Rescue on Roberts Ridge

On a chopper bound for Takur Ghar, specialist Oscar Escano had just received word that three of his fellow rangers were killed in action.

Specialist Oscar Escano:  I thought to myself, “There’s no way one of those KIAs was a Ranger, there’s no way!  Nah, my guys don’t get hit. They’re just too good. We’re just too highly trained. There’s no way. And, they just—they mean too much to me. That can’t happen. Not now. Not here!” And, it did. But, I refused to believe it.

It was about 8 a.m., when the chopper made it’s final approach.

Escano: So, we’re flying in. And, I’m like, “Okay, this is it.” We were already on one knee, trigger finger’s outstretched, ready to go.

At home in New Jersey, Oscar’s mother couldn’t have known her son had just flown into battle. She had never approved of his decision to enlist, but like Oscar, she did everything she could to prepare. 

Juanita Jenyons, Oscar's mother: I think that prayer gave me that reassurance that he was gonna be okay. I just felt like he’s protected, he’s gonna be alright. And it did give me that certainty.

Escano: As soon as we got off, about just a few seconds later, that’s when we heard gunshots. Gunshots coming from that mountaintop.

Oscar and the 9 other rangers on his chopper touched down IN a safer landing zone. 

But they would have to climb more than a thousand feet up steep, snow covered terrain to reach captain Nate Self and the rest of the Quick Reaction Force.

Phillips: It wasn’t nearly as close as you thought it was going to be.

Escano: But we were going to get there, one way or another.  Come hell or high water, we were going to get there.

Nate and his men had been pinned down for two hours.  By now, the young ranger captain had more than the enemy to worry about.   

Phillips: You had critical injuries?

Self: Yeah, it’s hard to think straight when you have people in pain, and the men who are treating them...

Phillips: They’re telling you we need to get these guys out of here.

Self: Yeah. I began to believe that if there were a couple of men who were wounded so badly that they needed to get out, that we could possibly get another aircraft in there very quickly, leave and the rest of us could stay.

But just when Nate thought he’d identified a safe landing zone nearby, the rangers faced with a new threat:  mortars.

Self: The first round that came in from mortar fire landed off the nose of the helicopter.  It came over all of us, landed off the nose, I don’t know 40 meters off the front of the helicopter.

Phillips: Incredibly close.

Self: Very close.

Phillips: For a first shot.

Self: Especially for a first shot yeah. 

Launched from a distant ridge, the mortar shells began hitting even closer.  Then, at about 8:30 a.m., the shelling stopped. The al Qaeda spotters had found a new target:  Oscar and the other rangers coming to Nate’s rescue.

Escano: We were hiking up this mountain and then there was this explosion way up in front of us. And then when the next round was behind us, that’s when I got worried.  They were honing-in on our positions. Somebody told me somewhere, that the average time for a mortar round to hit was 15 seconds, so I started counting and like clockwork, at 15 seconds, there will be another explosion. And I started living my life 15 seconds at a time.

Fifteen second intervals: the time it took the enemy fighters to adjust their aim, reload and fire.

Escano: We just kept going and just prayed for the best. I remember I—I saw a tree in front of me. One of these nice little evergreen trees. And, I remember I got down behind it.  Looking at this tree bark. There were only two thoughts going through my mind. The first one was, “Okay what if I get hit, I just pray to God as my last wish that it will just obliterate my body completely.” Because I did not want to force my buddies to have to carry, carry my body through this mission.

And I felt sorry for my mom because when I left home to join the army, my parents advised me against it. My grandmother was standing on the front steps sobbing. And, I knew I was putting my family through a lot of pain, but I had to do it for me.

Jenyons, Oscar Escano's mother: When he first told me that he was gonna do this, I was not thinking, “Oh, how courageous!” I was not thinking that. I was thinking y’know, “Oh my God!”

Escano: And as it turns out, the rounds didn’t hit anyone. They just kept getting closer and closer. And, eventually they stopped.

Escano: My mom says she had easily 100 friends and family members praying for me back. I’m not quite that religious, but hey, who knows?

Jenyons: He said to me, “Mom, I know I was protected.  I saw a light when I was there.”

Protection came from above that day, as it did throughout Operation Anaconda.     The enemy mortar positions were destroyed by thousand pound bombs called in by Nate Self.

As they waited for Oscar and the others to arrive, two of Nate’s men discovered a deserted enemy shelter just below the chopper.  Nate was about to hear the name Neil Roberts for the first time.

Self: They found some of Neil Roberts' gear down there with his name on it.  Found his rucksack They found his helmet which had a bullet hole in it.

Those traces of the missing Navy SEAL only raised more questions.

Self:  I didn’t know at that point why that stuff was there. I didn’t know that the man who had fallen out of the helicopter had fallen out right there.  I thought we had just landed in a bad place that no one knew was bad.

Phillips: Because you couldn’t imagine having been sent in to land at the same place where they’d taken such heavy fire.

Self: Correct.

So what had happened to Neil Roberts? Was it possible he was still alive?

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