Mission Ends in Afghanistan, but Sacrifices Are Not Over for U.S. Soldiers

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/us/mission-ends-but-sacrifices-are-not-over-for-us-soldiers.html

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KILLEEN, Tex. — Sgt. First Class Ramon Morris, a muscular dynamo and a father on his fifth deployment, was killed Dec. 12 in a roadside bombing in Afghanistan.

But in the state of New York, where he grew up in Queens as a Jamaican immigrant eager to serve, flags at government buildings were not lowered to half-staff until 10 days after his death — and only, his friends say, after they complained.

“They had forgotten. We had to call to remind them,” said Danielle Jones, a longtime friend of the sergeant. “The whole country has forgotten. People don’t realize we still have troops risking their lives out there.”

On Wednesday, as 2014 came to a close, the United States and allied forces formally turned over combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghans, officially ending the longest war in America’s history, and starting a new struggle for recognition among many military families who say they already feel forgotten.

Here at Fort Hood, the country’s largest Army base, there was no parade for the formal conclusion of the war.

The official end of the conflict, which began in October 2001, means little to many of the families on this sprawling installation, where anxiety and casualties have been routine for more than a decade. Despite President Obama’s urging American troops this month to be proud of bringing the combat “to a responsible end,” the wars that began after 9/11 remain ever-present at Fort Hood.

Many soldiers are still fighting physical wounds and mental trauma. Some are shipping out to train Afghan troops and protect the places where Americans remain, leaving behind spouses and children as the divide between military and civilian life in America keeps growing.

“They change the name of the mission, but the mission doesn’t change,” said Sergeant Morris’s fiancée, Christiana Strange, who must raise their 3-year-old daughter, Ariana, without him. “It still weighs very heavily on us, even if the rest of the country doesn’t pay much attention.”

The war in Afghanistan initially had strong support and a clear mission — to pursue Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban government that had given refuge to terrorists. But the length and cost of the war have long since overshadowed the initial goals.

The effort to rout the Taliban has, by some estimates, cost almost $1 trillion. As of Dec. 16, a total of 2,242 United States troops had died in Afghanistan and 19,945 had been wounded.

Even with the official end of combat, more casualties may still arrive. Operation Enduring Freedom, as the Pentagon called the war in Afghanistan, will now become Operation Resolute Support, a scaled-down mission involving about 12,000 troops who will indefinitely advise Afghan forces in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

For troops there, little will change. They will still qualify for hazard pay and combat decorations, as they did before combat operations ended.

“Not much has changed for us, we are still deploying all over the world,” said Meghan Killen, a former soldier who oversees family support services for Sergeant Morris’s unit. “We still have a job to do.”

Yet the sense of a grand mission has faded, and weariness about the war can be felt in the neighborhoods around Fort Hood, where almost everybody is somehow tied to the Army. The yellow ribbons and other overt displays of support that accompanied the start of the war are now rarely seen.

At Vida y Muerte, a tattoo parlor near Fort Hood’s main gate, Jason Siddoway, an Iraq War veteran who became a tattoo artist, said requests for military designs, once common, had become rare, even though the vast majority of customers are enlisted.

“It’s a different time in the Army,” he said. “It’s less pride about the big mission, more about just getting through the deployments.”

Jesus Jimenez, the owner of the tattoo shop and also a veteran, said he was not aware that troops were still in Afghanistan.

On the post here in Central Texas on Wednesday, the closest thing to a ceremony for the end of the war was a line of soldiers who silently marched out to raise the American flag high above the headquarters, commemorating the start of another duty day.

Sergeant Morris would have been familiar with the ritual. He served in the Army for the entire war, and like thousands of troops, he showed the wear of prolonged combat.

He moved from Jamaica to Queens as a teenager and enlisted after high school, in 1996. By the time he met Ms. Strange in a military cafeteria in 2007, he had deployed three times to Iraq and once to South Korea.

He was physically imposing but gentle and kind, and he often helped families when other soldiers were deployed, Ms. Strange said.

His deployments left him uneasy around crowds, and he avoided supermarkets and restaurants, said Ms. Strange, who is in the Army Reserves. He loved time spent playing with his daughter, she said.

Despite several close calls with roadside bombs in Iraq, she said, he felt untouchable and enjoyed the rush of combat missions. “Others were hurt all around him, but he never had a scratch,” Ms. Strange said. “He joked that he had the hand of God over him.”

The tours left him with an injured back. He had a Purple Heart, but would never tell his fiancée how he had earned it.

His injuries could easily have helped Sergeant Morris avoid another deployment, Ms. Strange said, “but he never complained.”

“He had too much pride and he loved what he did,” she added. “He felt it was wrong to complain when he was alive and others weren’t. There was work to do, and he wanted to be there for his soldiers.”

Sergeant Morris’s unit, the Third Cavalry Regiment, arrived in Afghanistan in June to close down American bases and turn them over to the Afghan government. He led a platoon that patrolled a buffer zone to combat frequent Taliban rocket and mortar fire, while other soldiers packed up from a decade of war.

In small ceremonies this fall, the regiment turned over bases to the Afghans. The unit took over security of the buffer zone around Bagram Airfield, one of the few bases that will continue to house American troops.

In interviews this week, officers in Sergeant Morris’s unit expressed confidence in the growing ability of the Afghan forces to maintain stability. But before turning bases over to Afghan security forces, troops cleared anything that could later be used by the enemy, cutting most of the wiring into four-inch lengths so it could not be used in improvised explosive devices.

“Some provinces had more enemy than others, but they were all dangerous,” Col. Cameron Cantlon, commander of Sergeant Morris’s regiment, said in an interview from Afghanistan. “There are no shortage of people who want to do us harm.” During this effort, the long days searching for roadside bombs began to wear on Sergeant Morris. He told Ms. Strange that the work was becoming dangerous and that he had a bad feeling. Deployments felt different now that he had a child, he told her.

In an email the day before his death, Sergeant Morris told his fiancée that he expected to be home soon, adding, “I’m tired and stressed out with this place and want to be home.”

A roadside bomb hit the sergeant’s armored vehicle on a paved road a few miles from the airfield, killing him at 37 and Specialist Wyatt Martin, 22, of Mesa, Ariz., and injuring three others. Officially, they were the final casualties of the 13-year war.

Dorothy Lewis, the wife of one of the sergeants wounded in the blast, said in an interview at her home near Fort Hood that the war had moved so far from people’s minds that her extended family sometimes forgot that her husband was deployed.

Above the fireplace, her husband’s empty Christmas stocking hung with four others.

Over three deployments, Mrs. Lewis, who has three children, endured not by focusing on the big questions of war, but by organizing potluck meals and meet-ups and performing other small acts of kindness. Her husband, Christopher, walked away from the wrecked military vehicle with a few cuts and a concussion, she said. Even though two of his colleagues died that day, he decided to keep doing missions with his unit.

“The war isn’t over for them,” Mrs. Lewis said. “And when they come home, others will replace them for I don’t know how long. I’m sure the fact that combat operations are over means something to somebody somewhere, but not us.”