Kabul Airlift Vol. I

KABUL AIRLIFT
C CO V18 Marine

    “The night before leaving I remember rehearsing the ROEs (Hostile Act, Hostile Intent) with my squad, talking scenarios. I didn’t want any question of morality to be had with my squad. We stopped and just talked, it was incredibly surreal. 

I was asleep on the C-17, red lights illuminating the hanging flag. What woke me up was my ears popping on descent and ironically enough, the Halo 3 theme “Finish the Fight” was playing in my headphones. Nerdy but notable. We landed in the morning on the 15th. It was casual at first, got settled in at an old office building. The command got to work on trying to figure out a force protection plan. A bit after sundown, an incredibly massive group of people storms the airfield to the south by the domestic terminal. It was assumed at the time to be hostile. Command developed an “Alamo” course of action as a last ditch, and we did a “maneuver to contact” to the airfield.

    Upon accountability we cleared south and it turns out that crowd was civilians and another company was already there. We integrated where we could and eventually got dispersed by squad members. Everyone tried to be nice at first but the level of desperation required sternness to make progress. There was an individual in the window recording that nobody seemed to notice or care for. In the early morning is when sporadic contact occurred. Officially it’s just “gunmen”, it could be Taliban, or IS-KP or someone we just pissed off.



A burst nearly hit the person next to me, it just sounded different. We couldn’t respond with there immediate “return fire” because civilians were fucking everywhere so we ran to the wall between us, located the gunfire and fired at it because there was enough light. Seemingly immediately after, another crowd approaches from the East and just moves on despite that happening. There were events like this all throughout the line as I found out later.

    As the sun came up, I was far off from everyone else with a squad of folks I didn’t all know at the time. We went to find where people were pouring in and plugged it. A fire team size force of Taliban pulled up on the other side of the fence in an HMMWV. They seemed and looked happy, we immediately took cover and prepared for contact. They never initiated and simply moved on. A squad from 2/1 (2nd Battalion, 1st Marines later came up and relieved us for a short rest."

- Vignette from an Anonymous Marine who served with Charlie Co, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines during the Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation in Kabul.