Braving withering fire from fortified Taliban positions, men from the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, located the body of Rifleman Yubraj Rai and then carried it more than 100m across open ground.

In previous years the fighting in Helmand has subsided in November, but the latest dispatches from the region reveal concerted resistance from the Taliban forces. Rai, who had been in Afghanistan for only two weeks, was shot during an operation to clear the southern districts of Musa Qala after intelligence revealed that the Taliban had consolidated their forces almost a year after British troops seized control of the town.

During the operation earlier this month, a Gurkha platoon was ambushed on a stretch of open ground. Amid the chaos, Rai was hit almost immediately.

Colleagues initially believed that the 28-year-old was just diving for cover. But after he realised Rai had been hit, Lieutenant Oli Cochrane began planning to rescue his body, but suddenly lost all radio contact as a bullet hit his radio. Further rounds then pierced his rucksack.

As Taliban fighters found their range, Captain Gajendera Angdembe, Rifleman Dhan Gurung and Rifleman Manju Gurung ran 100m across open ground to retrieve Rai's body.

Here's the video via ITN:


A second Gurkha was later killed in Afghanistan when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

With so much attention understandably focused on the economy and the incoming administration, the struggles being faced by G.I.’s coming home from combat overseas are receding even further from the public’s consciousness.

If you’re in your late teens or early 20s and your energies have been directed for a year or more toward dodging roadside bombs and ambushes, caring for horribly wounded comrades and, in general, killing before being killed, it can be difficult to readjust to a world of shopping malls, speed limits and polite conversation.

It’s good to be home. Or is it?

That day you dreamed about the past few months – it’s finally here. Sure, it’s great to be back, but after a while something sinks in. “It’s not as sweet as you think it is,” one vet recalls of his return.

After riding high those first few days or weeks, the honeymoon period can end abruptly. It doesn’t take long before everything that used to be familiar feels unfamiliar. You might feel like a stranger in your own town. You may feel you’ve changed, but nothing else has.

On top of that, after living on alert for so long, life at home can feel like living “with the volume turned down,” in one Iraq vet’s words. Disappointment and disorientation can mount early.

It helps to find an outlet, something you’re passionate about. “Everybody needs something to focus their energy on other than what’s going on,” one vet says. “You need something to get your mind off everything else.”

Bryan, now 24, was an Army sniper in Iraq from February 2004 to February 2005. At an age when many youngsters go to college or line up that first significant job, he and his squad-mates were prowling Tikrit with high-powered weapons, looking for bad guys.

He was shot in the leg and hand during a firefight, and he saw and did things that he was less than anxious to talk about when he came home.

“I wanted to go to college,” he told me. “I had all these plans, but I couldn’t seem to make them happen. I couldn’t focus. I would get, like, depressive thoughts.”

He said that he would party a lot. “Party” was a euphemism for drinking.

The drinking made him more depressed, and then he would get angry that he was “partying but not having a good time.”

Bryan said he would “flip out,” and friends began to shun him. “I just didn’t care what I did or who I affected with my actions. I would break stuff. I’d break, like appliances. It was bad.”

Writing on Veterans Day, Paul Rieckhoff founder of IAVA, explained the intentions behind this Public Service Announcement (PSA) [via Talking Points Memo].  The title of the piece was aptly named Veterans Day 2.0.