Daoud watched nervously as the choppers descended from out of the dawn sky, their giant blades throwing ominously as they dropped closer to the ground, kicking up dust and beating back the green shoots of wheat now oscillating wildly before him. He turned sharply and made a quick retreat back into
his house, bolting the door behind him. Then, peering out from the corner of a window, he watched as the first pair of camel colored combat boots hit the floor, soon followed by numerous others, and prayed to Allah that he would be left alone. Moments later, there came a loud, insistent knock at the door. The men, he assumed were Americans strangers, the people he'd been warned not to co
operate with. They were joined at the door by a more familiar face, who put the strangers short, insistent words into Pashtu so that he could understand their demands. But Daoud was finding it hard to concentrate two distracted by the service rifles in their hands. Just a few weeks ago, men not unlike these killed a ten year old boy in Daoud's village. Just another of the tens of thousands of Afghan civilians that would fall victim to a war
of which they had no control. Caught in the cross fire between Taliban insurgents and the invading U. S and British forces, while Daoud in his own home did his best not to seem guilty of anything. The interpreter explained that the soldiers wanted to use his home for the next few weeks, adding that they would pay good money for it, but Daoud couldn'toss agree. If word got out to the Taliban that he'd taken money from Americans, the
consequences would not be worth thinking about. Captain John Way's sun sighed and looked about at his men, who were growing ever more skittish, stood out in the open, each passing second bringing them closer to the possibility of death. He and his men were Marines, members of the second Battalion, eighth Regiment, newly arrived in the region after spending two months acclimatizing at Camp Leatherneck, the marine's primary base in
Helmand Province in South Afghanistan. The unit formed a handful of the four thousand new troops sent into Helmand as part of Operation Kanjar, the latest roll of the dice in the U. S Government's efforts to neutralize the Taliban's grip on the region. It was July twenty nine, and with all things going to plan, the war would be all but over soon. Daoud's village, Saujerdez, was one of many similar sized rural communities clustered around the Helmond River
in the Gamser district of Helmond. Although surrounded on all sides by endless miles of desert, here the land was rich and green, quite different to how many of the Marines had imagined Afghanistan to look. To some, it reminded them of the verdant countryside that surrounded their training base in North Carolina, though they were under no illusions of
just how far from home they really were. Out of the twenty most dangerous districts of Afghanistan, according to the US military, nine were located in Helmand Province, being as it was a vital asset for the Taliban on account of the vast, sprawling poppy fields that also love the
banks of the helm And River. The fields, which they cultivated for opium to help fund their operations, had flourished thanks to an extensive canal and irrigation system that had been constructed back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, largely with the help of significant US government investment. The system had even been partially designed by the company Morrison Knudson, perhaps better known for building the Hoover Dam and the San Francisco Bay Bridge, just one of the many ironies
that characterized this most messy of wars. The attempt to commandeer Daoud's home was part of a new tactic to go from village to village, setting up outposts and establishing a visible presence throughout the region to try and route out any Taliban strongholds while simultaneously engaging with the local population in the hope of winning their support. For those like Daou, it is a fraught existence, stuck between the harsh authority of the Taliban and the ambiguous motives of
the invading forces. For those like Captain's Son and his men, it is just the beginning of what must seem an impossible task, the first of many they will face together in the next seven months of their deployment. On this occasion, it ends with Daoud being forced to give up his home for at least the next two weeks. After local elders convince him to hand over his property. Daoud has barely finished loading the last of his possessions onto a cart.
When the Marines move in. He doesn't take the money, telling them instead to make it known that he had no choice in the matter, and in many ways he didn't. Not far from from Saujardes, another unit from the second and eighth of undertaking their first patrol outside the wire.
Among them is twenty year old Lance Corporal Charles Seth Sharp, hailing from the town of Adairsville in northwestern Georgia, Sharp had been motivated to join the Marines, partly in an effort to bring structure and focus to his life and to make his family proud, but mostly by a desire to fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves. While stationed in Iraq the year before, Sharp made a strange request to his family, asking them to send him coloring
books and crayons for Christmas. As he explained to his bemused parents, he wanted to give them toward the kids he'd met throughout his time there. Only a few days before heading out on patrol, Sharp had written a letter to his grandmother telling her that he was about to take part in a mission that his grand children would learn about in history class, but Sharp would never live
to have grandchildren. That morning, on his first patrol, his unit came under attack, and he was shot in the neck by an unseen shooter and died soon after, becoming the first US casualty of Operation Kanjar. For many in the second Battalion and eighth Regiment, the time spent in Camp Leatherneck had been a frustrating one. All cooped up
together under one giant tent nicknamed the Circus Tent. Having trained for months building themselves up for action, the last thing they wanted was to be sitting around kicking their heels in the desert. Sharpe's death was a harsh wake up call to the reality of combat and a brutal reminder of the true nature of the battle they were engaged in. The Taliban were not a simple enemy to
be routed and crushed through sheer might and will. There were no military compounds to storm or governments to overthrow. Theirs was a much longer game characterized by stealth and surprise. Their presence felt not by what you did see, but what you didn't. A movement in the tree line up ahead, or the improvised explosive device buried six inches under the
ground and primed to kill. And even when they did finally make their presence known, they could just as quickly disappear, like phantoms, back into the landscape, each member often indistinguishable to the Marines from the many other people whose land they now stalked. As one Taliban commander was often fond of saying, the Americans might have the watches, but they had the time of all the conflicts in recent years, it is little wonder that from out of this one
tales of ghosts would emerge. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. The small group of Marines stamped their feet to keep warm as a hazy, pale sun crept up over the makeshift walls of Patrol Base Hassanabad, a rudimentary settlement on the outskirts of Hassanabad Village that was comprised of little more than giant reinforced sacks of
gravel and a few canvas tents. On the orders of their sergeant, the eight men, comprising a unit from Golf Company, second Battalion, eighth Regiment, jumped into the waiting armored trucks and sat anxiously as the gate was opened. Moments later, they were out beyond the perimeter wall, huddled together with the nervous energy of the res recently deployed, the prospect of hitting an ied and ever constant in their minds.
For some, this was little more than routine. For others, like twenty two year old Lance Corporal Adam Wilson, this was their first assignment beyond the wire. Wilson looked out through the truck's dusty window at the alien landscape beyond, a mix of scrub and wheat fields, a far cry from his home city of Xenia, Ohio, while up above, a compatriot tended the truck's single machine gun, surveying the
horizon for any signs of a threat. Thankfully, with only a few hundred meters to travel, it wasn't long before they derived their destination, the truck skidding to a stop beside what looked like little more than a huge pile of mud. After quickly vacating the vehicle, the men took a moment to survey the place they would be calling home for the next sixty days. A small outpost set up about twenty meters high on the top of a strange dirt hill designated Observation Point Rock, or simply the Rock.
Being the highest point for some considerable distance, the rock was an obvious place to put an observation post from which any incoming enemies could be spotted long before they had time to reach the patrol base. Despite its relative closeness to the base, the facilities were basic at best, with no electricity, running water, or even beds to sleep in. As such, it was necessary to maintain a steady rotation
of personnel to occupy the post. Feeling thoroughly exposed and with the heat already beginning to rise, the Marines quickly made their way to the shelter of the compound above, where they were greeted by its outgoing occupiers, a group of Welsh Guards from the British Army. Lance Corporal Wilson couldn't help contrasting the fresh faces of his fellow Marines with this tired, despondent group of men hastily packing their bags,
evidently in a hurry to vacate the place. Meanwhile, Corporal Jacob Lena, the unit's second in command, made his way along one of the few shallow trenches that had been carved out of the mound, and surveyed the scene. The post was centered around a single machine gun that poked out of a small hutch on the west side of the hill. Some old magazines were littered about the place, while the remnants of a small homemade gym could just
be glimpsed from underneath some camouflage netting. Just then, Lena was startled by the bark of a dog, which revealed it moments later. Eager to meet the new arrivals, as one of the British soldiers explained it was a local stray that adopted. Calling it ugly Betty, Lena promised to
look after it for them. Ordinarily, this would be the point at which the previous group took a moment to go over a few details about the local landscape, sniper spots to look out for, or any individuals they might want to be suspicious of, but the Welsh guards offered no such courtesy, preferring simply to clear out as quickly as possible. There was one piece of advice, however, that
they were willing to impart. Should the men dig anything up, it might be best to put it back where they found it the Marines who made themselves busy settling into their new home as they quickly got down to the business of determining sentry shifts and figuring out the most comfortable places to get some sleep. With temperatures routinely hitting close to forty degrees celsius, finding ways to stay in
the shade would also be vital. As the last of that first day's light ebbed away and the hazy, pink and bluish hues of dusk descended, the men could be thankful to have made it through the day without incident. That evening, Corporal Lena took first watch at the machine gun, gazing out at the complicated mix of homes, fields and fir trees dotted before him, the shadows growing longer and longer before dissolving momentarily, only to later re emerge under
the gentle light of the moon. Not far to the south, Lena could just make out the old, rusted shells of two Soviet era tanks half buried in the earth, remnants of a past, both distant yet inextricably linked to Lena's own presence thirty years later, and only a few hundred meters away, The tanks were as alien to this landscape as Lina was, each of them brought here by the same winds that had left so many unwitting people sprawling
in its wake. Lina scanned back across the fields, almost willing for something to happen, doing his best to stop his mind from wandering. It was always difficult being on watch in such places of isolation, trying to toe the line between staying alert to any possible threat while simultaneously trying your hardest not to allow the possibility of such
a threat to overwhelm you. Lina was just eyeing the lip of a nearby ditch when a burst of static blared out of the outpost's radio, causing him to jump, catching himself. Lina turned to face it, anticipating an imminent communication from the patrol base. Then the radio crackled again, a muffled voice just about audible swimming around in the thick of it. Lena grabbed the device and fiddled with
the controls, switching it back to the required frequency. He called up the bass and asked them to repeat the message, but the voice at the other end was confused. They hadn't sent a message. Lina looked again at the radio, then apologized for wasting the bass operator's time and turned back to the gun. Moments later, the radio crackled into life again, and once again Lina heard that strange muffled voice. Listening closer, he soon realized it wasn't speaking in English,
it was speaking Russian. Perhaps the radio was picking up someone else's transmissions, he thought, giving the radio a thump, Or perhaps he was simply imagining things. Over the next few days, with little else to do with their time, the marine's attention soon turned to fortifying their position. Most pressing of all was the fact that, with the exception of a few well placed sandbags, nowhere offered significant safety
from most potential lines of enemy fire. Though some trenches had been dug in and around the compound, none were deep enough to bring you lower than the parapet without crouching, and so it was one morning that Corporal Lena and Lance Corporal Wilson, along with one other compatriot, began the arduous task of rectifying the situation. The clatter of shovels scraping dirt rang out through the camp as the men battled against the rock hard ground and the ever rising temperatures.
As Wilson paused for some water, Lena dug his shovel in once more, only for it to clang against something buried a few inches under the surface. Lena threw down his shovel and pulled a thin, tangled strip of metal from the ground. Then he blew off the dirt and held it up to the light. It was hard to tell what it was exactly, an old piece of shrapnel, most likely, suggested Wilson. Lena nodded in agreement as he tried to read some strange markings that had been etched
onto the side of it. It looked like Cyrillick. He thought back to that strange radio transmission from the night before, but thought better of telling Wilson about it lest he sound like he was going crazy. Half an hour later, with the men having hardly made a dent in the trench, Wilson slammed his shovel into the ground, unearthing a small sunken space about two feet wide beyond it. Spotting something within it, Wilson reached inside and pulled it out, then
recoiled in horror. It was unmistakably the leg bone of a human. Wilson's colleague grabbed it from him and goofed around with it, but neither Wilson or Lina saw the funny side. Remembering suddenly those final words the British had said to them, if you dig anything up, you should probably make sure to bury it, Lina grabbed the bone and put it back where Wilson had found it, having got back to the task at hand. Moments later, Wilson found another fragment of bone. Then Lina did too. In fact,
the more they digged, the more bones they uncovered. It soon became clear why the previous occupants had preferred not to dig any deeper. They were camped on a graveyard. As news of the gruesome discovery made its way through the group, it was hard not to be a little unsettled by it. Even in the height of war, such
things rarely fail to make the skin crawl. Perhaps it was all the talk of the bones, or perhaps it was the strange remoteness of the location and the unending cycle of boredom that comes with occupying such a post. Either way, something of the place was beginning to seep into the men. Two weeks later, Corporal Austin Hoyt celebrated his twentieth birthday. That night, it was his turn to
take machine gun duty. Growing up on a farm back in the States, he was used to the quiet and had thought nothing of being stationed at the rock for sixty days. But back home the quiet was something to be cherished and revered. Here, it was only ever a vacuum for the worst thoughts to infiltrate. It was a quiet that spoke not of wistful hopes and dreams, but
only of things lying in wait. When suddenly the quiet was broken by a horrific scream, Hoyt scrambled for his night vision binoculars and scoured the perimeter fencing below, assuming someone had been caught in the razor wire, but the fencing was completely empty and untouched. Blurring the binoculars to the ground, Hoyt gasped at the sight of a large humanoid shadow darting out across a nearby field. Moments later, it was gone. Just then Wilson and Lena burst into
the machine gun post, clutching their M four rifle. They'd heard the scream too. With no choice but to head out and investigate, the three of them cautiously made their way to the perimeter fencing and stepped out beyond the wire, but after a thorough scout at the surrounding area, the men found nothing. After only four weeks. Lance Corporal Zonik can't quite put his finger on it, but it's clear that something in the mood of the men has shifted.
Taking a machine gun watch that night, as all the stars of the desert emerged one by one from out of the sky, he soon finds his mind wandering to thoughts of family and loved ones back home. Phoning home is a rare event at the best of times for military personnel, but being stationed out here, it will be months before he is able to speak to any of
them again. For many service personnel posted all over the world far from home, especially with so many being barely out of their teens and in young relationships and marriages, it can be all too easy to let the separation each you up, and equally so for those left back at home, whether in loving relationships or deteriorating ones. Not knowing if they might ever speak to their partners or relatives again, many prefer not to call home at all to avoid the pain of hearing their loved one's voices.
Others are reluctant to make any promises of future calls, just in case they are unable to fulfill it. Zolnik took a swig of water to perk himself up, and slapped away at another giant moth that was buzzing about his head, when suddenly he felt the unmistakable sensation of a cold breeze across his face, follow by what sounded like a voice whispering to him from out of the darkness. Zolnich spun round, looking about. Who's there, he said, but
there was no reply. It was only then that he noticed just how cold the air had suddenly become, and then the whispering voice came again. Zolnik jumped. God, damn it, that isn't funny, he said, still looking about. Then the sound of footsteps approached, crunching in the dirt outside. Zolnich froze at the sound of them as they drew near, then moved up to the top of the mound above the machine gun post. Assuming with relief that one of his colleagues had finally come to join him, Zolnich grabbed
his end for and ran out of the hutch. Hoyt is that you? He said, as he looked up to the top of the mound, but no one was there. Doing his best to suppress the rising fear, Zolnik ran back inside and pointed his gun toward the stretch of land at the base of the mound and hurriedly scanned it back and forth through his thermal scope, when suddenly he spotted the white thermal outline of a figure standing
about a hundred yards from the outpost. Moments later, Lance Corporal Hoyt arrived to relieve Zolnich of his duty, finding him clearly rattled by something that someone there, insisted Zelnich, but when he looked again, the figure was gone. Hoyt took a look through his own scope and then through the night vision binoculars, but saw nothing. I guess they're gone now, said Hoyt, before patting Zolnich on the shoulder
and telling him to get some sleep. Over the next few days, Zoonich seemed unable to shift something from his mind. With his condition rapidly deteriorating, the sergeant made the decision to have him transferred out. As one day bled into the next, the men on the rock seemed to become more and more untethered from the strictures of life on patrol Base Hassanabad, beards were left unshaven as some of the men took to sitting about shirtless in the oppressive
desert heat. It was sometime around thirty days into their posting that Corporal Lena was back on night watch at the machine gun, with ugly Betty sat by his side to keep him company. It had just passed one thirty a m when Betty sat up suddenly and began barking furiously into the night. Lina grabbed the night vision binoculars
and scanned the fields below. As Betty's barks grew louder and more insistent, Lina caught sight of a figure dressed in Perihano tamban about two hundred meters away, standing completely still, that appeared to be staring directly at him. Lena grabbed hurriedly for his thermal scope to pinpoint the figure's position, but when he looked again, the figure had gone. Taking the night vision binoculars again, he gasped at the sight of the same person, now standing one hundred meters closer,
on the verge of firing a warning shot. Lina grabbed his M four and looked down the thermal scope to find the figure again, but once more they had completely vanished. In a panic, Lina was just about to alert the others when he felt the heavy tap of fingers on his shoulders, the sergeant signal to let him know that he is standing behind him. With a sigh of relief, Lina spun around, only to find that he was completely alone.
In horror, he grabbed once more for the night vision binoculars and hurriedly scanned the surrounding area as Betty continued to bark, but once again Lena found nothing. Despite his fears that he'll be judged at best unfit for duty and at worst insane, after forty days of strange, inexplicable experiences, Corporal Lena finally decides to confide in his colleagues, telling Wilson and Hoyt about everything that had been going on.
Having expected them to poke fun at him, it is with some surprise when both of them revealed that they too had been experiencing ghostly inexplicable events. Then Hoyt thought back to the night that Zolnik had seemed so spooked right before he decided to transfer out. Clearly it had been happening to him too. The men agreed to keep it between themselves for the time being, eager to see out the remainder of their posting and get back to
the main base. Through it all, they could be grateful for making it through unscathed, with or without the mysterious goings on. On their last night at the post, it fell to Lance Corporal Wilson to tend the machine gun. Sat up there alone in the cool night air, Wilson repeated over and over to himself that it was just one more night, and by tomorrow it would all be over. No more whispering voices, no more ghostly figures glimpsed out of the corner of his eyes. When suddenly all hell
broke loose. Wilson barely had time to react as the cacophonous sound of machine gun fire rang out all around him. Stumble back into the hutch. He was joined almost immediately by Corporal Lena, yelling for him to tell him where the fire was coming from, but Wilson didn't know. It all happened so fast. Then an almighty wush went up into the air, the sound of a rocket propelled grenade
being launched close by. Lena shouted for Wilson to get down, and together they braced for impact, and then nothing, only the silence of the desert save for the melancholic ring of a distant cow bell. Wilson and Lena staggered to their feet, utterly confused, and stared out into the night. After sixty days, Corporal Jacob Lena, Lance Corporal Adam Wilson, and Lance Corporal Austin Hoyt returned to Patrol Base Hassanabad and rejoined the rest of their compatriots from second Battalion,
eighth Marine Regiment. All three of them returned home alive. Others, however, who had spent time with them on the Rock, were not so lucky, leaving Lena to wonder that perhaps it was their uncovering of things in the earth there that
had placed a curse on them. In many ways, However, the men had been cursed a long time before they ever made it to Observation Point Rock, caught up in an unwinnable war, their valiant efforts forever fated to be beaten back against a complex tide of history and circumstance.
By the time the reports of the strange goings on at the Rock were first published, in a twenty oh nine Times article written by Tom Coglan, the rumours were old news among many of the troops that had the misfortune to come by it, and over time a picture began to emerge of oblique and haunting history. One local scholar suggested that the hill had once been an ancient fort built some time in the eighteenth century, under which a series of tunnels had been constructed, before later becoming
a sacred shrine to many of the local communities. At some point in the nineteen eighties, it is thought to be occupied by soldiers from the Soviet Union, who fought a long and bitter battle alongside the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the ruling power at the time, against a
number of militia groups intent on overthrowing them. Some claim that early in the conflict, Nasim A Kunzada, the fearsome commander of one such militia group, captured the rock along with the soldiers occupying it, and had the more beheaded on the spot, then later buried where they fell. Others have suggested they were in fact members of the Afghan police force in time, helped with funding from the United States government, who, like the Soviet Union were keen to
be the dominant influence over the area. The Soviet Union and the PDPA were eventually defeated by the militia forces. By then, however, those forces had merged into a fragile coalition often lumped together under the term mujahadeen. It is from this group of people, in one way or another, that Osama Bin Laden al Qaeda, and ultimately the Taliban
would emerge, and well, you know the rest. In the Soviet Afghan War of nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine, it is estimated that around fifteen thousand Soviet soldiers were killed, with anywhere between half a million to two million Afghans also thought to have been killed. Since two thousand and one, war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of roughly two hundred and fifty thousand people, among them four hundred and fifty seven UK Armed Forces personnel and two thousand, three
hundred and seventy two US military personnel. An estimated seventy one thousand Afghan and Pakistani civilians are also thought to have lost their lives as a direct result of the war. This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith Unexplained as an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show,
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