Kabul Evac: Sgt. Cho

Sgt. Cho
Northern Provisions
-Stash


Spot-Rushers
"You would think you saw the craziest thing of your life…then something else would happen, and it just… blows the last thing out of proportion."

Dispersed throughout Kuwait as the call came to evacuate Kabul, Cho, while not part of the first waves of Aztec that were sent to, Afghanistan would be part of the rush of 3rd Platoon Aztec (Alpha) Company to send in follow-on elements of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. Like their island-hopping predecessors, the supporting waves were not spared the later havoc and frenzy of the fall of Kabul. Arriving late at night, in full battle-rattle, Cho had gotten the word to seek cover as soon as they exited the C-17. Exiting the aircraft, Cho, and 3rd Platoon of Aztec 1/8 were not only surprised of the temporary normalcy of the airfield but were afforded the opportunity to go browse the fledgling shops that remained Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA). The Taliban and ISIS-K fighters had not yet reached the capital to enflame the exodus of Afghan civilians. Further tasked at the Combat Operations Center (COC), Cho and his team had received armored assets from the 10th Mountain Division and intel briefs of the situation. “We’re just like, oh, the situation was blown way out of proportion. This just feels like a normal day. It doesn’t feel what I imagine Afghanistan to be. Until that night.” Ready to rack-out from a seemingly normal day, it did not take long until word spread that the airfield was being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Afghani civilians. From the time 3rd Platoon landed, the dissolution of combat power, and presence of the Afghan National Army (ANA) had begun in earnest. The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani had also fled, which caused the deteriorating situation surrounding the forlorn airport to accelerate in tempo and intensity.

With is squad leader running into their sleeping quarters, Cho, and the Marines around him were told “Get you kit on! Co just updated us that there’s potential enemy fighters inside the airport with AK’s and RPG’s.” Moving to the reported contact, Cho and 3rd Platoon flowed past Marines holding security outside the compound, guns-up pointed downrange toward the airfield, which separated the military side from the civilian side. The reported enemy fighters were actually human waves of frenzied civilians scrambling onto the C-17’s. “There were probably hundreds, and thousands, of them and that [quickly] became us getting online-10th Mountain came out there had gotten online with us- and that became a several-hour operation of just pushing the civilians back from the military side of terminal to the civilian side.” What followed, as the sun just began crest the horizon of HKIA, was a two-day crowd control operation, a kind of seesaw-battle, of pushing and corralling the civilians. The fight to maintain control of the airport had only just begun for 3rd Platoon. Relieved later by supporting elements, Cho and his team were staged, not even for thirty minutes, at the halfway point of the runway when another breakthrough occurred. “We’re just bum rushing the field, to help out with the crowd control and just continued pushing.” Civilians, breaking through the line held by 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment (2/1), had impressed the fact that two Marine battalions, and supporting Army assets, could not cover all the gaps across the expanse of the airfield. Suddenly, a lone Afghan gunman appeared on the civilian side of the terminal. A shot rang out. “I don’t know who took the shot, I don’t know if it was Army or one of the Marines, but someone fired a single shot, hit him [the gunman] in the head, dropped immediately. As soon as that happened, this other buddy, who came out of a building, also with an AK on him, and that’s when essentially half-a-company’s worth of Marines and soldiers just opened fire on that guy and then another guy-also holding an AK- so three guys in total.” The first chaotic two days of crowd control would stick with Cho as one of the most memorable moments of the evacuation, a countless back-and-forth effort of rushing to plug holes in breached security. Losing count after the fourth bum-rush across the airfield, Cho would stand as participant, and witness, to the variety of hectic moments that characterized the desperation of the evacuation, seemingly increasing in number as the days blended together.

Baselines were broken, as gunmen, clothed in civilian attire, mingled with this mass of civilians. Not helped by the two and three-story building which sported tinted glass, which could conceal any lurking enemy fighter with hostile intent. “After that gunfight occurred, it was constantly like, reassessing the situation, looking out. It was impossible to just [be] constantly looking out. ‘Oh, where do I hold my security?’ We wouldn’t be able to pop identified threats and at that moment, I was like ‘Okay, from now on, its going to be a reactive situation." As would become one of the most harrowing episodes of the evacuation, both civilians, Marines, and soldiers would also react in unison, to the civilians hurdling back to earth as they fell off the departing plane’s undercarriage. Holding its collective breath, the airport fell silent as the bodies dropped from the sky. “When that happened, that was probably the first time there was probably silence in the airport. As [the airplane] was taking off, there was cheers from the civilians in the airport. And as it took off, as the people started falling, it was just…there was no more screaming, I think the airport was silent for like 10 seconds. And as the bodies hit the ground, it was just immediate chaos again.” Siphoned off runway duty to pull gate security at North Gate, Cho and 3rd Platoon acclimated to the 4-hour rotations of revolving gate duty, overwatch, and searches on civilians. Initially unaware of the August 26th bombing of the Abbey Gate, Cho began to received text message from a schoolteacher back in the States.

‘Are you okay? I heard there was a bombing.’
‘What bombing are you talking about?’

As if on cue, the ground-attack siren began to whine, although it had been sounding off every other day. About thirty minutes later after the ground-attack siren began its interminable drone, word of the bombing at Abbey Gate began to filter through to 3rd Platoon, now tasked to conduct overwatch security. Another squad leader in the platoon would regularly pass their positions, providing macabre updates on ever-increasing casualties to the Cho and small team of Marines holding security. “Oh, its now six. Oh, now its seven. And its just…I can’t really think of a word to describe the type of feeling. It was just you kept hearing the numbers go up…And also at the same time, we’re also getting intel updates that a potential VBIED (Vehicle-born Improvised Explosive Device) was headed towards our gate.” As the commanding officer of Aztec Company pulled the platoon guarding the gate, relief, in the form of some standoff distance, was created to mitigate the potential blast of the all-but-confirmed threat. To Cho, however, the BOLO (Be-On-The-Lookout) notice for the VBIED and the resulting standoff distance created, did not ease the concern, nor lessen, the threat. “We just knew that it’d be a very difficult job to pick out that car because right in front of North Gate was a major road with traffic passing through all the time. So that if there was a VBIED coming through the gate, it would be too late for us to even spot it.” As the last days drew to a close for Cho and the 1/8 Marines, intermittent rocket fire caused the air-attack siren to blare, and the Marines were rushed to adjacent buildings to escape the impacts. The majority of the gates had already been shut down. HKIA, once the sprawling hub of Operation Enduring Freedom, was littered with the flotsam and jetsam of human conflict. Streets, filled with discarded luggage, clothes and other abandoned articles, covered the hardball below. “You couldn’t even see the concrete below,” Cho remembered.
  
 Reflecting on these touch-and-go, rip-and-run moments, Cho credits the company leadership of 1/8 for the inspiration and motivation that kept them going throughout the chaotic cycle of events. “Seeing everyone: from our company First Sergeant, our Company CO, Company XO, battalion Sergeant Major, battalion CO; coming out on-line, actually helping out with crowd control….they weren’t just in some vehicle, all the way in the rear in some secure position. They’re actually out there with the boys…which I truly believe was the biggest epitome of [the] fighter-leader concept that gets preached in the Marine Corps.” Thankful to his leadership and to the Marines who made him into the NCO that he is today, Sergeant Cho remains ever mindful of the Marines who came before him and those thirteen who were killed at Abbey Gate. To Sergeant Cho, this episode in U.S history shouldn’t be viewed negatively by the American public and should be free from the political banter, that only further obscures the sacrifices made by our servicemembers. As a parting shot, Sergeant Cho offers sobering advice for any junior Marine joining their ranks:

“Get out of the mindset that you joined the Marine Corps during peacetime, and that you’re never going to see anything. That was the same thought process I had going into this MEU. Never take training lightly, because today we might be at peace, but tomorrow, we could be at war.”

This piece was written by an assistant writer, a "scribe" of American military and Marine Corps history, "Stash".