Van of Valor

Special Interview Feature from Van of Valor 

BRISTOL, Tenn. – The Van of Valor team is proud to bring to you a special feature, which is actual dialogue of Sgt. (ret.) Thomas Waterman and Senior Master Sgt. (ret) Dr. Kevin Wallace’s experiences in the same two remote areas of Afghanistan a year removed. 

Waterman now makes knives professionally, and shares a studio with Jason Knight, a world-renowned bladesmith and a star of the television show Forged in Fire.

Wallace, along with his wife Lauren Wallace, anthropologist and graduate student at Harvard University, cofounded the Van of Valor.

SMSgt (ret) Dr. Kevin Wallace: “So, Thomas, you were in Bala Baluk and then BMG. I was in those same places, just a little over a year after you. It’s wild how the experiences can be so different, yet so many of the details are the same.”

Sgt. (ret) Thomas Waterman: “Yeah, it’s a small world. A shitty, dusty, small world. Tell me you know about the ice cream run.”

Wallace: “The ice cream run? To Farah? Through IED Alley? Of course. It was a presence patrol, but everyone knew the real mission. First, were you on it? And, second, bro… Did you actually get your ice cream?”

Waterman: “We got it! Paid for it in lead on the way back, but we got it. It’s the little things, you know? A taste of normal before you’re right back in the shit. For us, it was getting drunk on limoncello with the Italians in BMG or finding a Tim Hortons in Kandahar. You hold onto those moments.”

Wallace: “You hold on because the other moments are so heavy. I read about Todd. You were there?”

Waterman: “Yeah, I saw the ramp service at Bagram. Dave Todd was a Goliath of a dude. I found out by coincidence. My flight was delayed, I dicked around at Phoenix… if I hadn’t, I would have been there when he died. It’s a weird feeling, the guilt of missing it by chance.” 

Wallace: “You know how it is over there — the randomness of who gets hit and when.”

Waterman: “The randomness and the regimented insanity. By the time I got to BMG, they had these insane rules for reporting contact. It started as any sustained fire, then it was a firefight had to last 15 minutes… then 30… then 45 before you could call it in.”

Wallace: “Yeah, to make it look like things were calm. ‘Accurate small arms fire,’ never a ‘sniper.’ We knew.” 

Waterman: “We were getting shot at from couch to couch like a damn Bugs Bunny cartoon in the early days. It was all to psyops our own people, to make it seem like those ‘transitional provinces’ were secure.”

Wallace: “Exactly. They told us it was going to be cake. And you and I both know, there was nothing cake about that valley.” 

Waterman: “It was a grinding, 18-hour-a-day fight to just build the FOB, fill sandbags, and then go on patrol again.”

Wallace: “And the donkeys, man. You remember the donkeys?”

Waterman: “Wait, did you ever hear the story of the, ‘IED donkey?’”

Wallace: “We used them for resupply up the hill to the COP. Slap it on the ass and it would just walk up and back on its own.”

Waterman: “We had one we called Eeyore. Did the same thing. Until one day, the Taliban rigged him with an IED. The weight of the IED was so great that it slowed him down and it detonated before it got to us. Only in BMG, right? You fight boredom by doing the stupidest shit, and then you’re faced with a decision to blow up a donkey?”

Wallace: “It’s that duality. The absurdity and the horror, right next to each other.” 

Waterman: “Yeah, like one minute you’re watching Italians throw a cat with a tiny parachute off a watchtower, and the next you’re eating an MRE on the hood of a car while a guy’s brain is hanging out. People back here will never get it.”

Wallace: “They’ll never get it, sure. But, actually, ‘what the fuck, man? A cat? I don’t care about the brains, but who the hell would hurt a cat, man?’”

Waterman: “Long story. But, the point is, they’ll never get it. That’s why this,” [gestures to the interview setup], “is important. Patriotism to me isn’t just flags and parades. It’s questioning why, and it’s also being willing to be part of the machine to fix it from the inside. It’s having the checks and balances and using them. But you can’t just criticize; sometimes you’ve got to be part of it.”

Wallace then shared a few close-encounters with death, and the taking of lives. Waterman shared the same. Neither want to share publicly. 

Wallace: “That’s the connection. You served there, I served there. Now we’re both out, and we’re trying to make sense of it and help others do the same. You’re making knives with Jason Knight, a physical craft from Forged in Fire. I’m doing interviews and art therapy. We’re both taking the chaos and trying to shape it into something tangible. Something that makes sense.”

Waterman: “Yeah. We’re still building, brother. Just a different kind of FOB now.”

Wallace: “A different kind of FOB. Cheers to that.”

Waterman: “Fucking BMG.”

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