Holding the Line:

Marines Confront Abbey Gate

Memories Two Years Later

By Kyle Watts     8/14/2023

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THE COLLAPSE

The U.S. Air Force C-17 began its final descent in preparation for landing. Corporal Von Straight sat packed in among the 25 Marines of his stick. Gear of every sort filled the expansive interior of the aircraft, leaving barely enough room for the Marines. Straight contemplated the mission ahead. What that mission was he did not fully understand, but it was Afghanistan. After watching Marines fight there for most of his life, Straight yearned to finally have his turn. Would it be a fight, though? Nobody seemed to know. The Marines aboard the plane could never have imagined the world in which they were about to spend the next two weeks.

The aircraft touched down at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in the capital city of Kabul during the early morning hours of Aug. 14, 2021. A few other personnel from 1st Battalion, 8th Marines had arrived earlier, but as a combat engineer, Straight’s squad arrived with the advance party. 

Events on the ground outside the airport had decayed rapidly over the weeks prior. The Afghan government and military, propped up by the U.S., collapsed under a Taliban onslaught in every city and province. After vacating Bagram Air Base on July 1, the airfield at HKIA stood as the last American toehold in the country. U.S. soldiers and Marines from Joint Task Force- Crisis Response operated out of HKIA preparing for the possibility of a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO). The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 1/8 attached, and Central Command’s Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines attached, were called in for support as the situation deteriorated.

As Cpl Straight prepared for the coming evacuation, the entire world watched events happening outside the perimeter wall. On Aug. 15, Taliban forces surrounded Kabul and Afghan President Ashraf Ghazi fled the city with numerous other officials of the American-backed government. Afghan army soldiers threw away their weapons and melted into the civilian populace. Taliban flooded the city and seized control of the country. American helicopters evacuated more than 5,000 personnel still on the ground at the U.S. embassy. 

News of the takeover spread quickly, and civilians massed at the airport in fear for their lives. The sudden lack of Afghan soldiers left holes on the airfield perimeter, and crowds seized the opportunity.

Straight was working with his team processing civilian contractors for evacuation as night fell on the 15th when a frantic call suddenly rose over the radio. Someone across the airfield said they were under fire and civilians had breached the perimeter. The Marines joined forces with Turkish soldiers and moved out. Ambient city lights washed out all night vision devices so vehicles trailed the line of Marines pushing over the open ground, illuminating their way. 

Sparks jumped off the tarmac in front of Straight. A vehicle-mounted machine gun behind him opened up on a shadowy figure hiding in a ditch. As they continued, a C-17 lumbered through the darkness down the runway. Marines dodged the aircraft and took cover as it throttled up on an emergency takeoff. Farther ahead, a line of black-clad men carrying AK-47s sprinted across the field. By the time the sighting made its way up the chain for permission to engage, the men disappeared into a distant crowd.

Two shots cracked through the air past Straight’s head. He stopped in his tracks. He’d never been shot at before.

“My platoon sergeant standing next to me started dying of laughter as he saw the thought process working through my head,” Straight recalled. “My first thought was that I was not wearing my eye protection, like I was on another damn field exercise at Lejeune or something. We saw the guy who shot at us on the edge of a crowd, but he disappeared. Things just got progressively worse from there.”

When dawn rose on the 16th, just a few hundred Marines and U.S. Army soldiers occupied the airfield amidst a rising tide of civilians. Estimates range as high as 24,000 civilians breaching the perimeter. A brief and unintended firefight broke out between Marines and Taliban with two Taliban killed. Air Force airplanes made last-minute emergency takeoffs through the crowds on the runway. At midday, civilians on the ground recorded the now infamous footage of people clinging to the outside of a C-17 and bodies plummeting from the sky as they lost their grip after lifting off. Apache helicopters flew back and forth over the flight line mere feet off the ground, forcing people back with their rotor wash. Nothing worked. The crowd proved largely peaceful but refused to budge.

The swell of people reduced as night fell. No planes would land or take off as long as they remained on the tarmac. Afghan special forces arrived and used extreme crowd control tactics, beatings, and shooting civilians who stubbornly refused to retreat. Finally, after more than 24 hours of effort to regain control, U.S. forces reopened the airfield.

NORTH GATE

Cpl Mike Markland waited in Qatar with the remainder of 1/8 for a flight to Kabul as different news agencies reported the fall of the city to the Taliban. Some Marines were told to prepare for a landing under fire. No one knew what to expect or what was happening on the ground.

As Markland’s C-17 waited for permission to take off, another aircraft landed nearby and stopped on the runway. The aircrew from Markland’s plane exited and ran over. Marines stirred and grumbled over the delay as the C-17 crews gathered around the landing gear of the other plane. Markland eventually learned that the body of an Afghan civilian remained lodged inside the aircraft, crushed beneath the landing gear and frozen solid by the frigid altitude of the flight.

Markland’s plane finally departed and arrived at HKIA on the night of the 16th after the airfield was secure. Upon their arrival, the Marines from 1/8 set up around the north and east gates of the airport to process civilians for evacuation. Markland reached North Gate and climbed above the wall. People were spread out as far as his eyes could see. Strands of concertina wire placed outside the wall lay flat beneath discarded clothes, luggage, and bodies shoved over them. 

Marines pushed outside the gate, fighting to create space between the wall and the crowd. They screamed at the top of their lungs for people to get back or sit down. Civilians screamed back at the Marines and at each other, holding aloft every kind of paperwork imaginable that they hoped could get them out of the country. Marines scanned for threats as civilians crushed in, and warning shots filled the air, originating from any nationality present with a rifle. Taliban soldiers lurked along a road running parallel to the wall less than 100 meters away beating and shooting people who didn’t comply with their orders. Afghan army soldiers waded into the crowd outside the gate beating and shooting people for the same reasons. 

“Nothing in your life gets you ready for something like that,” reflected Markland. “I was immediately met with something so different from anything I ever thought I would encounter; a situation I never even realized could happen with humanity. Everything you’ve learned as a man and as a Marine is constantly being used. It became exhausting very quickly.”

The young Marines knew Afghanistan as a war zone for all of their lives. Many of the older Marines had fought there on previous deployments but were now there under the pretense of a NEO, not combat, and they expected some form or order to make that happen. The chaos that greeted them left everyone looking to each other to determine what was acceptable and what was not.

“We wanted so badly to help these people,” Markland said, “but the only thing messing up the order and regulation of everything was the people. It’s like a two-edged sword. Any time you help one person, everyone sees that, and they get all riled up.”

In one example outside North Gate, Cpl Benjamin Lowther stood shoulder to shoulder with other Marines keeping civilians back. The crowd grew agitated and surged ahead. Warning shots and screaming filled the air. Suddenly, a can of tear gas erupted in the middle of it all. No one knew who threw it—a Marine, ANA soldier, or one of the other nationalities present. Marines withdrew back toward the gate to shut down processing until the crowd settled. As Marines backed away from the gas, civilians pushed ahead into the void, crushing some of their own beneath the weight of an unstoppable mass.

Their momentum pinned Cpl Lowther against a thigh-high jersey barrier. He drew his service pistol and fired into the air but could not create enough space to free his legs. He shouted for help and two Marines grabbed hold of his gear. Pulling at his belt and flak jacket, they finally freed his feet and safely returned behind the gate. 

Marines hardened themselves to maintain their sanity. One of the worst duties involved returning “rejected” civilians back outside the gate. With limited guidance from the Department of State (DOS) on what paperwork a civilian needed for evacuation, Marines ushered in people who did not meet the criteria. Other times, foreign nations brought in large groups without proper vetting and left them at the Marines’ entry control point. On one occasion, Cpl Markland helped bring in a man who had been shot in the genitals. They rushed him to medical care, but when he was stabilized, were forced to bring the man back outside the wall because he had no paperwork. Many other men, women, and children were forced back outside. Civilians resisted, begging Marines to let them stay, or pleading for the Marines to kill them. Unbelievably, they deemed this a more merciful death than being thrown out and left once more to the Taliban.