San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
12 soldiers who paid a price in Afghanistan
It was a Monday in late August, and I was driving through the Russian River country, headed north, just past the town with the big sign WELCOME TO MONTE RIO VACATION WONDERLAND. I had the car radio on, and here was the president, direct from the White House, explaining the chaos in Afghanistan. Nothing could be more incongruous.
I was an hour and a half north of San Francisco, and the radio reception was bad. President Biden’s voice kept fading in and out, like a shortwave broadcast from long ago and far away. “I am deeply saddened by the facts we now face,” he said. “But I do not regret my decision to end America’s warfighting in Afghanistan.” He talked for a long time, but I didn’t get all he said; I lost the signal.
The message was clear: The war is over and we lost. I have been to Afghanistan on a Chronicle assignment myself, but only briefly. I didn’t see the war, but I did see some of the Americans who fought in it.
There were a dozen of them that I remember best — 11 men and one woman. All had been wounded and were being evacuated out of Afghanistan. Six had to be carried in litters. The others could walk aboard the Air Force C-17 Globemaster that took them from Bagram Air Base near Kabul to a military hospital in the pretty little town of Landstuhl in Germany, a seven-hour flight and a world away from Afghanistan.
The plane was operated by the 349th Air Mobility Wing out of Travis Air Force Base, just up Interstate 80 at Fairfield. The Travis planes also made regular trips carrying wounded from Germany to hospitals in the United States, a 20,233-mile round trip to the other side of the world and back again.
That flight was in the summer of 2008, a long time ago, but sometimes, when I hear talk about the war, I see their faces and hear their voices.
Not all of them could talk, or wanted to. A few were too badly hurt, in critical condition. One man stared straight ahead, said nothing, no expression on his face. In another war they called that the thousand-yard stare. Some of them wanted to talk to a reporter, or to Carlos Avila Gonzalez, our photographer. They wanted to tell us how they got hurt — in a convoy that hit a roadside bomb, in a rocket attack that killed other soldiers, in other incidents.
All of it had happened suddenly, they said. They were casualties in an instant.
Jerrold Patterson, a Army warrant officer, remembered being in a small town and inside a brick building when people he described as “the bad guys” fired three rockets. Two missed. The third was a direct hit. “You hear that rocket coming and your heart stops,” he said. “Everything turned upside down in a matter of seconds,” he said. He was hit in an arm and a leg, and his back was peppered with shrapnel. He came aboard the plane in a litter.
Patterson and the others had high praise for the combat medics who treated the wounded in the field. “There was just blood all over,” he said. “If it wasn’t for them, some of the men would have bled to death. The medics were amazing. They saved lives.” But it all went by so fast Patterson never learned their names. You would think some of these people who had paid the price for American policy might be bitter. But they were safe now, they were going home.
William Ortega, a second lieutenant, had mixed feelings. Only a few days before, an explosive device injured his neck and he had extensive burns. He was sorry to leave. “I am a platoon leader,” he said. “I want to be with my soldiers. We are close, close, like a brotherhood. It’s an honor to lead men like this.”
Jacob Brittain was 21 back in 2008, a private first class in the Marines. “Some people want to be an astronaut or a fireman, I wanted to be a Marine,” he said. A roadside bomb shattered his heel that summer. He figured it might take a year for him to learn how to walk again.
I asked him whether he would go back. “Absolutely,” he said. “I am 100% sure.”
Lt. Col. Jim Coen commanded the medical unit that flew the wounded out of Iraq and Afghanistan. “We are not here to argue the policy or worthiness of the war,” he told me. “I don’t think arguing about the war is helping. Helping the kids who got hurt is the mission.”
I think about these soldiers and Marines and Air Force personnel and how they paid a steep price in the Afghanistan war. I looked up the newspaper piece I had written and tried to track down some of the wounded on that plane. But 13 years is a long time in the military, and I had no luck.
I wanted to see if Lt. Ortega went back to his soldiers, but he is from New York City and there are thousands of Ortegas there. And I never found out whether Jacob Brittain learned how to walk again. I tracked Jerrold Patterson to a small Utah town, but my lead fizzled out.
A more skilled reporter could find these people, I’m sure. But maybe it’s better to keep them as a memory, something to remember when they talk about the forever war and argue about who is to blame. There is a price for these wars. There is always a price.