US soldier retraces Afghan steps of dead brother

[High_Gravity]

US soldier retraces Afghan steps of dead brother

ASMAR, Afghanistan (AP) — The mountainside is steep and large boulders up the slope provide perfect cover for insurgents. It's been a frequent spot for roadside bomb attacks on passing convoys.

Andrew Ferrara has come a long way to take this path. His immediate mission, as he leads his U.S. Army platoon up the mountain, is to find a trigger point from which insurgents set off the bombs. It's a treacherous climb. Several of his soldiers slip and nearly fall on the sliding gravel and loose rock.

But the 24-year-old 2nd lieutenant from California has a broader goal in being here. Here is where he can forge a bond with his older brother Matthew, who was killed in the same rugged mountains of Afghanistan's Kunar province while leading a platoon of his own four years ago.

"I know that my brother was walking the hills 10 miles from here," said Andrew, who now has his brother's initials "MCF" and date of his death tattooed on his left rib cage, the area where the bullet that killed Matthew left his body.

"You look around here and you understand the challenges that he found are similar to the challenges that I'm facing now," he said. "I get outside the trucks and walk up into the mountains and it really puts it in perspective. What kind of person he was, how strong he was and how much heart he had."

But it's more than a matter of experiencing the same geography.

Questions over Matthew's death stirred up a swirl of emotions among his family beyond just grief. Guilt, feelings of betrayal and thoughts of revenge, even doubts over the principles that his parents tried to instill throughout their lives. Andrew, the youngest of four brothers and a sister, has been an ambassador for his whole family, and retracing Matthew's footsteps has provided them not answers, but at least a way to absorb his death.

The date was Nov. 9, 2007. Matthew, a 1st lieutenant, was on his final patrol before moving on to a new assignment. He and his platoon went to the village of Aranas to have one last meeting with local elders he had been dealing with often for the past months. On the way back, they were ambushed. The battle lasted an hour, killing Matthew and five other soldiers. It took two days to retrieve the bodies because of the difficulty of the terrain.

It was in the backyard of the Ferrara family's Torrance, Calif., home, that members of Matthew's platoon told his father Mario about that day. Matthew didn't have to go on that patrol, he just wanted to say goodbye to the elders.

From everything he's learned from the platoon members, Mario believes that the reasons for Matthew's death go back to a previous battle, 10 weeks earlier.

In that battle, roughly 100 Taliban led by a local commander named Hazrat Omar attacked Ranch House Outpost, where Matthew was stationed. Matthew and his platoon found themselves locked in fighting with Taliban only 10 yards (meters) away, firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenade. During three hours of intense combat, Matthew directed the return of fire, coordinated the evacuation of the wounded and called for airstrikes perilously close to his own position, ultimately repelling a force three times the size of his own.

In the end, Omar and 10 of his fighters were killed. No U.S. soldiers lost their lives. Matthew received the Silver Star, awarded posthumously.

Omar's father is one of the top elders in Aranas. Mario is convinced the village elders with whom his son had long worked drew him into a trap.

Matthew was the first one killed in the ambush as he left Aranas. "They knew who Matt was, they targeted him. They set him up," says Mario.

Now, Mario says: "I'd be going for Hazmat Omar's dad."

"It's an innate rage thing. I can't help it. I know better but I can't help it," he said. "I look at myself and say 'Why can't you practice what you preach?' But it's just there."

Mario and his wife Linda, who run a bakery business, sought to instill in their children that all humanity is one tribe. Growing up in the Ferrara home meant mandatory readings of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" — a tale of the dangers of vengeance — along with teachings from Hinduism's Bhagavad Gita scriptures. Theirs was a self-described "glass-half-full kind of family."

US soldier retraces Afghan steps of dead brother - Yahoo! News