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Afghan fighting fierce, troops say

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (CNN) -- They were hardly on the ground before they were in the enemy's sights. The fighters had no choice but to duck or die.

"Just moments after the helicopters had dropped us off, we started taking sporadic fire," said Army Sgt. Maj. Frank Grippe, wounded by shrapnel during the early stages of Operation Anaconda in the mountainous terrain of eastern Afghanistan.

Operation Anaconda began with intense bombing Friday night near Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Kabul. The operation was supposed to last 72 hours, but officials acknowledge that forces ran into heavier resistance than they expected. As many as 1,000 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters may have been hiding in the Paktia Mountains with no place left to flee.

The battle is now in its sixth day, but Grippe and other wounded soldiers are no longer in it. They were evacuated to Bagram air base near the Afghan capital, Kabul, where they recounted some of the moments in the fiercest fight yet in five-month-old war.

"After about the first 10 minutes of combat ... al Qaeda came out of their caves and their well-fortified positions, and we experienced a heavy volume of fire from the actual mountains above us," Grippe said.

Fellow soldiers put themselves in harm's way to evacuate the wounded, recalled Army Spec. Robert Healy, who said he was wounded by enemy fire along with Grippe and "about six or seven others."

"We pushed away, and about five of the guys from Charlie Company stayed up on the ridgeline, receiving sniper fire and machine-gun fire," Healy said. "None of them faltered; [they] knew they could get hit at any time. But they stayed there and held their ground and made sure we got out of there."

Maj. Gen. Richard Cody, the commander of the 101st Airborne, said the battle around Gardez is the biggest fight the division has been in since the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

"The 101st Airborne Division's air assault, ground and helicopter attack and assault forces have been in constant combat with enemy forces and have fought superbly," Cody told reporters Thursday at the division's headquarters at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

"They have repelled attacks by mortar, small arms and heavy machine gun fire, and then assumed the offensive to destroy the enemy forces. These are courageous soldiers, doing what is right, who are determined to bring the war on terrorism directly to the enemy," Cody said.

The fighting may continue for some time, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. In Washington, he reiterated Thursday that the battle will continue, and "certainly won't be the last" in the war on terror.