Combat· Afghanistan War (Op ENDURING FREEDOM)
Operation Asbury Park
Operation Asbury Park was a Marine operation in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, part of the effort to pursue insurgents and deny them sanctuary in the remote and difficult terrain where they sheltered and regrouped.
The Marines pushed into hostile country that coalition forces rarely entered, conducting a sweep through the high ground and villages to disrupt enemy fighters, gather intelligence, and assert a presence in areas the insurgents had treated as safe havens. The operation involved hard movement through harsh terrain against an elusive enemy who used the mountains and the population to his advantage. Asbury Park was one of the named operations of the middle period of the Afghan war, before the great surge into Helmand, when Marine forces ranged into contested regions to keep pressure on the insurgency. It reflected the challenges of fighting in Afghanistan's forbidding landscape, where reaching the enemy was often as difficult as defeating him.
Record no. 40