Troops in Afghanistan honor fallen SEALs 

By N.C. Aizenman 
The Washington Post 

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - They took their places on the parade ground at sunset, waiting for the ceremony to begin in total silence as the color of the mountains in the distance dropped slowly from pale violet to deep indigo. 

There were the Army Special Operations aviators - ''Night Stalkers'' - in crew cuts and jumpsuits, members of an elite helicopter crew who fly commandos behind enemy lines. There were Special Operations ground forces from the United States, Britain, France and Germany, all sporting the shaggy beards they grow to blend in among Afghans. 

And, at the very front, beside the flags flying at half-staff, were nearly 100 SEALs - shorthand for the Navy's Sea, Air, and Land units - who had come to bid farewell to 11 of their own, killed June 28. 
For this tightly knit fraternity - the smallest of the military's Special Operations units - the loss of even one seaman would have reverberated like a death in the family. 

But Wednesday evening they were there to commemorate the deadliest day in the SEALs' four-decade history. Three of the SEALs killed were members of a four-man reconnaissance team that came under fire from insurgents in the mountains of northeastern Konar province. Only one of them survived. 
The other eight SEALs were on a helicopter that was shot down, apparently with a rocket-propelled grenade, on a mission to rescue the pinned-down reconnaissance team. Eight Night Stalkers aboard were killed as well. 

''Our hearts are heavy with grief and the overwhelming sense of complete loss,'' said Col. Pat Higgins, commander of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, as many of the tough-looking men before him wiped tears from their eyes. ''No words of mine can adequately express the sorrow we feel at the loss of so many.'' 

Beyond the confines of Camp Vance, the Special Operations center at Bagram air base, 35 miles north of the capital, the counterinsurgency continued unabated Wednesday. 

The hunt continued for four Arab prisoners who escaped the U.S. prison here on Monday, and 19 insurgents were killed in southern Zabol province, U.S. military officials said. 

In Helmand province, a pro-government cleric, Saleh Mohammed, was killed in the fourth such assassination since this spring.