Spec Ops Magazine

The men of 2nd Platoon, A Company, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division. Chalk 2 after 9/11. Members of the first conventional light infantry unit to deploy to Afghanistan after the towers came down, on 4 October 2001. K2 in Uzbekistan to Bagram to the Shahi Kot Valley.

The photo set spans the deployment. The pre mission shot taken shortly before they boarded the birds for Operation Anaconda, with Sgt. Baker sitting first row center. The flight line frame. And the photo from the classified meet with NYPD and FDNY at Bagram in December 2001, where Baker is holding the NYPD flag and the stripes side of the U.S. flag. A unit that watched the city burn on TV stood in front of the first responders who ran into the buildings, on the airfield from which the war was about to be carried forward in their name.

Operation Anaconda, March 2002, was the largest U.S. ground combat operation of OEF at that point. The 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne, working alongside SOF and Afghan partner forces, cleared the Shahi Kot Valley of dug in Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The fighting was brutal. Eight Americans were killed across the operation, including the seven who died on Takur Ghar in the Roberts Ridge engagement.

Not Special Operations. Conventional light infantry. The men who carried the first weight of the GWOT before most of the country knew what the war was going to be.

A few new shots of CIA Ground Branch and the camo that’s become its calling card. The Desert Tiger Stripe pattern is a modern nod to the unit’s MACV-SOG roots, and it’s worn almost exclusively by Ground Branch and the Agency’s Global Response Staff.

The irony isn’t lost on anyone. Ground Branch usually tailors its kit to blend in, often running whatever weapons are common to the region or matching their partner force, yet the tiger stripe has become one of the few dead giveaways for one of the most secretive paramilitary outfits in the world.

Fewer than a hundred operators are believed to serve in the Special Operations Group at any given time, the men the government can deny ever knowing.