Special Forces unit wins 10 Silver Stars

FORT BRAGG, N.C. | Capt. Kyle Walton remembers pressing himself into the jagged stones that covered the cliff in northeast Afghanistan.

Machine-gun rounds and sniper fire ricocheted off the rocks. Two rounds slammed into his helmet, smashing his head into the ground. Nearby, three of his U.S. Army Special Forces comrades were gravely wounded. One grenade or a well-aimed bullet, Capt. Walton thought, could etch April 6, 2008, on his gravestone.

Capt. Walton and his team from the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group had been sent to kill or capture terrorists from a rugged valley that had never been penetrated by U.S. forces - or, they had been told, by the Soviets before them.

He peered over the side of the cliff to the dry river bed 60 feet below and considered his options. Could he roll the wounded men off and then jump to safety? Would they survive the fall?

By the end of the six-hour battle deep within the Shok Valley, Capt. Walton would bear witness to heroics that Friday would earn his team 10 Silver Star medals, the most for a single battle in Afghanistan.

Capt. Walton, a Special Forces team leader, and his men described the battle in an interview with the Associated Press. Most of the recipients seem unimpressed they’ve earned the Army’s third-highest award for combat valor.

“This is the story about Americans fighting side-by-side with their Afghan counterparts refusing to quit,” said Capt. Walton, of Carmel, Ind. “What awards come in the aftermath are not important to me.”

The mission that sent three Special Forces teams and a company from the 201st Afghan Commando Battalion to the Shok Valley seemed imperiled from the outset.

Six massive CH-47 Chinook helicopters had deposited the men earlier that morning, banking through thick clouds as they entered the valley. The approaching U.S. soldiers watched enemy fighters racing to positions dug into the canyon walls and to sniper holes carved into stone houses perched at the top of the cliff.

Considered a sanctuary of the Hezeb Islami al Gulbadin terrorist group, the valley is far from any major American base.

It was impossible for the helicopters to land on the jagged rocks at the bottom of the valley. The Special Forces commandos, each carrying more than 60 pounds of gear, dropped from 10 feet above the ground, landing among boulders or in a near-frozen stream.

With several Afghan commandos, Staff Sgt. John Sgt. Walding and Staff Sgt. David Sanders led the way on a narrow path that zig-zagged up the cliff face to a nearby village where the terrorists were hiding.

Capt. Walton followed with two other soldiers and a 23-year-old Afghan interpreter who went by the name C.K., an orphan who dreamed of going to the United States.

Sgts. Walding and Sanders were on the outskirts of the village when Staff Sgt. Luis Morales saw a group of armed men run along a nearby ridge. He fired. The surrounding mountains and buildings erupted in an ambush: The soldiers estimate that more than 200 fighters opened up with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and AK-47s.

C.K. crumbled to the ground.

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