We can always remember where we were when we got a particular bit of good, or too often bad, news.
On July 31, 2010, clearly remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing. I was standing at the counter of the old office of the Pender Post newspaper. We were wrapping up the day, and I was joking with Andy Pettigrew about something. Miss Rhonda and I were making plans for her birthday supper.
My phone rang, and it was my sister Becky.
I could tell by her tone that I needed to go back to my desk in the corner. Her son, John Thomas, was in Afghanistan, in a place most of us couldn’t pronounce, a place called Arghandab. There was an extended campaign going on, but frankly, I had a hard time keeping up with where the fighting was over there. Were it not for a now-defunct newsletter called the longwarjournal.com in my email every day, I doubt I would have known about the valley called Arghandab.
Becky said John was okay, but the day before, three members of his unit had been killed during what became known as the Battle of Bakersfield. She didn’t know their names then. One of those men was a young man named Kyle Stout.
Kyle, Michael Stansbury and Rob Pittman were members of John’s unit, the 1-320th Field Artillery of the 101st Airborne. The “Top Guns” were hastily retrained for infantry work during the Afghan Surge, and sent out to be “door kickers”, hunting insurgents in what were referred to as urban areas, although we in America would never see them as such.
The Battle of Bakersfield was a 96-hour push to secure a canal crossing and crossroads. It was a joint operation between U.S. Army forces and the Afghan National Army. Kyle, Michael and Rob were killed the first day, with eight others wounded. Another dozen would be wounded in the days to come.
John and Kyle were apparently very close when some coward of a terrorist set off an IED. There’s an iconic photograph of a medevac helicopter descending in a cloud of dust while several members of the 1-320thcare for their injured brothers. I can’t tell if John is in the picture, because the soldiers all look the same. I’m sure that when it came to their duty, they were (and some still are) the same.
Eventually the Battle of Bakersfield was a victory for the coalition forces, and a Forward Operating Base was set up to secure the area. It was named FOB Stout, in honor of Kyle.
Just as warriors have for thousands of years, the fighters secured their objective, did their duty, then watched as their governments betrayed them. However, they fought for each other, for the American people, and for those they were trying so hard to liberate. They were ordered by the government, but they didn’t fight for any bureaucrat in an air conditioned office directing operations via computer.
Indeed, were it not for an excellent book called Sons of Arghandab: Top Guns in The Devil’s Playground, a lot of people might never have known the battle happened. Like so many pivotal moments in history, it’s forgotten. You can even do an online search of the Battle of Bakersfield, and Arghandab won’t be the first suggestion. Instead, Google will want to tell your more about a charity ball tournament in a town called Bakersfield, or when the Japanese Navy launched fire balloons from off the California coast.
It might not have been much to Google, or to the algorithm that drives the search engine, but it was a pretty big deal for the families of the men in the 1-320th.
John and Kyle were more than just comrades in arms. They were true friends. Kyle stored his things at John’s home when they were deployed. Kyle enjoyed theater, football (well, he was a Texan, and that’s required) and his family, according to what the editor of the local newspaper, the PIO for his school, and his sister Robin told me. He became KIA No. 1,113 in the Global War on Terror. When he was brought home, the roads were lined for his funeral. The Patriot Guards Motorcycle Club was there to ensure no idiot protestors did anything stupid. They didn’t.
Kyle – and John Thomas, and Rob, and Michael, and their buddy Anthony, who lost his legs – they represent the best of us, those who answered the call to fight for their country. The former president screwed up withdrawing American forces from there, just as so many had before him. The gains America had earned through blood and sweat and bullets and tears and diplomacy were cast aside like an empty magazine for a rifle, all for politics.
As I said in the first tribute I ever wrote to Kyle, I never knew him, but he could have been any of the young men in my community. He could have been your son, your brother, your cousin, or your buddy from high school.
He could have mowed your grass or stood nervously on the doorstep in an ill-fitting tuxedo on prom night to pick up your daughter. At one point he might have been the kid who just couldn’t get his stance right at the plate on the baseball field, or he might have been the star pitcher.
He could have been the new boy in the choir loft, or one of those who pass notes on the back pew during the sermon.
I don’t know if Kyle Stout was any of those things; to the media and the Pentagon, he was Service Member 1,113 to die in combat actions in Afghanistan.
To me, he was my nephew’s friend. To a grieving couple I’ve never met, he was a son.
In the end, above all else, he was an American soldier, and a hero.
They deserve more than we give them, these Sons of Arghandab, and Mosul, and Kuwait City, and numbered nameless napalm-stinking hills in Vietnam, impossible-to-pronounce ridges in Korea, exotic sounding Pacific islands and ancient French villages, and all the rest of the places people forget. The sons and daughters of those places are our sons (and now, daughters too), our uncles and fathers and grandfathers. They deserve better benefits, of course, but they deserve to know that we value and will protect their investment.
Godspeed, Sgt. Kyle Stout. May your sacrifice have not been in vain.
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