METHOD

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This work of nonfiction describes the events of March 3–4, 2002, on Takur Ghar Mountain, Paktia province, Afghanistan, between 2330 and 1930 hours local. Roberts Ridge is a true story that represents an accurate and detailed accounting of facts from firsthand witnesses and other research, some originating in the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and classified secret. The participants trusted me with the treasures of their memories. They responded to my queries with candor and often with emotion in seventy-one hours of taped interviews and half as many hours again of background discussions. They told what they saw and heard and felt; secondhand testimony was for the most part discarded. Loved ones and friends shared, in sometimes tearful detail, memories of the men who perished on Takur Ghar. A complex, layered re-creation of the drama, remembered by the men who were there, would not have worked without the use of dialogue, which I based on the only source available to me, participants' “best memory.” Differences related to word choices, not to meanings or emotions; conflicting best memories were dropped or resolved. I italicized witnesses' thoughts, given to me as direct quotes that in the event were not spoken.