The Rock and A Hard Place will describe the exploits of the most decorated unit in the Global War on Terror.
After more than two-decades of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, no other United States Army battalion can boast the record of valor bestowed upon the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry (Airborne) “The Rock” from the 173rd Airborne Brigade.
During their fifteen months fighting in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, the battalion’s paratroopers earned a Presidential Unit Citation, a Valorous Unit Award, three Medals of Honor, two Distinguished Service Crosses, and twenty-seven Silver Stars. Including Bronze Star and Army Commendation Medals for valor, the battalion earned more than 300 awards for valor.
The unit also suffered 169 casualties—26 Killed in Action—a relatively high number for the US Army in the 21st century. This amounts to a roughly 19.5% casualty rate in the 1000+ paratrooper task force. Some of the unit’s exploits have been made famous in such documentary films as Restrepo and Korengal thanks to the outstanding journalism from Sebastian Junger and the late Tim Hetherington. The fighting in Kunar Province and Eastern Afghanistan came to epitomize the war to the public partially because it became the main effort for the army, yet this pouring of resources into that region also illustrated the war’s overall strategic drift. The Rock was at the forefront of those phenomenon.
The battalion has a unique history, first formed in World War II, the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment fought in the Pacific Theater as a regimental combat team—never part of a division. Throughout, the regiment made three parachute jumps including spearheading the American effort to retake the island fortress of Corregidor. Deactivated shortly after the war, elements of the regiment were brought back during the pentomic era before being consolidated in Okinawa in 1962 as the core of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. This brigade was subsequently the first large-scale US Army unit on the ground in South Vietnam in 1965. It remained in Vietnam longer than any other unit, and conducted the only parachute drop of the war—Operation Junction City in 1967. Deactivated shortly after the war, the battalion was brought back in Italy in 2002 as part of the also newly reactivated 173rd Airborne Brigade. Together, the unit made the only combat jump in the Iraq war, securing Bashur Airfield on March 26, 2003, during Operation Northern Delay. This history provides the foundation of a unique culture borne of always being forward deployed, and never assigned to a formation larger than regiment or brigade.
The history of the battalion since its formation is replete with stories of heroism and daring. These stories form an integral bedrock for the airborne mystique in general, and the brigade itself. Members of the 173rd, and therefore the 2nd Battalion, constantly strove to live up to the expectations that their history set forth. The unit’s exclusive location—forward stationed in Italy—also gave it a unique cauldron in which to brew the culture that inculcated the battalion. Regardless, this project will describe the distinctive set of circumstances that led to the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry’s record in Afghanistan.
This battalion had a unique cohesive culture, explicitly fostered by its leaders, that led to its tactical success and status as the most decorated battalion in the post 9/11 era. Facing a complex insurgency in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, The Rock fought with aggressiveness and vigor that was not always conducive to counterinsurgency operations, but nonetheless helped expand security operations and kept many of its men alive. The insurgency it faced in the province was as complex as any in the Global War on Terror. Separating the people from the insurgent—a critical component of successful population-centric counterinsurgency—often amounted to a nearly impossible task. Especially as American involvement in the region grew out of national level intelligence assessments on the whereabouts of international terrorist leaders. As more American forces flowed into the region to kill, capture, or at least disrupt various personalities, they kicked over the proverbial hornets’ nest, fomenting a locally based insurgency that proved nearly impossible to affect. But as battalion slides often boasted for the brash paratroop battalion out of Italy, “If it’s possible, it’s been done. If it’s impossible, we’ll do it.” That statement was put to the test over fifteen months of infantry combat that more resembled mountains fighting of the Central Highlands in Vietnam or the Apennine Mountains of Italy, than anything in Iraq, or the rest of Afghanistan, for that matter. This book, then, will provide a combat narrative history of a single airborne infantry battalion in an impossible situation in one of Afghanistan’s toughest provinces.
