Danger Close Page #2

operation is that...

And it was an operation

that still went on

for weeks and weeks thereafter.

And there were many

battles that still followed

and towns that these troops

had to clear, and...

but the important thing that...

That can't get lost in this

is that seven souls were lost.

The five crew of the flipper

and our coalition partners,

a Brit and a Canadian...

And that it... it

made no difference

that... that it

was internationals

or that they

might be reporters...

That we had Americans that

were willing to risk their lives

and go after and make sure

to recover the fallen.

They had to count

the bodies of the fallen.

And when I tracked down

Sergeant Greg Strickland,

whose little six-man platoon...

He had gone in there

and had counted five bodies.

And he thought, okay,

well, I found the crew.

And he was ordered

over the radio

to go back in and

count the bodies again

because the reporters

are missing.

And he told me on camera

that he went back in there

to look for the reporters,

and he said he...

That... to look for me.

I didn't know I was

supposed to be on that...

On that helicopter,

on that Chinook.

It was the guys

who told me afterwards.

It was a punch to the gut

because it was

this realization that...

men put their lives at risk

to come after reporters,

to come after people like me,

even though I'm

not a service member.

It's not that I have a purpose,

but it's that I have

this huge responsibility.

I have a debt to

pay back to these guys.

I have to tell their stories.

Did you stay embedded

with this group

for the entirety

of their mission?

No, I... I was with them

for a good week or so

and then it was time

for me to dis-embed.

I was trying to get in with the

Special Forces Teams in Iraq

and I had a hit date

to try to get in there.

And so it was time for me

to hitchhike my way to Iraq.

I went to Diyala province,

which is the size

of Massachusetts

along the Iranian border,

because that's where

I was going to embed

with the Operational

Detachment Alpha 0-7-2.

O.D.A 0-7-2 was

a so-called rough team...

Very austere, out there

on the fringe of the empire...

Where every day was truly

a fight for survival.

Even their Special

Forces Commander

called these twelve men

hard-charging

and living the Special

Forces Dream...

but they'd just lost

one of their own,

Rob Pirelli, who I knew

from an earlier SF mission.

QUADE:
Tell me... um...

tell me about Rob.

CHIEF JIM:
Rob was the

senior engineer on our team.

- He...

- Which means what? What does an engineer do?

Well, the engineer

is responsible for

anything that

we have to build or destroy,

or... he's responsible for

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