Through the 19 years and 10 months of War in Afghanistan, spurred by the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, 91 Pennsylvanians died serving their country. Two of the men who gave their lives on that battlefield were from Butler County.

Army Staff Sgt. Eric Holman, 39, and Army Pvt. Matthew W. Brown, 20, died in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2008, respectively.

Holman, who grew up in the county before moving to Allegheny County, was killed by an improvised explosive device according to army.com.

Holman was awarded the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, the Meritorious Service Award and a Combat Action Badge.

Brown, a Zelienople resident, died from non-combat related injuries according to the Associated Press.

In an attempt to add context to Afghanistan, one veteran compared the end of the War in Afghanistan to the end of the War in Vietnam.

Bill McNutt, a veteran of Vietnam from Butler, spoke about his feelings on Afghanistan and 9/11.

“We left Afghanistan the same as Vietnam, by helicopter,” McNutt said.

“I was not welcome when I got back from Vietnam. Afghanistan veterans deserve recognition,” he said.

As to the panic on 9/11 during the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, McNutt remembered how it influenced him,

“I had people up in New York calling me about what they should do,” he said.

Both Holman and Brown, made the ultimate sacrifice during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). The military operation was fighting an insurgency, much like Vietnam.

OEF was a global war on terrorism, according to the Department of Defense.

While most people think of Afghanistan when OEF is brought up, there were multiple countries and sections of the globe that military action operated in. Those theaters include the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Pankisi Gorge, Trans Sahara, Caribbean/Central America and Kyrgyzstan according to the DOD.

OEF's objective was to destroy terrorist groups like al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other terrorists in the country.

President George W. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden shortly after the attack on 9/11, which the Taliban refused to do.

OEF started the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, with air-strikes on terrorist groups in Kabul and Kandahar.

The first boots on the ground was tasked to search the compound of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. By December of 2001, seven countries joined the United States in sending troops to assist in the War on Terror according to NPR.

The stronghold of the Taliban, Kandahar City, fell to coalition forces on Dec. 7, 2001.

Bush made his first visit to Afghanistan in 2006, a few years after the establishment of a democratic government for Afghanistan. With 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan, Bush asked NATO for an increase of troops in February 2007 according to NPR.

In July 2008, the newly nominated presidential candidate Barack H. Obama made his first visit to the country. Obama authorized two troop increases during his presidency, an increase of 17,000 in early 2009 and 30,000 in the last month of the year, bringing the total U.S. troop number to nearly 100,000 according to the DOD.

In August 2010, the Netherlands became the first NATO member to pull their forces from Afghanistan. In May 2011, Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In July of the same year, the first collection of U.S. troops left Afghanistan. By October 2014, several NATO countries withdrew their troops from Afghanistan according to CNN.

The specific operation, OEF, ended on December. 31, 2014. Operation Freedom's Sentinel (OFS) succeeded OEF as the continuation of the war in Afghanistan. OFS ended on Aug. 15, 2021, 16 days before the official end of the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan claimed 2,461 American service members according to Linda Bilmes of Brown Universty's Costs of War Project.

The war in Afghanistan officially ended on Aug. 31 and surpassed Vietnam, by roughly five months, to become America's longest war.