BAGRAM AIR BASE, March 7: Seconds after stepping off the Chinook helicopter into the icy mountain-top combat zone, Sergeant Robert Healy knew things had gone badly wrong for his platoon in the biggest US-led ground offensive of the Afghan war.

“Two minutes after we got out, we started taking hits. There were RPG (rocket propelled grenade) hits all over the place,” he said, referring to the opening moments of last weekend’s battle.

Eighteen hours later, Healy, from the US 10th Mountain Division, and the 80 other soldiers on the mission were rescued by helicopter after one of the most intense firefights the US army has been involved in since Somalia in 1993.

Some 27 men, including Healy, were wounded — mostly by shrapnel from a hail of mortar bombs rained on them by Taliban fighters.

But no US lives were lost despite the fact that they were outnumbered as Taliban reinforcements came to join the battle being slogged out at an altitude of around 2,570 metres.

The mission, which included some special forces, had been to secure a landing zone on the southern side of Shahi Kot, where US-led forces have been trying to wipe out one of the last pockets of Taliban and Al Qaeda resistance.

But almost immediately after the helicopters left the landing zone, the plan was in disarray as the US soldiers were bombarded by mortar bombs and machine gunfire from Taliban fighters who had taken easily defended positions on higher ground.

“After the initial barrage, we took cover in a small valley and started returning fire,” Healy said on Thursday.

By that time, three of the company’s four medics had been wounded. One of them, 24-year-old James Rissler was hit by shrapnel across his knee minutes into his first battle, but said he kept on moving as that was the only chance to survive.—Reuters