In the war’s early years, the people of Afghanistan had
embraced American troops. But that warmth had tilted toward
resentment.

“Everybody could see it,” said Brandon Southern, 29, who served
with Sitton. “Everybody knew most of the populace didn’t care that
we were there.”

It became harder to talk to the locals because they feared the
Taliban, he said. The now-infamous insider killings, in which
Afghan trainees shot their American trainers, had begun.

Once-defined objectives — find the enemy, defeat them — had grown
muddled.

“It was a lot of senselessness,” Southern said. “Just walking
around. What are we doing this for?”

Sitton didn’t waver.

“Matt still believed in the big picture,” Southern said. “Free the
oppressed.”

One night near the end of that deployment, Sitton’s base was
attacked. A nearby explosion threw him from his bed. He scrambled
to his weapon and helped the other soldiers fight back the ambush.
No Americans were killed.

By that time, the Army had begun to transfer duties to the Afghan
troops. Among those was tower guard.

That night, Sitton later told his mother, not one bullet was fired
from those towers.

After their return in late 2010, Southern left the military.

“I didn’t believe in what we were doing,” he said. “I lost
faith.”

…Afghanistan in 2012 was far different than the place Sitton had
left two years earlier.

Politics, Sitton thought, had overtaken common sense. His platoon
worked for weeks on four hours sleep a night, he told his wife and
friends. Their missions were aimless. Twice each day for two to
four hours, he and his men were mandated to walk through what he
described as a “mine field.”

“Seriously, there is no rhyme or reason for our patrols other than
to meet a time criteria,” he wrote to Southern. “So now we are
being punished because we as a platoon are saying all this is
garbage and we won’t go out into freakin’ hell and back for no
reason.”

Sitton and his men, he wrote over and over, felt alone. In prior
years, they often received air support during heavy firefights.
Because the command staff was so concerned about harming Afghan
civilians, that option had all but disappeared.

He told his wife and Southern that the infuriating orders had come
from brigade commander Col. Brian Mennes. The Army did not return
several calls for comment.

Mennes, Sitton told his wife, had blamed his own troops for the
high rate of IED injuries and deaths because experts had determined
improvised explosive devices should be avoidable.

“We are serving no purpose. We are leaving and still the command is
putting the lives of Afghans over the lives of Americans,” he wrote
to her. “Col. Mennes said he would rather risk losing a paratrooper
than killing an innocent civilian over here.”

Sitton still believed in the mission, the greater good, but he
seldom mentioned it. He told his wife he didn’t know who would make
it home. He stopped saying that God wasn’t done with
him.