MARGAH, Afghanistan — With the signature whoosh and crack of a rocket-propelled grenade, the local Taliban of northern Bermel district made their feelings perfectly clear. After three years without laying eyes on U.S., Afghan, or allied forces, the insurgents of this mountainous border community were saying, unambiguously, that they were not exactly pleased that the U.S. Army had paid them a visit.

The rocket fell short, exploding in the loose, jagged rocks beneath one of a pair of mountaintops occupied by two platoons from Fox Company, 2nd battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The small arms fire missed its mark, too. But it came close enough to piss off Sergeant First Class Michael Espeland, the company’s taciturn first sergeant.

“Aside from that, it was a good patrol,” Espeland said sarcastically, after a pair of tan-painted CH-47F Chinook helicopters had snatched Fox Company from its rocky redoubts and returned it to the relative safety of Combat Outpost Margah — a chilly hodgepodge of Hesco barriers and concrete that stands alone along a wide swath of eastern Paktika province.

Until last fall, COP Margah was home to just a platoon of soldiers — too few to do anything but guard the base. It was like a modern-day Alamo. That left many of eastern Paktika’s border districts, including Bermel, essentially unpatrolled by coalition forces. It should come as no surprise, then, that Taliban fighters crossed the Af/Pak border by the hundreds, fueling a strengthening insurgency. When Fox Company finally did show up, in August, the Taliban countered with a mass assault that very nearly overran the base on Oct. 30.

Having survived the worst the Taliban could throw at it, Fox Company settled in for a long, cold winter. Everyone expected the insurgents to strike again once the snows had melted. But Fox Company wasn’t just waiting around for another attack. With an aggressive new company commander named Chris Tanner, Fox Company planned to meet the traditional Taliban spring offensive with an offensive of its own.

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