Afghanistan: What We Left Behind
From items material and sentimental to bits and pieces of ourselves and our souls to friends who fought alongside us, here is what remains in Afghanistan after America’s withdrawal
Mil & Intel
By Nolan Peterson | December 19, 2021
Scott Elwell, an Army officer from the 10th Mountain Division, commanded a battery at a forward operating base in the far northwestern corner of Afghanistan — a place they called “the end of the world.” A November 2010 firefight wounded eight of Elwell’s men and killed a popular sergeant first class named Todd Harris.
Afterward, the American soldiers turned an empty bomb canister into a memorial for their fallen friend. They taped Harris’ picture to the outside and wrote messages to him on the metal with a Sharpie marker. When it was time to go home four months later, Elwell had to leave the bomb canister memorial behind. Something about Army regulations or whatever. So on that final morning, with the last CH-47 Chinook helicopter on its way to pick up his remaining soldiers after 12 months at war, Elwell knelt down and taped his Bronze Star medal to the inside of the canister, out of sight, with a large amount of electrical tape. He whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I suppose the gesture seems sort of silly now or perhaps, to others, even meaningless,” Elwell says a decade later. “Medals and ribbons are merely pieces of metal and cloth. I couldn’t bring him back. I couldn’t make his family whole again. I left more behind that day than a simple medal — I left a part of me that will never be whole again too. I’m so sorry, Todd.”
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