Friendly Pakistani border guards: G.I.s' night in firefight hell

G.I.s' night in firefight hell
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Thursday, August 4th, 2005

FORWARD OPERATINGBASE SALERNO, Afghanistan - For Army Staff Sgt. Jesse Landazuri, the decision to bail out of his two-man border outpost last month came after the ninth or 10th incoming rocket-propelled grenade finally knocked him to the ground.

Wounded in the face and leg by the shrapnel, the 82nd Airborne Division trooper abandoned his position just as he and Queens-born Pfc. David Joy were about to be overrun on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by a platoon of suspected Al Qaeda fighters.

"I made the call, we have to get out of here or we’re gonna get killed," Landazuri calmly recounted yesterday over a plate of meatloaf at this base about 6 miles from Pakistan.

Landazuri, 23, of Fontana, Calif., and Joy, 23, raised in upstate Lockport, had held off the 40 or so enemy fighters for almost an hour with their M-240 SAW machine gun, repelling a well-coordinated attack that made worldwide headlines.

Just after midnight on July 14, a foggy, moonless evening, green tracer rounds from Kalashnikov rifles and heavy machine guns streaked past the duo from Company B of the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, known as the "White Devils."

The enemy forces were firing from two positions, the hero G.I.s said.

"One was covering us and the other was covering our escape," Landazuri told the Daily News in the pair’s first interviews. Nearby, a squad of U.S. troops moved to higher ground overlooking Joy and Landazuri at Outpost 4, on the peak of a rubble-strewn hill dotted with trees and shrubs in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost Province.

On the opposite hill inside Pakistan, just a few meters away, a Pakistan Army border outpost responded by firing its .50-caliber heavy machine gun straight up in the air - a move that infuriated the Americans taking massive enemy fire. It was a warning that the U.S. soldiers should not try to seek safety on the Pakistan side of the border.

"We were screwed where we were, and we needed to get more people up there," Joy said of his "terrifying" night.

After 40 minutes of the firefight, almost a dozen RPG rounds exploded near the two men, including one that stunned them when it landed on their bunker. Their buddies nearby thought they were dead.

So did the enemy.

"To Allah! To Allah! We took for you," the Islamic jihadis could be heard yelling, they were so close. "We give this mountain back to you!"

Dazed and bleeding from a spray of shrapnel, Landazuri stood up and blasted away with a sawed-off shotgun, which he kept within reach even during the chow hall interview.

The U.S. backup squad opened fire again and covered the men’s escape. A quick-reaction force soon arrived by helicopter and the enemy fighters fled back into Pakistan, where coalition forces counted at least 11 killed by U.S. artillery and air strikes. The Pakistani government reported finding 24 bodies inside its border, angering local tribal leaders.

Pakistan has publicly insisted U.S. forces do not operate inside their country, but it has recently relaxed some restrictions in the wake of terror attacks in London and Egypt, sources told The News.

For Joy and Landazuri, little trust remains for Pakistan’s border guards. And after their first firefight, they said a few lines from Johnny Cash’s "The Man Comes Around," are what they live by.

"And I looked, and behold: A pale horse/And his name, that sat on him, was Death/And Hell followed with him."

Joy said everybody in the squad knows those words by heart now.