Here’s what I remember. We were talking. There was a gunshot.
 | | A tent where Marines stayed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. One much like this located at Camp Dwyer was the site of the negligent discharge.Thomas Gibbons-Neff |
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On New Year’s Day in 2010, my friend Rob nearly shot me with a 9-millimeter pistol. We were in Afghanistan. It was a negligent discharge. I could go into everything that led up to exactly how a bullet ended up in the chamber of a firearm on a large base where that was strictly prohibited. But I won’t. This is a sad story. |
I should clear up that Rob nearly shot me, along with Steve and Shane. We were all sitting on a cot, talking about things that young Marines talk about when trying to pass time. It was early evening, after dinner. Steve was closer to the bullet path than I was. Maybe Shane was, too. I can’t remember how we were arranged on that rigid green cot. |
Here’s what I remember. We were talking. There was a gunshot. I saw a hole in the tent and that fire retardant lining they sprayed on its exterior fluttering down on some staff sergeant’s shaved head. He was in his underwear, watching a movie. I think we locked eyes. I turned around and there was Rob. He looked horrified, staring at the pistol as if it had fired by itself. Rob placed the pistol on his cot and walked outside. |
Next came the yelling, the march out to some berm on the far side of base where we all cleared our weapons because we were being treated like children. There was the rumor of Rob’s punishment and Josh’s punishment (it was his pistol that Rob accidentally fired). |
Rob and Josh were never punished. It was a month before a big operation, so the whole episode, The New Year’s Negligent Discharge, was to be litigated afterward. |
Rob got blown up a couple of months later. A directional fragmentation charge filled him with steel. There was a lot of blood. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it on the radio. A lug nut tore out his Adam’s apple, changing his voice to something gravelly but affectionate — after he learned how to talk again that spring. He died of an accidental drug overdose in 2014. That was Rob. Josh left us sooner. Josh died that May during the operation. I heard about that on the radio, too. |
There’s more to tell, but that’s the story. If you’re looking for a lesson in this, I don’t have one. I am a correspondent in Afghanistan now. I’m often in Kabul, a few hundred miles away from where this all happened. That base is still there. That big operation ultimately meant nothing. |
This story is a mile marker of my youth, a reminder that my friends existed and were a tiny blip in the middle of this unending war that continues to claim lives, now almost all of them Afghan, despite the talk of peace agreements and “conditions-based” U.S. withdrawals. So maybe that’s something to think about as another year begins, if you’re one of us who still thinks about the Afghan war at all. Happy New Year. |
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a correspondent in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: December 2020 |
 | | The site of a car bomb attack in Kabul on Dec. 20.Zakeria Hashimi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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At least 185 pro-government forces and 101 civilians were killed in December. The Times confirmed 3,378 security-force and 1,468 civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2020. [Read the report.] |
Here are three articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | Women in Qala-e-Biwaha, or the “village of widows.” They survive on earnings from the wool-processing trade, or donations from relatives and aid groups.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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“I don’t know if they were buried in Iran or their bodies were just thrown in the desert.” In one remote Afghan border village, most of the men have died trying to smuggle opium into Iran, leaving behind loved ones forced to survive on their own. [Read the article.] |
“I wish the leaders in Berlin and Washington had ties as good as ours, it makes it easier to solve problems.” American culture, friends and jobs are part of the fabric of Vilseck, Germany, home to a U.S. military base. President Trump has forced its people to think about what it would mean to lose that. [Read the article.] |
“We do not seek conflict, but no one should underestimate our ability to defend our forces.” Two American B-52 bombers flew another show-of-force mission in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, a week after President Trump warned Iran that he would hold it accountable “if one American is killed” in rocket attacks in Iraq that the administration and military officials blamed on Tehran. [Read the article.] |
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