August 10, 2012, was the 22nd day of Ramadan, the holy month when devout Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. Summer days in southern Afghanistan are long and brutally hot, and the few dozen officers at the Garmsir headquarters of the Afghan National Police were relieved when, as the light slanted low over the Helmand River, the sunset call to prayer finally sounded. After the evening meal, no one paid much attention as Aynuddin, the 17-year-old assistant to the police chief, walked into the station, picked up an AK-47, and headed toward the open-air gym out back.

There were seven Marines in the gym that night, part of a police-training team that lived on the second floor of the dun-colored police station. They liked to use the gym—a makeshift cluster of weights and equipment under camouflage netting in a corner of the yard—after dusk, when the heat had begun to dissipate. Hospital corpsman David Oliver, a buff, blond, 24-year-old medic, was skipping rope in the corner. Two younger Marines, Greg “Buck” Buckley Jr. and Richard “Richie” Rivera, were doing dumbbell curls, yelling “Beach Day!” each time they brought the weights to their shoulders.

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