U.S. big guns resound through Afghanistan's Pech River Valley

[unhappycamper]

http://www.stripes.com/polopoly_fs/1.114155.1281520466!/image/4071329066.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_240/4071329066.jpg

Troops take a break in front of a shrapnel-pocked building after firing a 155 mm howitzer that was later damaged by insurgent attacks and had to be replaced.


U.S. big guns resound through Afghanistan's Pech River Valley
By Dianna Cahn
Stars and Stripes
Published: August 11, 2010

NANGALAM, Afghanistan — Each day in this hot summer fighting season, the thundering boom of U.S. artillery reverberates off mountain walls, shaking the Pech River Valley like a giant’s footsteps.

The big guns at Camp Blessing, the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment’s headquarters in the river valley, fire when any of the four U.S. bases that dot the river road come under attack. They strike when soldiers on patrol are ambushed by insurgents who stalk them from the mountain ridges, or when there are reports of insurgents preparing an assault.

In most of Afghanistan, the counterinsurgency strategy of diplomacy and governance has made these 155 mm howitzer guns almost irrelevant. Most artillery and mortar men are doing infantry jobs, focused on key population centers.

Not so in Pech. This is an artillery fight here, in deeply hostile mountain terrain, and this fighting season is so extreme that there is near constant and imminent threat to soldiers holding the valley floor.

And so, the giant stomps his feet.



unhappycamper comment: This is the same way the Afghans decimated: the British, the British, the Soviets and pretty much every occupying force since Genghis Khan in 1219.

[tabasco]

1. That looks like a 105 to me, not a 155.

[era veteran]

2. Afghan national pastime is war.

Good at it too.The British once lost an entire army there except for one nurse if memory serves me.