Kabul by Jerry Dunleavy & Jerry Dunleavy

Author:Jerry Dunleavy & Jerry Dunleavy [Hasson, James & Dunleavy, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

A PUNCH IN THE GUT

As dusk turned to darkness on the twenty-sixth of August, an eerie stillness hung over Abbey Gate. Bloodstains were prominent on the walls and pavement of the inner gate. Bodies and severed limbs floated in the sewage water in the canal below. The canal was mostly empty, save for a handful of Afghans wading through the carnage in search of family members. For the first time since the Marines had arrived, the area was silent.

Marines from 2/1’s Echo and Weapons companies relieved Ghost Company immediately after the attack and continued to guard the now-shuttered gate. At 2:00 a.m. on the twenty-seventh, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne’s 5th Battalion, 201st Parachute Infantry Regiment arrived at the gate to take over for the hurting Marines. As the sun began to rise a few minutes after 5:00 a.m., the paratroopers were fully in charge of the gate, and the Marines rotated off shift for the final time.

During the relief in place from 1:00 to 7:00 a.m., soldiers from the United Kingdom’s 1st and 2nd Parachute Battalions retrograded their troops and remaining evacuees through the gate. While the final UK personnel were crossing the threshold of Abbey Gate, the nineteen US service members who had been seriously wounded in the bombing were being loaded onto a C-17 bound for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Abbey Gate was now closed for good and would soon be sealed off forever, as far as US forces were concerned, but limited evacuations continued through the airfield’s remaining entrances. In midmorning on August 27, Ukrainian special operations forces maneuvered outside the wire to rescue two minibuses of Afghan evacuees who were surrounded by an unruly crowd and unable to make it to the gates. The nineteen evacuees, bound for Canada, included a former interpreter for the Canadian special forces and his family and an interpreter who had worked for the Toronto Globe and Mail.1 Video of the operation shows Ukrainian forces approaching the crowd while shouting and firing volleys of automatic weapons fire just over their heads.2 At first the crowd moved only a little, attempting to gauge the Ukrainians’ level of commitment. When it became clear that the troops weren’t messing around, the crowd parted just enough for the minibuses to surge forward and resume movement toward the gates. The Ukrainian forces escorted them the rest of the way in.

THE MOST SACRED GOODBYE

“Ramp ceremonies” are among the most intimate and sacred events of military life. Photos and videos are forbidden, but that standing order almost never needs to be emphasized. The event is not about the attendees or their observations; its sole purpose is to provide a final salute, a deeply felt recognition of the sacrifice of the fallen that words alone cannot quite capture. A military transport plane, its cargo bay empty, awaits on the tarmac. Every serviceman and -woman not on duty stands in a file on each side, creating a corridor for the fallen hero’s last journey on foreign soil. A

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