Horse Soldiers to be memorialized

[Utah Bob #35998]

Maybe not what you're thinking though.

 

Demossville, Kentucky (CNN) -- The U.S. special operations teams that led the American invasion in Afghanistan a decade ago did something that no American military had done since the last century: ride horses into combat.

 

"It was like out of the Old Testament," says Lt. Col. Max Bowers, retired Green Beret, who commanded the three horseback teams.

 

"You expected Cecil B. DeMille to be filming and Charlton Heston to walk out."

 

Bowers spoke while sitting in the rural Kentucky studio of sculptor Douwe Blumberg, along with three of his former "horse soldiers."

 

They, along with 30 fellow commandos on horseback, are the inspiration for a new monument that Blumberg is creating, dedicated to the entire U.S. special operations community.

 

The statue is scheduled to be erected across from the World Trade Center site in New York on November 11, Veterans Day. The artist rounded up these "horse soldiers" to share their personal stories and mission photos as inspiration for the 18-foot, bronze monument.

 

"It was unbelievable in 2001," Master Sgt. Bart Decker says to Blumberg.

 

Decker, the team's Air Force Special Operations combat controller, who is now retired, sports a Fu Manchu-style mustache. "We all looked at each other [and said] 'We're witnessing a cavalry charge!' " he said.

 

Blumberg listens in awe to the elite fighters in his art studio. He says he felt compelled to sculpt the monument after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld first held up a photo of these special operations forces on horseback in northern Afghanistan during a 2001 news conference.

 

"The image, I think, typifies the special operations mission of get the job done, however you have to do it, adapt, overcome," the artist tells Bowers and his fellow fighters.

 

That image has also captured the imagination of Hollywood blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who's making a movie based on the mission as told by Doug Stanton in his New York Times best-selling book, "Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan."

 

De Oppresso Liber