The Flintstones Meet the Jetsons: America’s Horse Soldiers Who Fought Back After 9-11

Green Berets behind Horse Soldier Bourbon unveil major PBR partnership.

PBR

On Saturday, October 19, 2024, a major new sports partnership will be unveiled by Horse Soldier Bourbon – a brand with an origin story seemingly ripped from the rich imagination of a Hollywood screenwriter with a taste for the outlandish.

That story, nothing short of miraculous, is true.

Rewind to October 19, 2001, five weeks after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.

On that day, a team of US Army Green Berets secretly infiltrated Afghanistan to begin a modern warfare operation unlike any other. The first combat troops leading the invasion to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban were on horseback.

They were given a year for the audacious mission…with little hope of survival. As if the hand of God above decided to intercede in the absolute hell of war on earth, a small team of Americans working with tribal militias miraculously liberated the country in three months. The so-called Horse Soldiers returned home unharmed.

Outnumbered thousands to one, theirs is described as an Old Testament Biblical-scale victory.

Hollywood did take notice with the film 12 Strong, starring Chris Hemsworth who plays Captain Mitch Nelson, the screen name for Green Beret Mark Nutsch, leader of the elite U.S. Special Forces unit Operational Detachment-Alpha 595 (ODA 595), one of three teams sent into Afghanistan, and a co-founder of Horse Soldier Bourbon.

As happens in big-budget films, dramatic license was exercised. Battlefield scenes were exaggerated. Hollywood loves suicide bombers, especially when a principal actor is late for another shoot. Contrary to the film, there were none in Afghanistan in late 2001.

While the Green Berets did not court the movie and had scant input into the production, 12 Strong showcased an improbable mission executed by a tight lunch-bucket group, alone and unafraid, uniting ethnic factions in a fight for good, according to Scott Neil, co-founder and president of Horse Soldier Bourbon.

The film also shined a favorable light on the Green Berets on the silver screen for the first time since John Wayne did so a quarter century earlier.

Nobody in 12 Strong is based on Scott Neil. His separate mission to take out Taliban leaders south of ODA 595’s entry point remains classified.

Neil comes from a military family that fought in the Revolutionary War and every major conflict since. He had an opportunity to go to college but enlisted in the US Army after high school in 1986, because “it’s all I ever wanted to do.”

HSB Scott Neil and his dog. / PBR

On September 11, 2001, Neil was at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky isolated in an anti-terrorism Special Forces training exercise simulating an attack on America.

The Intel Sergeant wrote on the blackboard that the World Trade Center in New York had been attacked. Part of the exercise, Neil thought. The sergeant returned and wrote the second tower had been hit. Neil assumed the simulation was being escalated, mimicking how real-life wars can metastasize. Then a Colonel rushed in to stop the training.

Real life would never be the same. The United States was at war.

Briefed by his National Security Team about a large-scale Middle East invasion, President Bush wanted immediate reaction.

Operation Task Force Dagger was the answer. Small groups of US Army Green Berets inserted into Afghanistan would link up with tribal resistance fighters, taking out the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

General Dostum (L) with Captain Mark Nutsch / PBR

Five weeks after the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Green Berets were chosen to secretly enter Afghanistan and join forces with Afghan General Abdul Rahid Dostum, a powerful, volatile leader who loathed the Taliban. About 48 hours prior to insertion, the group was told “be prepared to use indigenous animals for transportation,” according to Military Times.

Until then, they had no clue they’d be going to war on horseback across the rugged, mountainous Afghan terrain attempting to capture the city of Mazar-i-Shafir, the stronghold for the Taliban’s northern forces.

The joke was that the Green Berets had quarter horse training – when mom and dad took them to the grocery store and put a quarter in the machine.

Indeed, in 2001 no one in the U.S. military was being trained to ride horses for combat. Soldiers may have mounted a horse now and then, but it was to build rapport or purely for recreation on forgiving tourist trails.

Fortunately for his men, Captain Nutsch grew up on a working cattle ranch in Kansas before entering the ROTC program at Kansas State University. The tips Nutsch gave Will Summers, a Junior Communications Specialist, who now has a stake in the bourbon company, saved his life.

In the equivalent of a cowboy getting on his first bull – who happens to be Man Hater, Summers learned to ride for a five-hour trip to Gen. Dostum’s mountain camp.

“The first seconds, you imagined it was going to be fun, until I found out my saddle was the pelvic bone of a cow,” said Summers, a Texan whose dad, also a Green Beret, served for 40 years.

The saddle cut clean through skin and muscle tissue in his groin. He slathered on Neosporin, bit his lip, and rode off. 

A half hour into his combat horse-riding career, Summers had to climb a steep ridge-line rock.

“Hey, I watched the Lone Ranger; I knew how to drive that thing…or at least I thought I did,” he said. “Some guys had great horses; I didn’t. My untrained, absolutely insane horse was constantly embarking on the ‘Run Away Mission’ sometimes into a minefield. You just figure it out and learn how to make it doable. They didn’t have a bit, just a rope halter. You weren’t causing the animal any pain.”

The inherent danger ratcheted up when the horse took off on a mad dash. Pulling back the rope halter had no effect. At Nutsch’s suggestion, Summers pulled the reins on one side, and the horse would wind up spinning in circles. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

The horses came first and received excellent care. As a peace offering to win the trust of Gen. Dostum, the Green Berets presented a bag of grain for his horses.

Will Summers on his horse that liked to go AWOL. / PBR

Summers recalls a steep temperature drop as winter approached. “We brought in blankets for soldiers, and they put them right on the horses. Every resource went to keeping the animals healthy and well.” 

Left with no choice but to become proficient atop a motley assortment of animals loaned by a fickle General who had changed sides in the past, the Green Berets were writing new chapters in unconventional warfare.

There was no contingency plan. There were no reliable tactical maps. The Horse Soldiers read National Geographic and studied tourist maps to learn the people, culture and terrain. They used Garmin GPS Vista hand-held devices to triangulate the location of enemy command posts.

“We had been told, ‘The majority of you are going to die on this mission,’’’ Summers said.

Getting captured could be worse; the Taliban hadn’t signed up for sensitivity training. Brutal torture was assured. 

Summers was accustomed to the concept of service – performing your mission and fighting with those who share your values for a country whose ideals you believe in.

Now, he and his unit would learn the principle of duty. Riding toward unimaginable torture or the finality of death, he’d embrace the legacy of every preceding soldier to find courage and bravely push ahead regardless of the odds.

Summers and his brothers did it in an environment he would later describe to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as “the Jetsons meet the Flintstones.”

(If Fred and Wilma didn’t have abundant fresh food, neither do the mountains in Afghanistan. Entering the mission at 190 pounds, Summers dropped to 143 by its end).

American forces in Afghanistan were grossly outnumbered. U.S. Special Forces – about 100 strong – were broken into 12-man teams. Each team partnered with varying numbers of Afghan friendly forces. ODA 595 oversaw 500 cavalry and approximately 2,500 infantry.

The horse soldiers memorized Psalm 1. They read and discussed the New Testament epistle of Romans. They prayed for their enemy; not for their victory but for them to realize the evil in their objectives.

And then they organized one hell of an uprising. Split into four groups of three, they acted as de facto commanders of the tribal fighting groups.     

Coordinating with Air Force assets, special forces raids, calvary charges, and other unconventional tactics, they would break the back of the Taliban. Afghanistan fell. Interim president Hamid Karzai took office December 5. 

Military historians have called Operation Task Force Dagger one of the most successful unconventional warfare campaigns in U.S. history. 

“The men of ODA 595 are anomalies,” Summers said. “They had experience, training, cultural awareness, language skills, honor, and maturity. I see them as a God-ordained collection of men, like King David’s mighty men coming from a doing-what’s-right foundation. I believe the result of our mission was 100 percent the hand of God. He had mercy on us.”

Scott Neil and the horses. / PBR

Scott Neil retired from the US Army in 2011, after a quarter century in the service, which included counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and the Horn of Africa. 

Back in the States, no longer employed by the government, he knew he couldn’t pass down a footlocker filled with old war medals and dirty boots. But he could create a legacy with a family-owned business lasting for generations.

It was time to live the American Dream that he had defended and start a business.

In 2015, Neil went on a month-long vacation to Yellowstone with his friend John Koko, a garrulous serial entrepreneur who had served Special Forces and a government intelligence agency before forming several successful startups, along with Koko’s wife, Elizabeth.

They climbed the Tetons, learned to fly fish, and rode horses. Neil remembers being like an overanxious Padawan asking the Kung Fu master “How do you make a million dollars?”

Meanwhile, Koko was going Zen in trying to get Neil to slow down and chill out. As the trip wound down, they’d sit on horses for hours at time, taking in breathtaking scenes and contemplating life.

At the end of a blissful month, they saw a sign for a craft distillery tasting. Sitting at the bar of the Grand Teton Distillery, they caught the bourbon bug.

The past month, they’d done amazing stuff. Yet the distillery is all they talked about the next three days.

Green Berets are not tentative, wishy-washy folk. The group extended their trip another three weeks, visiting distilleries from Idaho to their home in Tampa, Florida.

Neil says he became a Pied Piper of sorts, calling former Green Berets. Six weeks later, like warrior whiskey monks soaking up all the world’s knowledge in making bourbon, a group of Green Berets flew to Ireland and Scotland to learn more.  

They made their first bourbon in 2015. Five years later, the company sold 150,000 cases and are now building a new distillery in Somerset, Kentucky to produce up to five million gallons annually.

At the beginning, the retired Green Berets knew they had a great story. They had very good luck when 12 Strong came out just as they were producing bourbon, then discovering the Horse Soldier name was not taken.

They knew their bourbon should look good on the shelf. It had to taste good. And they needed to find a way to make enough of it.

The great-looking bottle became part of the story – the steel used for the bottle mold was sourced from the collapsed World Trade Center and gifted to the soldiers. That means every drop of their bourbon touches steel from Ground Zero.

The label depicts a cutout of a mounted solider modeled after America’s Response Monument, a bronze statue in Liberty Park across from Ground Zero – the first monument dedicated to the US Army Special Forces and the first near the site of the attacks to recognize the heroes of 9/11.

Horse Soldier Bourbon / PBR

Horse Soldier Bourbon Whiskey, handmade with all-natural ingredients, and bottled in the heartland of America at Horse Solider Farms in Pulaski County, Kentucky, has been recognized with the highest honors at world spirits competitions, including three double gold wins in the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

On October 19 in Las Vegas on the second night of PBR Teams Championship, 23 years to the day from when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter ferrying men who were told that some wouldn’t be returning home flew through a wicked sandstorm to touch down in the mountains of North Afghanistan, Horse Soldier will officially unveil their first sports sponsorship…with a bull riding league that shook up the Western sports industry just as their brand has rocked the bourbon business.

Chris Pin, a PBR fan in St. Louis known on social media as a bourbon connoisseur, is delighted to hear Horse Soldier will now share its history on the sport’s wide-reaching platform.

“As American heroes, the Horse Soldiers are the real deal, and they happen to make a great bourbon,” Pin said. “Horse Soldier Barrel Strength is well balanced with corn and fruit notes, hints of baking spice and some brown sugar sweetness. The best part to me is ‘The Kentucky Hug’ – that long finish putting a lingering warmth in your chest after you drink it.”

Like winning double gold medals, the multimillion-dollar, multiyear PBR partnership deal is something Horse Soldier Bourbon’s founders wouldn’t have dared dream about when making those first batches of bourbon.

Their sponsorship includes presenting the sport’s Be Cowboy Award – given each week to a community hero. They’ll also have naming rights to the Horse Soldier Bourbon Bunker – the best seating closest to the action, and at the end of each season fans will vote for the Horse Soldier Bourbon Comeback Rider of the Year. 

“PBR is down-home America full of patriots,” Summers said. “It’s God, country, rodeo, and bourbon, all going together. It makes so much sense for our brand.” 

Summers, Neil, Koko and other whiskey warriors will be in the house at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night when their bourbon debuts as PBR Teams’ newest partner.

“Bull riding is about getting your butt kicked then getting back up and doing it again,” Summers said. “It’s a battle – scary, dangerous, and it can kill you. But the athletes are determined to do it. Bull riders, soldiers, even a new business taking on an established industry, anything is possible with passion, will and desire. In the end, don’t we all just want a chance to give it our best and win?”