The US troops who were deployed to Afghanistan in the war on terrorism after 9/11 hoped their sacrifice would spare their children the need to also fight — but after 19 years, the mission has become generational.

Operation Enduring Freedom ended officially in 2014, but operations in the battle-scarred country have continued since and those same American service members have seen their offspring take up the cause.

“When we started this, people asked why I was going, and my response was, ‘So my sons don’t have to fight this war,’ ” Master Sgt. Trevor deBoer, who has deployed three times with the 20th Special Forces Group since 2002, told Stars and Stripes.

And now, Spc. Payton Sluss has followed in his father’s footsteps — serving in Afghanistan, including at Forward Operating Base Fenty where deBoer had served.

“My feet were walking the same land you were,” Sluss told his dad in a joint phone interview with the military newspaper.

By the time he arrived in the country in 2018, the US had shifted its mission from eradicating 9/11 masterminds al-Qaida — who had been given safe haven by the ruling Taliban — to rebuilding the country and training its forces.

Meanwhile, the Taliban regained strength and launched an insurgency against the US-led coalition, which lost about 150 troops in insider attacks as of 2018, according military data cited by Stars and Stripes.

But Sluss believes the US involvement in Afghanistan has brought about a measure of success.

“An inch is an inch, progress is progress no matter what,” he told the outlet, referring to advances in women’s rights, free speech and educational opportunities, among other changes.

His father, however, said he often asked himself if the US was making progress or “just chasing our tails?”

President Trump has been adamant about ending America’s “forever wars,” saying he wants to “bring our soldiers home.”

A US-Taliban deal signed in February calls for all international troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan by the middle of 2021 if the Taliban fulfill pledges including cutting ties with groups like al-Qaida.

Former Army Sgt. Michael Kreuger fought in the Pech Valley in 2010, sometimes questioning why he did.

Eight years later, his son Trenton deployed to Afghanistan, also with the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, according to Stars and Stripes.

The elder Kreuger now hopes his grandson won’t also be sent more than 7,400 miles away to fight the same battles “for the same reason.”

Bajun Mavalwalla, 31, another former sergeant, was barely a teen when his namesake father, a 55-year-old former captain, was deployed to Afghanistan.

The two men even met up there in 2012, when Mavalwalla’s father returned as an adviser to police in Herat after serving in the country a decade before with the 19th Special Forces Group.

The son said he was disillusioned when he was deployed to Kandahar province with the 250th Military Intelligence Battalion.

“I wanted to go out and help people, serve my country … (but) I just sort of contributed to this deepening mire,” said Mavalwalla, who decided not to make the military his career.

“Did the good really outweigh the bad? Did we make things better? Or did we just make things different?” he said.