The name “Ronin 3: The Battle for Sangin” sounds like the title of a samurai film, or maybe a sequel to an action flick featuring a Hollywood movie star.
While it does feature plenty of action, it’s not the fictional kind. “Ronin 3” is actually a multi-part documentary series about real-life, against all-odds-battles fought by Marines from Camp Pendleton while deployed to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban in 2010.
And just in time for Veteran’s Day, the documentary, which details how a hard-hit platoon managed to defeat the enemy in a notorious enemy stronghold, is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Directed by award-winning journalist and author Jeanne McKinney and narrated by actor Tom Berringer (“Major League,” “Born on the Fourth of July”), the series features present-day interviews filmed at Camp Pendleton and USMC Recruit Depot San Diego, as well as never before seen real-time battlefield footage and combat training at Pendleton.
The three-part docu-series mainly tells the stories of hard-charging infantrymen with Pendleton’s 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5) who were deployed to the Middle East during combat operations.
“There’s never been a battalion in the Marine Corps at any time – in World War II, the Korean conflict, Vietnam – that has pulled a tougher mission that what 3/5 has,” retired Lt. Gen. Richard Mills, who was in Afghanistan during the conflict, said in a statement.
The series – episodes run about 54 minutes each – focuses on Ronin 3, a platoon from the 3/5 during a 2010 tour in one of the most violent and lethal battlegrounds of the anti-insurgency operation, the Sangin district of Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
“It was an extremely hostile place,” USMC Maj. Josef Patterson said. “We didn’t refer to the enemy as ‘Taliban’ because it was much larger than that. We were fighting the Taliban for sure, but there were some pretty significant networks of insurgents in the area from third countries.
“Basically, everybody who wanted to take their shot at shooting at a Marine seemed to show up in Sangin at one time or another,” Patterson, who also served as a consultant on the docu-series, said.
The series is similar to the war film “Black Hawk Down” in that at one point, a major assault is launched by enemy forces on pinned-down American troops.
“Nobody was really ready for how ferocious the fighting was gonna be,” Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Esrey admits in the documentary’s first episode.
During a series of battles, limbs and lives were lost.
“Marines, we like to fight; that’s what we train to do. You don’t want to train your whole life and (then) sit on the sidelines,” Brig. Gen. Jason Morris said. “So, I think the Marines were very happy to be in a fight like that, that was so important and so tough.”
Unfortunately for the U.S., the gains were erased when NATO troops were pulled out of the country in 2021, leading to the Taliban resuming control of Afghanistan.
But for years, thanks in large part to infantrymen trained at Camp Pendleton and MCRD, Afghanistan’s people had an amount of freedom that they hadn’t experienced before or since.
“Six-year-old girls who were never able to go to school before were able to go to school when we were there,” Esrey said. “Everything we did over there passes my ethical and moral compass.”
“Ronin 3: The Battle for Sangin” is now available to stream on Prime Video.
