Mornings in Afghanistan, Sgt. John Wilder and Sgt. Bob Pratt shook scorpions out of their boots, drank their coffee and went to work.

They stitched wounds, treated snakebites and dressed barefoot children in new socks and shoes. Afghans collapsed at the camp's front gate, dehydrated from dysentery. Soldiers on guard were afraid to touch them. Pratt and Wilder carried the Afghans inside.

Each night as the sun set, Wilder and Pratt pulled their Kevlar vests tight, readied their weapons and waited for the rockets to come.

As medics with the New Hampshire Army National Guard, Wilder and Pratt were sent to Afghanistan to care for soldiers and local civilians. But Taliban fighters didn't care that the medics saved villagers' lives. Americans are enemies, and medics are soldiers.

"People do tend to forget that there's a real war going on in Afghanistan," said Pratt. "I think the perception was it was going to be easier in Afghanistan, and it really wasn't."

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the New Hampshire Army National Guard has sent at least 80 soldiers to Afghanistan. Those soldiers, including a group of five medics, arrived in Afghanistan after the war in Iraq had begun in March 2003.

"We called ourselves 'The Forgotten Five,' " Wilder said of the five medics.

Unlike the war in Iraq, the Afghan conflict caused little political or public outcry. People understood the connection between Afghanistan terrorist training camps and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Lori Duff / Concord Monitor John Wilder and Bob Pratt get together at the Barley House to swap stories. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

The Afghans were often eager to help soldiers root out the Taliban, a radical Islamic group that ruled brutally. The military operation in Afghanistan seemed to progress smoothly; the first American soldier killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan died in January 2002, three months after the invasion.

But as American attention and resources moved to Iraq, the Taliban returned, and the soldiers' lives grew more dangerous. American casualties in Afghanistan have doubled since the beginning of the year, according to a Sept. 5 article in The New York Times. Altogether, 335 American troops, including three New Hampshire soldiers, have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began.

For Pratt and Wilder, a salesman and a metal forger, work mattered more in Afghanistan than it ever had. Their successes and failures changed lives, even if no one at home was paying attention.

"We knew that we directly affected people's lives," said Pratt, 49, of Lyman. "It made me really proud of what I was doing."

Wilder said, "If I had a chance to do it all over again, I would. Without hesitation."

In a strange land

For Wilder, who grew up in Nashua, Afghanistan looked like another planet. The gray earth was dry, dusty and rocky, and soldiers often sprained their ankles walking over it.

The medics were stationed in Paktika Province, a remote, mountainous area near the Pakistan border. The base was nearly 53 miles from any other base or larger town. When equipment broke or food ran short, it sometimes took days or weeks to receive shipments.

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