Building from scratch
As a unit, the 45th did not deploy until November 2003, when the brigade was called to service in Operation Enduring Freedom. U.S. Central Command sent the soldiers to Kabul, Afghanistan, under the command of Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino, USA, and tasked the brigade with training the ANA. Their goal: Prepare 10,000 professional soldiers by June 2004, when the national elections were slated to begin.

"It is the first time the headquarters has been deployed into a combat theater since Korea," Mancino says. "It's a great honor to be the commander of a group of soldiers whose combat lineage goes back to Korea and World War II."

The 45th faced a challenge. Twenty-five years of war had shattered the country's infrastructure, including schools, highways, means of production, power, and water. The withdrawal and collapse of the Soviet Union left the country in the hands of feudal warlords.

"Building an army is not something we are trained to do. We are trained to destroy armies," says Mancino.

Initially the ANA was plagued with problems. The ranks were filled with "donated" warlord militiamen, whose true loyalty lay elsewhere, and the desertion rate was as high as 50 percent a month. Equipment was a mixed assortment of old captured Soviet arms in the hands of untrained soldiers. Any formal training possessed by the soldiers was outdated Warsaw Pact training, useless against the mountain guerilla fighting that ran the former Soviet Union out of the country in the first place.

But Mancino and the 45th were up to the task. Mancino is the first general to take the 45th into a battle zone as a unit in more than 50 years. The historic nature of the move was not lost on him - his father was a soldier with the 45th during World War II. And with his son joining him on this mission, the possible cost of taking soldiers into war wasn't lost on Mancino, either. He easily rattles off the number of fathers and sons, cousins, brothers, and mothers and daughters serving together in the 45th.

Coalition partners in the British, French, German, Italian, Romanian, and even Mongolian armies joined the 45th in its endeavor. While the 45th oversaw and coordinated the training of the ANA, the British army brought in its famous Gurkha soldiers to train the non-commissioned officers; the French trained the officers; the Germans trained the armor units; and other countries trained different specialists or took up security patrols.

Equipment came from a variety of partners, heavily leaning on former Warsaw Pact countries such as Romania and Poland for weapons and vehicles. Such equipment already was familiar to the Afghan fighters whose experience involved a 10-year insurrection against the former Soviet Union.

By March 2004, the desertion level of the ANA had dropped to 2 percent, and by late March, it graduated its 15th "Kandak," or battalion, completing the army's central corps for the security of Kabul. By April, the army had graduated 10,000 soldiers two months ahead of schedule. Mancino says increases in pay and benefits erased many of the obstacles the coalition faced in the initial stages of the army. Mancino has unwavering respect for the Afghans, whom he calls "natural soldiers."

"The Afghan soldier is a very obedient and disciplined soldier ... they are virtually not afraid of anything," Mancino says. "In their culture, fear is frowned upon, so many of our efforts have been to temper their natural enthusiasm for combat and to make them remember fire and control measures we've taught them."

Up to the task
In mid-April, the 45th handed over basic combat training to the ANA. Many of the trainees became the trainers, with coalition soldiers serving in supervisory and mentoring roles. As the ANA gained stability and growth, things in Afghanistan began to heat up. Border skirmishes with remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida increased with the announcement of a new U.S. offensive. The Pakistan military and coalition forces tightened access along the border.

At the same time, new threats arose from old sources. Warlords such as Ismail Kahn in the west and General Dostum in the north became isolated holdouts in the New Afghanistan. Warlords restarted the opium production and trade that had been banned under the Taliban, overtook local towns in last-minute power grabs, and threatened Afghanistan's interim government. ThoUSAnds of newly trained ANA fighters were dispatched - along with their mentors, soldiers of the 45th.

"Our embedded trainers are in combat operations on a daily basis," Mancino says. "Basically, when we came, we thought it would be pretty much of a training mission. In fact, now we are engaged in fighting alongside the Afghan soldiers and mentoring them in combat operations."

The instability created by the warlords combined with border conflicts made the push for new elections even more important - but the coalition wanted stable elections with valid outcomes. Despite the 45th's success in building and training the ANA ahead of schedule, a disappointing voter drive made such an outcome uncertain by the original June target date. The elections were rescheduled for September, and it was up to the Thunderbirds to maintain security.

"Right now the emphasis is building the army's support for the presidential elections. That's the next significant step in Afghanistan's history, and that [began] in September. The army will be built, manned, and equipped to operate and provide security for the elections," Mancino says.

Aside from training a foreign army, Mancino found himself making other "firsts" for the 45th. He pinned the Combat Infantry Badge on several soldiers who'd seen combat. Even Mancino had been put under fire in the previous months, when a hidden machine-gunner had sprayed his convoy as it returned to base one evening.

Mancino thinks the 45th has a lot more fight in it. When the unit does return home, all the soldiers will have "double birds" for the first time in a long time. He says all members of the 45th will be able to wear the patch on each shoulder - one to identify them, the other to show they had been deployed in combat.