An Ambush In The Taliban Heartland

Read his account: Capt. Abdul Rakhman peered over a chest-high mud wall as gunfire and shouts rose. Beside him were two Afghan Army soldiers and a Dutch marine. A few yards away another Afghan soldier knelt in the dirt, reloading a rocket-propelled grenade.



The patrol was stuck, enveloped in a poppy field in a Taliban ambush. Automatic rifle fire came toward them from a tree line about 175 yards to the west and from a row of mud-walled Afghan houses to the east and north.



The captain and Sergeant Leendert, a Dutch marine and the squad's senior adviser, had dashed here when the shooting began six minutes before, leading an Afghan squad to cover.



Now neither side of the wall was…