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KABUL, Afghanistan - A bullet from a PKM machine gun ripped through the right hand of a Special Forces team sergeant within seconds after he scrambled from a helicopter in northern Afghanistan.

The soldier moved his weapon to his left hand, deftly returning fire to allow his teammates to get off the hot landing zone.

The commander of that A-team, speaking from Kabul weeks after the fight, detailed how his team's top noncommissioned officer refused medical aid for nearly eight hours while the battle raged.

"He was shot in the first 30 seconds we hit the ground," the captain, a team leader with the 3rd Special Forces Group, said. (For security reasons, the names of Special Forces operators cannot be used in news reports.) "He stayed out there the entire time, refusing all medication, all pain meds, so he could be coherent."

The soldier, a veteran of multiple deployments and a recipient of at least two previous Purple Hearts for combat wounds, did his job as a medic tended to him.

He spoke with his team leader on the radio, instructed Afghan commandos and gave guidance to Air Force combat controllers.

Even now, with the soldier home and recovering, he's not happy being away from the fight.

"He is hell bent on coming back, probably in the next 30 days," the Special Forces captain said.

That drive, that commitment to team, is not limited to Special Forces soldiers, but it is clearly common among the Green Berets. Over more than a dozen years, many have deployed to Afghanistan multiple times, developing deep ties not only with their American comrades, but also with the Afghan commandos who work with them so closely.

"Yeah, we had maybe nine Green Berets on the ground that day, but we had 160 commandos," the Special Forces captain said. All of them matter, he said.

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Special Forces leaders say building friendships key in Afghanistan