In the early dawn hours of March 4, 2002, 20 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, became embroiled in a fierce, 18-hour firefight with entrenched Al Quaeda and Taliban forces along a desolate 10,500-foot frozen ridge of Takur Ghar in Shah-e-Kot Valley in southeastern Afghanistan, during the third day of Operation Anaconda.