Full of pine-covered mountains and places to hide, feuding Islamic fundamentalists and Taliban influence, Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan is not a kind place for U.S. forces.

It's been equally treacherous for Hawai'i-based troops.

Army 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, 24, of 'Aiea, was killed on July 13 in the village of Wanat along with eight other soldiers when several hundred enemy fighters attempted to overrun their vehicle patrol base.

It was the deadliest attack in Afghanistan in three years.

The area's bloody history includes the June 2005 deaths of five Pearl Harbor Navy SEALs in an ill-fated commando mission and the subsequent crash of a rescue helicopter in Kunar, two events in which a total of 19 lives were lost.

And last October, Hawai'i-based Navy corpsman Mark Cannon, who was in Kunar with a detachment of Kane'ohe Bay Marines, was fatally shot in a firefight as he rushed to aid a wounded corporal.

Cannon, 31, had told his father, "Dad, this is totally different than Iraq, and it's totally worse."

Hawai'i Marine Sgt. Luis Repreza, who fought alongside about 45 other U.S. troops and 24 Afghan soldiers in the July 13 Wanat firefight that claimed Brostrom, recently spoke with The Advertiser by phone from the much-bigger Camp Blessing, about a half-dozen miles away.

There were so many rocket-propelled grenades exploding during the battle that U.S. troops wondered how the enemy could have so many. Rounds struck the sandbags that shielded Repreza and two Marines who were out of Okinawa.

"Probably for the first 10 or 15 minutes, it seemed like it started raining on us with RPGs and small arms fire," said the 29-year-old Repreza, who's from California. "They were trying to take down the vehicles and trying to shoot our fighting positions."

About 18 Marines with the 3rd Marine Regiment out of Kane'ohe Bay are spread over Kunar province and work as "embedded training teams" to improve the proficiency of the Afghan National Army.

TALIBAN BOLDER NOW

U.S. troops in Kunar routinely take fire, and increasingly that fire comes from organized forces who stand and fight.

"The Taliban are growing bolder in their tactics," Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway said last week.

The number of coalition forces killed in Afghanistan has outpaced U.S. deaths in Iraq for June, July and August, and the July 13 firefight added to Pentagon opinion that more more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan.

Repreza said for about the first hour of the firefight, the Marines and some of the Afghan National Army soldiers were completely pinned down in fighting holes by the volume of fire.

The attack had come at dawn as Repreza was preparing to head out with the Afghan soldiers on patrol.

"If we got out of (the fighting holes), we'd pretty much risk getting hit by the RPGs and the rounds that were impacting in and around us," Repreza said.

A nearby U.S. observation post also was being hammered. CNN reported that Brostrom and another soldier, Cpl. Jason Hovater, were killed when they ran through Taliban gunfire to carry more ammunition to fellow soldiers.

Repreza said he had heard radio reports that the observation post needed ammunition resupply and backup, and he sent the two Okinawa Marines to help while he stayed with the group of Afghan soldiers and marshalled their fire.

The U.S. observation post "is where they took most of their wounded," Repreza said. "Almost all of their wounded came from the observation post, and the soldiers killed."

One of the Marines was slightly wounded by shrapnel from an RPG, Repreza said. When it was over, about a dozen soldiers from Brostrom's unit, the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, out of Vicenza, Italy, also had been wounded.

REMEMBERING COMRADE

Repreza had met Brostrom, a 2002 Damien Memorial School graduate, at combat outpost Bela, an even more remote firebase beyond Wanat that later was closed because of the amount of fire it took.

"He would coordinate patrols with me and security," Repreza said. "He was a great officer to work with — I mean probably one of the better ones that I've actually worked with in the Army. Great sense of humor. He was all about trying to take care of his soldiers. He would bend over backwards to support me and my Marines out there at our isolated observation post at Bela."

Repreza said he didn't see Brostrom get hit.

Mountainous Kunar province is on Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, and has long been a favored spot for insurgents. Over the past several years, that insurgency has grown in intensity.

Kunar abuts the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan, a region in which al-Qaida militants, including Osama bin Laden, are thought to have hidden out.

The Pech River and Korengal valleys of Kunar province have become legendary hotbeds of insurgent activity and a place where U.S. troops face formidable history, geography and opposition.

People in the area practice Wahhabism, a strict form of Islam, engage in timber smuggling with Pakistan, and have longstanding clan feuds. Al-Qaida pays foreigners and Afghans alike to fight the Americans.

SEALS ATTACKED

In 2005, a team of Navy SEAL commandos was discovered high on a mountain in the Korengal on a mission to hunt down an insurgent named Ahmad Shah.

More than 100 heavily armed fighters chased the SEALs down the mountainside. Five Pearl Harbor SEALs were killed in the initial Operation Red Wings and in the subsequent crash of an MH-47 Chinook helicopter sent in to rescue them when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Altogether, 19 U.S. service members died. Lt. Michael Murphy, from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One at Pearl Harbor, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The last battalion-size deployment of about 1,000 Hawai'i Marines to Afghanistan ended in May 2006. Teams of 18 to 22 Hawai'i Marines still deploy as part of embedded training teams, and another team of Hawai'i Marines is north of Bagram, officials said.

Lt. Col. Kevin J. Anderson, a Marine reservist out of Massachusetts who commands the Kunar embedded training team, said the next group of Hawai'i Marines will arrive in November or December.

The Marines are co-located at eight bases throughout Kunar with U.S. soldiers, Anderson said from Camp Blessing.

Through economic development, the United States hopes to win the hearts and minds of the people — something the former Soviet Union didn't do when it occupied Afghanistan, Anderson said.

A paved road was put through the Pech River Valley last year, and a Provincial Reconstruction Team has been building clinics and schools, he said.

'WE'RE MAKING PROGRESS'

Outposts such as those at Wanat and in the Korengal Valley are meant to push out a "security bubble," Anderson said.

"As it's getting pushed out, the people will feel more secure and start participating in the government and getting the skills necessary to move this country forward," he said.

Anderson acknowledges the challenges the insurgency poses.

"We're making progress," he said. "I mean progress sometimes comes in inches, sometimes it comes in yards, sometimes it comes in miles."

The vehicle patrol base at Wanat was only several days old when it was attacked.

The troops had concertina wire, their vehicles, sandbags and some Hesco dirt-filled barriers for protection.

Some of the fire came from a few houses that were about 300 feet beyond the concertina wire, said Repreza, the Marine who was in the firefight.

"We weren't able to see (the fighters), but we could see the RPGs and small arms fire coming from that direction," Repreza said.

For a time, rocket propelled grenades were being fired two and three at a time every 30 seconds, he said.

Repreza was with one group of Afghan soldiers, while a second group manned a checkpoint.

"I tried to let them know they had to made sure they didn't just shoot all their ammunition at once. They needed to conserve it, because we didn't know how long the actual fighting was going to last," Repreza said.

At least four Afghan soldiers were wounded.

Repreza, who along with the other Hawai'i Marines has been in Afghanistan since early 2008, downplays the regular attacks that U.S. troops endure in Kunar province.

"It's just the job we have to do," he said. "Have to train the (Afghan) soldiers, and let them know, don't let the insurgents think we're going to hide. Just let them know that if you come at us, we're going to come back at you. We're going to fight you. We're not going to run away."