Hundreds of Taliban soldiers streamed down mountainsides surrounding Combat Outpost Keating, firing at the post.

One rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the generator beside Staff Sgt. Clinton Romesha.

“Kind of shook me up a bit but we knocked off the dust and kept on going,” Romesha said earlier this year, after it was announced he would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions in the battle that ensued.

Shrapnel peppered Romesha’s body, and another soldier needed to remove some from his neck.

Still he fought.

In the aftermath of that “conspicuous gallantry,” two narratives emerged from the 13-hour battle on Oct. 3, 2009. One involved the epic heroism of the 53 Fort Carson soldiers at Keating, many led by Romesha, the one-time platoon sergeant who lived in Pueblo.

Despite those shrapnel wounds, Romesha regrouped his men while most of their post burned. Then, he led them to take back Keating piece by piece.

First their ammo supply. Then the main entrance. Then the bodies of their comrades.

The other narrative, detailed in an Army report after the battle, involves repeated failures by the Army leaders tasked with adequately protecting those men.

In the wake of those failures, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — then the top commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan — approved reprimands of two Fort Carson officers and admonishments against two others. Commanders of B Troop, the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, the unit at the outpost, and Fort Carson’s 4th Brigade Combat Team were disciplined.

News reports questioned McChrystal’s own role in leaving Romesha’s troops so vulnerable to the attack on Oct. 3, 2009.

Looking back, little mattered to Romesha that day beyond protecting his men and holding the post.

• • •

The mortar rounds that rained on Keating felt different than previous attacks.

“We all just knew that this was something more than we’d experienced before,” Romesha said. “It’s one of those instinct things.”

Before those shells hit, Romesha and his men faced near-constant probing attacks.

The first Purple Heart awarded to Fort Carson soldiers at Keating came from the day B Troop’s first sergeant arrived in May. Shrapnel ripped into the sergeant’s body that day. And the Taliban never let up.

Insurgents hit Keating with mortars and gunfire 47 times over the next four months.

It was as many attacks as the Taliban ran against Keating in the prior year.

On Oct. 3, Romesha and his men sprang to action with precision that comes from repetition.

As the Taliban advanced and eventually penetrated Keating’s perimeter, the soldiers hunkered down.

Most of their Afghan allies fled in the battle’s opening moments. Two Latvian soldiers stayed, fighting beside their American comrades.

Less than two hours into the fight, while Romesha manned a machine gun to provide covering fire for his troops, the rocket-propelled grenade hit a nearby generator.

“I made the critical mistake that I always tried to preach to my guys — don’t put the blinders on,” Romesha said.

His fellow soldiers offered him bandages. One person removed shrapnel from Romesha’s neck, said Master Sgt. Michelle Johnson, an Army spokeswoman.

“To me, it was nothing,” said Romesha, describing it as a “good peppering.”

“Some of my good buddies have lost so much more.”

• • •

Romesha didn’t need a hospital. But his wounded comrades did.

The air around him rumbled as F-15E Strike Eagle jets dropped bombs on the advancing insurgents and AH-64 Apache helicopters flew gun runs overhead. The aerial firepower ensured that Keating wasn’t ultimately overrun.

Still, insurgent fire twice drove off a medical evacuation helicopter sent to rescue the wounded.

Steep, craggy mountain faces surrounded Combat Outpost Keating, leaving the post in a bowl. The village of Urmol sat 200 meters to the west, a rifleman’s shot away.

An Army report later described the post as “extremely vulnerable.”

“If the tables were turned and that was like a Taliban camp,” said Staff Sgt. Eric Harder, in a telephone interview “we kind of discussed like, ‘Man, it would be too easy to run these dudes over. I don’t know what the hell they’re waiting for.

“Kind of saying that as a joke — never thinking it would actually happen.”

It was so dangerously remote that supplies came by helicopter.

On Oct. 3, the rescue helicopters would have to wait until nightfall to reach the embattled outpost.

Romesha and his men fell back to three buildings, keeping a toe hold while much of the outpost burned and Taliban kept coming.

• • •

Five and a half hours into the battle, Romesha went into a barracks on Keating to review plans for retaking the place with another sergeant.

Romesha gathered volunteers.

“When you got your teammates behind you and you really pull together,” he said, “we were going to fight through it. And we were going to own that place once again.”

Ammo ran low, so the first objective was to repatriate the ammunition.

Enemy gunfire continued. The Americans pressed on. They regained control of the post’s main entrance and tried regaining contact with the soldiers who were pinned down elsewhere or had fallen silent on the radio.

In one daring moment, Romesha stepped from behind a barrier and laid down covering fire for other soldiers’ “mad dash” in a bid to save injured Spc. Stephan Mace, whose pulse had ebbed.

“To witness that bravery and their true gusto … they were willing to do anything to ensure Mace had a chance,” Romesha said.

Back at the aid station, the medic in charge that day used his own blood in a transfusion for Mace. Other soldiers also took a break from firing, gave blood, then returned to the battle.

Led by Romesha, the men slowly clawed back Keating.

• • •

Reinforcements arrived 13 hours after the first mortar round fell.

“It was a sight for sore eyes,” said Capt. Stoney Portis, the troop’s commander, remembering when he first saw Romesha after the battle. Portis was away from Keating on other business when the attack began.

“You wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. I mean, (Romesha was) just upbeat, ready to continue fighting if he needed to.”

In the days that followed, Army officials embarked on two endeavors.

One was writing award citations. Several soldiers received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for combat valor.

On Monday, Romesha will receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest combat award.

Army officials also began a sweeping investigation of why soldiers at Keating ended up in such a precarious situation.

That investigation found that commanders at Keating and within 4th Brigade failed to maintain Keating’s defenses — deciding to conserve resources rather than devote them to a post facing closure.

Simple measures, such as replacing the Claymore mines surrounding the post, didn’t take place upon B Troop’s arrival.

In many respects, the attack could have been avoided all together.

Col. Randy George, 4th Brigade’s commander, voiced concerns about Keating’s location before the deployment, and drew up plans to close the post. In a meeting, Curtis Scaparrotti, then an Army major general in charge of eastern Afghanistan, agreed, said a former brigade spokesman.

Nothing happened.

With the resources and helicopters needed to pull out of Keating diverted elsewhere, commanders delayed Keating’s closure.

The new closure date: Oct. 15, 2009.

After the Taliban attack, Army commanders sped up the timeline.

On Oct. 6, 2009, Air Force jets leveled the outpost that Romesha and his men fought to defend three days earlier.