Oct. 27--About five dozen soldiers survived the battle, many with only their weapons and the clothes they wore.

The Oct. 3 attack on post Keating in Afghanistan by a force of insurgents reportedly numbering in the hundreds left eight Americans dead, the barracks charred and the outpost in tatters.

"Most people back home don't even know, no one gives a (expletive)," one U.S. Army soldier wrote after the attack to Mark Seavey, a military blogger who works for a Web site known as the American Legion Burn Pit.

"He was just a frustrated soldier. I've been there," Seavey said. "There were two things that bothered me: First, that they believed nobody cared. The second, that eight of their friends had died, and they had nothing to do."

Some of the soldiers lost everything. Some made it out of the base with a duffel bag.

"It ran the spectrum, but all the laptops and everything like that were essentially destroyed," Seavey said. "In Afghanistan, computers have a tendency not to last too long."

So Seavey, along with two dozen or so American Legion volunteers, will visit SuperTarget in Edina this morning to round out a care package of books, magazines, computers, games and videos to send to the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 61st Cavalry Regiment's 3rd Squadron.

Mary Henry, of Crystal -- whose son, Sgt. Eric Harder, 29, is one of the survivors -- said she finally heard from her son a few days after the attack.

"All I want now is a razor," he wrote. He had a

beard and little else.

"They're saying they don't want anything. They're soldiers. They want their buddies to be remembered," Henry said. "But when they walked away four days later, they were in the same underwear."

In an interview with a U.S. military reporter posted online, Harder said of the attack: "You could feel the concrete breaking off the buildings, but you let it go and kept moving. ... Our guys were so tired from all day of running and shooting, nobody had a chance to take a knee." Harder said he went through 40 magazines of ammunition.

When asked by the military reporter how he felt afterward, Harder said: "Worn out, kind of brokenhearted that we lost a lot of our friends that day. ... Movies don't do it justice."

Having a place to rest your mind can be crucial, especially after a hard mission, said Seavey, 39, of Indianapolis, who quit law school to re-enlist when he learned his Virginia-based National Guard unit would be sent to Afghanistan for a 2004-05 tour.