Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary
Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who
Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by
Doug Stanton
Saddle Up
From the New York Times-bestselling author of In Harms Way comes a
true-life story of American soldiers overcoming great odds to achieve a
stunning military victory.Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small
band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following
9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered forty to
one, they pursued the enemy across mountainous terrain and, after a
series of intense battles, captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which was
strategically essential if they were to defeat the Taliban.The bone-weary
American soldiers were welcomed as liberators, and overjoyed Afghans
thronged the streets. Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn.
During a surrender of six hundred Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers were

ambushed. Dangerously outnumbered, they fought for their lives in the
citys immense fortress, Qala-i-Janghi, or the House of War. At risk were
the military gains of the entire campaign: if the soldiers perished or were
captured, the effort to defeat the Taliban might be doomed.As the
Americans struggled to hold the fortress, they faced some of the most
intense urban warfare of our time. But until now the full story of the Horse
Soldiers has never been told. Doug Stanton received unprecedented
cooperation from the U.S. Armys Special Forces soldiers and Special
Operations helicopter pilots, as well as access to voluminous after-battle
reports. In addition, he interviewed more than one hundred participants
and walked every inch of the climactic battleground.This exciting story is
filled with unforgettable characters: brave Special Forces soldiers, tough
CIA operatives, cunning Afghan warlords, anxious stateside soldiers wives
who do not know where their husbands have gone, and humble Afghan
boys spying on the Taliban.Deeply researched and beautifully written,
Stantons account of Americas quest to liberate an oppressed people
touches the mythic. The Horse Soldiers combined ancient strategies of
cavalry warfare with twenty-first-century aerial bombardment technology to
perform a seemingly impossible feat. Moreover, their careful effort to win
the hearts of local townspeople and avoid civilian casualties proved a
valuable lesson for Americas ongoing efforts in Afghanistan.Horse Soldiers
is a big-hearted and thrilling read, with an epic story that reaches not just
across the cold mountains of Afghanistan but into the homes of small-town
America, and confirms Doug Stanton as one of our countrys preeminent
storytellers.
Personal Review: Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a
Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by
Doug Stanton
Doug Stanton was born in the Reed City Public Library. In fact I have
heard him say this. Of course at the time it was the Reed City Hospital, but
it still makes a great opening line for a review of Doug's newest book,
HORSE SOLDIERS, recently released by Scribner. Because Stanton
writes like he was born to it. Here is history that reads like the best fiction
of the action-adventure type.
Now a resident of Traverse City where he grew up, Doug is a product of
the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. His first
book, IN HARM'S WAY (2001), was an international bestseller. After
reading HORSE SOLDIERS, I strongly suspect it will enjoy similar
success.
The subtitle of Stanton's new book may be problematic for some. It reads:
The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in
Afghanistan. And, in a nutshell, it's a good description of the book's
content. Because the soldiers described in these pages are indeed
extraordinary people who deserve to be recognized. The problem for some
more politically oriented readers, however, will be the word "victory." They

will argue that the U.S. has not achieved victory in Afghanistan and
probably never will.
But this is not a book about politics. This is a book about ordinary people,
military men and officers, who have trained hard and dedicated their lives
to safeguarding the security of our nation, both here and abroad. They are
not political people. They were given a mission, and they carried it out to
the best of their abilities, despite extreme hardships and unbelievably
primitive conditions. They suffered hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion,
sickness and wounds incurred in battle. Against what appeared to be
insurmountable odds, these Special Forces soldiers and Special Ops pilots
(and a few CIA paramilitaries) persevered and were indeed successful in
carrying out their mission, the taking of the town of Mazar-e-Sharif from the
Taliban forces. Working in concert with the combined forces of several
Afghan warlords of the Northern Alliance, the SF teams lived in caves or in
the open, and ate what their Afghan allies ate - often little or nothing. They
traveled on horseback, even though many of them had never been on a
horse before. This initially prompted some rather comical scenes
reminiscent of episodes from F Troop. But despite the too-small wooden
saddles, too-short stirrups, and bleeding sores, they quickly adapted. And
once mounted, these few dozen courageous soldiers became the first
Americans of the twenty-first century to participate in a cavalry charge,
racing up and down ridges against vastly superior Taliban forces as they
marched steadily north to their objective of Mazar-e-Sharif. In a strange
combination of spaghetti western and Star Wars, the Americans, packing
radios, GPS devices and laser sights, called in gunships and pinpointed
bomb strikes to put the fear of Allah into their numerically superior black-
turbaned enemies.
The story told here covers no more than a couple of months' time shortly
after the 9/11 bombings of New York. But, sticking to the style that earned
him such success in his first book, Stanton fleshes out the narrative with
personal details on all the principals involved, having interviewed the men,
their friends, families and superior officers. He was able to do this by
gaining unprecedented access to the lives of soldiers who are ordinarily
very silent about their activities. Stanton logged literally thousands of miles
of travel in the six years he spent researching his story, not just here in the
U.S., but also in Afghanistan, where he interviewed some of the warlords
involved in the operation, as well as various citizens and shopkeepers of
Mazar-e-Sharif, the town liberated from the Taliban in November 2001.
You will meet men - and their families - from Alabama, Kentucky,
Minnesota, West Virginia, California, Kansas, Texas and Michigan. Any
one of them could be your neighbor.
The story reaches a horrific climax in the closing chapters when several
hundred Taliban prisoners being held in the ancient mud fortress of Qala-i-
Janghi rise up and attack their Northern Alliance jailers, and the SF
soldiers are caught in the middle of the ensuing siege and resulting
bloodbath.

I am sure HORSE SOLDIERS will have its detractors, people who will
argue that invading Afghanistan was not the proper response to the 9/11
attacks. And I would not completely disagree with them. And perhaps
neither would Doug Stanton, judging by his epilogue critique of the war as
it has been waged since 2001. Stanton's intent, however, was not to justify
the war, but to honor the men who followed orders and prepared the way,
at great cost to them and to their families. In this he has succeeded
admirably.
Here is how Stanton explains his motives, at least in part, for writing this
book about a period of just a few weeks which may one day be no more
than a blip on history's radar -
"... I wanted to know what it was like to wake in the predawn hours on a
tree-lined street in the middle of America and leave for war ... Children's
toys fill the cracked driveways of the neighbors' houses up and down the
street ... This was the face I wanted to see ... the face of that man, in those
private hours."
Stanton found that man - those men - who left for war, and he is
Everyman. Yet he is unique, apart. And we owe him.
- Tim Bazzett is the author of the Cold War memoir, Soldier Boy: At Play in
the ASA. He lives in Reed City, MI.
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