The final days of the 20-year U.S. presence in Afghanistan offered scant details of our service members’ experiences. We know that they evacuated more than 120,000 Americans and endangered Afghans from Kabul. But we don’t know many of their individual stories.
Fortunately, Battles and Beers, a social media account run by Marine Corps veteran Nicholas Laidlaw, is providing much-needed individual perspectives. He’s sharing anonymous stories from U.S. service members, Australian military personnel, Afghan National Army members, and Afghan refugees who participated in our withdrawal.
Marines recall riots, chaos, violence, and “unnecessary death” as the trademarks of our final weeks at the airport in Kabul. Men were seen “stampeding and hitting babies [and] little kids, and even kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach,” and “pushing women holding babies into c-wire obstacles.” Some women “us[ed] their kids as human shields.”
The hellish environment affected our service members. After the consulate vetted only half of the Afghans inside the airport for transport, a Marine from the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment recalled “having to shove women and little kids … that [he] had fist bumped and reassured hours earlier” back “towards the Taliban.” It “makes [him] hate [him]self,” the Marine said.
Another 1/8 Marine told Battles and Beers of the paranoia and tension that pervaded the airport after an Aug. 26 explosion killed 13 U.S. service members and almost 200 Afghans. He said families that were escorted from the gate “begged [the Marines] to shoot them instead of turning them back to streets where the Taliban would find them.” “What [he] hate[s] the most,” he reported, is “knowing that we could’ve saved more people. [He’ll] never forgive [him]self for any of it.”
One 1/8 Marine said he justified using rubber bullets, control spray, batons, and flash-bangs on Afghans “because we didn’t want them to trample and kill each other.” A 22-year-old Marine from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment found it difficult to turn away an Afghan man who “had been risking his life for our military since [the Marine] was two” years old. When they returned to the United States, the Marines were hailed as “heroes.” The Marine’s family told him he “should be proud of the people [he] did save.” He told Battles and Beers he only “think[s] about the people [he] didn’t save, or the people that are dead because of [him].”
These heart-rending recollections are a small fraction of the remembrances Laidlaw says he has collected from “almost 300 veterans across [more than] 20 different wars since 1939.” Battles and Beers’s stories come from both U.S. personnel and onetime foreign adversaries. Its contributors’ diverse experiences have taught the former rifleman that “each war is different, and every war is the same,” characterized by “horrible suffering” and “tragedy.”
Laidlaw allows contributors to remain anonymous so they can “be emotionally vulnerable and honest.” Veterans and service members tell him that sharing their stories is “a healing experience [because they don’t] carry the weight of their story alone anymore.” Many Battles and Beers readers also relate that hearing from their fellow warfighters has “helped them come to terms with their own experiences.”
The historical accounting of our nation’s conflicts often obscures our service members’ personal wartime experiences. Battles and Beers offers a unique opportunity for civilians and military personnel to understand war from the “unbiased, raw, and unfiltered” perspectives of individual warfighters. This intimate understanding of struggles and triumphs is vital. It helps us support military personnel and veterans on Veterans Day, and every day.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85 ) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
