A Reluctant Warrior's Journey

All War Stories Are Different

Maj. John Cherry, Regimental Judge Advocate, stands alongside Richard Cavagnol (left), and Ken McGongley, Legacy Group Program Manager, during a lengthy tour and discussion of Delaram Afghan National Police Station, March 11. The conversations evolved from local development of the police station to strengthening the structure of the current judicial system. (Common)

September 11, 2001

I drove our daughters to school that morning. We learned of the attack on the car radio. I was filled with anger and sorrow. I wanted to hit back.  I was a middle-aged Army Reserve lawyer. What could I do? I read about the proposed military commissions at GITMO. I was a career civilian prosecutor with many years of experience trying cases. Maybe I could help? I contacted the people in charge of the commissions. The career Army lawyers were interested in my experience and eventually offered me a job.

I didn’t take it. The stories about waterboarding and secret prisons were beginning to surface, and the regulations that laid out commission procedures were lacking in due process. I had a good reputation as a prosecutor. I didn’t want to be involved in anything that would cause me to be ashamed of myself. I was disappointed. My ego wanted me to take the job. I would have been in DC and Cuba with a top-secret clearance. I would have been with exciting people, but I said no.

The years passed. My family did the usual things families do. Our daughters, Madeline and Mary Clark, moved into junior high and high school. The girls had more activities, and my wife Ellen and I were involved. Ellen was very involved in her work as an adoption social worker. I was busy in the Army Reserve.  I spent a lot of long weekends writing wills and powers of attorney and conducting legal briefings for reserve units deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq. Eventually, I was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.

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I finally had a position with some authority in the District Attorney’s Office. I prosecuted all sorts of grueling cases. The job was demanding and grim, but I was good at it. I was good at getting children to talk about horrible things. As time passed, the details of what some adults do to children began eating away at me. I saw things and heard things that most people never see or hear. 

In January of 2006, I drove out of town for my reserve unit drill weekend. The Commanderander told us we were on alert for deployment to Baghdad later that year. I was overwhelmed. The war in Iraq was at its height for Americans. The National Guard and Army Reserves represented over half of America’s soldiers in Iraq that year. Death notices were regularly appearing in the New York Times. 

Our commander struck me as a Walter Mitty who dreamed of military glory. The colonel was a retired businessman who worked for the Army Reserve full-time on a part-time salary. We were combat service support. However, I was convinced that he would get us all killed in an attempt to earn a medal for himself. There was nothing I could do. I felt as if I were being dragged toward my doom. 

I called my father and told him but did not tell Ellen and our daughters. I didn’t want them to worry. Ellen didn’t sign up for the military life. I didn’t join the Army Reserve until several years after we were married. We didn’t live in a community with a significant military presence. We were the only Guard or Reserve family in our neighborhood, and I was one of only two Guard or Reserve members in the District Attorney’s Office.  There seemed to be no one Ellen or I could turn to, no one we knew who would understand.

Looking back now, I suspect I was just making excuses. I thought about it, though. I thought about it constantly. My performance at work suffered, or at least my then-supervisor thought my work was suffering. I made the mistake of telling him that I was on alert. Instead of making things a little easier for me in the office, he ramped up the pressure on me, complaining about me to the District Attorney. Eventually, my supervisor had me removed from my position as Chief Child Abuse Prosecutor, and I went back to being a rank-and-file courtroom prosecutor.

Fall 2006 arrived, and the call came. After the call, I lay on the bed for what seemed like hours, staring up at the ceiling. I finally told Ellen and the girls. It was emotional, theirs and maybe mine. A shadow passed over our house. I drove several hours through the night to meet the rest of the unit. We then rode a bus for several more hours to the processing center. I failed the medical screening because I told the doctor about my history of depression and anxiety, and I told him that I was on antidepressants. The doctor marked me nondeployable. 

On the way back to the Reserve Center, the Colonel received a call that our deployment was canceled. He was disappointed. I went home and returned to my civilian job as a prosecutor. Early in 2007, the unit was alerted again, this time for deployment to Kuwait. This time, the unit actually deployed.

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I had reached one of the lowest points in my life. The unit went to Kuwait, and I stayed home. I knew I would eventually go before a medical board for discharge. I couldn’t let things end this way. What kind of man would I be if I were to stay at home while other men and women my age were risking their lives in the war zone? Why should I be exempt?  I wasn’t sure I could live alone if I stayed home.

I persuaded myself that the odds of survival were in my favor, and if I died in the war, at least I would die for something. I studied the Army regulations on the use of antidepressants. I got letters from my doctor and my psychologist. I persuaded the same Army doctor who listed me as nondeployable to change my status to deployable. Once I was deployable, I volunteered for active duty as an individual soldier.

I was offered a job as the US Army Command Judge Advocate for the Afghan Regional Security Integrated Command, South (ARSIC-S) in Kandahar. I took the job. I wanted to be as close as I could get to the war. I would be the ARSIC-S Commander’s lawyer and mentor to the Afghan Army’s 205^th Corps lawyers.

On a Saturday morning in early October 2007, I kissed the girls goodbye. Ellen drove me to the airport. I do not remember many conversations on the way. We had been together a long time, since our last year of college. We had never been apart for longer than a couple of weeks of annual training. I told Ellen where to find a letter I had written in case the worst happened. Then, I pulled my bags from the trunk. I hugged Ellen, kissed her, and walked through the airport doors.

After a night in the tents at Camp Arifjan, I flew in an Air Force C17 to Bagram Air Base. The ramp came down, and I walked off the plane. The C17 was full, but I was on my own. I was not with any of the other soldiers. I stood for a moment on the tarmac.  What the hell have you done? Then I shouldered my duffel bags, and I started walking toward the lights of the Pat Tillman USO Center. I called and found someone in the Trial Defense Service who helped me get a room there.

Even now, fifteen almost sixteen years later, images from my year in Afghanistan race through my mind. Riding south to Kabul in an armored bus. Behind the walls of Camp Eggers. I was flying down to Kandahar Airfield, where I performed my duties—establishing myself as a credible legal advisor. Rocket attack, the first of many. My interpreter Nadir. The daily trips to the 205^th camp, driving by the Soviet graveyard of tanks, trucks, and rocket launchers. Helping the Afghan lawyers teach their soldiers the Law of War.

The ramp ceremonies and the silence—the deafening silence—the taste of dust in the mouth, the staggering heat of summer, and the shivering nights in the mountains. The smell of wood smoke and helicopter blades beating against the Afghan sky. Mortar rounds on Thanksgiving evening. Riding in a convoy to Qalat. The brown mountains on either side. The helicopters swooping and whirling above us. One final crest. A door in my mind opened, and I went through that open door to a place where everything was connected, and I was connected to everything. Ecstasy.

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It was a long ride home from Kandahar to Bagram, Biskek, Incirlik to Baltimore, and Fort Benning to Memphis. 

Our oldest daughter, Mary Clark, came home from college to join Ellen in meeting me at the airport.  We went to pick up Madeline at school. I remember the smile on her face when she saw me in the car.  I was so proud of all of them. They had met the challenge of my absence. Then, we drove home to begin the process of getting to know each other again.

I had thought my service in the war would improve my prospects in the D.A.’s office and the profession, but that didn’t happen. I realized later that most people like people who are like them, and by volunteering for service in the warzone, I had shown that I was nothing like most of my contemporaries, most of whom had never risked very much.

Once the hypervigilance faded, the rest of my life went well. Years flew by. The girls grew up, attended high school, college, and graduate school, and then she got married. Ellen retired. I continued to trudge through the legal profession.

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I stayed connected with my interpreter, Nadir, through email. He sent me photos of his family, and he sent me pictures of his family. He never asked me for anything, but I occasionally sent him money. I wanted to help him the same way he had helped me. Gradually, he became my nephew, and I became his uncle.

On August 15, 2021, my phone rang. “Uncle,” Nadir said, “ The Taliban are in the city. What should I do?” I didn’t know what to do but told him I would think of something.  Some fellow veterans agreed to help me, and with their help, I persuaded Nadir to take his family to the airport in an attempt to get on one of the evacuation flights. The family sat on the asphalt for several days. We tried to persuade the Americans inside to let Nadir and his family through a gate. We gave them the family’s location, but the Americans wouldn’t budge. Nadir had given our country 15 years of honorable service, but the gates remained shut. I will never forget this. 

Nadir didn’t give up, though. I didn’t either, and neither did my small band of veterans, plus my daughters.  We used hawala, the Islamic money transfer system, to get money to them when Western Union and Moneygram were closed.

We fed and housed them while we worked to find a way out for them. Nadir kept his family one step ahead of the Taliban, and in February 2022, we welcomed the family to Houston, Texas. Nadir was the hero of the story, and I was happy to provide him with backup.

It’s August 2024, three years since the fall of Kabul and twenty-three years since 9/11. What did it all mean? For years, I thought I knew. Now, I’m not so sure. My feelings about my country and its leadership have changed forever. I was once one of those people who regularly fly our flag. When the last planes left Kabul, I folded my flag and put it on a shelf in my storage room. It’s still there. I don’t know when I’ll fly it again.

I went, though. I did my best. My wife and our daughters did their best at home. I’m proud of my brother veterans who helped me rescue Nadir and his family. They had never met Nadir but did everything they could to help him. My government let down a man who had given our country fifteen years, but I didn’t. We didn’t. These memories sustain me.

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Kevin Rardin is an Afghan veteran practicing law in Memphis, TN.