Book excerpt: The story of one of the Afghanistan war's most decorated units and their fifteen-month ordeal, culminating in the Battle of Wanat, the deadliest battle of the war A single company of US paratroopers calling themselves the "Chosen Few" arrived in eastern Afghanistan in late 2007 hoping to win the hearts and minds of the remote mountain people and extend the Afghan government's reach into this wilderness. Instead, they spent the next fifteen months in a desperate struggle with the Taliban that culminated in the Battle of Wanat--the war's deadliest conflict. The Chosen Few returned home tempered by war, and forever changed by the experience.