COP Keating was established in a remote location near the town of Kamdesh of Nuristan province in North Eastern Afghanistan approximately 25 km from the Pakistan border along the only improved dirt road in the Kamdesh District. OP Fritsche was established 2.2 Km straight line distance to the southeast, non-line of sight with an elevation difference of 2150 ft. from Keating. The COP was surrounded by extremely rugged, mountainous high ground and is positioned to interdict historic trafficking routes to and from Pakistan. We arrived in Country in June, and the temperature was already ranging between 110 to 115 degrees in Jalalabad. The turbines from the Chinook only added to the scorching temperature which, did not help us out at all. Several of the guys were becoming hot weather casualties, but we pushed all the way through to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Bostic. All personnel, we …show more content…
He informed us that the plans for the COP was for it to be closed down and that our main mission was to hold ground until the plans were complete. The first thing that was on our agenda was COP security. 1st PLT was assigned to conduct combat patrols first, since most of the patrols from the left seat, right seat rides were executed by us. We improved the COP security between patrols as 3rd PLT defended the COP from the fighting positions that were made of the HWMMVs. Improvement of the COP security was so important because there was only one strand of concertina wire surrounding the COP, in some places there was none, and in other places the wire had been pressed down by the weight of the snow from the previous winter. Every day we patrolled, and after we continued to improve COP security. We carried up dozens of strands of concertina wire, pickets, and rolls of barbwire, and picket pounders; up the side of the