Today, some 16 years after Chapman's tragic death, fierce disagreement over what happened on that snowy peak threatens to overshadow two Medal of Honor recommendations that-as of publication-await White House approval. It wasn't until the next evening that Jay learned Chapman had died, that he was the last American to hear him alive. This is Mako Three Zero Charlie….' Then it fell silent. The voice continued for about 40 minutes, he says, like a plaintive mantra-'This is Mako Three Zero Charlie…. From his hidden perch, Jay responded again and again on his powerful satellite-capable radio. They belonged to his counterpart on another team: Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman. At once an hour-by-hour, bullet-by-bullet chronicle of a landmark battle and a sobering look at the capabilities and limitations of America's high-tech army, Roberts Ridge is the unforgettable story of a few dozen warriors who faced a single fate: to live or die for their comrades in the face of near-impossible odds.From the Hardcover edition.Jay was part of an elite reconnaissance team operating behind enemy lines, and he immediately recognized the call sign and voice. And by the time the shattered helicopter crash-landed on the valley floor seven miles away, Roberts's fellow SEALs were determined to return to the mountain peak and bring him out-no matter what the cost.Drawing on the words of the men who were there-SEALs, Rangers, medics, combat air controllers, and pilots-this harrowing true account, the first book of its kind to chronicle the battle for Takur Ghar, captures in dramatic detail a seventeen-hour pitched battle fought at the highest elevation Americans have ever waged war. A red-haired SEAL named Neil Roberts was thrown from the aircraft. But the enemy was waiting, hidden in a series of camouflaged trenches and bunkers-and when the Special Forces chopper flared on the peak to land, it was shredded by a hail of machine-gun, small arms, and RPG rounds. Launched as part of Operation Anaconda-a hammer-and-anvil plan to smash Taliban al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan -the taking of Takur Ghar would offer U.S. In this gripping you-are-there account-based on stunning eyewitness testimony and painstaking research-journalist Malcolm MacPherson thrusts us into a drama of rescue, tragedy, and valor in a place that would be known as.ROBERTS RIDGEFor an elite team of SEALs, the mission seemed straightforward enough: take control of a towering 10,240-foot mountain peak called Takur Ghar. For the man's fellow Navy SEALs, and for waiting teams of Army Rangers, there was only one rule now: leave no one behind. soldier is stranded, alone, surrounded by fanatical al Qaeda fighters. In the early morning darkness on a frigid mountaintop, a U.S.

Roberts Ridge by Malcolm MacPherson