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Online only feature: A distinguished past

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The 45th Infantry Brigade has been trained to destroy armies. Now, it's building one.

An explosion boomed from a Special Forces sniper position on a hill in the Paktika Province of Afghanistan. Capt. Eric McElwain, USA, of the 45th Infantry Brigade's embedded training team ran toward the sound of guns.

In March 2004, American and Coalition troops were hunting al-Qaida forces in the mountainous badlands that mark the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan - tribal provinces that hold the last al-Qaida elements and their Taliban supporters. The Special Forces team fell under attack and set off a defensive Claymore mine - hence, the explosion.

"[The Special Forces] had been compromised and were under attack by 30 or 40 of what they believed to be al-Qaida and al-Qaida sympathizers. They were under heavy fire," McElwain says later.

McElwain and two other 45th team members, Capt. Chris Chomosh of Tulsa, Okla., and Sgt. 1st Class Shayne Simmons of Vernon, Mo., grabbed their weapons, rallied the soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) unit they are training, and rushed to the battle.

"We ran down the wadi ... and the bullets started hitting the ground and dirt was flying up around us," McElwain recalls. "We took cover ... and we eventually identified about four machine gun positions firing on us."

Al-Qaida had set the trap to kill anyone trying to rescue the sniper team. It was a double ambush.

At first, the Afghan soldiers, whom the 45th had spent the past two months training, wanted to throw aside all they'd been taught and act on the instincts they acquired through 25 years of war - to attack the machine gun nests in a frontal assault.

"They wanted to charge the hill, but we held them back. It would have been a massacre if they had," Simmons says. "I'll say this for the ANA: They are here to fight."

Instead of charging the position, the 45th trainers persuaded their student-soldiers to use their newfound tactics: indirect fire with mortars, as they'd learned on the course, and a call to the Special Forces Quick-Reaction units for cover fire.

"Our ANA were dropping mortars and rockets, and we were directing the fire on those enemy positions," Chomosh said. "Then the [Special Forces] guys mounted vehicles and ran around the back side of the hill, and the al-Qaida were taking fire from the back side."

The tense skirmish went on for 20 to 30 minutes, until the al-Qaida forces withdrew. As a result, there were no coalition casualties, nine dead al-Qaida members, and the Special Forces were rescued. The battle was one of the largest since the early days of the Afghan invasion and showcased how well the men and women of the 45th trained the ANA. The Afghans proved they could operate as an effective, professional military force.

An action-packed past
This achievement is the latest in a long line of successes for the 45th Infantry Thunderbirds, whose trail of hard-won victories began in 1923 and still echoes in history - battles and places such as Anzio, Sicily, and the liberation of Dachau. Generals such as George S. Patton and Omar Bradley have lauded the unit's victories. The 45th was the template infantry of cartoonist Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe," and its soldiers were the "G.I. Joe" of legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

After playing a key role in World War II, the unit was deactivated Dec. 7, 1945 - exactly four years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The division was called to action again during the Korean War, when it saw combat along Pork Chop Hill and Heartbreak Ridge. Elements remained in Korea until the end of the conflict.

When the 45th came home, it became an all-Oklahoma national guard. By 1969, the unit disbanded into several smaller state guard units, all of which retained the Thunderbird patch. (Learn more about the 45th's history online by reading "A Distinguished Past")

In the 1990s, the 45th became an "enhanced brigade," a light infantry unit containing all the elements necessary to dispatch

to a conflict anywhere. This change enabled the 45th to be ready for a new field of hostility requiring fast deployment.

In recent years, a few elements of the 45th saw duty in the first Gulf War, the Sinai, and Bosnia, but none saw battle until Operation Iraqi Freedom. There, a company of 45th soldiers took part in the invasion of Iraq; one platoon even conducted the first amphibious assault the 45th had seen since World War II.

First Lt. Christopher Ballard is one of the Thunderbirds who took part in the battle for Baghdad. Ballard earned the Purple Heart when Iraqi irregulars organized by Uday Hussein attacked his Humvee. A bullet shattered the vehicle's windshield and came so close to Ballard's head that shards of glass were embedded in his cheek. After medics patched him up, his group boarded Army riverboats and navigated the legendary Tigris River to a momentous landing in Baghdad.

"When they needed the job done right, when they needed the infantry, they called us. My platoon made that assault," Ballard recalls.
Following the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States entered Afghanistan not only to completely crush the Taliban regime, but also to establish a permanent, stable democracy in the country. The interim government called for a central, constitutional government ruled by a president and a parliament. Further, the government's agreement called for a standing army of 70,000, answerable and subservient to the civilian government: the Afghan National Army, or ANA.

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