Ollie roughs it with Afghan Marines

Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North is roughing it with the Marines in Taliban country in Afghanistan and sends in the second in a series with Report From a Forgotten War ... It's well worth a read and if you missed it, here's his earlier Report From a Forgotten War (1st in a Series)

Lt. Col. Richard Hall, the task force's commander, describes the nearly nonstop gunfights, indirect fire and improvised explosive device attacks as "a very dynamic, complex and often hostile environment." That's putting it mildly.

Because there were no police stations or Afghan army units in most of the remote districts where TF 2/7 is operating, the Marines had to construct their own security outposts -- a herculean effort, given the lack of paved roads and primitive infrastructure. As Lt. Col. Hall puts it: "We have had to simultaneously fight the Taliban, build more than a dozen defensive strongpoints, train new Afghan National Police and conduct civic-action programs to win over the local population, and we're doing it. Our motto, 'Ready for all, yielding to none,' says it all."

He's right. Though his Marines and Navy medical corpsmen have suffered more than 100 casualties from enemy action since they arrived, they have confronted the Taliban, unrelenting heat, innumerable exhausting patrols wearing 40 pounds of armor, and persevered in the roughest living conditions I have experienced since Vietnam. More than half the task force has served previously in Iraq or Afghanistan -- some in both. Yet the unit's re-enlistment rate is 118 percent -- among the highest in the U.S. armed forces.