Afghanistan War veteran and Brunswick resident Bob Evans. Nina Mahaleris / The Times Record
“We all live for a purpose over a course of time,” Afghanistan War veteran Robert Evans said. “Our time was, and now our time is not.”
Robert Evans and his wife, Gretchen Evans, moved to Brunswick last year.
Both served in Afghanistan and met during active duty in 2005, marrying a year later after returning to the United States. Well over a decade after returning from Afghanistan, from 6,500 miles away, their lives continue to be deeply interconnected with the war, country and people that ultimately brought them together.
Around Aug. 15, Afghanistan’s capital city was taken by the Taliban after the U.S. began withdrawing troops en masse.
The fall of Kabul happened quicker than most expected — possibly marking the end of America’s longest war — where American troops sought to defeat Al-Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks and support a new Afghanistan government and nation over Taliban influence.
The United States’ military presence in Afghanistan stretched over 20 years, cost $2 trillion dollars and resulted in more than 2,400 American lives lost, with 20,000 more wounded. The impacts of the war have been widespread, throughout Afghanistan, the United States and the world, and are also felt here, in the Midcoast region of Maine.
‘A check doesn’t go in either box’
For Robert and Gretchen Evans, to categorically label the war a loss glosses over twenty years of nuance, and the reality of the Evans’ time in Afghanistan is too multifaceted to neatly fit.
Gretchen Evans talks about her experiences in Afghanistan outside her home in August. Nina Mahaleris / The Times Record
Gretchen Evans, a command master sergeant, served twice in the country between Nov. 2001 and Nov. 2002, and again from Dec. 2004 to March 2006. Robert Evans served as a command chaplain between March and Sept. 2005.
“We responded correctly and proportionately to the lives lost on 9/11 as a country,” Gretchen Evans said. “The initial reason to going into Afghanistan was to get rid of the terrorist camps, and we did that.”
Outside of that initial goal, Gretchen Evans said there were moments which she said she would never forget, like waking up one day to see kites flying in the sky, a tradition comparable to football in the U.S. that at one point had been banned by the Taliban.
For both Gretchen and Robert Evans, these moments of victory – a sense of justice for those impacted by 9/11, improved infrastructure, glimpses of liberation for the women and children of Afghanistan – are intertwined with moments of great loss as well as an uncertainty in what the future holds for the country.
Gretchen Evans of Brunswick during her deployment in Afghanistan. Courtesy of Gretchen Evans
“A check doesn’t go in either box,” Gretchen Evans said in an interview on Aug. 16, shortly after the Taliban took Kabul. “A check goes in that we served with honor and dignity and with hope and perseverance and grit and gumption.”
Sixteen years after returning home, herself wounded by incoming fire that left her with debilitating injuries, Gretchen Evans said she ultimately has faith in those appointed above her to make the right decisions, just as those who she guided as a command master sergeant trusted in her.
“There’s always hierarchy,” Gretchen Evans said. “We as military members, we don’t practice democracy, we defend it.”
‘Hundreds of emails from Afghans’
“The reality on the ground is you don’t really understand a place like Afghanistan until you’ve served there,” said Doug Livermore, an Afghanistan War veteran and 2000 Brunswick High School graduate.
Among many other tours around the world, Livermore served in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014 as a future plans director and deputy partnering director to Combined Special Operations Task Force 10.
Brunswick High School graduate and Afghanistan War veteran Doug Livermore. Courtesy of Doug Livermore
In those positions, Livermore advised and helped train NATO partners and traveled across the country in a task force responsible for looking at operations in eight provinces throughout eastern Afghanistan.
Today, he remains connected to the country, serving on the board of directors for No One Left Behind, an organization that is working to get special immigrant visas for Afghans trying to escape after the Taliban’s return to power.
Since Kabul fell, he has been working around the clock coordinating flights for Afghan allies.
“Immediately we were in 24 hours a day 7 days a week operational mode,” he said. “Even now, I had to break away from the hundreds of emails from Afghans that have been reaching out looking for assistance with evacuation.”
As of Thursday, Livermore said No One Left Behind had helped roughly 200 Afghans escape the country, and thousands more are scheduled to be evacuated on flights the organization is coordinating.
Acknowledging that the current circumstances are dire, Livermore said he ultimately does not think Afghanistan’s final outcome has been written, and that it won’t be for some time. Like the Evans’, he said he does not see the United States’ effort as a waste.
“We’ve spent the last 20-plus years showing a generation or more of Afghans what an inclusive, democratic society can look like,” Livermore said. “I trust that they will hold onto that and won’t forget what it was like to live in a society that wasn’t what they’re going to unfortunately probably endure under the Taliban.”
Livermore said he personally feels that the commitment being made to Afghanistan was sustainable, and the U.S. probably could have, and should have, stayed longer and been more responsible and considerate in how troops withdrew.
“I don’t see it as a win or a loss, I know that we very much as a society want to say one or the other,” Livermore said. “Right now, I have to hold onto that hope in order to move forward.”
‘No common thread’
David Patch is a Boothbay resident who served three tours in Vietnam. After a 25-year career in the U.S. Navy, he has spent his retirement supporting Maine veterans through different programs, like offering one-on-one veteran and family support, working as a Veteran Affairs hospice volunteer and organizing adaptive sports and activities for disabled veterans.
23 Mainers lost their lives in the Afghanistan War, according to iCausualties.com, a website that compiles state-by-state data on American war deaths. Overall, more than 800,000 troops nationwide served in Afghanistan.
“Just like Vietnam, or just like any other time, every veteran’s having their own experience and there is no common thread I could pull,” Patch said in an interview the Friday before the fall of Kabul. “If there is a common thread, it’s in the mental health area.”
Over his retirement, Patch estimated that he had worked with hundreds of veterans, about 20 to 30 of whom had served in or were impacted by the Afghanistan War.
“Often times it’s a family member that says my son or daughter is struggling, and they just need to talk to somebody,” Patch said. “Some of it is just a brief touch, some if it is spending quite a bit of time.”
Patch likened some of what he has seen and heard through Afghanistan War veterans to his time in Vietnam, particularly as it pertains to mental health, cultural differences and the war’s final days.
“From my perspective, I don’t see a real big difference between the younger veterans of today coming out of Afghanistan and the veteran community that came out of Vietnam,” Patch said, stating that while each veteran has their own emotional experience, he has noticed a comparable sense of disappointment, sadness and frustration over the war’s outcome.
“I’ll go a step further, I think some are just pissed off,” Patch wrote in a follow-up email after the fall of Kabul. “The problem is, pissed off at who? Leadership? Political leadership? Military leadership? All of the above?”
Many years after finishing his service, Patch said, he now believes that Vietnam was not a place that the U.S. should have gone to start with, although at the time of his service, he felt as though the war was necessary.
“It’s an opinion that has developed over time,” he said. “There was no question about the fact that I absolutely bought into the domino theory, I absolutely believed that if we weren’t successful that communism was going to take over the world.”
As for Afghanistan, Patch said he does not think U.S. forces had a chance to correct the situation in the Middle East and, like in Vietnam, change a culture and political atmosphere that was thousands of years in the making.
“We had a mission to eradicate the bad guys that caused 9/11,” Patch said. “I think that trying to change those kinds of cultures is not what our military should be doing.”
To see what veteran resources are available, visit va.gov.
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