The Giants of Afghanistan

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Of all the nations known throughout recorded history, there aren't many that hold the proud distinction of having never been conquered or colonized by invading forces.

Afghanistan is one of these select few countries.

Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Mongols, the British Empire, and the recent hegemon of the Soviet Union have all attempted to subdue this Middle Eastern nation.

All have failed, thus cementing Afghanistan's place in history as the graveyard of empires.

But what is the secret behind the country's enduring resistance against the invading forces of foreign, often more powerful armies.

Many strategists will cite the Afghan terrain as being the key to its success, namely its vast mountain ranges.

Their vast network of uncharted footpaths, valleys, overlooks, and cave systems have proven effective in concealing even entire armies from the eyes of their enemies.

In more recent years, the British, Australian, Canadian, and American troops tasked with rooting out insurgents from within this this imposing landscape have no less faced an overwhelming task.

There are some among these men, however, who found the task all the more unnerving.

While exploring these mountains on foot, flying unmanned aerial vehicles overhead, and interviewing local villagers, These men realized that the mountains of Afghanistan harbor far more than rebel insurgents.

They describe witnessing creatures that have long been believed to be extinct, if not complete myths.

This is the smoke pit, and these are true stories from military servicemen of giants in Afghanistan.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

Anybody else get that feeling?

What feeling?

That we're being watched.

Yeah,

I was just about to say the same thing.

Just keep your eyes peeled.

In the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, the United States military launched Operation Enduring Freedom, which began in October of 2001.

Their goal was the dismantling of the Taliban regime that was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.

believed to be responsible for the attacks.

This military action involved a large-scale deployment of U.S.

forces into Afghanistan, leading to significant combat operations and the toppling of the Taliban government.

Squaring off against overwhelming American air superiority, the Taliban forces soon fled the cities, finding refuge in the nation's many vast, rugged mountain ranges.

These natural fortresses now serving as their home base, the insurgents then launched a fierce resistance against both the American troops and their Western allies.

With the Kandahar region being identified as a key stronghold for the Taliban, securing the mountains was essential and disrupting their supply lines, their operations, and control.

To accomplish this monumental task, the Americans would employ a search and destroy strategy.

These missions involved ground troops, often special operations forces, such as the U.S.

Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, conducting thorough searches of areas known or suspected to be occupied by the enemy.

The operations often required clearing and securing large areas of terrain, sometimes involving house-to-house searches or patrolling through remote regions looking for caves.

Search and destroy missions were usually coordinated with intelligence gathered from various sources, including reconnaissance flights, surveillance drones, and local informants.

This intelligence helped identify likely enemy locations and optimize mission effectiveness.

The mountainous terrain otherwise required adapting their tactics to deal with the high altitude conditions and the challenging geography.

Uniquely dangerous as these missions were, whether from the enemy's improvised explosive devices, IEDs, accidents and injuries, or direct engagements, it was no surprise that patrols often suffered casualties.

However, sometime in early 2002, one of these patrols disappeared entirely.

Alarmed at the prolonged period of radio silence, another Special Forces team was quickly inserted into the Kandahar Mountains to find the missing men and return with either their bodies or any remaining survivors.

Far from what they might have expected, however, the true fate of the missing patrol would take them beyond anything they had been trained for.

Hold up.

Looks like we got something here.

Oh man, this is messed up.

Oh, Sarge, these are definitely our guys.

But look at this gear.

It's like he got ripped right off him.

Should we send up a sit-rep now?

No, stay sharp.

Whatever happened here,

we might still be in the middle of it.

Rifles up.

Patrolling the last known area where the previous team had been inserted, This second team soon stumbled across pieces of scattered military gear and shredded uniforms, which clearly belonged to the missing men.

Puzzled by what appeared to be a macabre trail of breadcrumbs, they began following it, keeping the rifles at the ready, increasingly unsure of what to expect.

Having worked their way up a steep mountain footpath, the men eventually found themselves standing in front of a series of large caves.

But the caves were not what first caught their attention.

Littering the ground in front of the cave entrances was what appeared to be piles of bones.

Despite this unusually gruesome feature, their first thought was that this must be a part of a vast Taliban cave network.

But before they had time to formulate their next plan of action, the Special Forces team was suddenly confronted with a far more terrifying reality.

Emerging from one of the caves, its primal war cry echoing off the surrounding mountains, a giant man appeared, wielding a long wooden spear.

Its head crowned with thick, untamed red hair, its body wrapped in animal skins, its teeth bared in a primitive challenge, it charged directly at the now stunned Americans.

Before the men could even raise their rifles, the giant, massive spear in hand, had thrust the weapon through the torso of the nearest man, simultaneously lifting him off the ground, prompting the other men to let loose with a torrent of gunfire.

After 30 seconds of sustained firing, the giant finally collapsed, bringing the harrowing ordeal to an abrupt end.

Skinwalker 2, say again, line 5, over.

I say again, line 5, one letter, alpha, break.

Sierra 1 is down.

We need immediate meta-pack.

Over.

Roger, line one through line five is received.

Lima Charlie, break.

I'm not going to believe this shit.

For line six, interrogative.

Here it comes.

You said Tango was a what?

Over

damn it.

Gulf India Alpha November Tango.

A very large man with a wooden spear.

Over.

Told you.

Roger that.

Wait, one.

Over.

Baffled and horrified by their encounter.

The operators immediately radioed back to their command.

A transmission that arguably must have been the most insane situation report ever heard by the man sitting Radio Watch on the other end.

Undoubtedly, it took time to clarify what they were trying to report, that one of their team members was now dead and that they had just killed his attacker, a literal giant.

Once the report had been submitted, they remained on site waiting for the arrival of the extraction team and marveling at the size of this creature.

Taking measurements of the massive foul-smelling corpse, the giant was described as being at least 13 feet tall and notably having six fingers on each hand, its gaping mouth showing two rows of teeth.

The men also came to another horrifying realization about the piles of bones and military gear they had seen scattered around the area.

It appeared they wouldn't be returning with any of the missing team's bodies.

The giant had clearly eaten them.

But they would soon find out that the giant's corpse was evidently of great interest to someone up the chain of command.

After some time, a Chinook transport helicopter arrived, bringing with it loading pallets and harnessing gear.

They were going to take the giant back with them.

The return trip made all the more unbearable by the creature's awful stench, Upon arrival back at base, the men were immediately debriefed.

After each man shared his account of the mission, namely the details of the climactic battle with a literal giant, they were made to sign non-disclosure agreements, forever swearing to secrecy regarding the encounter.

This came as no surprise to the operators.

They never saw the thing's body after departing the helicopter.

They had no proof.

Even if they wanted to tell someone about their incredible encounter, who on earth would believe them?

Since the story began making headlines in various military papers and other news sites in 2022, the giant of Kandahar has since become a staple in the vast realm of cryptid lore.

But how did this incredible story first come to light?

The earliest known record of the account surfaced in 2008, only about six years after the incident was said to have taken place.

So much for keeping it a secret.

However, the original testimony came not from any of the soldiers who reportedly killed the giant, but from the pilot of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter that transported its corpse out of the mountains.

This pilot, who remained anonymous, was interviewed by George Norrie on the Coast-to-Coast AM program during a December 3, 2008 episode titled, Flashpoints and Giants.

Considering that he only witnessed the loading and transport of the giant's body, his own testimony includes very little about what had happened before the helicopter arrived to pick it up.

His testimony was compelling in that he never sought to embellish the story by recounting a harrowing tale of a man being speared by the giant, followed by a dramatic firefight.

The pilot simply explained only what he had personally witnessed and was forthcoming in stating that he heard most of what had happened, secondhand, from the soldiers who had killed the creature.

Again, like I said, it was secondhand.

They said that when they got this thing, it had actually taken out the first crew that had found him.

And they went in afterwards.

And when they came up on this thing, supposedly, of course, secondhand, but the way they painted it out, yes, this guy was eating probably more than our guys with the killing fields that they more or less described.

But they basically said that the thing ran like the wind, threw stones at the guys at a pretty good distance, so they said.

And, of course, our weapons did take it out because I was looking at this dead thing.

Most of it was covered up with the tarps and the rigging and stuff like that.

Most of what we had to see we were just goofing around with and seeing what we could see on this thing because it was a pretty large dude.

Could not, you know, poke it, measure it, or anything like that.

I can tell you that its hands more or less looked kind of human, very dirty, except for the six fingers.

Having already been covered by a large tarp and strapped to a 463L pallet, a standard aircraft loading pallet measuring 9x7 feet, The pilot otherwise had a clear view of the creature's hands and feet.

Though he wasn't allowed to get close enough to get exact measurements, the pilot estimated that the feet, which were covered in some kind of canvas material, like rudimentary shoes, were at least 28 to 30 inches in length.

Having been curled into a fetal position to fit onto the loading pallet, if it had been laid out, he remarked that the giant would have easily measured a staggering 12 feet in height, if not more.

Charged with airlifting the thing out of the mountains, the pilot could at least accurately attest to how much it weighed.

What I can tell you is the weight of the thing, basically, it was approximately 1,500 pounds when it was getting on the aircraft.

Now, if you take away the pallet weight and all the rigging that we had to hold this thing down, we figured it was around 1,100 pounds.

When asked about what else he saw that was noteworthy, he said the fingers were pasty white in color, appearing Caucasian, which was surprising considering the dark complexion of the local people.

But, he reasoned, this could have been attributed to the creature now being dead.

He also described the awful, musky, skunk-like odor coming from the thing, which he offhandedly said must have been intolerable for his loadmaster.

who was riding with the body in the back of the Chinook as they returned to base.

In closing, when asked about where the giant ended up, he said he wasn't sure, but got the impression it had been transloaded back to an Air Force base in Ohio.

Mention was then made in the interview of the fact that there is only one Air Force base in Ohio, referring to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

And if that is the case, it only adds to the intrigue of the story and the likeliness for it to be buried by the U.S.

government.

because that base is notably involved with all manner of things strange and unexplained, such as the Air Force well-documented research into UFO sightings, which began in the 1950s.

There was a nice, nice path, goat path.

As we bent around this corner, you could see this opening of the cave.

There was a cave as we're coming around.

And then I see there's a lot of rocks, which is another oddity.

And then bone matter, but I'm not close enough to identify what kind of bones, but I did see something I knew was a piece of our communications equipment.

So instantly we're thinking ambush, maybe animal, you know, could be anything.

And there was enough room in front of this cave, but it had a sheer drop-off, but there was enough room that we actually got into a decent dispersal in case of an ambush.

And he comes out.

It was a man at least 12 to 15 feet in height.

This is a monster, red beard.

His hair was long past the shoulder, a scarlet red, and he runs at us, woke all of us into the reality.

So real.

We just went into complete muscle memory at that point.

Considering the widespread account of the soldier's encounter with the Kandahar giant includes details not provided by the Air Force pilot in his 2008 interview, such as the giant's red hair color, its double row of teeth, and the brutal killing of one of the soldiers with a spear, it begs the question, who provided this additional information on the story?

In reading through various articles which have covered it, it was stated that in some circles, the truth of this giant's story is widely considered to be an open secret among soldiers who served in Kandahar in 2002.

But more precisely, in 2016, A video was uploaded to the internet that featured an interview with a man going by the name Mr.

K, who claimed to be one of the operators on the search team who encountered the giant.

The video has since been pulled down for unknown reasons.

Perhaps because his testimony provided more details on the soldier's actual violent encounter, his testimony has come to define the giant of Kandahar story, introducing the concept of a spear-wielding beast with red hair and two rows of teeth that took the internet by storm.

Of course, with such a shocking story making the rounds in recent years and even being picked up by the Military Times and reputable news sources, everybody wanted to know, is this story true?

When confronted about the alleged incident, the U.S.

Department of Defense, to nobody's great surprise, stated that they had no record or information about a Special Forces member being killed by a giant in Kandahar.

This official denial, of course, didn't quell anyone's interest in the story.

Quite the opposite.

Now that the story has been brought to light and is being widely considered credible, even more service members across different nationalities have finally come forward to share their own testimonies about similar things they saw during their combat deployments.

Fascinating as they are to read, the following accounts, several of which were submitted to the Tales from the Grid Square project, appear to indicate that the Kandahar giant was only one of many of his kind that still exist hiding in the remote mountains of Afghanistan.

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Hey, is that a

new optic?

Yeah.

Recon 3 or something.

LT wanted me to test it out and then train everybody else.

How's it working?

Well, I'll put it this way.

I am just pushing buttons and seeing what happened.

Oh.

Okay, I do see.

Huh.

Looks like we got a couple of tally just over there.

How many?

Maybe two?

Three.

It's just a big blob.

It's hard to tell.

It's like they're all huddled around.

Oh.

Oh.

What?

That.

That can't.

Hey.

How tall would you say the trees are around here?

Huh?

The trees.

How tall on average are the trees?

I don't know, maybe.

10,

15 feet?

That's what I thought.

This story comes from a soldier who was serving in northeastern Afghanistan several years after the original Kandahar story is said to have occurred.

He was actually in country when the 2008 Coast-to-Coast interview about the Kandahar giant first aired.

He writes,

I was deployed as an infantry team leader with the army in the Qinar province of Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009.

One night, we set out on an observation patrol to overlook a village that we suspected IEDs, improvised explosive devices, were coming out of due to a successful IED recovery a few weeks prior.

My lieutenant gave me a new thermal imaging system called the Recon 3 that none of us were familiar with and told me to figure out what I could and pass along that information to the other team leaders.

I started to look across the valley to what I could see and that led me to look along the spur we were set in on, catching on a very large heat signature at the top of one of the false peaks.

I did everything I could to get a clear image, suspecting that it was a group of Taliban huddled together around a light, as they tend to do in the mountains.

All of a sudden, the heat signature stood up as one being.

The trees in that area grew to about 10 to 12 feet tall.

and this thing was at least as big, if not taller, than the trees that surrounded it.

It started taking steps parallel to my position and was covering ground quickly with ease.

Its stride was slow and relaxed, and yet it moved with incredible speed.

That led me to believe this creature was gigantic.

It very quickly traversed the landscape, and I lost sight of it along a neighboring spur.

I couldn't believe what I saw initially, assuming I had imagined it.

I never had seen anything like that in my life.

I didn't tell many people about it, either when I was still in the army and even when I got out, I kept it to myself, thinking there was no way I saw what I saw.

But then, in 2010, I listened to a story on coast to coast, specifically the story about the giant of Kandahar.

That made all the memories of my time in service come flooding back and made me consider other things I saw during that deployment.

For instance, the Kandahar creature was described as having fire-orange-red hair, and it reminded me of a tradition that the locals in the area of my sighting would do.

The Afghanis would dye their hair a bright orange color and even dye their goats the same color.

They never gave any explanation why.

It seemed like it was every once in a while they would do this, and then all of a sudden those orange-dyed goats would be gone, and the locals' hair would also no longer be dyed orange.

I assumed maybe it was a cultural thing.

I didn't understand, but now it makes me wonder if that was some kind of gesture to the creature, or if the goats were being sacrificed to it.

I am a Christian, and the Bible briefly discusses beings called the Nephilim.

I think that's what I saw.

A member of an ancient race of giants.

Although he mentions the interview with the Air Force pilot being what reminded him of his own experience, it should be reiterated that the 2008 Coast to Coast broadcast did not provide any details about the giant having red hair.

Those came about in 2016.

It's possible that almost a decade on, considering Mr.

Kay's interview and everything else that's been said about the Cantahar Giant story since it first aired, the detail about the red hair got mixed up in the overall narrative, hence why this soldier thought he heard about it from the Chinook pilot.

But it's no less interesting that he did find a correlation with the hair dyeing practice of the Afghani people in the region that seemingly validated the idea that the giant's hair could have been red, as Mr.

K had indicated.

If the giants are out there even today preying on humans, as the Kandahar story ominously indicates, he otherwise may not have been at all wrong to reason that the villagers would make efforts to appease the giants by dying their hair and making sacrificial offerings of red-haired goats.

But far from all of them being cave-dwelling monsters, this next account depicts the giants as being much more human in their way of life.

Reaper actual, this is Raptor 1TAC-1.

We've reached grid 267-834, serving multiple individuals around a campfire requesting ISR sweep.

Over.

Copy Raptor 1TAC 1, maintain current position.

Confirm visual on civilians or possible hostiles.

Over.

Reaper actual Raptor 1 TAC-2 visual confirms eight individuals, possibly Afghani civilians.

No visible weapons.

This next story was shared by an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan as a UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle operator.

He is absolutely certain of the existence of these beings because what he saw was unmistakable.

He writes,

I was a senior operator on the Reaper, heading up to work, a tasking in the northern parts of the country.

I was scanning around, doing my thing, and looking at stuff.

There are small villages up high in the Central Mountains that I've scanned probably a dozen times.

I found a super small mud hut, which is where I saw the giants.

They were three-ish, maybe even four meters tall.

There's a ruler tool on the screen that tells you how wide your crosshair is, and these people were as tall.

as the crosshair was wide.

They didn't do anything crazy, just normal people things, tending fires and other chores.

I wish I could say they did something exciting, but really they just moped around their small clearing.

There were a few goats tied up and a fire that one of them was tending.

Hard to tell details, but they seemed to wear rugged clothing, I would guess similar to Afghan traditional garb from how they moved, but they seemed heavily cloaked.

The only interesting thing was their size.

The goats looked like cats next to them.

This was all in mid-wave IR infrared at night, so they showed up as black humanoid heat signatures.

I wish I could have used our daytime camera.

I always wondered if they had red hair.

I was only able to monitor them for like 10 minutes before we were too far away to see.

Being a drone operator with eyes high above the terrain would of course be an ideal way to see a lot more than the average soldier on the ground possibly could.

That applies to spotting both enemy soldiers and

whatever else is out there.

But when it comes to gathering intel using drones, a lot of what is observed is recorded and then sent for more careful analysis.

Full-motion video or FMV analysts in Afghanistan played a crucial role in military operations, intelligence gathering and surveillance.

Their primary responsibility was to analyze live and recorded video feeds from various aerial surveillance platforms such as drones and manned aircraft.

This next account was shared by another Air Force veteran who was working as an Intel analyst in Afghanistan sometime between 2012 and 2018.

The video footage he was tasked with reviewing was recorded near the Korongal Valley in the Kunar province, which often served as a covert route for Taliban insurgents to funnel men and supplies over the border with Pakistan.

It sounds like his primary goal in reviewing the footage was to determine patterns of life.

basically getting an idea of what people living in the area, possibly enemy insurgents, were doing on a day-to-day basis.

When they wake up, where they go, when they come back, if they carry weapons, what kind of weapons, etc.

And this is typically done prior to committing any other operations in the area, like sending foot patrols through the villages and so on.

However, this airman describes witnessing a far more unnerving sight.

He writes,

I was an FMV analyst from 2012 to 2018.

We were doing a pre-op soak northeast of Corongall, getting patterns of life on damn near every warm body.

We saw some dudes around a fire, which is completely normal, but watched to see if we could ID any weapons.

After about 20 minutes, what we thought were two dudes, huddled together under a blanket, stood up.

I mean, this guy made the rest of the dudes look like children in terms of height.

He stood up and walked over to a mud hut that he had to bend way over to get inside.

We were using infrared IR, so I couldn't say if he was red-haired or not, but I just know that he was a big mother effer, at least eight or nine feet tall.

It's worth noting from his observations, he indicated this particular giant was intermingling with local villagers.

The people in Afghanistan and the surrounding regions have long been very tribal, adhering to their cultural differences.

Perhaps the giants, not far from being human themselves, are similarly diverse, including their diets.

Maybe not all of them are man-eaters.

Of course, nothing is really known about these giants other than what has been scantly observed.

But as far as their coexistence with humans is concerned, and as one of these men indicated in his testimony, Giants have been documented as far back as at least 5,000 or 6,000 years.

A giant named Goliath fought with the Philistine army, and he was their most fearsome soldier, standing nearly 10 feet tall and carrying a bronze spear with a tip that weighed nearly 15 pounds by itself.

Just the tip of the spear.

By comparison, your standard fully loaded military rifle weighs half of that.

Far from Goliath being the only giant, the annals of King David from 3,000 years ago would indicate there were other remnants of an ancient giant race that he and his men fought and killed in later battles, along with those accounted for much earlier by Moses and Joshua.

They are often called the Rephaites, or Rephaim, being descendants of a giant named Rapha.

Another of them was killed by King David's brother, Jonathan, in a battle in Gath.

Goliath's homeland.

Like the giant of Kandahar, he was recorded in the second book of Samuel as being a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, 24 in all.

Like Goliath at the head of an army, one would expect that in any tribe, the leader would often be the biggest, meanest, and strongest one in the group.

That might explain why a giant named Og was made king over the region of Bashan, northwest of the Sea of Galilee in modern-day Syria.

How do we know he was a giant?

He was cited by Joshua as being one of the last of the Rephites.

The third book of Deuteronomy records him having an iron bedstead, presumably because he needed something stronger than wood.

A bed which measured 13 feet in length by 6 feet in width.

It doesn't sound like he would have slept comfortably on a small army cot.

Giants ruling over humans, fighting alongside them millennia ago.

And now, in even the last two decades, we hear tell of giants warming themselves by the fire with Afghani locals.

This next account would likewise indicate that giants are still out there in remote areas, intermingling with humans to this day.

Hi, Dave.

Yeah.

Got anything with caffeine in it?

I think I'm losing my marbles, Eddie.

I'm seeing things.

What's up, Lieutenant?

You see an insurgent?

No,

it's um.

Never mind.

Just

I must be naked.

Only mate.

Hang tight.

This next account was shared by an Australian officer serving in the central region of Afghanistan, possibly with either the Mentoring Task Force or the Special Operations Task Force, based on the context he provides.

In his story, we find him sitting up on his LAV, light armored vehicle, late at night, keeping an eye out for enemy insurgents.

Like the previous soldier's observations through night optics, As with most of the other testimonies, I am no less struck by the general, matter-of-fact tone this man takes when sharing his incredible story.

Something the Air Force pilot who was interviewed on the Coast-to-Coast AM program more or less stated, even if you have never believed in something like giants, when you suddenly find yourself looking at one, you can't really do much else but just accept the facts.

The Australian officer writes,

I was an LT in the Australian Army at the time and deployed to the Uruskan province.

I was on picket, picket, what you Yanks would call security or sentry, in my LAV in the early hours one morning and was scanning across the valley with the thermal imager.

That was when I saw a large human-like figure that looked different from normal because it didn't have the usual clothes the Afghans would wear.

It looked like a person, but lankier.

Not much detail through the thermal imager and due to distance.

It walked behind a few compounds and I could see it from the chest slash armpits up.

I lased the compound walls to confirm the distance a few times because I knew I would get a good return off the walls.

I thought it was around 500 to 600 meters out, but when I did a more detailed scan, I realized it was further away.

Using the LRF, the laser rangefinder, I was shocked to see it was actually at a distance of 1800 meters.

It wasn't in any hurry, and I followed it for about five minutes before it went out of my field of view.

No idea what it was, but it would have been at least 12 feet tall.

I don't know of anyone else who saw anything like it.

Never told anyone about it before, but it has stayed with me over all these years.

Of course, by now, we realize that he is not alone in seeing something like that.

I get the feeling that these few accounts are not the only ones either.

But of course, as each of these men has indicated, nobody wants to go around telling people that they saw what most would consider a fairy tale monster.

So, like so many others, they keep it to themselves until someone takes a sincere interest in hearing their story.

As if all these stories were not enough, just recently in late 2023, a journalist named Mike from Atlas News reached out to me to do an interview.

When we finally spoke, I realized that he is also an Army combat veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

We had a long talk about all manner of the strange and unexplained with regard to military operations, bases, training grounds, religious texts, and so on.

And about halfway through the conversation, we landed on the subject of cryptids, and Mike was quick to express his disbelief in many of these entities.

But then he offhandedly told me about one unexplained experience that he had while patrolling in Afghanistan.

In summary, he was on patrol near the eastern Afghan border with Pakistan, a region not far from where many of these aforementioned giants were seen.

His unit's mission was what he directly referred to as HUMINT or HUMAN Intelligence Gathering, interviewing the local village leaders and trying to wean any intel they could give him about Taliban insurgents moving through the area.

But during a conversation with one man, his interpreter explained that the man was trying to tell them to avoid going into the nearby mountains because there was a group of individuals living there that most of the villagers tried to avoid.

Individuals, he said, that had pale skin, a habit of harassing the locals while they were feeding their goats in the highlands, and even throwing large rocks at them.

Through his interpreter and then showing his own rifle and the rifles of the men around him, Mike then asked if these pale-skinned individuals carried any kind of rifles or other weapons and whether they were Taliban.

He was like, no, no, no.

They're like you guys, like white, but they wear like clothes like us.

And

they don't have like plague carriers.

But I just remember the dude was like, yeah, they have like beers and they're like heavy, heavy set, and they're super tall like you guys.

And so

I didn't want to put it down until later.

And I asked him, I was like, hey, did we get that base figured out?

And they were like, yeah, it's nothing.

Don't worry about it.

But it was like, this dude literally literally just told us the story of his life I don't know maybe it's a nomadic tally base but it was just one of those weird things where it's like why don't you tell us where these people live and then years later somebody talked about

Afghan giants and I was like

whatever

and then I thought about it and I was like well the description matches up And the kind of remote location matches up.

And so after I discovered all this stuff, I'm looking back and I'm like,

I don't know.

I chalk it up to it being just foreign fighters, Syrians, Chechens, or something, but that is sort of weird.

With the Kandahar giant being possibly the only direct confrontation between soldiers and a remnant species of giant men, at least in Afghanistan, It's understandable why this would appear nothing more than a modern-day spin on the David and Goliath story.

But the fact there are other witnesses, all of whom relay grounded testimony devoid of any theatrics, certainly this must lend some credibility to the continued existence of these creatures, even if the Kandahar story has been a bit embellished over the years.

In any case, until further evidence finally surfaces which dispels our lingering unbelief, We are at least left to wonder.

But these military men appear certain of what they saw.

And as they say in the world,

there is no smoke without fire.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acasio, and Witt Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooke Lynn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Kloxen Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.