Built as an interactive map of Afghanistan, Project Athena is an archive that veterans can upload photos to, chronicling the war as they lived it next to the memories of others.
Clay Beyersdorfer
A team of veterans have created an interactive map of Afghanistan that allows any vet to upload pictures and notes from the war as they remember it. Screen capture from Project Athena website
For a generation that lived the war in Afghanistan one grid square at a time, the war now feels like a series of dots on a map. A patrol base carved out of hardpan soil. A culvert on a highway that never felt safe. A ridge where the radio went quiet.
Nathan Kehler knows the pull of those dots. When he and a group of fellow veterans wanted to record the war they experienced, they knew all their stories would be easiest to see laid out on a map. They launched Project Athena — a visual map connecting the memories of soldiers to the coordinates where they occurred.
“War is chaotic, and when you’re a soldier on the ground, you rarely see the full picture,” said Kehler.
But putting memories — photos, names, notes — onto a map, and adding the memories of others, can fill out a picture of that war.
Kehler is Canadian and served as an armored reconnaissance soldier with the Royal Canadian Dragoons, then as a GeoTech with 2 Combat Engineer Regiment, the military’s map makers. He deployed to Afghanistan in 2009 in the Panjwayi district, and he left with memories that were specific and unfinished.
When he remembers the war, there is one day — and one grid coordinate — that stands out.
“I spent fifteen years wondering what the hell happened that day,” Kehler said. As his unit patrolled near the town of Chalghōr, outside of the town of Salavat, they were hit by a coordinated IED attack. One vehicle after another exploded as the mission turned to a fog of detonations and confusion.
Before Project Athena launched, he added photos and details of the engagement to the map. Three days after the project went live, a second entry appeared. An engineer uploaded a photo and a short account, one Kehler had never seen.
The missing piece snapped into place.
“That day was one of those moments that stayed with me for years because I never fully understood what had happened,” Kehler said. “Seeing it on the map, with someone else’s account from the same operation, finally connected the dots. It turned a fragmented memory into something I could understand, and there is real value in that.”
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