BREAKING: Never Forget

𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗯𝗯𝗲𝘆 𝗚𝗮𝘁𝗲: 𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗚𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀

By Alex Omhoff

Today marks five years since the bombing at Abbey Gate, one of the entrances to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. On August 26, 2021, in the chaos of America's final withdrawal from Afghanistan, a suicide bomber affiliated with ISIS-K detonated explosives in the middle of a crowd desperate to escape the country. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed. So were more than 170 Afghan civilians, men, women and children who had spent days standing in sewage canals and crushing crowds for the smallest chance of a seat on a plane out.

It is easy, five years later, to let that day become a statistic, a line in a broader story about the end of a twenty year war. But at Abbey Gate there was nothing abstract about what happened. There were young Marines and a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier standing at the edge of an ocean of frightened people, pulling babies out of arms, checking documents, making split second decisions about who could pass through the gate and who could not. They were not standing behind walls. They were standing in the crowd, because that is what it took to search people, to keep the line moving, to try to save as many as they possibly could in the little time they had left.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹:

Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Darin T. Hoover

Marine Corps Sergeant Johanny Rosario Pichardo

Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole L. Gee

Marine Corps Corporal Hunter Lopez

Marine Corps Corporal Daegan W. Page

Marine Corps Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez

Marine Corps Lance Corporal David L. Espinoza

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared M. Schmitz

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Rylee J. McCollum

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Dylan R. Merola

Marine Corps Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nikoui

Army Staff Sergeant Ryan C. Knauss

Navy Hospital Corpsman Third Class Maxton W. Soviak

That is the part of this story that deserves to be said plainly and without flinching. Those thirteen did not die manning a checkpoint from a safe distance. They died with their hands on the shoulders of strangers they were trying to get to safety. They spent their final hours doing the most human thing imaginable in an inhuman situation, refusing to let fear stop them from reaching one more person, one more family, one more child. Nicole Gee had been photographed days before cradling an Afghan infant in her arms, a photo that would circulate the world within hours of her death. That image says more than any casualty count ever could. She was not there to process paperwork. She was there because a baby needed to be held.

And it was not only the Americans. Afghan interpreters, guards, and civilians working the gate that day were caught in the same blast, killed in the same instant, trying to help their own people reach the same gate to the same uncertain future. Their names are less known outside their own families, but their courage was no smaller.

Five years on, the debates about how the war ended, who bears responsibility, and what could have been done differently will continue, as they should. But debates about policy should never be allowed to crowd out the plain fact of what these people did in their last moments alive. They gave their lives to help others, not for themselves. In a withdrawal that so many remember as chaos and failure, it is worth holding onto the truth that some of the very last American service members in Afghanistan spent their final hours trying to save people who were not their own countrymen, simply because they were within reach and needed help.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟮𝟲𝘁𝗵.