A veteran-built interactive map of Afghanistan plots memories

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
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...