K-9 Sgt. COLE, USMC died saving the lives of his men - Cole made eye contact with his handler and seemed to say, “I won’t let them hurt you.”

While I was in Afghanistan, the experience of being there was somewhat difficult as you feel very isolated. Even on a base like Kandahar Airfield with 28,000 troops and contractors, you can feel somewhat alone as it is so alien to our normal life.

One night I was driving on the base from one place to another and I saw a dog handler and his pal walking along one of the roads that criss-crossed the base. It was kinda cool as you could tell they were having fun even just walking along. It made me think of my own dogs back home and miss them a little more.

I slowed the van down and rolled down the window to speak with the young soldier.

I said, " Hey, do you know you are the luckiest bastard on this base??? You get to have your pal with you wherever you go..."

He responded, " Yes, Yes I am the luckiest bastard on this base."

He knew that having his buddy along gave him something the rest of us envied...a friend and protector by his side while walking around the shite-wilds of Afghanistan.

K-9 Sgt. Cole was one of the best at what he did - finding IEDs and protecting his men especially his buddy, Cpl. Brian Holm. He gave his life to keep his men safe.

We salute you Sgt. Cole....SEMPER FI....You done well.

Fair Winds and following seas shipmate - Rest Easy, we have the watch.

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Champion-bred retriever K-9 Sgt. Cole dies saving Marines
Black Labrador spent final days hunting IEDs

By J.L. Miller - Marine Times
Posted : Sunday Jan 16, 2011 11:12:58 EST

Cole was born for sport, but died in battle. The spawn of two champion black Labrador retrievers, he was bread for field trials, a competitive sport in which dogs make complicated retrievals at the direction of their owners.

But destiny had other plans for him. He was donated to the Marine Corps and spent the last of his days saving lives by sniffing out improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.

In Cole’s last moments, as Cpl. Brian Holm’s three-man unit searched for mines along a dangerous road near Delaram, in Helmand province, the black Lab looked over his shoulder at Holm, his handler. Holm later told his wife, Brittany, that he will never forget the look on Cole’s face. It seemed to say, “I won’t let them hurt you.”

Then the explosion hit.

In his final moment before the blast, Cole made eye contact with Holm, and then, knowing his job, went back to work protecting Holm, his unit and all of us back home.

Cole began life in Iowa where Steve Tull, a hunter and dog handler in Dover, Del., bought him for $3,000. Tull wanted to try his hand at field trials with a dog bred for the task. Training can be costly, but Tull had a friend who took it on. When the friend moved away, Tull was left with a partially trained dog and a decision to make about what to do with him.

One day, Tull spoke with Bob Agnor, a friend who works for K2 Solutions Inc., a North Carolina firm that trains dogs to sniff out IEDs. Tull and his wife learned that military handlers form a deep bond with their dogs and treat them well, which is what they wanted for Cole. So Cole shipped out to North Carolina, where he met Holm, a 26-year-old combat engineer.

“We clicked real well. He just kind of responded to what I did,” Holm recalled in a telephone interview from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., where he is based.

Trainer and trainee graduated in mid-February. Cole became Sgt. Cole, USMC — Marine dogs traditionally hold a rank one level above their handler’s — and by April they were on their way to Afghanistan.

Eventually, Tull received a photo of Cole with a Marine corporal with the name “Holm” stitched on his uniform. He e-mailed a Navy chaplain assigned to the 3rd Combat Engineer Battalion.

“Cole was, and is, a very special dog,” Tull wrote. “I feel that it is important to let Cpl. Holm know the history behind Cole, and I would like to be able to send the two of them care packages.”

Davenport responded with e-mail and postal addresses for Holm. The two swapped messages, and Tull and his wife struck up a friendship with Holm’s wife, who lives in Cleveland with their three young boys.

“I must say my husband is more on the ‘manly man Marine’ side,” Brittany told Tull. “And when he received your first letter while still in the States, he was reading it to me and began to get teary-eyed. … He told me he will do everything he possibly can to bring Cole home safe.”

On Cole’s first mission in Afghanistan, he sniffed out an 80-pound IED. Before long, he was top dog. And when the summer ended, Cole’s routine ramped up.

“There were two other dogs in the platoon. One dog had one find, one dog had zero finds. Cole was our go-to dog. He was finding IEDs every mission in October,” Holm said.

Oct. 15 was scheduled to be their last patrol. Holm, Cole, two other Marines and another dog were searching for mines on a busy road.

“It was known for kite-string, command-pull IEDs,” Holm said. Those explosives are tripped by an insurgent hiding nearby who pulls the string when the target is close.
Cole was searching about 50 feet in front of the men. The Marine with the mine detector was the closest to Cole.

“There was no sign of kite strings,” Holm said.
There was no sign of insurgents.

Cole looked over his shoulder and caught Holm’s eye. Someone pulled a string.
“Cole was probably not even 3 meters from the IED,” Holm said.

No one knows why the insurgent pulled the string. Perhaps nerves got to him. Maybe he did not like dogs. All Holm knows is that if Cole had not taken the hit, the Marine with the mine detector was next in line.

Holm told his wife he was given two choices for Cole’s remains. He could bury him or have him cremated.

“Brian chose to bury him,” Holm’s wife wrote to Tull. “He buried him where the incident occurred. He wanted him to be there because that’s where he became a hero.”

Miller writes for The News Journal (Wilmington, Del.)

" It’s not an easy thing to do...”

Please read the short story below and understand what it means...this is the personal and up close part of what our military does that only those who have been there can truly understand. I am glad to share this as all need to know how well these brave warriors perform their duties and how important it is that they are there to serve to our country.


Ultimate sacrifice

AP photographer David Guttenfelder was aboard an Air Force Expeditionary Rescue Squadron helicopter that responded to a call about a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle that had been struck by an IED in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

Two of the American soldiers aboard the armored vehicle were killed, and three had been seriously injured.

Guttenfelder describes the scene: “We landed in a huge marijuana field, which is growing everywhere in the area, and I could see as we were coming in that the vehicle was completely destroyed; there was nothing left of it and the soldiers were kneeling by the side of the road with their two fallen colleagues, waiting for the helicopter to land.

“On the flight back, they took two flags out of the back of the helicopter and unfolded them and carefully took the bodies of the soldiers and placed them in bags and then wrapped them in American flags in the back of the helicopter. And the helicopter is flying at 150 miles an hour, very low, tactical flying because they’re taking contact often from the enemy.

“When the pararescue guys were covering the bodies in the back of the helicopter, they had only two flags with them. The wind was whipping through the open window … A medic was unfolding one of the flags and handed it to me to free his hands when
the wind caught it and it blew out the window and they lost it. So they only had one flag.

"They were talking to each other on the radios, ‘What are we gonna do?’ One of the pilots had a flag that he kept inside, behind the plate of his flak jacket that he’d kept with him for every deployment he’d ever done – in Iraq, and Afghanistan, he flew over Washington D.C. with it, his children had kissed it and his friends had signed it and he carried it in his flak jacket since he started in the Air Force. He took it out and passed it to the back of the helicopter and that was one of the flags that they used to cover one of the guys.”

When asked how the soldiers reacted to him shooting pictures during such a personal, sensitive moment, Guttenfelder said, “The soldiers were as respectful of me as I was of them.

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it was important, because it’s not an easy thing to do.”

Guttenfelder has been covering the war in Afghanistan for nine years

Afghanistan's bloody hell: Where any field can be a killing field

The IED is the signature weapon in Afghanistan and Iraq.....I have heard them go off in close proximity but luckily, I have never been in the "kill zone" of one detonating. This reporter for the Toronto Star gives a ringside seat to what the troops deal with, especially the combat medics who fly into the kill-zone whenever & wherever needed.....If this doesn't fill you with awe, then I regret to inform you that you are without a heart or a human soul....

Afghanistan's bloody hell: Where any field can be a killing field

Louie Palu Special to the Star

I sit strapped in on another express ride to hell. I am flying on a medevac bird. The crews who fly these helicopter air ambulances of the US 101st combat aviation brigade medevac company are the most insane heroes I have ever seen. They fly into the worst places not to fight, but to selflessly pick up the wounded; soldiers, civilians and, yes, insurgents. This Blackhawk carries no weapon system. We are racing over Kandahar’s grape fields in Panjwaii to one of Canada’s last battlefields in Kandahar.

The bird dips, drops and drowns in a swirling cloud of dirt, and then hits the landing zone. The medic leaps out and a desperate group of people rush forward carrying the wounded. Then it arrives, the blood and body parts that look like they’ve been through a grinder.

I fly nine days with them, and slowly it begins to wear on me, mission after mission, body after body. What seemed to get to me the most on some days was the smell of hot blood as the bird heated up. Apparently, over time blood leaks down into the belly of the helicopter and is baked into the fuselage.

When it heats up the smell can come to life in the cabin.

These missions provide a window into what weapons deal to the human body. Most of the casualties are from Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) and mines. Many victims become amputees, legs blown off by the blast. The stumps have tourniquets holding what’s left of their life in. Some casualties have so many holes they bleed out. One day two boys are carried into the bird, both blinded by a mine, staring into space in shock. An Afghan police officer comforted them to the NATO hospital. The parade of blood and tears that moves in and out of the helicopter seemed endless, yet the medevac crews never stop.

The I.E.D. has begun to symbolize, in this war, what the stinger missile was for the mujahedeen when fighting the Russians. This indiscrimiate weapon is the primary tool used by the insurgents to sow terror throughout the countryside. Many of the victims this year are ordinary citizens, including many children, their little feet ripped from their lives forever. Caught between growing numbers of NATO troops and insurgents bent on matching any possible offensive, civilians have suffered the most, as they always do here.

In May I joined the 82nd Airborne and some Canadians in Arghandab District as they made the initial push to secure the first layer of security around Kandahar City. ....There are so many IED’s that patrols become acrobatic feats climbing on, around, over and through every land feature including rivers and trees. On one patrol I jump over a wall, walk five metres and “boom!,” a blast. I hit the ground. We think we are under attack, then comes the shriek from a cloud of dust behind me. I have just walked over a mine. The soldier behind sets it off, his foot shattered. A few days later “bang!,” another IED goes off after I pass it.

During the weeks and months explosions echo in the distance all day. Engineers destroy IED’s, people are also maimed and killed. The deadliest thing you can do here is take a walk. We start to do a “low five” after patrols — a dance where we tap each others’ feet like an Irish jig, celebrating that we still have our feet.

I tour the hell holes of Kandahar and end up in Nakhonay in Panjwaii District, where within sight of the combat outpost an IED explodes behind me again. I am so close to the blast I think my legs are gone in the blinding dust. I run my hands quickly down my legs and they are still there.
One of the most disturbing days unfolds in nearby Fathullah. I join Canadian soldiers for a patrol that ends without incident. Children are running and joking, asking for a “qalam” which in Pashto means pen — they always want pens.

We are about to leave the area when “kapow!” a mushroom cloud bursts into the sky 150 meters away. There is confusion: are we under attack, or did an insurgent blow himself up setting an IED? In the chaos, people come running. An 8-year-old boy is being carried on a man’s back, soaked in blood. He was hit by an IED. His situation is grave.

The soldiers begin first aid, a medevac is called in — the 101s t who answer the call. The boy lives.

In the armoured vehicle on the way back to base, I reflect: How will Afghans deal with these tragedies, when we leave? Will we leave them with the capacity to deal with this threat, or will IED explosions become a way of life and death, for years into the future?

Louie Palu is a Canadian photojournalist who has been covering the war in Kandahar since 2006