With the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, my mind returns, as it does most days, to the soldiers that I trained, equipped and ordered to Afghanistan during the five years of that two-decade long war that I commanded the Illinois National Guard...
With the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, my mind returns, as it does most days, to the soldiers that I trained, equipped and ordered to Afghanistan during the five years of that two-decade long war that I commanded the Illinois National Guard...
An August birthday she won't be here to celebrate
With the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, my mind returns, as it does most days, to the soldiers that I trained, equipped and ordered to Afghanistan during the five years of that two-decade long war that I commanded the Illinois National Guard.
During that five-year span, I lost nineteen soldiers. One in Iraq, eighteen in Afghanistan. On some god-forsaken days, we lost more than one. Some days an IED took two or three American lives at a time. It was my duty…and honor…to act as the senior military member at the funerals. On those awful days when we had multiple funerals, my deputy, who was also a two-star general, attended one and I the other.
We did our best to comfort family, console bereaved spouses, and on bended knee present the carefully folded American flag covering the casket to the next of kin. Whether the ceremonies were at a sprawling national cemetery with rows of markers from centuries of American wars, or at a tiny country cemetery with a few dozen tombstones, the military ritual was the same. Crisply uniformed honor guard. Immaculate white gloves carefully folding the red, white and blue flag in prescribed order. Three volleys of rifle fire. Taps echoing across the grounds in a final salute. Uniformed soldier picking up the rifle casings to hand to family members. In the background rows of Patriot Guard motorcycles standing watch over another fallen American soldier.
That’s the end of nearly 2,400 stories in the last two decades. But what of the beginning of the story?
There was a girl. A girl from Robbins, Illinois, just outside Chicago. Her birthday is August 30th. She was bright and funny and smart and cute with a turned-up nose and a two-year old daughter.
She wanted to go somewhere in life. She knew she’d need help to get that somewhere. She joined the Army National Guard while still in high school. She knew the education benefits and the status as a veteran would help her get that somewhere.
She liked cookies and smiles and loved her daughter. She was damn good with a fifty-caliber machine gun. That’s a handy skill to have when you’re in Afghanistan.
She was guarding an American Army fuel truck when the IED went off. Trapped between a compound security wall and the fuel laden truck, the flames flashed over her body and four other soldiers. She didn’t die there even though more than fifty per cent of her body was charred. She was swiftly medically evacuated from Kabul to Germany to the States.
She went to the best medical burn hospital in the world. Brooks Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas. The Army put her mom on a plane to be there with her.
As always when one of our soldiers was killed or desperately injured, I got the call. “Sir, the Sergeant is on her way to Fort Sam. They’re flying her mom and sister there from Chicago. Sir, she’s not going to make it, but the docs think she’ll live long enough to see her mom one last time.”
I knew about Brooks. It has been treating burn wounds since before Viet Nam. It’s the best at its job. I knew Brooks from the couple of years I’d spent in the 375th Aeromedical Evacuation Wing during Viet Nam, flying wounded soldiers to the best treatment providers for their wounds. Burn wounds are among the most horrifically painful wounds a person can suffer.
“Get me the first flight down there.”
“Yes sir. It’s so late, it will have to be tomorrow.”
“Ok. Just get me there.”
I didn’t want to go. I knew there were no words that I could say to a dying girl’s mother that would ease the pain. There was nothing I could do to assist the nurses or the doctors or the suffering girl. I didn’t want to see or smell or hear what I would witness. I’d seen too much of it on those flying ambulances in my youth. But she was my soldier and they were my soldier’s family. I would go. I would go because I had to. It was my duty.
My wife questioned me with her eyes as I hung up the phone. “I have to fly to San Antonio tomorrow morning. I’ve got a dying soldier there.” Wordless, she patted my arm
Six hours later the phone rang again. “Sir this is the Tactical Operations Center. The Sergeant died a few minutes ago. Will you still fly to Fort Sam?”
“No Sergeant. Cancel my flight.”
Guilty relief that I wouldn’t walk through that burn ward. That I wouldn’t face the mother that day. Guilty relief that I wouldn’t sit there helpless as my solider died. Guilty relief that she was out of pain.
Yes, there would be a funeral and I’d be there and the soldiers would be there and the Patriot Guard would be there and the flags would snap in the breeze with a two-year-old little girl mystified by the ceremony that meant she’d never see her mother again.
Kabul fell to the Taliban two weeks before her birthday, her thirty-fourth birthday. The birthday she won’t celebrate. Nigh on to twenty-four hundred birthdays that won’t see cakes and candles.
Politicians and policymakers and pundits think long and hard about those forgone birthday celebrations before you send us to fight and die. Think about that two-year-old motherless girl before you make more of them.
© William L. Enyart, 2021.
Reflections from the River