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His dead friend was at Durie, and as the squad’s biometrics expert, I was tasked with processing him. The young man barely looked real: his face was burned beyond recognition, brains hanging out behind his left ear. His left arm was amputated, clothes torn and tattered, and his legs faced opposite directions from being blown out at the knees.
I couldn’t get a picture of his face because it was too damaged, so I went for his irises next. When I pried open his eyelids, nothing but two black voids stared back at me, deep pools of darkness enveloped his irises as the pupils dilated post-mortem. I cleaned his fingers off with spit and water to get his prints, the severed hand yielding better results.
We got back at noon.
I smoked cigarettes for two hours.
As we were landing on the jagged rock of the outpost, enclosed by huge, HESCO barriers, only one thought crossed my mind:
I’ve seen his face and eyes nearly every day since.
I saw it in my grandfather’s face after he passed. My dad’s, too.
When I came back to Afghanistan from mid-tour leave, my platoon had moved from Kandahar city’s Sarpoza Prison to the remote Afghandab River Valley.

I remember my flight to our new “home” at COP Terra Nova, near the town of the Jelawur. We passed over the river, with its lush, green bank ripe with pomegranate orchards and tiny farm compounds.We flew over the foliage and into a desert; it was wide open with sand that looked like moon dust, huge mountains holding the edges of the valley together.

As we were landing on the jagged rock of the outpost, enclosed by huge, HESCO barriers, only one thought crossed my mind:  I’m going to die here.
I became disillusioned after a mission in March of 2012.
I was pulled out of the guard tower early to drive for a QRF mission at midnight. While we waited for permission to leave, the black sky turned bright red from two Hellfire missiles, intended to kill two young men planting an IED on the road outside of Durie. 

Our commander at the time sent us out with EOD to find the bomb, with 0% illumination and eight different grid coordinates. Against our wishes, we were to stay out there until we found and destroyed the IED. 

We found it after six hours of driving in circles, my vehicle rolling over it at least three times. If the young bomb-makers were successful, I would’ve died from the 80 pounds of home made explosives inside. It only took 40 pounds to destroy our huge, menacing trucks.
One boy had died, but one somehow lived. He’d walked to a nearby compound despite heavy internal bleeding and dehydration. We found him, scared and exhausted, and took him back to Terra Nova in the back of the Afghan Police’s Ford Ranger. 

His dead friend was at Durie, and as the squad’s biometrics expert, I was tasked with processing him. The young man barely looked real: his face was burned beyond recognition, brains hanging out behind his left ear. His left arm was amputated, clothes torn and tattered, and his legs faced opposite directions from being blown out at the knees. 

I couldn’t get a picture of his face because it was too damaged, so I went for his irises next. When I pried open his eyelids, nothing but two black voids stared back at me, deep pools of darkness enveloped his irises as the pupils dilated post-mortem. I cleaned his fingers off with spit and water to get his prints, the severed hand yielding better results. 

We got back at noon. I smoked cigarettes for two hours.

I’ve seen his face and eyes nearly every day since. I saw it in my grandfather’s face after he passed. My dad’s, too.