The dark evenings spent saluting coffins loaded onto aircraft bound for America.
The Afghan boy with a wounded arm, recovering in an American military hospital.
The wife of a Marine who was killed, posting on the memorial page for her husband, “What was the purpose?”
All are moments connected to area veterans’ service in Afghanistan; all are memories they now struggle to reconcile with the collapse of Kabul following the U.S. exit from the region. The Taliban quickly took over the country, leaving many desperate to flee as the world watched chaotic scenes from the Kabul airport.
“Seeing the fall, it’s like all your hard work has gone to waste,” said Ashton Kroner, who served in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2012.
Over two decades, 800,000 Americans served in Afghanistan; many are now watching the disintegration of that country. Many veterans said their feelings were complicated, as they were processing experiences they had years ago, and didn’t expect them to surface this week. Some were wondering why fellow service members died there, only to watch the country fall so quickly. Still others were filled with worry about Afghans they served alongside, who protected their lives time and again. And naturally, some questioned where the American public’s interest, now swirling in conversations on social media and around headlines, was during the time Americans served there.
Justin Kurtzhalts, 34, served multiple times in Afghanistan throughout his more than five years in the Army, which included four deployments to Afghanistan and one to Iraq. “I spent a total of 19 months of my time, of my life, over there,” said Kurtzhalts, who lives in Minneapolis and has family in Glenview.
This week he is thinking of Afghans he served alongside, like the man who “saved our lives more than once” and loved American culture, wanting to move to the U.S. and live in Disneyland. Kurtzhalts loved the country and its people; recently he was telling his wife about memories of sitting in the mountains after operations and watching the sun rise over waterfalls and rivers.
“I just want people to look past the government and military right now, and what previous administrations did or what the current administration is doing,” he said. “Just realize there’s human beings just like us, that have the same thoughts and feelings and just a different culture, that are being destroyed right now.”
His time in the country included meeting many whose lives the Taliban had ripped apart. As a father of two girls, he feels sick watching a group known for brutality and restricting the rights of women and girls take over. This week, Taliban militants spoke about restoring calm but also attacked protesters. Kurtzhalts said the U.S. needs to make it easier to welcome refugees.
Speaking of videos of people clinging to American planes even as they taxied to take off, Kurtzhalts said, “We’re watching people fall from the sky. That should say enough right there.”
Among his friends who are veterans, “We’re all kind of just saying the same thing. That we’re heartbroken about it,” he said. “Now we’re failing the people.”
Jill Stephenson has been talking about her son, Ben, a lot this week. People keep asking her how she’s doing, how she feels. Benjamin Kopp died at age 21 after being shot in Afghanistan in 2009 while serving in the Army.
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A boy who loved trucks and pored over his great-grandfather’s war medals, he wanted to be an Army Ranger.Watching the news feels like, she said, “20 years of your hard work, of your blood sweat and tears, has just been tossed into the sea.”
At the same time, she has found a lot of purpose within her son’s life. And she knows his service created long-term good, helping people and providing more education for girls, for example. Yet those gains feel gone.
“This just rubs salt in the wound,” she said.
Kroner is an outreach coordinator at Rush University Medical Center’s Road Home Program, which provides free mental health and wellness services to all veterans and their families. The program is prepared for an influx of help requests; the constant headlines may be triggering for veterans.
“The community, they’re struggling right now,” she said. “A lot of people are upset.”
She encourages people to lean on, and listen to, family members. It was her husband who encouraged her to seek help, saying, “There’s something going on with you.” Kroner was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
This week, Kroner keeps thinking of the many times she participated in what are called dignified transfers, the moments when a casket is loaded onto a plane bound for home. She watched as coffin after coffin was loaded, each carrying the body of a person killed in Afghanistan.
“Seeing all those people lose their lives,” she said, “it’s tough.”
She is thinking of each slow salute, each carried casket. She wonders, were those deaths worth this?
Kroner said many are asking this question, and wrestling with what mental health experts call moral injury: questioning your own morals, or what you have done and whether it violates deeply held beliefs and values. She was 22 when in Afghanistan, and considered death the ultimate sacrifice one was prepared to make. Now a decade older and a mother herself, she looks back at those loaded coffins and a bullet piercing a child’s arm, differently.
“I’ve lost friends to suicide, and seeing the emotional and physical tolls that that deployment put on your families, put on ourselves,” she said. Watching the collapse, she said, “It’s getting punched in the gut over and over and over again.”
Nick Montijo had always been patriotic; as a kid he got chills listening to the national anthem at baseball games. Like many, 9/11 moved him to serve. “Somebody messed with my country,” he said. “Away I went.” He deployed to Afghanistan with the Marine Corps in 2009.
This week’s headlines summon memories he wasn’t expecting to confront. “It’s a weird thing to bring back up (things) that I’ll probably have to deal with for the rest of my life,” he said. Montijo has found healing through work as a veterans advancement coordinator at BraveHearts, a Poplar Grove group that offers equine therapy for veterans through riding and gentling horses.
And the headlines now, for some, highlight the lack of attention paid to the Afghanistan situation.
“I wish the public had been half this interested in what we were doing in Afghanistan over the last 10 years,” said Jeremy Butler, who grew up in Springfield and is chief executive officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “It really does feel like Afghanistan had become the forgotten war.”
He hopes Americans work to better understand the military, and the world. He said the rhetoric about Afghan forces not wanting to fight lacks context about how they died in larger numbers than U.S. troops and hadn’t been paid for months. He hopes the U.S becomes more thoughtful about what we ask of enlisted members, and why.
“It’s the American public who was kind of happy to turn a blind eye to what was going on over there,” he said. “The blame literally encompasses all of us.”
He wants veterans to know that they should not question the validity or the honor of their service. “They did what their country asked them to do, they did it honorably,” he said. And he pointed to the many ways veterans still serve, such as groups like Team Rubicon, which mobilizes veterans to help in places like Haiti.
Kroner said veterans and their families should reach out to each other. If they feel emotions getting the best of them, contact the Road Home Program or veterans crisis lines like the Department of Veterans Affairs line at 800-273-8255 or its text or online chat options.
“It’s important that we check on one another,” Kroner said. “Check on your battle buddies.”
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