Bastogne at World War II's Battle of the Bulge. They took Barawolo Kalay and wounded Qari Zia Rahman, who barely escaped into Pakistan.

For their valor, No Slack's soldiers were awarded a basketful of silver and bronze stars. Gen. David Petraeus pinned medals on Mott, Bankston, Sizemore, Mendez and a host of other soldiers -- awards they would gladly trade for the lives of their brothers.

And then they went home. There was no send off, no brass band. Without a word, they walked to a chartered helicopter and got the hell out of Kunar and "The Heart of Darkness."

ABC News's Mike Boettcher is an award-winning investigative journalist currently embedded with U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan. He is the only journalist with the 101st Airborne. Boettcher is also a professor at the University of Oklahoma. His students host a website called Afghan101, covering the wars from the home front.