The survivor’s burden

Seven American soldiers were killed in the valley while I was there, most of whom I met. Juan “Doc’’ Restrepo was a medic — originally from Colombia — who was shot in the throat and died trying to tell his platoon mates how to save his life. Larry Rougle, a squad leader with the Scouts, died in a burst of machine-gun fire when Taliban fighters overran his position on the Abas Ghar ridge. Mark Cannon was a tall, soft-spoken Marine who died trying to save the life of another wounded soldier during an ambush in the small town of Aliabad.

I didn’t know these men well, but I spent much of a year with men who did. Every man in the platoon was almost killed out there — the unit was in over 400 firefights during their deployment — and they came home deeply traumatized by their experience. But the most upsetting thing for these men wasn’t their own near-death experiences, but the loss of their friends. They felt responsible for these deaths, convinced there was something they could have done to prevent them, and a sense of guilt that they should have been killed instead. There was often a feeling that the better man had died and God had somehow made a terrible mistake.

Not often thought about on Memorial Day, however, are these survivors. For thousands of years, societies have sent their young men out to do things that often got them killed. They sent them on hunting trips and raiding parties, on voyages of exploration around the world, they sent them to work on fishing boats and oil rigs, they stuffed them into coal mines or sent them out into the woods to cut down huge trees. These endeavors were extremely dangerous, and those who survived often saw their best friends killed or maimed in hideous ways. And yet they got the job done.

Some of these endeavors are controversial and ill-advised, particularly war, but for these men that’s not really the point. It’s one of the odd artifacts of war that the men fighting it rarely debate its merits. Combat itself is so intense and self-referential that the men tend to simply evaluate it on its own terms and neglect the wider debate about whether we should or shouldn’t be at war. It is often said there are no atheists in foxholes. Far more relevant, however, is that there aren’t any Republicans or Democrats in foxholes either. There aren’t homosexuals or blacks or Asians or handsome men or educated men. When you get out to the really exposed positions — the units that are doing the actual fighting — there seem to be good soldiers and bad soldiers and that’s about it. The men are far less concerned about social or political issues than the folks back home who sent them there in the first place.

In the platoon I was with there were men of every race in the world, every political position, every economic background. I never heard these differences discussed in any meaningful way. As one of the soldiers said to me, “There are guys in the platoon who straight-up hate each other, but we’d all die for each other.’’

As we watch the Afghan and Iraq conflicts lurch toward their violent conclusions, Memorial Day can serve another important purpose. We’ve chosen to live in a time of unparalleled division and rancor in Congress, a time of ugly vehemence and terrifying political rhetoric. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of our young people are volunteering to fight and die in wars without regard for the race, religion, or political beliefs of those around them.

If there is an example for our congressmen and media blowhards to emulate, it can be found at the remote hilltop positions in Afghanistan. In those places, the men truly are — first and foremost — Americans. Every other distinction is a luxury they really can’t afford. The least we can do is to commit to running our country with a similar loyalty and sense of unity. It’s the only thing keeping those men alive up there, and it may very well turn out to be the only thing that keeps our great country alive as well.

Sebastian Junger’s latest book, “War’,’ is about the conflict in Afghanistan.