DATELINE: FORT CAMPBELL, KY — The two warriors faced each other across a table, the weight of two decades and a thousand unspoken battles hanging in the air between them. Allison Black, the Air Force navigator known by the call sign “Boxer 35,” and Mark Nutsch, the Green Beret captain who led the first horse-mounted Special Forces team into Afghanistan, had not sat down together like this in years. The room was quiet, but the air crackled with the electricity of shared history, of a bond forged not in boardrooms or briefing rooms, but in the crucible of a desperate, chaotic war fought from the backs of stallions and the belly of a steel beast that rained fire from the sky.
For the first time, in an exclusive joint interview, the legendary “Angel of Death” of the AC-130 gunship and the “12 Strong” horse soldier have come together to recount the harrowing, intertwined story of how a 28-year-old female navigator and a farmer from Kansas became the unlikeliest of partners in the opening salvos of the Global War on Terror. Theirs is a story of insult turned to inspiration, of a plan that was nothing more than a point of departure, and of a battle where a woman’s voice over a crackling radio was used as a psychological weapon—an insult so profound it may have broken a Taliban commander’s will to fight.
The conversation began not in the mountains of Afghanistan, but on the morning the world changed. Black recalled that September 11th morning with vivid clarity, a day she spent inside the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in Montgomery, Alabama. She was there for a mundane, bureaucratic task: swearing her husband back into active duty as a signals intelligence specialist.
“We were sitting in the waiting room with all the young 18-year-olds getting ready to ship off to boot camp,” she narrated, her voice steady but laced with a subdued emotion. The television in the corner flickered. The first plane had hit the Twin Towers.
A native New Yorker, Black struggled to comprehend the reports. “Knowing the landscape, it just didn’t make sense.” Then, they watched the second plane hit.
The world stopped. MEPS shut down. No one flew.
She recalled the atmosphere back at the 16th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida—a maelstrom of energy focused on one singular instinct. “It was a safe assumption that was happening in every military organization… It was, ‘What happened?
Who’s responsible? And how are we going to make sure we are a part of it? We don’t want to sit on the sidelines.'”
Across the country, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Mark Nutsch was facing a different kind of transition, but one struck with the same terrifying significance. On September 10th, he had just stepped down as the commander of Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595. His wall locker was empty, his gear dragged across the street to a new job in the battalion operations shop.
September 11th was supposed to be his first day in that new role. Instead, he found himself glued to the television at home with his wife, who was six and a half months pregnant with a high-risk pregnancy, and his two young step-sons, ages four and three. Within days, the silence of his new office was shattered.
On September 14th, he was in a Nashville Babies “R” Us when his phone rang. It was his old team. An hour later, his new boss.
The message was the same: get back to the unit, bring your gear. “Were there mixed emotions?” Black probed.
Nutsch’s response was a raw, unvarnished confession of the warrior ethos. “I’m a horrible husband. I let out a hoot and a holler.
The babies are out. My wife knew what it meant. I’m back on my team.”
On that car ride back to Fort Campbell, they picked out their daughter’s name, managing life’s most intimate details even as the gears of war were grinding into motion. By that afternoon, he and his 12-man team were informed they would be the first to deploy. They didn’t know where, only that they were needed “forward.”
Their target was Afghanistan, and their entry point into the war was as archaic as it was audacious. While the world expected a high-tech conflict, Nutsch and his men were tasked with a mission that hadn’t been undertaken in 60 years—a horseback offensive. “When did you know the team was going to be on horseback?”
Black asked. Nutsch laughed, a dry sound that held no mirth. “You know, it may shock folks to learn there wasn’t a big plan to go.
A plan is a point of departure.” It was a departure born of a 48-hour warning. After meeting with CIA teams at the secret base in Karshi-Khanabad (K2), they were given a directive almost as an afterthought.
Looking at his team, which was barely equipped for conventional warfare, let alone cavalry tactics, Nutsch described the moment they realized the field of battle could cost them their lives before even making contact. “We had a young sergeant from South Dakota who had ridden horses in high school. My chief warrant officer and team sergeant came in and said, ‘Sir, we talked to the guys.
We found out the team has quarter horse training. You throw a quarter in the mechanical horse and go back and forth.'”
The humor was a thin shield against the terrifying reality. “The US Army had not ridden horses in combat since 1942,” Nutsch emphasized. Yet there they were, in the middle of October 2001, being led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a warlord with a history as brutal as the terrain.
On the very first day, six of his men had to mount “half-crazy Afghan stallions that want to bite you, kick you, and buck you heavy Americans off their back.” While trying to project the image of an invincible American soldier to a hardened militia force, Nutsch was privately coaching his young sergeants on which end of the horse to feed, all while trying to maintain the credibility of the United States military. Inside, a part of him was thinking, “Oh god, how’s this gonna go?”
It was in the saddle that they shared the hardships that bonded them to their Afghan allies. For 21 days, they lived in the Soggy Mountain Dew of the Afghan highlands, sleeping in the open, eating meager rations, and moving constantly through snow and rain. Nutsch lost 20 to 25 pounds in the first month.
They were riding 7 to 24 hours between positions, splitting his 12-man team into three-man cells, each attached to a different militia commander to serve as the eyes and ears of the nascent front. It was a test of leadership, but more fundamentally, it was a test of will. “Courage isn’t not being afraid.
Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway,” Nutsch said, quoting a lesson from a Medal of Honor recipient. His vise-grip of a plan was disintegrating into a series of daily survival decisions for his team leaders, who were now responsible not just for themselves, but for coordinating an entire battle space with nothing more than a satellite radio and a primal desire to survive. “They couldn’t tell you how to survive the day,” he said, acknowledging that the world had completely turned on its head.
Meanwhile, in the clear night skies above, the battlefield was taking shape for Allison Black. After weeks of hunting for a way to get “put in coach,” the 16th SOS was finally making noise. AC-130 gunships were massive, powerful, flying arsenals—but they were essentially blind without support on the ground.
On the day she rolled into K2, they were told to be ready for a mission. She had her “little green military memo book” that she flipped open, writing down a call sign, a radio frequency, and a grid. That was the entirety of her briefing.
“In the AC-130 mentality, a plan is a point of departure. That’s all I needed.”
Her aircraft was a behemoth uniquely suited to this chaotic battlefield. They flew over the northern border into Afghan airspace, and her first priority was to “sight in” their 105mm howitzer and 40mm cannons, calibrating them against a specific spot on the charts, usually a large stretch of empty sand. But a gunship without eyes is just a blunt instrument.
And on that night, Allison Black and her crew were the eyes. They flew into a blacked-out country, scanning for signs of life. “We were looking for armor,” she said.
“The country was dark. If they were out moving around, they were probably up to no good.” It was a slow, methodical search.
And then they found it—a convoy of tanks and armored vehicles breaking out of the Taliban’s redoubt in Kunduz.
The coordination that night was a ballet without prior rehearsal. On the ground, Mark Nutsch’s team was in a precarious position, trying to orchestrate a surrender of thousands of enemy fighters. He had anticipated the enemy might try to break out to the northwest.
The terrain was impassable for his column. They couldn’t reach the gap in time. But the AC-130 overhead was the gap.
Black’s crew painted a picture for the ground team, identifying a single vehicle moving with its lights on, right at the absolute limits of the infrared technology. She matched friendly force locations and called it in. The clearance was given to engage.
But just as she was about to pull the trigger, the vehicle pulled into a compound. They held off. She and her crew described the unfolding scene, estimating the number of adult males, assessing the vehicles—they were being an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platform far more valuable than any drone, because they were also the decisive weapon.
Then, with the picture clear, the clearance came again. That night, the AC-130 known as “Boxer 35” had hardened its legacy.
The story of “The Angel of Death” is one of the most chilling monikers of the war. It wasn’t a title she sought, but it was one she earned in the skies above ODA 595. As the Taliban commander remained defiant, refusing a surrender lag, the coalition leadership on the ground had a radio.
General Dostum, a man of immense cunning and a keen intellect, was amazed that the voice coming from the American squad was a woman’s. In a move that was purely a piece of psychological warfare, he brought the radio to the recalcitrant Taliban commander. “This is how little the Americans think of you,” Dostum told him, translating his own message for the American listeners.
“They have sent their women to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 you.” It was an insult designed to enrage and embarrass the enemy commander, to strip his honor in front of his men. To tell a hardened Afghan warlord that he was being defeated by a woman was to strike a blow that was almost more powerful than a bomb.
It was a humiliation of the highest order, and it was effective. When they heard the story later, it shifted from insult to inspiration. “It started as an insult to the enemy,’ Black reflected, ‘and it turned into an inspiration to folks that our country may not be perfect, but we provide opportunities for people to try.”
Her presence in the cockpit was a tactical and psychological weapon, but it was also a symbol. Black admitted she was deeply guarded about her role for years. She was just doing her job, flying the same plane her male counterparts flew, trying to make sure the men on the ground—the men like Mark Nutsch—went home to their families.
“The Air Force special operators step right up,” Nutsch praised, remembering the airmen sent down to his team later. But Black downplayed the individual act, focusing on the mission. “We knew that our primary job was to protect you,” she said simply.
“We were going to do whatever it took.”
The battle of Mazar-i-Sharif would fall shortly after the Kunduz standoff. The Taliban regime was toppling, not just from bombing, but from a ground offensive that was a masterclass in unconventional warfare. The city was liberated on November 10th, 2001.
It was a resounding defeat for the enemy, but for Nutsch and Black, the victory was bittersweet. The cost was immense. Nutsch’s voice dropped to a low, serious register.
“We lost one of our CIA teammates, Mike Spann. We lost hundreds of our Afghan partners. Hundreds more were injured.
There’s no plausible reason why I’m sitting here having this conversation with you because there were allies as close as we’re sitting that were killed from gunfire, explosions, and mines.” The liberation of Mazar-i-Sharif wasn’t a clean victory; it was a heavy one, stained with the blood of those who trusted the Americans enough to fight.
The two warriors were brought back to the present, sitting in a quiet room, far from the snow-capped peaks and the thunderous groan of the gunship. They are older now, leaders who have traded the 120-pound rucksack for the weight of time. They have both navigated the transition to the “other side” of service, moving from active duty to the broader world of civilian life, veteran advocacy, and family.
Nutsch, who has written about his experiences and become a symbol of the 12 Strong narrative, reflected on finding purpose beyond the uniform. “We are now the ones on the other side, not rowing hard in uniform, but reflecting on our service,” Black mused.
Their story is not just a history lesson. For the generation that has come after them, the mission is different. As Black observed, “Today, we have a generation that isn’t necessarily joining to go to a specific war.
They are wondering what’s next?” Nutsch nodded, agreeing. The anger and clarity of 9/11, the need to find a target and retaliate, has faded.
The motivations to serve now are more abstract. “September 10th, we didn’t know what we were going to be doing,” Nutsch said, drawing a parallel to the post-9/11 generation. “You’re just training broadly, preparing.
But no matter what the mission is, you want to be a part of it.”
For them, it was more specific. It was about the discipline of the “reps and sets”—the countless hours of training, the maintenance of radio skills, the trust built between a navigator calling out coordinates and a captain on a radio relying on their judgment. “All of the reps and sets prepare you for that moment,” Black said.
“And then it’s the grit, determination inside, and the not-quit attitude that is part of our DNA. That’s what sees the day that gets you through.” Nutsch’s story, the story of how the horse soldiers won the first battle of the war, and Black’s story, the Angel of Death, are inextricably woven together.
There is one final, haunting—and deeply personal—relic of that joint service that binds them together. It’s a physical object that exists in the present day, a piece of the enemy’s defeat that is displayed with pride. “You brought me the AK afterwards, and it’s hanging in the squadron right now,” Black said, her eyes lighting up.
She referred to an AK-47 that was presented to her after that pivotal engagement—a token of gratitude from ODA 595 for the AC-130 crew’s decisive intervention at Kunduz. It hangs in the halls of the 16th Special Operations Squadron to this day, a silent testament to the inter-service cooperation and the lethal promise of American air power. For Nutsch, seeing that weapon in her squadron is a symbol of his team’s validation that they were never alone.
The pilot was their cavalry. The gunship was their shepherd.
As the conversation wound down, the gravity of their shared journey settled in. They are part of a “large dysfunctional family,” as Black joked, referring to the tight real, tight-knit community of special operations veterans. But there is a solemn duty that has now assumed the mantle of their service.
“We feel the impact that the previous generation has made on us, and we’re just paying it forward,” Nutsch said. For him, paying it forward means sharing those hard lessons, guiding legacy, and ensuring that the memory of his Afghan partners is honored. For Black, it means continuing to serve her community, tell her story, and inspire young women to reach for standards they might not know they can achieve.
“No regrets. If you can meet the standard, go do it.”
They may have started as an insult to a warlord that night, but Allison Black’s presence on the battlefield became a hallmark of the American arsenal. Mark Nutsch, the captain from the rodeo family, brought the intangible, unrelenting American spirit. Their war was a microcosm of the entire conflict—simultaneously ancient and futuristic, fought with hooves and high-tech optics.
When the sun sets now on a quiet evening, they are no longer young. They carry the physical and psychological scars of a conflict that became a decade-long upheaval. But sitting across from each other, they are the living proof of a bond transcending rank, service, and gender.
They are proof that courage is a shared commodity. He was the steel core that held the plan together. She was the steel angel that made it possible for him to see the next sunrise.
And together, they toppled a regime. In the final analysis, they are not heroes because they did not die; they are heroes because they chose to act. As they stand to leave, there’s a slight embrace, a pat on the back, the silent language of warriors who know they don’t have to say thank you.
They just have to remember. And they will. The story of “12 Strong” was never just about them.
It was about the silent, unseen power orbiting above, ready to strike at the speed of sound—and the terrifying, yet inspiring, reality that sometimes that power comes in the form of a woman who just wanted “to be put in coach.”