Shivan Sivalingam was born in Singapore. His family immigrated to the United States in 1984, and he grew up in Austin, Texas. While attending Texas A&M University in the mid-1990s, Shivan began serving as an intern in the federal government. After graduating, he received a commission in the US Navy Reserve. In 2005, Shivan left federal service to work as a defense contractor. He has been recalled to active duty on five occasions, most recently to serve as a liaison officer for the US Navy’s 5th Fleet at Special Operations Command Central, in Tampa, Florida.
My friends,
Ten years have passed since I shared the story of my friend Roz with some of you. Others of you may have heard bits as we’ve met in the years in between. Roz and Shawn, two of my teammates in Afghanistan, set off on the Kabul-Bagram road ten years ago today. A short time after eight that morning, both were lost. There are many story lines that I think about from that day. The tremendous leadership from an unlikely hero. The friendship and community from Roz’s family and so many others in the years since. Obviously, the guilt. But most of all, I think about the difficult fact that life will deceive us with relative predictability for long periods until, at the moments when we begin to feel the most comfortable, it unfolds, reminding us how powerless we all are.
As we approach Memorial Day, of course I remember Roz. However, on this day, we must be obliged to remember as many of our fallen friends as possible. While some of us by good fortune may not have a loved one or even acquaintance who has perished in the conflicts, isn’t that all the more reason for those of us who have lost someone to share their stories? What follows are some stories of a few friends no longer with us.
MOHSIN
With much in common, Mohsin and I became fast friends at my camp in Kabul. We were both junior officers in a headquarters camp, both of South Asian descent, and both exceptionally charming young gentlemen for the times. Charm, we should be reminded, is one of those forgotten casualties of war. Mohsin, a Pakistani, had just completed a tour in Iraq and had gone home only long enough to get married before returning to harm’s way. We ate dinner together most days, recounting the events of the past few hours and our plans for the day that was to follow.
Mohsin was especially excited during one of his first Fridays at the camp, as that was the day of the big bazaar. Vendors from all over the area would set up an open-air market just outside the camp, peddling everything from furniture and antique rifles to pirated DVDs and all manner of trinkets in between. After lunch, we walked to the bazaar, where he planned to shop for jewelry for his wife. For me, one of the grand wastes of time is watching someone bargain for anything at all, let alone alleged precious stones, so I excused myself. Mohsin seemed slightly displeased at this, expecting more hospitality from a friend.
When we met up for dinner, Mohsin, with unnecessary enthusiasm, displayed his prize catch of the day: a beautiful lapis lazuli necklace. He stayed on the topic some forty-five seconds longer than necessary to convey a message that I believe should never have exceeded ten. I took this as gloating, as implying that I should have kept his company at the bazaar. Never accused of refusing an opportunity to humble a good friend, I reminded him that the only difference between a jeweler and a thief is a handshake. Mohsin conceded, putting the lapis away.
During our chats, we often spoke about Mohsin’s desire to go to the border region, where he felt he could put his language skills to better use. This would be a point of contention in our friendship. I tried appealing to reason, telling him that he could potentially get the attention of one of our seniors if he stayed in Kabul, thereby influencing the conflict at a strategic level. I appealed to emotion, reminding him of his obligation to his new bride and his family. None of my interventions worked.
The border region was unsafe for all Americans, but it would be especially unsafe for Mohsin. Locals he encountered there would quickly identify him as a native. For each local who displayed pride that one of their own had become an American soldier, there would be no fewer than three who would brand him a traitor. I thought that our enemies would not rest until they killed him. They would be relentless. Regardless, after a few weeks of trying, Mohsin got his desired assignment and left the camp in mid-August of 2008.
About a month later, I traveled home for my brother’s wedding. On a random day, I looked at the faces of the fallen in the local paper. You don’t ever look at that section expecting to see someone that you were just eating dinner with…not because the person was out of harm’s path, but because you expect that you will get the bad news in a more direct way.
But Mohsin had arrived at our camp by himself, and he’d left by himself. In the few weeks he was at my camp, he got to know only a handful of people. When I got back to Kabul, I looked up the incident reports. Mohsin had been assigned to a camp where they frequently went out on missions. Our enemies had struck American convoys from that camp at a rate of just a couple of attacks per month in the months prior to Mohsin’s arrival, but in the two weeks prior to his death, the enemy had targeted Mohsin’s convoy four times in five attacks! Relentless indeed. Our enemies had been hunting for Mohsin.
MIKE
In November of 2001, some of the heaviest fighting of the then just six-week-old war occurred at Qala-i-Jangi (literally, “fort of war”), an imposing structure guarding the ancient Shia city of Mazar-i-Sharif from the west. It was here that General Rashid Dostum held some four hundred Taliban fighters, rounded up during a death march from Konduz to Mazar, across the Afghan northern plains. Dostum was one of several influential Afghans whom we enlisted for support after the 9/11 attacks.
One of my friends who had deployed there in October of 2001 shared a great account of General Tommy Franks speaking to Dostum on the phone about additional compensation for the assistance that the warlord was providing. “What’s got to happen first is the mission!!!” Franks thundered before slamming down the phone on Dostum. Franks, having risen through the ranks during the lean Clinton years, was probably uniquely prepared to handle Dostum.
Dostum and his men picked up some four thousand Taliban on the way to Mazar, but only four hundred survived the journey. At Qala-i-Jangi, the prisoners were stuffed into the basement of a small building with pink walls. If a sardine had viewed the cramped, filthy conditions in that basement, he would have quickly reconsidered his plight and happily lumbered back into his can.
Mike and his partner arrived to question the Taliban prisoners. A few dozen of Dostum’s men were all that stood between the two Americans and the prisoners. Initially, the prisoners, weary from the long trek, were likely just content to be off the container trucks, but perspectives and intentions would change quickly. Mike and his partner were focusing on the task at hand, not completely attuned to the changing attitude of the enemy, which was no doubt taking stock of scenes of friends being beaten and spirited off to unknown fates by Dostum’s men. Recall that these were men who survived the death march—the march that had reportedly wiped out more than three thousand of their comrades.
Said another way: they were the strongest, toughest, and most resilient of the initial group. Even depleted in number, they still outnumbered Dostum’s men by three or four to one and may have smuggled in weapons. Mike and his partner probably didn’t know those crucial details. The prisoners began sizing up Mike, his partner, and Dostum’s men. At a coordinated moment, when Mike’s partner was away, they encircled Mike and began to pounce.
The ensuing battle featured these prisoners; Dostum’s men, some of whom were on horses; British Special Forces elements parachuting in; and precision-guided aerial munitions dropped from ground attack aircraft, all within the confines of a high-walled desert fortress.
The picture in my mind is one from an eighties-era G.I. Joe cartoon, except Qala-i-Jangi really happened. Over the grand ramparts, inside the fortress grounds, the Afghan Army’s 209th Corps would establish a garrison here a few years later. A huge wall bearing a disproportionately small door divides the fort in half, separating the working area from what amounts to a memorial ground for the fighting that took place here that November. The fortress was perfectly unpreserved, and stepping through the door, one quickly encounters rusted-out trucks, spent 12.7mm DShK shells, and the notorious pink house, the whole scene almost exactly as it was in the days following the battle.
When you walk Bull Run or Sharpsburg, much is left to interpretation and your imagination. In Qala-i-Jangi, the only things missing from 2001 are the bodies, the sounds, and the smell. A memorial for Mike stands in the veranda of the pink house, and the camp bears his name, a couple of miles to the south. Mike has the unfortunate distinction of being the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan after the conflict began.
FRANK
Some eight years after Mike was killed, Frank arrived at Camp Spann with a team of Navy personnel. They had trained together, done their pre-deployment workups together, and they had all traveled into theater together. In short, they were already a tight-knit group. Camp Spann was entirely enclosed within Camp Shaheen—the main garrison for the Afghan 209th Corps, with some command buildings a short distance away at Qala-i-Jangi. Shaheen was a perfect square, about three-quarters of a mile on each side, and Spann occupied a small corner of the larger camp, with its own perimeter fence.
We often place our camps within the walls of an Afghan camp to add a layer of protection…in concept. In 2007, I had deployed to Spann for six weeks. An unexpected treat of this duty was getting to run the roughly three-mile perimeter road of Shaheen. The weather in Mazar was pleasant, the air was clean, and the perimeter was perfectly flat, on soft gravel. In short, excellent running conditions, if one so desires. One loop was a typical warm-up or cool-down run; two loops was a regular running day; and on a three-loop day, with the greatest of intentions to complete the run, I would invariably begin evaluating the educational benefits of “walking it in” from just past the last turn, which featured a boneyard of old Russian ground combat vehicles on a road conveniently parallel to the perimeter.
Here lazy runners could break into a trot as they tried to distinguish old Soviet T-55s from T-62s while, more important, sparing their knees about a mile’s worth of additional high-impact exercise. Running outside was not an easy option in Kabul, so being able to enjoy an outside jog while in Mazar was a welcome change. I did some form of running no fewer than three times a week, and I felt perfectly safe doing so.
Nearly two years later, Frankie and his teammates shared this mindset. A few months into their deployment, during a Friday run, Frank and his running partner in a foursome had dropped about fifty yards behind the lead pair. As the lead pair rounded that final bend, an Afghan soldier came down off a watchtower and shot at the lead group, mortally wounding one of Frank’s teammates. Knowing that their friends were wounded, Frank’s partner made a break for the clinic, which was perhaps a quarter mile away, while our beloved Frank stood with decision.
You see, he was at that last turn on the perimeter road, alongside the boneyard of tanks and APCs that would have offered ample protection from the bullets that would soon fly his way. At fifty yards and a moving target, he probably would have reached cover in the boneyard. But the proposition Frank faced that day, as life unraveled before him, was Do I try to save my friends, or do I save myself? He did not know that one friend was already succumbing to wounds.
It is a peculiar condition in humans, common even in the worst of pessimists, that when confronted with the prospect that one of our best friends has suffered a fatal accident, even one we have witnessed, we believe they are still alive. Some may explain this behavior as part of denial, but there is more to it. Our best friends are not mere mortals. They are our role models. They are our superheroes. Mere car accidents, or bullets, or IEDs cannot end them. Their superpowers will carry them a little longer.
In short, Frank charged the gunman that day believing he would save his slightly wounded friends. As he approached the gunman, Frank yelled out, running toward him but zigzagging as the gunman attempted to get Frank in his sights. Two of Frank’s teammates survived injuries and live today because of his bravery.
Frank is buried at Arlington. I visited his grave site a few Memorial Days ago with two good friends. One of them, a graduate of the academy, had just walked us over to the markers of a few of her classmates. It was a mini reunion of sorts for her school, but also a solemn reminder of the lives we have given in these conflicts. Folks were remembering Doug, Travis, and many others. And then we walked over to Frank’s marker, a less-visited tomb, maybe a hundred yards away.
Along the way, I was sharing the account of Frank’s bravery that I shared above. As we neared his marker, I noticed three young ladies whom I had never met, yet each was distinctively familiar. They looked back at the approaching group like sentinels standing a solemn watch, guarding especially hallowed ground. Indeed, they were.
Still a little shocked, I said “Hello, Brooke” to Frank’s wife, who turned to his sister as if to say, Who is this?
Frank’s mother then turned to me and, having no need to introduce herself, politely did so anyway. She admitted that she had overheard the story I had been sharing about her son. “Did you know him?” she asked, with a pause as if to indicate that, while she could not place me from all the years past, the pictures, the emails, and the visits, surely I must have known him from the detail of the story?
I replied with a resounding “No!,” without offering explanation, knowing that there is always an incredible pride that falls over parents when they come into the company of complete strangers who speak so highly of their child’s great deeds in life.
She smiled.
Roslyn “Roz” Schulte was from Saint Louis, Missouri. She was an officer in the Air Force and graduated from the Air Force Academy. She was residing in Hawaii at the time of her deployment. She was killed in action on May 20, 2009.
Shawn Pine was from San Antonio, Texas. He was a retired Army officer. He died of wounds on May 20, 2009.
Mohsin Naqvi was from Newburgh, New York. He was an Army officer. He was KIA on September 17, 2008.
Johnny Spann, a.k.a. Mike, was from Marion County, Alabama. He was a Marine Corps officer. He was residing in Northern Virginia at the time of his deployment. He was KIA on November 25, 2001.
Francis Toner was from Rhode Island. He was a Navy officer and graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy. He was residing in Hawaii at the time of his deployment. He was KIA on March 27, 2009.
From Manama with love,
Shivan