To my veteran friend who killed himself as Afghanistan was falling
We are just two days away from it now. The three-year anniversary of Afghanistan’s collapse — a day that changed the world’s history and future. A day that destroyed many Afghans’ dreams and haunts U.S. service members and veterans. Somehow it feels like it happened so long ago, and yet the rawness of emotion around it is still too accessible.
I covered that time intensely as a journalist, doing packages and live shots all day, staying up late at night, talking to sources on the phone for hours. I still keep in touch with many of the people I reported on. But there is one source who remains frozen in time, one who I can’t keep up with.
So I wrote a letter to him instead. Michael McCarthy was a former Navy Corpsman who served in the Second Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. They saw heavy fighting in Afghanistan, running out of ammunition and water, with no air support or medevac. He took his own life in his LA apartment just days before the Taliban took Kabul.
* * *
Dear Mike,
Yesterday I woke up out of sorts. The whole day was a struggle — someone had been using my credit card to buy Amazon Prime videos and then a whole slew of other dumb, trivial things happened. I knew they were small things but I couldn’t shake the panic. I just woke up uncomfortable in my life, as though it was a frock that no longer fit me.
In the evening, I got a text from your friend, Mike Ritz. He sent me a photo of a beer on a bar top, over an empty stool. And I knew it before I read the message underneath: “Three years ago today, Michael took his life.”
That was it. My body had remembered to mourn you and that tumultuous evacuation, but my mind had forgotten and sent me on a spiral all day, picking up material along the way.
Back in 2021, news of your death came a few days after you carried it out. A fellow veteran called me, and it took a few seconds to register. I was sitting at my kitchen table, scrambling to stay on top of the daily developments, tracking numerous and overwhelming attempts by Afghan interpreters to make their way through the crowds and gunfire to the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport, to the safer lives they so clearly deserved and could be denied. The Taliban would be hunting them down for working with the Americans.
You and I had spoken just a few weeks before about your efforts to get two interpreters you had worked with out of Afghanistan. You had propped your phone against a tree branch to speak with me outside, a little nervous and shy. You had talked about “forces outside of our control as individuals” and how “good people get caught up in really negative circumstances.” You told me while we were rolling that you got despondent thinking there may not be institutional will to save interpreters, but that you were turning to God. “I personally put my hopes in the hands of God at this point,” you had said.
When I flew to LA for your memorial, I met the people who loved you in your life. There were so many — maybe more than you realized. Your sister flipped through a photo album, still devastated that you were gone. And I watched your stepfather scatter your ashes into the Pacific. Your family kindly let me document it all, but they were skeptical of me in a “fake news” sort of way, so I stayed back to give them the space to mourn.
I am sure the three-year anniversary of your death was a hard day for them. I thought about reaching out, but wasn’t sure if they would want to hear from me. Maybe next year.
Unfortunately, I see now that you died in a simpler time — even though it was just three years ago — before the Taliban’s rule was essentially accepted in a giant, national shrug. Before Russia tried to seize all of Ukraine, and Israel went to war with Hamas, the region now at risk of a wider war. You didn’t have to see the plight of the Afghans get drowned out by the louder, newer stories. (And I still get pleading texts from interpreters, every once in a while.)
But you also missed out on seeing the two interpreters you were trying to help finally come to the United States. Last year “Danny,” who you inspired to become a doctor and whose medical schooling you paid for with VA checks, arrived with his family. They now live in Texas and Danny is apparently trying to start a security company with fellow Afghans. (Yes, I’ll cover it.)
“Wolf” who was hiding out illegally in Turkey, working exploitative jobs for pennies, texted me in May that he finally got his Special Immigrant Visa. Now he is in California, where you lived.
And your former squad leader Dustin Batson, who continued your work in securing Danny’s and Wolf’s departure from Afghanistan, got married and had a little girl. Now instead of posting rants that occasionally got him kicked off Instagram, he’s posting beautiful photos of his wife and baby. His joy comes through.
Right now, August in Washington, D.C., the air is thick with humidity and the sound of crickets. I don’t think I’m the only one feeling a general morose. I know this month is a struggle for many veterans and service members who have memories of Afghanistan. For journalists who covered it too.
And I’m not sure how to end a letter like this. Three years out, yes, you are missed. Mike Ritz sitting alone in that bar last night, drinking your glass of beer… you are undoubtedly the source of many, many tears.
I didn’t know you well, but your absence still saddens me — the choice that you made. I do wonder if I had just asked you different questions, checked in with you afterward, if it would have made any difference. I suppose life is often filled with questions when you look back, especially if you’re a journalist.
But if 2024 me could deliver a message to 2021 you, that day when you propped your phone up against the tree branch or right here in this letter now: Despite the frustration you felt in trying to help Danny and Wolf, the journal that your sister read that made her believe you ended your life due to this struggle, you were a key piece of those men’s journey. You helped them to get here, and to live out their dreams. Your 39 years made a profound difference in this world. Thank you for what you gave us.
Your friend,
Sasha
What an incredible person and tribute! His sacrifices will always be remembered and bear fruit in the lives he saved.