News of Afghan war brings memories to Marine
“I feel torn in two,” said Islander Zack Mundy.
The 29-year-old Islander was speaking this week of watching and hearing the news coming out of Afghanistan. American troops are withdrawing after 20 years of war and Taliban insurgents are rapidly taking control of the country as the Afghan Army retreats on all fronts.
Zack’s reasons for feeling torn are personal. He served in Afghanistan as a 20-year-old member of the Third Battalion, Third Marines, from October 2011 to June 2012, mostly in Helmand Province.
“I’m happy we’re getting out,” Zack said. “At the same time, I think about how we got out of Iraq, and the whole thing went to hell. The same thing’s happening in Afghanistan, and it’s happening really fast.”
He spent most of his service in the Garmsir district of Helmand. When he was deployed there it was, as it is now, one of the most dangerous places in the world. He described the district as a place partially of desert, but also dotted with lush watermelon and poppy farms. There was a good relationship between the Marines and the local population, Zack remembered. “They wanted us there,” he said. “We were respectful and they were respectful people.”
His duties were helping to train members of the Afghan National Police, teaching skills such as weapons maintenance and counter insurgency strategies to battle against Taliban firefights, sniper attacks and improvised explosive devices. The Marines patrolled with the Afghans, but also went out on their own patrols.
The desperation now occurring among Afghan personnel who worked with the Americans to get out, to escape retaliation from the Taliban is again something personal Zack feels. When the Marine units he served with left the area, and the Taliban “took control, we assumed many were killed or ran away and got rid of their uniforms, to say if questioned, ‘We had nothing to do with the Americans.’”
He remembered a translator they had worked with on the ground, who later received a visa to come to the United States. Reading and watching reports of Afghans who worked with Americans now fleeing for their lives and seeking entry to the U.S., he said, “I’ve heard that the government is doing everything to get them out, either here or the U.K. I just hope so.”
In an interview with the Reporter several years ago, Zack remembered with warmth a gesture he learned during his service, the Afghan greeting of shaking hands and then taking that hand and placing it over your heart. “We’d do the same thing,” he said.
