Sangin sits at 888 meters altitude in the fertile Helmand River valley, 95 kilometers northeast of the provincial capital Lashkargah. The surrounding "green zone" -- irrigated farmland laced with canals, mud-walled compounds, and dense vegetation -- made it prime agricultural land and an ideal environment for ambush. By the mid-2000s, the area was one of the central nodes of Afghanistan's opium trade, with poppy cultivation funding both local power brokers and the Taliban insurgency. Route 611 ran through the town, connecting its bazaar to the wider province, but for years the road was one of the most dangerous stretches of tarmac on earth. Control of Sangin meant control of the opium corridor running south toward Pakistan, and every faction in Helmand understood the stakes.

When British paratroopers of 3 PARA took over FOB Robinson in June 2006, they walked into a fight that would not let them go. The base, built on a plateau overlooking the green zone, had already been renamed in honor of Staff Sergeant Christopher Robinson, killed on a special forces mission in the valley. The British adopted a "platoon house" strategy, stationing small garrisons in district centers, but in Sangin this meant 120 troops surrounded by a hostile population and Taliban fighters who moved freely through the bazaar. Attacks came five or six times daily. Resupply helicopters from Camp Bastion were the only lifeline, and Taliban fire sometimes cut even that for days at a stretch. Corporal Bryan Budd of 3 PARA was killed on August 20 while counterattacking a Taliban ambush; he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. Over four years of British occupation, approximately one-third of all British deaths in Afghanistan -- roughly 100 soldiers -- occurred in and around Sangin.

American Marines began arriving in 2008, when Echo Company of the 2nd Battalion 7th Marines deployed to assist the Royal Irish Regiment at FOB Jackson. The pattern was immediate and brutal: IEDs, ambushes, and close-range firefights in the irrigated fields. On August 14, 2008, two IED blasts within minutes and a few hundred meters of each other killed Lance Corporal Jacob Tovez, Corporal Anthony Mihalo, and Lance Corporal Juan Lopez-Castaneda. When the U.S. Marine Corps formally took over northern Helmand in September 2010, the intensity only increased. The 3rd Battalion 5th Marines lost 25 killed in action and 174 wounded during their deployment -- among the dead was Second Lieutenant Robert Kelly, son of Lieutenant General John F. Kelly. In 520 firefights, the battalion killed or wounded an estimated 470 enemy fighters while clearing Sangin's green and brown zones compound by compound.

The roll call of units that bled in Sangin reads like a catalog of the war itself. The 1st Battalion 5th Marines lost 17 killed and 191 wounded. The 1st Battalion 7th Marines fought through the summer of 2012, conducting helicopter-borne insertions into outlying districts where three patrol bases came under simultaneous assault. Corporal Taylor Baune, Lance Corporal Steven Stevens, Lance Corporal Eugene Mills, Lance Corporal Niall Coti-Sears, Lance Corporal Hunter Hogan, and Lance Corporal Curtis Duarte were among those killed. Yet amid the violence, there were signs of progress: by late 2011, Afghan National Army soldiers were running their own patrols and patrol bases, buying food from local vendors, and receiving tips from civilians about IED locations. It looked, briefly, like a fragile stability might take hold.

It did not hold. In December 2015, the Taliban partially captured Sangin, prompting NATO to deploy British SAS and American special forces to support the Afghan army. The reinforcements bought time, but not enough. During the early hours of March 23, 2017, the Taliban took the town entirely, securing the district they had fought over for more than a decade. The victory erased years of coalition sacrifice in a matter of hours. Sangin had consumed the lives of hundreds of soldiers from multiple nations, cost billions in military operations, and generated some of the most intense combat the British Army had seen since Korea. In the end, the dusty bazaar town on the Helmand River returned to the hands of the force that had held it before the first foreign boots arrived.