[War Horse] Explosions flashed in the fog hanging over the Euphrates River like a coming summer storm.
The continuous thunder of Russian guns pounded the American positions in a burned-out natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Tracers crisscrossed the Syrian sky. The Special Forces soldiers felt the rumble of the explosions through the armored cabins of their trucks.
Overhead, America’s most lethal aircraft—F-15E strike fighters, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, and MQ-9 Reapers—pounded the Russian guns and enemy formations below.
The Special Forces team had been in combat against ISIS fighters for months, but this was different. ISIS, for the most part, was a few mortar rounds or spray-and-pray potshots from an AK-47. This was a trained Russian force with artillery and armored vehicles.
This was a fair fight, and the U.S. troops were driving into it.
"It looked like New York City on New Year’s Eve," Chauncey, a former Special Forces team sergeant who helped lead a quick reaction force (QRF) to the refinery, tells The War Horse. "By far, the most chaotic battle scene that I’ve ever observed, let alone be a part of."
The soldiers’ last names have been withheld to protect their identities.
In February 2018, the American Special Forces team deployed to Syria as part of the ongoing campaign against ISIS that began in 2015. But after months of successful operations against ISIS, the team now faced a new adversary. Around 500 pro-Syrian government forces, including Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, launched a nearly four-hour attack on a small group of 40 American Special Operations troops and their Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies at a Conoco natural gas refinery in eastern Syria. Among the largest in the area, it had multiple buildings that provided good cover. It offered the Russians a foothold on the east side of the river. 
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