He said it was like a small cardboard city. The Marines slept in barracks at the airport, and on the way to the control point, they would walk through the processing facility where the refugees awaited their futures with all their possessions in small bags, Chryst recalled. 20, 2021, a few air traffic controllers from the Air Force joined the team, according to Haunschild, who said the additional controllers provided a great relief for the Marines. “That’s a long time to control aircraft, especially with the amount of aircraft that was coming in and out of the airport,” Dahl said. The long, busy days blurred together, JoseMendez said. Ian Chryst, an air traffic controller who is now a staff sergeant, the three Marines could work in 12-hour shifts. But as the plane took off and they dropped from the sky, a silence fell.Īt one point that night, small arms fire hit the dirt and portable toilet six feet from where the Marines were operating, according to JoseMendez’s summary of action.Īlready tired from barely sleeping the past few days, the two nevertheless monitored the radio and the sky nonstop except for occasional short naps, until 10 more troops from Marine Air Control Group-28 flew in on Aug.

Haunschild remembers hearing lots of yelling as it became clear what these people were trying to do. But as one C-17 was about to take off, the crowd surged forward again.ĭespite Marines’ best efforts, some Afghans, desperate to leave their country, clung to the bottom of the plane. Marines tried to grab onto some of them to prevent them from getting in front of the planes. That day, thousands of people swarmed the runway, according to Haunschild. That left two Marine Air Control Group-28 air traffic controllers - Haunschild and JoseMendez - to coordinate planes’ arrivals and departures. 16, 2021, the civilian controllers had evacuated the airport altogether. Both the civilian and his “mission-essential radio equipment” were safe, the Marine Corps later said in a news release about a Bronze Star Haunschild received.īy Aug. While they were on the way back to safety, gunfire from an unknown source sprayed the truck, Haunschild recalled. Haunschild and a soldier wended their way through the crowd, bringing body armor to the civilian and taking him to their tactical truck.

15, 2021, Haunschild was tasked with rescuing an Afghan air traffic controller who was stranded in a crowd of people that included both Afghans desperate to flee the country and some members of the Taliban. The people in the crowd were scared and just trying to get help, he stressed. Zackary Dahl, the officer in charge of the Marine Air Control Group-28 element said the Marines did it as humanely as possible: by talking with them and telling them to push back. military helicopters also flew over the crowd to disperse them.Ĭapt. As a crowd of evacuees started to encroach on that tower, the Marines held them back - using “non-lethal crowd control measures,” according to the summary of action for JoseMendez’s Bronze Star.

The Marines helped the civilian air traffic controllers relocate to a more secure control tower. Marines look back 1 year after the Abbey Gate attack “That’s when the Taliban took over Kabul.” “And then August 15 happens, and everything goes crazy,” JoseMendez said. 13, 2021.īut meeting with the civilian contractors handling air traffic control helped give the Marines a better sense of air traffic control at the airport. Kevin Haunschild, one of the four Marine Air Control Group-28 Marines deployed on Aug. The Marine Air Control Group-28 Marines had gained much of their knowledge about Hamid Karzai International Airport online while on the ship that had taken them east, using laptops connected to the ship’s spotty Wi-Fi, according to JoseMendez.Īir traffic controllers typically have to be much more familiar with the particular airspace before they are qualified to operate there, said Master Sgt. But the Marines did what they could to prepare with the time and resources they had. Julio JoseMendez, one of those four Marines. The information available to them at that point had given them only a “vague understanding” of the airport’s operations, said Gunnery Sgt. 13, 2021, only four Marines from the 24th MEU’s Marine Air Control Group-28 Detachment flew to Kabul from Kuwait after having sailed to the Arabian Sea on amphibious assault ships. Three Marines so far have received Bronze Stars for efforts coordinating air support they, along with a fourth Marine air traffic controller, spoke with Marine Corps Times in interviews in fall 2022. And a small team of Marines from the 24th MEU, using one hand-held radio to coordinate with aircraft, helped manage the chaos as planes flew in and out of the airport at all hours.

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