Zero Foxtrot

Operation Anaconda
March 2002, Shah-I-Kot Valley, Afghanistan

The helicopters crossed the mountains expecting to chase a broken enemy. Instead they flew into hell, surrounded by guns. Coalition planners believed the fighters hiding in the Shah-i-Kot Valley were retreating remnants after months of bombing and pressure following the invasion of Afghanistan. The assumption was simply to push conventional forces into the valley floor, block escape routes, and crush whatever resistance remained.

But the enemy had plans of their own. Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had spent weeks preparing fighting positions in caves, ridgelines, rock walls, and elevated terrain overlooking the landing zones. They knew exactly where helicopters would have to approach. They knew where troops would bunch up after insertion. They understood something armies keep relearning through history. High ground matters.
The first helicopters started taking fire almost immediately. Machine guns opened up from the ridges. RPGs streaked through thin mountain air. Mortars started walking into exposed valley positions while troops tried to orient themselves after landing. Some helicopters limped away shot full of holes. Others barely made it onto the ground before crews started unloading wounded. The valley floor became the trap.
Men climbed frozen slopes carrying machine guns, radios, ammunition, and casualties at altitude while under fire from fighters dug into the rock and snow above them. Helicopter resupply became dangerous if not impossible.

Operation Anaconda eventually succeeded because coalition airpower and reinforcement capacity were overwhelming once fully engaged. B-52 strikes, AC-130 gunships, close air support, and relentless pressure slowly took over. But it wasn't without consequence.

The KIA were:

Technical Sergeant John Chapman
Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts
Sergeant First Class Matthew Commons
Staff Sergeant Marc Anderson
Sergeant First Class Scott Sather
Specialist Marc Tyler Anderson
Sergeant First Class Stephen Kanes
Sergeant First Class William Bennett

25 OCTOBER 1944
WORLD WAR II
TAIWAN STRAIT
USS Tang

USS Tang had already turned the Taiwan Strait into a graveyard before the last torpedo left the tube. By October 1944, Tang was one of the deadliest submarines in the Pacific. With an aggressive captain and experienced crew, they had numerous patrols with confirmed sinkings.
That night started with a successful ambush. Tang surfaced for a nighttime attack against a convoy moving through the strait. Torpedoes were already in the water. Targets were burning as Japanese escorts scattered. The crew was running hard inside the submarine trying to keep pace with the firing solutions while O’Kane maneuvered for another shot in the dark.

But the last torpedo malfunctioned.

American submariners feared “circular runners” for a reason. A torpedo gyro could fail after launch and send the weapon curving back toward the submarine that fired it. There was almost no time to react once somebody spotted the wake changing direction.
O’Kane ordered emergency power and a hard turn, trying to outrun it. But submarines are not fast moving vessels. Especially at close range, in darkness, with seconds to decide whether the glowing wake in the water is real or imagined. The torpedo slammed into Tang near the stern.
The submarine sank so fast most of the crew never had a chance. Men were thrown into darkness, flooding compartments, ruptured batteries, steam, fuel oil, and collapsing pressure. Inside submarines, mechanical failure does not stay mechanical for long, it becomes drowning immediately.

Only nine men escaped. They used the flooded escape trunk and shot themselves toward the surface one by one from nearly 180 feet down. Several suffered burst lungs and decompression injuries. The survivors floated for hours in black oil-covered water while Japanese ships circled nearby pulling prisoners from the sea.
Tang finished the war with one of the highest confirmed sink records in the U.S. Navy. And in the end, after surviving depth charges, escorts, storms, and months of combat patrols, the boat was killed by its own final shot.

S.O.G. "Studies and Observations Group"
Vietnam War November 1968
MACV-SOG Recon Team Idaho
Near the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The irony is that “Studies and Observations Group” sounds like nerds writing reports somewhere in Saigon, when in reality it became one of the highest casualty-rate orgs in U.S. military history. SOG veterans joke that the name itself was part of the camouflage. Quiet title. Extremely violent work. Rule #1 - Don't Get Caught.
SOG recon teams crossed borders the United States officially denied crossing. Tiny patrols pushed deep into Laos to watch truck routes, track troop movement, call air strikes, and get out before the jungle swallowed them. Sometimes that plan lasted hours. Sometimes minutes. It was another example of the government saying one thing and blatantly doing another.

John Stryker Meyer was leading one of those teams when the jungle erupted around him. The NVA soldiers would hit their patrols with extreme violence at close range. The Ho Chi Minh trail was their lifeline and they protected it like a swarm of hornets.
This was the reality of SOG that people misunderstand. They were not clearing terrain, they were surviving detection inside enemy-controlled territory while massively outnumbered. A recon team might have two or three Americans and a handful of indigenous fighters moving through areas packed with entire NVA units protecting the trail.
The indigenous troops carried an enormous part of the war. Montagnards and Nùng fighters tracked movement, carried wounded, spotted ambushes, and died in numbers history barely recorded. Meyer has always been very direct about that. No fake lone-wolf mythology or pretending Americans did it alone.
When SOG called for help, extraction helicopters knew they would be stepping into an active fight. Sometimes aircraft left with bullet holes and sometimes they did not leave at all. Pilot David Nelson from the Stay Zero Podcast ep 10 was shot down while trying to rescue another down pilot, and spent 8 days in Cambodia evading capture.
SOG Men were operating at the edge of survivability to disrupt the enemy's supply chains, while the government actively denied their existence.

For me, Memorial Day always pulls me back to December 1st, 2005. South of Fallujah, inside the compound of a flour factory, an IED was detonated by a pressure plate. Ten Marines were killed. Eleven more were wounded. They weren’t strangers from a history book. Most of us had gone through infantry school together. They were friends.
To this day, it remains one of the most impactful experiences of my life. People who have never lived inside a platoon, usually don’t understand the magnitude of what gets lost when something like that happens. It’s not just names or people you know. It’s real connections and inside jokes with stranger who over months of shared trauma became the closest friendships of your life. It rips your heart out.
I tried EMDR therapy for the first time recently and this is what came up for me. Initially an overwhelming sadness for them and their families that I can't imagine ever not feeling. As I sat with that longer and longer, I began to appreciate it. I realized I don't want it to go away. I don't want to forget. I don't want to think about them and feel nothing. So what do I do with it? I don't really know, but for now I've settled on accepting that I don't want to put it down yet. I want to carry them and if sadness is the feeling then I'll sit in sadness when I have to. For them. And in that realization it shifted from a burden I've carried for 25 years to a badge of honor I keep for their sake. Maybe one day I'll be ready to put it down. But for now, it's mine. And I'll toast to their sacrifice and the pain it produces because it was real.
So while everybody else celebrates the long weekend, take a minute and learn one name. Read one story. Look at one photograph of the sacrifices made over the years. Understand that every headstone in places like Arlington Cemetery, was somebody’s best friend, sitting around a fire, making everybody laugh with a p***s joke.
May you have a deeply memorable Memorial Day.
RIP:
SSgt Daniel Clay.
Sgt Andy Stevens.
Cpl Anthony McElveen.
LCpl Craig Watson.
LCpl Scott Modeen.
LCpl Andrew Patten.
LCpl Robert Martinez.
LCpl Adam Kaiser.
LCpl David Huhn.
LCpl Holmason.

Corporal Leo Major
APRIL 1945
World War II
Zwolle, Netherlands

The mission was supposed to end before dawn. Slip into Zwolle, scout the German defenses, return to Canadian lines, then let artillery do the rest. Corporal Leo Major never came back. Major and Corporal Willie Arsenault entered the occupied Dutch city under cover of darkness to reconnoiter German positions ahead of the assault. Somewhere in the streets, Arsenault was killed by German fire, leaving Major alone behind enemy lines with every reason to withdraw. Instead, he kept moving.
The Germans defending Zwolle were exhausted, scattered, and operating in darkness with limited communication and no clear understanding of where Canadian forces actually were. Major realized confusion could become a weapon.
He spent the night moving through the city firing from different positions, throwing grenades, setting fires, and creating enough chaos to make it sound like a larger Canadian force had already entered Zwolle. More than once he captured German soldiers at gunpoint, marched them back toward Canadian lines, then turned around and headed back into the city alone.
As the hours passed, the uncertainty spread. Some German troops reportedly believed a major assault was already underway. Others assumed tanks and infantry would arrive by daylight. In the dark, perception started carrying more weight than reality.
By morning, much of the German garrison had withdrawn from Zwolle. Canadian forces entered the city without the artillery bombardment that likely would have destroyed large sections of it.
Leo Major did not literally capture a city by himself. The German position was already weakening inside a collapsing war. But one aggressive soldier exploited confusion and momentum so effectively that he accelerated the collapse far beyond what his actual numbers should have allowed.
Zwolle still remembers him because the city survived the liberation largely intact.
Wars are full of moments where people stop reacting to reality and start reacting to what they think is happening. Sometimes that difference decides whether a city survives the night.