SGT. Bryan Triplett
US Marine Corps Infantry Rifleman
BTL 1/8 C company – V 3/8 Khaos Company
Kabul, Afghanistan Jan ’18-Dec. ‘21
US Marine Corps Infantry Rifleman
BTL 1/8 C company – V 3/8 Khaos Company
Kabul, Afghanistan Jan ’18-Dec. ‘21
Bryan Triplett was born at the Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio on January 30, 1999. Bryan has two sisters and a younger brother who passed away. Bryan was eight years old when he first decided he wanted to be a Marine. He was watching TV and an F-22 flew across his TV screen as part a commercial for the Marine Corps. Bryan announced, “I want to be a Marine. That’s what I want to do.” His family was against the idea, but Bryan was undeterred and started doing burpees in the kitchen to get ready for bootcamp.
Bryan grew up in Columbus and Worthington Ohio and attended Worthington-Kilbourne High School. He started heading down the wrong path in life and college wasn’t appealing to him. He knew he need to take control of his life and he went to see the Army recruiter. He didn’t like what he heard, so he went to see the Marine recruiter. The Marine recruiter told Bryan he’d never be a Marine, so Bryan decided he was in the right place. His parents wouldn’t sign his paperwork, so he waited until he was 18 to enlist. He left high school before graduation and on January 2nd, 2018, he was on Parris Island.
I asked Bryan what he thought when he stepped off the bus. “It was surreal. It was one of the only times it snowed in South Carolina.” “I had a plan to stay undercover all through boot camp. I was going to be quiet and not give them a reason to mess with me and that didn’t work out too well. They decided to make me a squad leader which was the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen.” Bryan wanted to be a combat engineer or a medic. The Marines do not have their own medics. They use Navy Corpsman. There were no engineering spots available, so Bryan elected infantry. Specifically, he wanted to be an assault-man. “I wanted to shoot rockets and blow stuff up.”
After 13 long weeks Bryan graduated from boot camp and was still the squad leader. After a 10 day leave Bryan returned to Camp Geiger for Infantry School and training as an infantryman with hope of being an assault man. Things were going well until “I pissed off one of the instructors.” Bryan was assigned to be an infantry Rifleman. After two months at Camp Geiger Bryan left for his first command at Camp Lejeune.
Bryan did a rotation in Norway where they did a lot of cold weather operations. He remembers the highlight of the deployment being a survival night put on by the British and Norwegian troops they were training with. They slaughtered a reindeer, cooked it over a fire and built shelters with minimal tools to keep warm. The Marines were using experimental boots on this deployment and Bryan had the wrong size. He developed a severe limp, and the Corpsman asked to look at his foot. He told Bryan he had frostbite. Bryan remained in Norway but was not able to participate in the remaining training.
Bryan and his unit returned to the states and Bryan was placed in-charge of several younger Marines. Bryan really enjoyed this command and learned a lot. He really liked and respected his company leadership including 1st Sergeant Lerma and Captain Hanks. “My all-time favorite squad leader was Sergeant Goode. He really developed me as a man, and he really changed the way I saw being a leader. At first, I was trying to be the drill instructor. He showed me that you didn’t always have to be a bulldog. It was a kind of a reality check because I had people looking up to me.”
During his enlistment the COVID pandemic gripped the world. Bryan was able to convince his platoon leadership that playing Call of Duty qualified as training, which led to a Tour of Duty competition. His next assignment was going to be a tour in Okinawa, but he was really hoping to remain under the command of Captain Hanks or Sargent Lerma who were now assigned to different units. An opportunity came up to transfer to infantry battalion V 1/8 and Bryan took it. Bryan was a Lance Corporal, and he was put in a position to lead and train Marines.
Bryan’s unit was going to be part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). An MEU is an expeditionary quick reaction force that is deployed and ready for immediate response to any crisis. While preparing to deploy for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) he was promoted to Corporal.
During the MEU Bryan made port calls in some interesting places, but COVID put a damper on some of those port calls. He recalled visiting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and passing through the Suez Canal. During the deployment the Marines were told their next stop could be either Africa, where the Marines would be working with U.S. Special Forces training local military forces, or Afghanistan. Bryan was 22 years old, assistant patrol leader and team leader, in the last year of his enlistment, and he thought he was going to miss all the action. That was not to be the case.
It was mid-August of 2021, and the United States was preparing to pull out of Afghanistan. Bryan and his company briefly stopped in Kuwait to stage for deployment to Afghanistan. After a short time, they were on a plane to Kabul. Bryan was responsible for a team of three Marines and was next in command of his squad as well. When he walked off the plane his first thought was Kabul was not a good strategic location because it was surrounded by mountains which gave the enemy the high ground.
The initial instructions were for some Marines to process refugees and while Bryan’s company would go out on patrols and possibly “snatch and grab missions”. The mission quickly changed. Bryan’s company would be providing security at the airport as other Marines processed the steady flow of refugees trying to flee the Taliban as the last US troops were preparing to pull out of Afghanistan. His first night in Kabul, Bryan went to sleep in anticipation of his security duty the next morning.
30 minutes after Bryan lay down in his bunk his platoon sergeant began barking orders to put on their gear. They were being overrun by the Taliban. His 1st Sergeant, 1st Sergeant Roess kicked open the door and began running toward the airfield. The Marines picked up their rifles, put on their night vision goggles and followed 1st Sergeant Roess. “That night I learned 1st Sergeant Roess was a hard man!”
Initially they were told 400 Taliban had overrun the airport. As Bryan was running down the runway his thoughts were “holy shit, all my friends have been killed. There were 400 of them and about 100 of us. I just told myself there is no way I am surviving tonight”. Luckily the intelligence was wrong. They found close to 400 Afghani citizens who had broken through the perimeter and were trying to escape from the Taliban. There was a group of Marines that encountered several Taliban, and they quickly and permanently eliminated the threat. This was quite a wakeup call to these Marines because up until this point, they were mostly peace-time Marines and had never experienced combat.
Bryan and his Marines spent the rest of the night “herding everyone onto the airfield and if we found any stragglers, we searched them.” This was Bryan’s first interaction with Afghani’s. “I just really saw how desperate they were. We saw babies that were who knows how long without food and water. I was squirting water from my camelback into kids mouths.” There wasn’t any sleeping after that.
Bryan prefaced his remarks by saying, “So much happened and there is so much that I don’t remember.”
Bryan and his team spent most of their time at East Gate, which was about 600 meters from Abbey Gate, where the bombing would take place several days later. “I didn’t sleep much so my memory is kind of foggy. Our job was pretty simple. Keep Afghani’s from coming over the wall.” One of Bryan’s Marines saw someone throw a backpack against the wall. Bryan called in a potential IED, but it turned out to be just a backpack.
One of the Afghani’s at the gate told Bryan the Taliban were dangerous and they needed to let him in. He lacked the proper documentation, and the Marines could not allow him in. Not happy with that answer, the Afghani began yelling, “you motherfuckers, you butchers.” That left a lasting impression on Bryan and that quote is now a tattoo on his rib cage.
At one point, a Marine came down from the guard tower to report three technical trucks with dishka machine guns mounted on the back and a platoon of Taliban coming down the street toward the airport. Bryan had a feeling something was going to happen. The large crowd outside of the airport had disbursed. Bryan was unable to establish communications with his command to get updated information. One of his junior Marines was able to establish communications using his cell phone. What they learned was the Taliban had agreed to work with the US forces and provide crowd control. Bryan talked about the crowd control techniques used by the Taliban which included beating people with loaded RPG’s. Bryan requested additional wire to put on the top of the walls to deter the growing crowd. The Taliban stood below Bryan watching as he strung the wire and contended with an angry nest of hornets he had stepped on.
Outside of East Gate Bryan and the Marines tried to control the crowd. He saw one of the Taliban push a pregnant woman. Bryan grabbed the Taliban fighter to stop him. He recalled how time slowed down. It was “a moment that lasted forever” as they both looked at each other, rifles at the ready wondering who would make the first move. Calmer heads prevailed and they both walked away. “It kind of really sucked because I wanted to kill him but I couldn’t disobey orders.”
Bryan’s team was rotated from security duty to internal crowd control. He didn’t really care for this because it included escorting Afghani’s out of the airport if they didn’t have the correct documentation. He suspected the Taliban would very likely kill anyone rejected by the US. Bryan said this is something that still bothers him today.
“We knew something was happening to some of the people we turned away. “We had heard that the Taliban’s perspective was, ‘you betrayed us and America doesn’t want you, so we’re just going to get rid of you.’”
He also said people were free to leave. He felt good about successfully talking one child out of leaving. He knew the child would be converted to Taliban or killed. Outside the gates the Marines fought to keep their ground. “It’s not the mission we trained for. It’s the mission we got stuck with.”
The Marines were instructing families to interlock arms so the Marines could grab one family member and pull the entire family from the crowd. Bryan recalled one family couldn’t keep their arms locked and the children were stuck deep in the crowd. The Taliban had established an imaginary line, that if crossed, allowed them to shoot the Marines. Bryan had already seen bodies of dead children floating in a ravine at the North Gate. “I didn’t want these kids to get trampled.” Bryan crossed the line and ran into the crowd to grab the children to protect them and carry them into the airport. He found himself arms distance from one of the Taliban trucks. One of the Taliban fighters had a stolen U.S. M16, and it was pointed at the back of Bryans head. One of Bryans Marines grabbed Bryan by his body armor and pulled Bryan and the kids to safety. “We knew we would be covering the evacuation, but we didn’t realize we would be deciding who lived and who died.”
“While I was processing people I was trying to help as many as possible, but still had to turn some away…..I’m under the impression that a lot of those people we turned away aren’t alive anymore. That’s kind of something that fucks with me at night.”
“It was us against the country of Afghanistan. It’s one line of Marine’s pushing against thousands and thousands of people just trying not to lose ground.”
“If you ask them nicely to backup they’re not going to. I had a shotgun with riot control rounds, just rubber pellets.” Bryan stood on top of a crowd control barrier and shot into the crowd so they would move back, but the crowds kept on coming, desperate to get away from the Taliban. “Sometimes they are just pushing against you, so you had to hit them.” That is something that bothers Bryan to this day.
“We had kids come up to us and ask the Marines to shoot them because they didn’t want to die by the Taliban. These kids don’t want to hurt you but if they do certain things maybe we would shoot them. So, they try to take your rifle. I didn’t want to kill a kid so I would just push them off.” The shear desperation of the Afghani’s is indelibly etched in Bryan’s memory.
Bryan said he never killed anyone and only discharged is rifle once in the form of a warning shot. He did talk about the emotions that you feel is a situation like this. A true desire to kill the Taliban but the need to control your emotions and “hold it together”.
Bryan recalled a funny moment. “An Afghani who came through, and he was pretty young, and he told me I was a beautiful man. He looked like he was about to die so I think that was a pretty good complement.”
Bryan mentioned another humorous moment. “I’m pretty sure my squad is in an ISIS propaganda video. We could see them across a field filming, and we’d flick them off.”
“There are some things you don’t want to see. 5 years olds, maybe a little bit older, carrying siblings. Who knows how long they have been out. The Taliban is sitting outside the gate not letting any of the civilians eat or drink water.”
“I watched a little girl try to steal an infant…because we were letting people with infants….get on the planes first because they were dying quicker. I watched her take this kid and I chased her around until I got the kid back and returned it to its father.”
“I’d ask Afghani men where their wives and kids were, and they said they ‘were still out there’ (outside of the gates). I’d ask them if they wanted to go get them or get on the plane and they’d say get on the plane.”
Some children would be carrying their siblings and they would want to go back out to get the rest of their family. The Marines had to tell them no.
Eventually the East Gate was closed but Abbey Gate remained open. On August 26th, Bryan was able to take a break and step down from the wall. He removed his helmet, lit a cigarette, and had a little food. The environment finally seemed stable. The commissary was being shut down and the Marines helped work down the remaining inventory of ice cream and pie. “Then there was a loud ass bang……..then the air got really still and there were a lot of sirens.” What Bryan didn’t immediately know was that an ISIS suicide bomber had just detonated at the Abbey Gate. Eleven Marines, one Navy Corpsman, one Army Staff Sergeant and numerous civilians would die from the blast. Bryan knew one of the Marines killed, Sergeant Nicole Gee. Nicole would help Bryan and his Marines by searching the children and female Afghani’s at the East Gate. “I have this tattoo that says Til Valhalla. Even though I didn’t know any of them, we were there doing the same thing and it could have easily been me.”
The words, ‘Until Valhalla’ hold special importance to military members. It means there is no greater distinction in life than to die with honor and valor.
Bryan and his Marines thought they had seen the suicide bomber. A female Afghani was being very aggressive in trying to enter their gate, which had been closed. She became very agitated and left. In the time it took for someone to walk from the East Gate to Abbey Gate the explosion was heard. Bryan was carrying a lot of guilt for not having shot her. It wasn’t until a year later that he learned it was not that woman.
On August 30th the Marines boarded a plane back to Kuwait, but not until they had cleaned up all the human waste and garbage left by the Afghani’s. One of Bryan’s Marines had to remove the bodies from the runway of the Afghani’s who fell off the US planes as they lifted off from the airport. “They wanted us to do a proper turnover of the airport to the Taliban.” This only added insult to injury, but the Marines carried out their mission as the true professionals they were. After being sure no one had COVID the Marines headed back to the states.
About one month before Bryan was scheduled to be discharged, he realized “something wasn’t right in my head.” The memories of that short period in Afghanistan were becoming difficult to manage. He was discharged a bit early, and he returned to Ohio to start his new life.
Since leaving the military Bryan met his girlfriend, and they have spent time traveling. He talks and visits with some of his buddies from the Marine Corps. He is enrolled in college and is majoring in biology. He has started therapy and joined a Brazilian Ju-Jujitsu group which he finds to be very therapeutic. “Since I’ve been back, I’ve been working on myself.”
“If anyone is reading this and is questioning if they should start therapy, they should. No matter how much of a man you think you are.”
Bryan misses his time in the Marine Corps and was talking to a recruiter about going back. However, his brother died several months after returning home, and he didn’t want to take the chance that his parents could lose two children. He decided not to re-enlist.
It’s not easy for most Americans who view the world through the lens of a first world country to fully comprehend the level of desperation the Afghani’s felt, knowing the danger and daily suffering coming when the Taliban assumed control. Nor is it easy to understand the depraved inhumanity of the Taliban and ISIS and what drives such evil in men. Bryan and the rest of the U.S. Marine Corps were given a mission and they completed it with honor and success despite taking casualties. While Bryan and other soldiers accept the risk of paying the ultimate sacrifice to defend America, a sober assessment of the events at Abbey Gate would lead a reasonable person to conclude the loss of American lives was senseless and avoidable.
Bryan, you experienced an entire career of combat in two weeks without firing a lethal shot. The horrors you saw while carrying out your mission are something you now must address and conquer. All of America is quietly rooting for you to tame those memories as you continue to “work on yourself”.
Bryan grew up in Columbus and Worthington Ohio and attended Worthington-Kilbourne High School. He started heading down the wrong path in life and college wasn’t appealing to him. He knew he need to take control of his life and he went to see the Army recruiter. He didn’t like what he heard, so he went to see the Marine recruiter. The Marine recruiter told Bryan he’d never be a Marine, so Bryan decided he was in the right place. His parents wouldn’t sign his paperwork, so he waited until he was 18 to enlist. He left high school before graduation and on January 2nd, 2018, he was on Parris Island.
I asked Bryan what he thought when he stepped off the bus. “It was surreal. It was one of the only times it snowed in South Carolina.” “I had a plan to stay undercover all through boot camp. I was going to be quiet and not give them a reason to mess with me and that didn’t work out too well. They decided to make me a squad leader which was the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen.” Bryan wanted to be a combat engineer or a medic. The Marines do not have their own medics. They use Navy Corpsman. There were no engineering spots available, so Bryan elected infantry. Specifically, he wanted to be an assault-man. “I wanted to shoot rockets and blow stuff up.”
After 13 long weeks Bryan graduated from boot camp and was still the squad leader. After a 10 day leave Bryan returned to Camp Geiger for Infantry School and training as an infantryman with hope of being an assault man. Things were going well until “I pissed off one of the instructors.” Bryan was assigned to be an infantry Rifleman. After two months at Camp Geiger Bryan left for his first command at Camp Lejeune.
Bryan did a rotation in Norway where they did a lot of cold weather operations. He remembers the highlight of the deployment being a survival night put on by the British and Norwegian troops they were training with. They slaughtered a reindeer, cooked it over a fire and built shelters with minimal tools to keep warm. The Marines were using experimental boots on this deployment and Bryan had the wrong size. He developed a severe limp, and the Corpsman asked to look at his foot. He told Bryan he had frostbite. Bryan remained in Norway but was not able to participate in the remaining training.
Bryan and his unit returned to the states and Bryan was placed in-charge of several younger Marines. Bryan really enjoyed this command and learned a lot. He really liked and respected his company leadership including 1st Sergeant Lerma and Captain Hanks. “My all-time favorite squad leader was Sergeant Goode. He really developed me as a man, and he really changed the way I saw being a leader. At first, I was trying to be the drill instructor. He showed me that you didn’t always have to be a bulldog. It was a kind of a reality check because I had people looking up to me.”
During his enlistment the COVID pandemic gripped the world. Bryan was able to convince his platoon leadership that playing Call of Duty qualified as training, which led to a Tour of Duty competition. His next assignment was going to be a tour in Okinawa, but he was really hoping to remain under the command of Captain Hanks or Sargent Lerma who were now assigned to different units. An opportunity came up to transfer to infantry battalion V 1/8 and Bryan took it. Bryan was a Lance Corporal, and he was put in a position to lead and train Marines.
Bryan’s unit was going to be part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). An MEU is an expeditionary quick reaction force that is deployed and ready for immediate response to any crisis. While preparing to deploy for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) he was promoted to Corporal.
During the MEU Bryan made port calls in some interesting places, but COVID put a damper on some of those port calls. He recalled visiting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and passing through the Suez Canal. During the deployment the Marines were told their next stop could be either Africa, where the Marines would be working with U.S. Special Forces training local military forces, or Afghanistan. Bryan was 22 years old, assistant patrol leader and team leader, in the last year of his enlistment, and he thought he was going to miss all the action. That was not to be the case.
It was mid-August of 2021, and the United States was preparing to pull out of Afghanistan. Bryan and his company briefly stopped in Kuwait to stage for deployment to Afghanistan. After a short time, they were on a plane to Kabul. Bryan was responsible for a team of three Marines and was next in command of his squad as well. When he walked off the plane his first thought was Kabul was not a good strategic location because it was surrounded by mountains which gave the enemy the high ground.
The initial instructions were for some Marines to process refugees and while Bryan’s company would go out on patrols and possibly “snatch and grab missions”. The mission quickly changed. Bryan’s company would be providing security at the airport as other Marines processed the steady flow of refugees trying to flee the Taliban as the last US troops were preparing to pull out of Afghanistan. His first night in Kabul, Bryan went to sleep in anticipation of his security duty the next morning.
30 minutes after Bryan lay down in his bunk his platoon sergeant began barking orders to put on their gear. They were being overrun by the Taliban. His 1st Sergeant, 1st Sergeant Roess kicked open the door and began running toward the airfield. The Marines picked up their rifles, put on their night vision goggles and followed 1st Sergeant Roess. “That night I learned 1st Sergeant Roess was a hard man!”
Initially they were told 400 Taliban had overrun the airport. As Bryan was running down the runway his thoughts were “holy shit, all my friends have been killed. There were 400 of them and about 100 of us. I just told myself there is no way I am surviving tonight”. Luckily the intelligence was wrong. They found close to 400 Afghani citizens who had broken through the perimeter and were trying to escape from the Taliban. There was a group of Marines that encountered several Taliban, and they quickly and permanently eliminated the threat. This was quite a wakeup call to these Marines because up until this point, they were mostly peace-time Marines and had never experienced combat.
Bryan and his Marines spent the rest of the night “herding everyone onto the airfield and if we found any stragglers, we searched them.” This was Bryan’s first interaction with Afghani’s. “I just really saw how desperate they were. We saw babies that were who knows how long without food and water. I was squirting water from my camelback into kids mouths.” There wasn’t any sleeping after that.
Bryan prefaced his remarks by saying, “So much happened and there is so much that I don’t remember.”
Bryan and his team spent most of their time at East Gate, which was about 600 meters from Abbey Gate, where the bombing would take place several days later. “I didn’t sleep much so my memory is kind of foggy. Our job was pretty simple. Keep Afghani’s from coming over the wall.” One of Bryan’s Marines saw someone throw a backpack against the wall. Bryan called in a potential IED, but it turned out to be just a backpack.
One of the Afghani’s at the gate told Bryan the Taliban were dangerous and they needed to let him in. He lacked the proper documentation, and the Marines could not allow him in. Not happy with that answer, the Afghani began yelling, “you motherfuckers, you butchers.” That left a lasting impression on Bryan and that quote is now a tattoo on his rib cage.
At one point, a Marine came down from the guard tower to report three technical trucks with dishka machine guns mounted on the back and a platoon of Taliban coming down the street toward the airport. Bryan had a feeling something was going to happen. The large crowd outside of the airport had disbursed. Bryan was unable to establish communications with his command to get updated information. One of his junior Marines was able to establish communications using his cell phone. What they learned was the Taliban had agreed to work with the US forces and provide crowd control. Bryan talked about the crowd control techniques used by the Taliban which included beating people with loaded RPG’s. Bryan requested additional wire to put on the top of the walls to deter the growing crowd. The Taliban stood below Bryan watching as he strung the wire and contended with an angry nest of hornets he had stepped on.
Outside of East Gate Bryan and the Marines tried to control the crowd. He saw one of the Taliban push a pregnant woman. Bryan grabbed the Taliban fighter to stop him. He recalled how time slowed down. It was “a moment that lasted forever” as they both looked at each other, rifles at the ready wondering who would make the first move. Calmer heads prevailed and they both walked away. “It kind of really sucked because I wanted to kill him but I couldn’t disobey orders.”
Bryan’s team was rotated from security duty to internal crowd control. He didn’t really care for this because it included escorting Afghani’s out of the airport if they didn’t have the correct documentation. He suspected the Taliban would very likely kill anyone rejected by the US. Bryan said this is something that still bothers him today.
“We knew something was happening to some of the people we turned away. “We had heard that the Taliban’s perspective was, ‘you betrayed us and America doesn’t want you, so we’re just going to get rid of you.’”
He also said people were free to leave. He felt good about successfully talking one child out of leaving. He knew the child would be converted to Taliban or killed. Outside the gates the Marines fought to keep their ground. “It’s not the mission we trained for. It’s the mission we got stuck with.”
The Marines were instructing families to interlock arms so the Marines could grab one family member and pull the entire family from the crowd. Bryan recalled one family couldn’t keep their arms locked and the children were stuck deep in the crowd. The Taliban had established an imaginary line, that if crossed, allowed them to shoot the Marines. Bryan had already seen bodies of dead children floating in a ravine at the North Gate. “I didn’t want these kids to get trampled.” Bryan crossed the line and ran into the crowd to grab the children to protect them and carry them into the airport. He found himself arms distance from one of the Taliban trucks. One of the Taliban fighters had a stolen U.S. M16, and it was pointed at the back of Bryans head. One of Bryans Marines grabbed Bryan by his body armor and pulled Bryan and the kids to safety. “We knew we would be covering the evacuation, but we didn’t realize we would be deciding who lived and who died.”
“While I was processing people I was trying to help as many as possible, but still had to turn some away…..I’m under the impression that a lot of those people we turned away aren’t alive anymore. That’s kind of something that fucks with me at night.”
“It was us against the country of Afghanistan. It’s one line of Marine’s pushing against thousands and thousands of people just trying not to lose ground.”
“If you ask them nicely to backup they’re not going to. I had a shotgun with riot control rounds, just rubber pellets.” Bryan stood on top of a crowd control barrier and shot into the crowd so they would move back, but the crowds kept on coming, desperate to get away from the Taliban. “Sometimes they are just pushing against you, so you had to hit them.” That is something that bothers Bryan to this day.
“We had kids come up to us and ask the Marines to shoot them because they didn’t want to die by the Taliban. These kids don’t want to hurt you but if they do certain things maybe we would shoot them. So, they try to take your rifle. I didn’t want to kill a kid so I would just push them off.” The shear desperation of the Afghani’s is indelibly etched in Bryan’s memory.
Bryan said he never killed anyone and only discharged is rifle once in the form of a warning shot. He did talk about the emotions that you feel is a situation like this. A true desire to kill the Taliban but the need to control your emotions and “hold it together”.
Bryan recalled a funny moment. “An Afghani who came through, and he was pretty young, and he told me I was a beautiful man. He looked like he was about to die so I think that was a pretty good complement.”
Bryan mentioned another humorous moment. “I’m pretty sure my squad is in an ISIS propaganda video. We could see them across a field filming, and we’d flick them off.”
“There are some things you don’t want to see. 5 years olds, maybe a little bit older, carrying siblings. Who knows how long they have been out. The Taliban is sitting outside the gate not letting any of the civilians eat or drink water.”
“I watched a little girl try to steal an infant…because we were letting people with infants….get on the planes first because they were dying quicker. I watched her take this kid and I chased her around until I got the kid back and returned it to its father.”
“I’d ask Afghani men where their wives and kids were, and they said they ‘were still out there’ (outside of the gates). I’d ask them if they wanted to go get them or get on the plane and they’d say get on the plane.”
Some children would be carrying their siblings and they would want to go back out to get the rest of their family. The Marines had to tell them no.
Eventually the East Gate was closed but Abbey Gate remained open. On August 26th, Bryan was able to take a break and step down from the wall. He removed his helmet, lit a cigarette, and had a little food. The environment finally seemed stable. The commissary was being shut down and the Marines helped work down the remaining inventory of ice cream and pie. “Then there was a loud ass bang……..then the air got really still and there were a lot of sirens.” What Bryan didn’t immediately know was that an ISIS suicide bomber had just detonated at the Abbey Gate. Eleven Marines, one Navy Corpsman, one Army Staff Sergeant and numerous civilians would die from the blast. Bryan knew one of the Marines killed, Sergeant Nicole Gee. Nicole would help Bryan and his Marines by searching the children and female Afghani’s at the East Gate. “I have this tattoo that says Til Valhalla. Even though I didn’t know any of them, we were there doing the same thing and it could have easily been me.”
The words, ‘Until Valhalla’ hold special importance to military members. It means there is no greater distinction in life than to die with honor and valor.
Bryan and his Marines thought they had seen the suicide bomber. A female Afghani was being very aggressive in trying to enter their gate, which had been closed. She became very agitated and left. In the time it took for someone to walk from the East Gate to Abbey Gate the explosion was heard. Bryan was carrying a lot of guilt for not having shot her. It wasn’t until a year later that he learned it was not that woman.
On August 30th the Marines boarded a plane back to Kuwait, but not until they had cleaned up all the human waste and garbage left by the Afghani’s. One of Bryan’s Marines had to remove the bodies from the runway of the Afghani’s who fell off the US planes as they lifted off from the airport. “They wanted us to do a proper turnover of the airport to the Taliban.” This only added insult to injury, but the Marines carried out their mission as the true professionals they were. After being sure no one had COVID the Marines headed back to the states.
About one month before Bryan was scheduled to be discharged, he realized “something wasn’t right in my head.” The memories of that short period in Afghanistan were becoming difficult to manage. He was discharged a bit early, and he returned to Ohio to start his new life.
Since leaving the military Bryan met his girlfriend, and they have spent time traveling. He talks and visits with some of his buddies from the Marine Corps. He is enrolled in college and is majoring in biology. He has started therapy and joined a Brazilian Ju-Jujitsu group which he finds to be very therapeutic. “Since I’ve been back, I’ve been working on myself.”
“If anyone is reading this and is questioning if they should start therapy, they should. No matter how much of a man you think you are.”
Bryan misses his time in the Marine Corps and was talking to a recruiter about going back. However, his brother died several months after returning home, and he didn’t want to take the chance that his parents could lose two children. He decided not to re-enlist.
It’s not easy for most Americans who view the world through the lens of a first world country to fully comprehend the level of desperation the Afghani’s felt, knowing the danger and daily suffering coming when the Taliban assumed control. Nor is it easy to understand the depraved inhumanity of the Taliban and ISIS and what drives such evil in men. Bryan and the rest of the U.S. Marine Corps were given a mission and they completed it with honor and success despite taking casualties. While Bryan and other soldiers accept the risk of paying the ultimate sacrifice to defend America, a sober assessment of the events at Abbey Gate would lead a reasonable person to conclude the loss of American lives was senseless and avoidable.
Bryan, you experienced an entire career of combat in two weeks without firing a lethal shot. The horrors you saw while carrying out your mission are something you now must address and conquer. All of America is quietly rooting for you to tame those memories as you continue to “work on yourself”.