The battle of Wanat took place 16 months ago in eastern Afghanistan, but the tragedy of that day hasn't come to a close.

Instead, it's being re-fought at home.

Nine soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team were killed and 27 wounded on July 13, 2008, and the ripples of pain, sadness — and now anger — continue far removed from the obscure corner of the world where the battle took place.

Staff Sgt. Jonathan Benton survived the battle only to struggle through the aftermath.

Benton stared into the eyes of a dying fellow soldier who had been hit below his body armor by a rocket-propelled grenade. Benton said he told that soldier, Sgt. Israel "Ira" Garcia, it was going to be OK.

"I still look into his eyes almost every day," Benton said.

Benton has been through counseling and taken antidepressant medication as he tries to cope.

For more than a few of the soldiers who were at Wanat, the attack continues in the form of nightmares, flashbacks and alcohol abuse.

Some were taken out of combat units and still receive treatment at "wounded warrior" facilities.

For Mary Jo and David Brostrom of 'Aiea, who lost their firstborn son, 24-year-old 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, every day is a struggle, and they take the pain one day at a time.

"Nobody can walk in our shoes until they actually experience it," David Brostrom said. "We're still grieving, and we always will. It's not going to go away."

Kurt Zwilling, whose son also was killed at Wanat, said he didn't think he would make it at first and sought Veterans Affairs counseling in his home state of Missouri.

He's found some solace in talking to the parents of other service members who have lost their own loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan, and in trying to help them survive, too.

For some of the families who lost sons at Wanat, there's another emotion — outrage, stemming from the belief that Army senior command negligence led to the casualties that day.

Cpl. Gunnar W. Zwilling, 20, who died at an observation post called Topside, the same place where Brostrom fell, had called his father on July 4, 2008 — nine days before the battle — to tell him "what a screw-up" the plan was to occupy Wanat, Kurt Zwilling said.

"He told me they were being sent on a suicide mission and that it was going to be a bloodbath," said Zwilling, who lives in O'Fallon, Mo. "He said he didn't want to go but he would go because he was being ordered to go."

His son was present at prior meetings with village elders in Wanat "and they told them (the U.S. forces) not to come there — that they weren't wanted there, and (U.S. commanders) threw down the money and said, 'We're coming.' They told (the enemy) when they were coming and what time they were coming, so (the attack) was all lined up."

Carlene Cross, whose 25-year-old son, Cpl. Jason Bogar, also died at the "Topside" observation post, said, "It made me just physically ill to think about the horror that my son must have gone through and the recklessness of the situation — the (situation) that the upper command put these really great soldiers in."

Bogar, an amateur photographer from Seattle who sent home photos of Afghans he met on patrols, was killed as he fired a light machine gun that he had propped on a sandbag wall. Bogar fired 600 rounds as bullets pounded the sandbags in front of him. Then his weapon jammed. No one saw him fall, according to an Army report on the battle.

Cross believes higher command was guilty of negligence and a cover-up of what happened after reading the Army's official investigation and a report by military historian Douglas Cubbison, at the Combat Studies Institute.

"It was just so chilling and heartbreaking as a mom to read that (report) and just ask, 'Why?' the Seattle resident said. "Who was at the helm there?"

David Brostrom, a retired colonel and helicopter pilot who spent 30 years in the Army and now works for defense contractor Boeing, started asking questions about Wanat shortly after the attack.

The 173rd Airborne Brigade commander, Col. Charles "Chip" Preysler, a friend of David Brostrom's before the attack, was evasive after, and the friendship dissolved, he said.

Brostrom, 56, said he tries to approach the battle of Wanat from the standpoint of an experienced former Army officer who knows the right and wrong way to go about a mission. He still views the Army as a "great organization."

"My view of the Army hasn't lessened any," he said. "I'm disappointed in the way the leadership in Afghanistan handled (Wanat)."

He also knows there are many in his branch of service who will try to dismiss him as a grieving father out for revenge.

"I am not going to take that away I am a grieving father," he said. "But my professional experience in the Army is telling me that this (Wanat) was not done right. One, the investigation was not done right, and the planning and execution and aftermath of Wanat were not done right. It was a significant leadership failure at all levels."

Brostrom added that "what really makes me mad is that the Army would do this, and dishonor those soldiers that gave the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the reputation of officers who may or may not have made a mistake."

DIDN'T SEE IT COMING

Frankie Gay, a Georgia man whose son, Cpl. Pruitt Rainey, 22, died with Jonathan Brostrom at Wanat, is also looking for answers. In recent months he spoke by phone to Col. William Ostlund, who oversaw Brostrom's platoon at Wanat as commander responsible for a large area of eastern Afghanistan.

Ostlund admitted "there were some mistakes made," Gay said, but Ostlund didn't elaborate.

"He (Ostlund) said, 'Now, that's what happens in war; you know, things are never perfect,' " Gay said. Ostlund said he did not expect the soldiers to be attacked. "I did not see it coming," Gay reported Ostlund saying.

Regardless of how it happens, the death of a child brings a pain words cannot describe.

Against one wall of David and Mary Jo Brostrom's garage are six black shipping crates, stacked neatly just as they arrived a year ago from Afghanistan after their son was killed.

Inside are camouflage uniforms, civilian clothes, military orders, efficiency reports and winter outerwear that belonged to Jon Brostrom.

What would be mundane stuff to most now has become an important and tangible endpoint to their eldest son's 24 years.

The crates are framed by the small red, white and blue needlepoint canvases that Mary Jo collects and has throughout the house — including a couple in the shape of helicopters that reflect her husband's long Army career.

"We've gone through everything. I'd like to get rid of it, but I can't. It's part of him," David Brostrom said as he stood in the garage.

Throughout the Brostroms' hillside 'Aiea home are mementos of the fearless son who in his younger days would "get on a skateboard and go 60 miles an hour down a hill," according to his dad.

It's all those recollections that the Brostroms have gathered in close to cherish.

There are multiple framed photos of Jon around the house, as well as images of his younger brother, Blake, now 23, who also is in the Army. A 16-by-20 inch photo of a smiling Jon Brostrom in his camouflage uniform dominates one wall of the kitchen between sets of cabinets.

A black sweatshirt with "Terrorist Hunting Club" and his company's name, the "Chosen Few," hangs behind the front door where Jon Brostrom left it in May of 2008 when he was home on R&R. Both David and Mary Jo Brostrom wear metal remembrance bracelets inscribed with their son's name. Mary Jo wears two — one in black, one in silver.

When asked during a visit to her son's grave at the Hawai'i State Veterans Cemetery in Käne'ohe if it had gotten any better more than a year later, Mary Jo Brostrom quickly answered, "No."

"It was hard over Christmas. How do you sign a Christmas card?" she said, giving just one example of the painful reminders she must endure. "I didn't want to do the Christmas cards. David did the Christmas cards. Jonathan is a part of our family. He will always be a part of our family. I want his name to be on the card. So it's little things like that.

"I know he's in heaven," she added after a pause, "but he will forever live in my heart."

STRUGGLES CONTINUE

Kurt Zwilling, who also lost a son in the Battle of Wanat, has followed the Brostroms on a similar path through sorrow and anger.

The Missouri man said he received counseling through the VA, but "unless you talk to somebody that this has happened to, they really don't know what to say to you," he said.

He now makes it a point to speak to families near his home in O'Fallon, Mo., who lose service members in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Zwilling talked to one man whose son died about four months ago.

"He told me he was at peace with all this, and I said, 'Well, OK, that's fine. Here's my phone number,' " Zwilling said. "About 2 1/2 months went by and this guy is falling apart. He's already lost his wife. They're separated, and the guy — he's mentioned suicide. I don't know how a parent can go through this and not think about it."

He stays in touch with some of the soldiers who survived Wanat and they occasionally stay at his house.

They, too, are still struggling with the memory of Wanat.

"Mentally, they are hurting. Because you've got to understand, a lot of these guys are macho, they are fighters, and it's one of these things where, 'Well, I ain't going to sit in front of a shrink, I'll deal with this on my own,' " Zwilling said. "Well, on their own means drinking themselves to sleep every night and nightmares and not being able to sleep at all and flashbacks. It's pretty sad."

There have been no suicides, according to soldiers who were there.

Some have found ways to cope.

Benton, who was in Wanat at observation post Topside when Sgt. Garcia died from a horrific rocket-propelled grenade wound, said he will have to deal with the losses at Wanat for the rest of his life.

"I found myself in the thick of things and walked away with mere scratches and yet I had to watch these guys dying," Benton said.

The 29-year-old staff sergeant, now an Army instructor in Grafenwoehr, Germany, said he received counseling and antidepressant medication.

"But what I really needed and what I'm getting an opportunity to do now is spend time with my family to reset myself," Benton said. His wife and three daughters "daily keep me in reality on things."

Sgt. Tyler Stafford, who was bounced around at the Topside observation post by exploding rocket-propelled grenades and also saw friends die, said he expected to have issues.

He's had a few, including nightmares. Sometimes he's jumpy, he said. "Or something catches your eye and it brings you back there (to Wanat)," said Stafford, 25, who now is an Army recruiter in Colorado. "I think about it all the time if I don't have somebody to talk to or I'm not doing something."

Some of the soldiers from the platoon still stay in touch, and they continue to watch each other's backs.

Stafford said some from the unit remain in "wounded warrior" barracks with mental health issues.

Jon Brostrom's son, Jase, who now is 7 and lives with his mom, Lindsey Spargur, in Utah, is trying to find his own way through the loss of his father.

"He likes to talk about Jon a lot. Everything he does, he'll be like, 'Did my dad used to do that? And, 'Do I act just like my dad?' " Spargur said.

The boy who is a "carbon copy" of his father now draws pictures of him in heaven, Spargur said.

"It's still pretty raw, and (his father's death) is still in the front of his mind," she said, adding that if he hears the national anthem, or sees an American flag, he gets emotional.

First Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom is buried on a rise at Hawai'i State Veterans Cemetery about 100 feet from another Island warrior, 1st Lt. Nainoa Hoe, 27, who was killed by a sniper in Mosul, Iraq, in 2005.

Mary Jo and David Brostrom visit Jon's grave every Sunday, usually after church.

"He'll never leave us — he's always here," David Brostrom said. "You know sometimes you'll be sitting there and you think he's in the same seat, in the passenger seat, and he's driving with you."

The lifestyle that Jon Brostrom loved in Hawai'i — surfing and golfing in particular — went with him to the grave. He's buried in board shorts, a T-shirt and slippers, exactly the way he had wanted.

Now he visits his parents spiritually. And surfs the waves with Nainoa Hoe.

"I don't think they spend much time in their graves," David Brostrom said. "They're probably out flying around in Hawai'i having a good time."