Kabul Evac: HM2. Goldthwaite
HM2 Goldthwaite
Northern Provisions
-Stash
Looking Out
"You’re basically picking and choosing how far that patient’s care is gonna go before you’re dipping low into your own resources, to the point where you can’t protect the Marines if you had to…"
Jumping aboard their ship during their last night in Bahrain, all Corpsmen attached to Combat Logistics Battalion-24 (CLB-24), of the 24th MEU, were shuttled into the medical bay. HM2 Goldthwaite, one of those Corpsmen from 1st Battalion, 8th Marines (1/8), were told to pack all of their gear, unsure of the exact reasons for the abrupt about-face but notified nonetheless that they were to go to Kuwait for a possible insertion to Kabul, Afghanistan. Before this, HM2 Gold had been in Saudi Arabia, training for over a month by conducting Tactical Combat Casualty Care (T-CCC) and practicing more medical airlifts. Side-by-side with the Saudis, HM2 Gold had the cross-training opportunity to work with their medical equipment as well as to show them their own techniques and procedures. On standby in Kuwait, Gold “[W]as nervous but this is why I joined, I wanted to go with the Marines since I joined as a Corpsman. This is a life experience I had been waiting for.” They had trained, and had trained some more, just waiting for the opportunity to apply these unique, life-saving skill sets to real-world situations. Although she and her team were not fully aware of the unfolding situation consuming Kabul, with a potential uprising to embassy evacuation, the Corpsmen were geared-up and prepared to support in any way they could. Staged in Kuwait, HM2 Gold was assigned as the Corpsman to a female-engagement team (FET), receiving additional training in the customs and courtesies of the host nation to provide parallel care and comfort.
Bracing for a chaotic, possibly a mass-causality situation, Gold was relieved when the situation on the ground was being controlled by the outlying rifle companies of 1/8. The medical teams swiftly exited the aircraft, HM2 Gold was struck by the sight of the human and geographic terrain surrounding them. “There’s refugees everywhere, everything was moving pretty fast-paced…My first thought was ‘This is a pretty bad scenario to be [in], we’re in the middle of a mountain range, built up cities around, there’s opportunities for snipers and different situations…We’re in it.” Their bivouac, which turned out to be a small room of a building, filled up fast with personnel and their gear. Divided into four groups, the medical teams moved to their respective gates. Assigned with her team to assist the North Gate, the ceaseless work of searching, processing, and treating, began. Each day brought new and fresh challenges too, as her team would alternate between the North Gate and East Gate. Akin to forced marches in the Marine Corps, a slinky effect developed between the chain of vetted Afghan civilians from the gates to the comfort areas, and to the airport terminal where the civilians were prepped for their flights. “The first few days were crazy, we were constantly pulling in refugees, thousands of them. Then as soon as we started slowing down, at the gates, we were having to close the gates more, due to the influx. We were holding too many people on the base, and it was constantly changing who we were letting in the gates.” Apart from the countless gunshot wounds, lacerations, and heat casualties, HM2 Gold also had to cope with the raw emotion and terror these civilians, mainly women, showed her.
Chow was continuous. Hygiene required. Sleep was optional, if available at all. From her experience of alternating between gates, Gold noticed the subtle differences between the North and East Gates, where the poorer tended to end up at North Gate, and the better-off at North Gate, adorned with additional luggage and personal belongings. The historical, yet good-natured, banter that develops between tight-knit Navy-Marine Corps teams were ever-present in this situation. “I remember joking with the male Marines, like how ‘You guys have it so easy over there, we have females that come in through the gate and they have up to four or five children each and these females don’t travel alone: they have their female companions, not to mention all of their bags.’ Her work now multiplied, HM2 Gold began to take on more responsibilities, which increased, in parallel, the challenges offered by the onrush of civilians. Searches uncovered weapons, drugs, and even perfume bottles bursting with wires. “It was like a test for us, to see how thorough we were being when conducting these searches. On top of that, being the Corpsman in the group, I was dealing with the environmental stress put on these people, being outside the gates for five days straight, waiting to get in, in the sun, they [had] limited food and water.” Caring for victims suffering from the human stampedes, malnourished infants, children with head injuries quickly began to drain the on-hand supplies of this sole Corpsman. Gold’s natural regard for these victims had to be weighed against her duty to her Marines and fellow Corpsmen, “I’m trying to treat them as they come through the gate with limited resources, stuff I can’t use on the because I have to save it for Marines in case of an emergency situation. So, there’s a lot of stress, working bot sides of that job.”
Growing day by day, the floods of people crashed and cascaded against the gates, in various forms of intensity. North Gate had to be reinforced with barricades, and HM2 was pulled in from the outside. JLTVs (Joint, Light Tactical Vehicles) were sent to North Gate, in an effort to brace the gate, preventing it from being pushed open. “The most stressful gate I worked at had to be North Gate, [there] was a constant threat of VBIEDs, and the crowd there was worse. The gate was closer to the outside walls, closer to the town that we were surrounded by, and it had a lot of free-moving roads next to it, you had trucks coming down those roads. [The Taliban] would park the trucks right outside the gate, to just pull right up to that gate, right up to those crowds.” The close proximity of enemy technical not only unnerved the civilians attempting to escape, but they also stirred nearly irrepressible emotions from the Marines and attached personnel, that had either lived through the Global War on Terror (GWOT) or had already participated in the last twenty years. Still manning North Gate, Gold was approached by an Australian soldier who had heard Marines calling her ‘Doc.’ To the uninitiated, the phrase ‘Doc,’ can easily mean a doctor, who can specialize anywhere from dentists to surgeons, but when in fact, they are medics, rendering life-saving treatment in combat environments. “They’re bringing out babies to me that are very lethargic, non-responsive and [they’re] thinking that we can do something for them and we didn’t have any formula or anything to give these children for the first week. So a lot of babies didn’t make it due to their moms not being able to breastfeed because they were dehydrated and they didn’t have food, or the food we were giving them, [which] they weren’t used to.”
HM2. Gold treated would go on to treat approximately one-thousand civilians during her time in Kabul, Afghanistan. No small feat by any standard, Gold, with her team, no doubt treated and saved countless more. Ever so humble, HM2 left us with words filled with pride, in her unit, 1/8 as well as for her team. “1/8 went in there and crushed it. We trained for it, but we trained for it in like thirty days. I’ve never seen people work together so well. I just remember all of my girls that I was with and the other Corpsmen I was with.” Such as it is with Corpsman, and the Marine infantry units they are assigned to, the esprit de corps that the Marine Corps cultivates at the ground level was personified in HM2 Gold. “I just wanted division orders; I didn’t even know I was going to get infantry…this is what I joined for. So, when I got 1/8 orders, I was ecstatic, you know? I started to learn everything that 1/8’s been involved with, it’s a heavy hitter battalion, in my opinion it’s the best battalion, I love this unit, I’m sad to leave it.”
Attached to her FET team, Marine Lieutenant Southern and Staff Sergeant Solis would also personify the bond forged within Navy-Marine Corps teams, “They kept us running, they made sure at all times that we were good to go, that we were mentally and physically prepared. Often relieving us at times to take over our jobs, to make sure we were getting rest that we needed. Every night, they brought us back, they checked on us, they were the support we needed. They were awesome, at all times.” Reaching the limits of her levels of care, HM2 Gold and her team had not wavered, nor shied away from, the greater responsibility that Corpsman are known around the world for, risking their lives to save those in peril.
This piece was written by an assistant writer, a "scribe" of American military and Marine Corps history, "Stash".