Welcome to Veterans Radio. I am Jim Fausone, I'm the officer of the deck today. The program
today is going to focus on Afghanistan as we approach the two-year withdrawal from Afghanistan
after the 20-year war that so many of our veterans participated in now. So we're going
to bring you programs about being in a remote outpost in Afghanistan. We're talking to Travis
Harmon who was part of the Pennsylvania National Guard and spent time fighting with the U.S.
Army in Afghanistan and then we're going to talk to Michael Cook who wrote about the life and death
at Abigate. Really talking about the struggles of people trying to get out of Afghanistan,
Afghan nationals as Abigate exploded and life exploded there in Afghanistan. We've talked
about this issue a little bit in the past back in September of 22. We talked to Major Tom Shrooman
who wrote a fantastic book called Always Faithful worth listening to that podcast and we've written
stories on this for Home of Heroes. If you go to homeofheroes.com go to the war on terrorist stories,
read Air Heroes of Afghanistan invasion. Some pilots and flight nurses received the
Distinguished Flying Cross or go read the story of Sergeant Julie Brigelow who was an air medic
again received the Distinguished Flying Cross. So some incredible stories comes out of service in
Afghanistan and we're going to talk about these stories today. We always want to remind you you
can find more about Veterans Radio at its Facebook site or at the web veteransradio.org is our news.
URL veteransradio.org where we're on the web 24-7 you can find a lot of our podcasts there as well.
We post new ones every Tuesday and before we get started we want to thank our sponsors. First up
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your business by going to NVBDC.org. We want to thank Legal Help for Veterans. Legal Help for
Veterans fights for veterans disability rights all across the nation. You can reach them at 800-693-4800
or on the web at legalhelpforveterans.com. We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Travis Harman
Staff Sergeant in the Army National Guard wrote an interesting story a remote outpost fighting
with the US Army in Afghanistan but it's more than just his story it's also a bit of his father's
story. Travis welcome to Veterans Radio. Thank you for having me. Well this is a bit of an unusual
story and a number of fronts. You weren't the prototypical recruit the Army was looking for I
think you're a self-described young skater punk at the time so tell us a little bit about your
background where you grew up in Pennsylvania and this decision about joining the Army. Okay I grew
up in central Pennsylvania around Williamsport known for the Little League World Series.
So there's a lot of farming communities around Williamsport and I grew up from one in Yuzvo.
Basically 9-11 happened my father had joined in the 80s and got out when I was born so I always had a
family tradition of military service my grandfather was in a few of my uncles were in my brother my
older brother joined the Air Force when I was around 10 so I had a lot of family influence
in joining and once 9-11 happened I was I was only in eighth grade but I hoped that one day I would
be able to go and fight and well my dream came true. Well it was not only yours but talk to us
about your relationship with your father Dean and and how sort of all those family influences led
you to say hey I'm gonna enlist. Right so my father joined the Marines in the 80s and like I said that he
ETS out after I was born he joined the Army National Guard in the early 90s while I was a
little kid so I grew up seeing this military service and we would watch war movies together
and that you know made it even more exciting for me so as time grew on I kind of lost interest in it
but my dad would talk to me at random about then once 9-11 happened he enlisted in the PA National
Guard again and you know I saw that as my opportunity to kind of we never had a really close relationship
while I was growing up so that was kind of my way of earning his acceptance by enlisting with him.
And you then enlisted in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard?
Correct. It's kind of that's that's a whole different process after 9-11 people who are
familiar with the Guard pre 9-11 you know it's a different training tempo it's a different op
tempo as you got in this wasn't the National Guard that your dad was in in the 90s did he
talk to you about hey this is a whole different op tempo here. Right yeah so he I initially wanted
to go active duty Army and he talked to me and was like you know maybe you should go PA Guard for a
little bit it's one week in a month two weeks in the summer if you like it you could go active duty
if you don't and you just you're stuck with your one week in a month two weeks in the summer but
like you said the the op tempo was completely different my unit had not they had deployed
to Germany and I believe it was 04 and then the PA Army Guard second brigade deployed to Ramadi
Iraq and it was 6 and my father went with them and a lot of the guys from my unit went with them as well
so um they got back and while I was in basic training and advanced training and once I got home
within a week's time I got orders to go to Afghanistan. So you did some of your training at
Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia a whole lot different than uh Hughesville Pennsylvania
wasn't it? Oh absolutely I I would prior to that I'd never flown I'd only left the state once to go
to New Jersey to the beach um so it was definitely an experience for me. And was this did you feel
like this is part of what my dad wanted me to experience maybe wanted me to grow up a bit
because I'm sure everybody who goes in goes through this and goes I'm not the same kid I was a year ago
right yeah so I don't like any son and father he was trying to give me advice you know pull your
head out of your butt uh yeah we've all got that one we've all got that one or given it yeah yeah so
uh once I did that he you know he talked to me about joining and uh I decided it was probably
for the best because I had no you know aspirations or anything I wanted to do um so yeah he talked
me into it and at the time Band of Brothers had come out on HBO and my grandfather fought in World
War II so I was very interested in that and I watched that and that was kind of my deciding
factor of joining. I you know I said I want to have a band of brothers like that I want to go
into combat I want to serve my country. Well as you say you go through your training and then
like a week later you get orders to go to Afghanistan how did that impact you the family
your dad Dean? So my parents had divorced when I was 10 but as far as my grandmother his mother
and that side of the family they were very um worried for both of us they were happy that he
was going with me because he also received orders to deploy we were in the same battalion he was in
Alpha Company I was in the headquarters element um I was a hunter in third armor and uh yeah so the
family was worried but at the same time my mom came to me and said I'm glad he's going with you.
It's really an unusual situation where one deploys even with a family member a brother
a sister let a mother or a father really unusual did you know anybody else who's doing that type
of deployment? Not so much parent-child relationships but brother brother brother sister sister
you know relationship sibling relationships um that was more common I think we came across one other
father son duo that was over there the same time we were. So this is uh what 2009 when you're in
Afghanistan 2008 2008 tell us about the conditions of fighting in Afghanistan at that point. So when
I first got there it uh it wasn't too bad things were pretty um light as far as attacks once the
old unit ripped out of the outpost we were on uh progressively got worse and worse the month of
April we were hit pretty much every day uh whether it be mortars attacks you know what ids what have
you um yeah so and the interesting part was my father was stationed at Bagram and he could go
into the talk and see what was going on at my outpost while I was getting attacked you know what
was happening at the time. So let's let's expand on that in the uh title of the book is remote outpost
fighting with the US army in Afghanistan and we're talking to Travis Arman. Travis explain to us
uh the outpost you were at and give our veteran radio listeners a little bit of insight of what
that was about. Okay so the outpost was called Combat Outpost Nigel and it was in the uh I believe
it was at the top of the Alashang Valley it was you were at the top of the bottom uh where the Alashang
and Alangar valleys met uh we were put there to kind of stop Taliban traffic coming back and forth
through Mederlam which Fahm Mederlam was our main base that we operate out of but 90 percent of the
time we were at the outpost um so generally we would see combat while deployed on the outpost
not so much outside the wire it became it started to become pretty heavy where we would get fire
outside the wire but the majority of it was they were trying to overrun us.
And talk about again there are a lot of people who are listening
Travis who don't understand what these outposts were in Afghanistan. This is not a big formal
base there's not a lot of people and give us some sense of the the size and the protection
that is available in these remote outposts. Okay so we had one guard tower initially
um and it was called Punisher Base or Punisher Tower and it oversaw a village that sat right
across the road uh from us there was a road and then a little bit of a creek and across that was
the village I can't remember the name of it I'll stop my head um but yeah so the outpost itself
was encircled with three rows of constantian wire and then claymore mines and trip flayers.
Um there were some Hesco barriers that you know the barriers filled with rocks and dirt to try
and stop bullets and shrapnel but we had very limited sources up on the outpost.
In terms of manpower we had a platoon of about 20 guys ourselves and then the Afghan army had
about 20 soldiers as well. During this time when you're in this rotation that platoon is made up
of all Pennsylvania National Guard members? Yes now the unique part about our platoon we were an
infantry platoon um I joined as a radio operator and I was assigned to this infantry platoon as
their RTO um but the unique thing about our platoon was it was a thrown together platoon so we
were infantry on paper but realistically our jobs were you know we had cooks we had mechanics we had
um artillery guys and a handful of infantry guys but the majority of us were from different you
know occupational specialties. And that's uh was fairly common I think as a the war wore on and they
kept kind of having to put units together to to man up and and so these weren't guys that you
necessarily drilled with on a regular basis. Right uh I would say only about two of them were from
my actual unit that I drilled with the rest were from throughout the state.
So now you find yourself in Afghanistan at this remote outpost what's going on through your mind
between that image that you had prior to joining up and and the reality that you're now facing?
So it didn't really hit me until about the first weekend and I was at the main base of
Bob Mederlam and I saw a Medevac helicopter was landing and they were pulling body bags off
of Afghan troops and they were refueling, rearming the the Kiowas that were coming in the Blackhawks
and uh you know that's when it really sunk in that this is real this isn't some movie that I've
watched growing up like I need to keep my stuff together I need to keep my head on a swivel
you know and uh once the first time outside the wire I thought I was going to be dead within seconds
because I was just not ready for what was to come. Well and and I think that's the point at which
fear, questioning, do I have the stuff to do what needs to be done for my buddies?
All that's playing hard on you isn't it? Right yeah so it's a lot of stress obviously
you don't want to let your team down you want to make it home yourself you want to make sure
your buddies make it home with you and you want to accomplish your mission at the same time and
you know as the as it wore on or went on I kind of just wrote myself off as dead already
and that took away a lot of the fear for me. Just just mentally saying hey this is going to happen
so quit worrying about it? Exactly yes. And the the horrific realities of warfare
did it come to this outpost? Tell us about that. The warfare at the outpost? Yes. So it was pretty
like I said in the beginning it wasn't so bad a couple pop shots here and there maybe an RPG
fired at us but as this time passed it became we would have to start flying up to the outpost
versus taking humvees because the IEDs were so thick and there's so many of them planted along
our route we only had about one or two routes we could take by humvee to get there so they began
to fly us in well when they began to fly us in they'd be waiting waiting for it to land on the
helipad and they would start shooting at the helicopter. I came back from pass in Qatar
in the beginning of July and our helicopter couldn't land on the outpost because it was taking
fire and the outpost was taking fire so we had to circle around a couple times you know and we
did a combat landing and got off just in time to get attacked again. Tell us a little bit about some
of the injuries and casualties associated with the 20 guys and the Afghan troops up there at
outpost Nagyul. So we had one one of our soldiers the PA Guard soldiers take some shrapnel from
a I believe it was a Chinese rocket came in and hit the entry control point that he was manning
because at this point we had built up a couple other towers to you know basically secure the
outpost a little better because it was getting to the point where they were getting pretty close
to getting inside the wire so we decided to push back the perimeter and in doing so they started
you know figuring us out even more and you know we had it seemed like we had somebody one of the
Terps or not one of the Terps who one of the Afghan workers on the post or on the outpost
was you know an insider working for the Taliban. But in terms of other casualties usually the
Afghan soldiers took the brunt of it it seemed you know there were multiple casualties there
some killed some wounded you know shot through the legs shot other places it was just they
they seemed to be bullet magnets in my eyes. Well they certainly probably were from the
Taliban's viewpoint too that those were the traitors if you will. Yes. As the radio operator at the
outpost again give give the civilian listening here some understanding of what you're doing
during these attacks and what the what the role for the radio operator is.
So if we were on the outpost and we would be attacked it was my job I was also a UAV operator
or drone operator a handheld drone and it was my job when we started getting attacked to set
the drone up get in the air to see where the Taliban is so that was one of my duties as the
operator the radio operator. But generally on a daily basis I would have to go around and check
every radio in the morning check all the radios before patrol make sure they had the right you
know frequencies and whatnot they were encrypted the right way and then I would go out and patrol
with everyone and take my you know my radio with the giant antenna that you see in like the Vietnam
movies and that's what that reminded me of a lot was Vietnam like obviously I'm too young to have
fought in Vietnam but the landscape and just the patrols on foot reminded me a lot of movies I watched
as a kid. When you're over in Afghanistan how old are you? When I'm there I'm 20. And how old is
your dad about? He is at that time he would be 40. And he had a different job you mentioned he was
back at Bagram the whole time you're up at the outpost is he down at Bagram? Yeah so he was the
unit movement officer for the battalion he was the NTO in charge not the actual officer
but he was in charge of all the helicopter routes for our battalion and our supply movements and
troop movements. So you know he I used to joke with him and say you have a cushy desk job
because he had a desk and he was in a building with air conditioning and there I was sleeping in
a tent with 10 other guys on the side of a mountain. Remember you're 20 years younger too so yeah yeah
so let me ask this part part of your getting involved here was to demonstrate something to
your dad or to create a different relationship with your dad how did this experience over in
Afghanistan that you both experienced in a different way ultimately impact the relationship?
If anything it brought us closer together not only were we father and son in a closer
relationship but we were now brothers that band of brotherhood that I wanted and I never thought
I would find it was my father but it turned out that I did and even when we came home we would
swap war stories and you know he was in Iraq and prior to Afghanistan I would ask him how did it
compare to my deployment versus your deployment the combat and you know different scenarios
that we had been in and yeah so it actually brought us really close. I asked this of a lot of guys
you know as you know the military Travis is having a hell of a recruiting problem right every
branches but your dad would have encouraged you to join up and participate and some of that's family
history some of its own experience from being in the Marines. As you reflect back and when it's time
for you to have a son or a daughter a niece or a nephew come ask uncle uncle Travis hey
should I'm thinking of joining up what do you think about that what's what's your view on it now?
My thoughts now are my first thought would be no please don't but then that would retract and
you know it's a great career if you make it one you get out of it what you put into it
there are great benefits you know it's hard to navigate the VA afterwards but you know once you
figure it out or find somebody that can figure it out for you you know all the benefits are there
for you it's great in that aspect what I would say as a word of advice is be careful what job you pick
or know the job you're going into and you know I think that's good advice for anything in life
right do you do a little more study do a little more due diligence look into things you know see
what might be useful if you only spend two or four or six years in what might be useful afterwards
right I think that's what you're kind of saying yeah so in my entire 13 years in the PA guard
I did four different jobs I was a radio operator a signal support NCO a infantryman and a supply
sergeant when I were medically retired in 2018 you know I hated being a supply sergeant and I love
being an RTO and an infantryman so I mean it's a hard life and it's hard on your body and your mind
but it's very rewarding well and you develop that band of brothers that you were looking for you
probably still have a bunch of guys who you're connected with that shared your experiences in
a way that nobody else can really relate I suppose oh yeah they're my family everyone I served with
and like I said even though my father wasn't on the outpost with me I still consider him a brother
in a sense and you know we have a bond that I feel can never be broken well we're talking to
Travis Harman he wrote remote outposts fighting with the US Army in Afghanistan it's published by
casemate Travis if people want to read the book and learn more how do they do that so there's
several ways you can go to my website www.travisharman.com it's spelled h-a-r-m-a-n or you can go to casemate
publishers and google or search remote outposts you can just google my name you can google remote
outpost Travis Harman it'll pop up it's on amazon barns noble it's available pretty much everywhere
well we really appreciate not only your service but taking some time to spend with us here on
veterans radio today Travis really a great job and we're glad that we got a chance to speak
thank you thank you for having me I really enjoyed it military veterans touch everyone's life
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again 1-800-693-4800 we want to welcome two veterans radio today we have a great author to talk to
staff sergeant from the US Army six years michael cook michael welcome to veterans radio
hey thank you so much for having me I'm really excited well you you have written a book called
life and death at abbey gate it's really not only about the fall of afghanistan but the operation to
save afghanistan individuals getting them out through the gate but also afterwards so that's
really what we're going to talk about the book is published by casemate and but let's start with
a little background you're you're a guy who went to eastern michigan university primarily to play
hockey if i understood reading you right and later on said well you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna
join the the US Army kind of an unusual step at that point tell us why you did it yeah so yeah
grew up a local guy here in michigan growing up in an arbor and then going to eastern michigan so
you know be hockey was always a big part of my life as it is with many people in this area right so
i think i always had that camaraderie that that team feel in my life through my hockey experiences
so then once i graduated college and moved out to california i kind of lost that so i was out there
for about five or six years and was just feeling like i really needed something more like i need
to be a part of a greater organization and that's really what i think led me to down to the recruiter's
office down in huntington beach california so i went in talked to the marine recruiter talked to
the army recruiter i'm decided that army was the branch that i was more interested in and started
pursuing a career with them and you talk a little bit about your m.o.s you're an engineer
battalion i think and construction tell us a little bit about that yep so as an engineer
12 whiskey is the designator that i started at so mainly we we did all the army's construction work
or you know security or anything like that anything that would need to be built or erected
essentially engineers do that job so that's what most of our training consisted around and then on
our deployment to afghanistan in 2019 and 2020 that's primarily what we were doing is just building
beehuts like barracks or joint operation centers or you know what offenses for security whatever the
military needed from us we built it yeah and while the general population you know 99% of the
us population doesn't serve they only think of guys in the army with you know totem toad
and a rifle going forward at the pointy end of the spear but somebody back here is building stuff
cooking meals doing all the logistics things taking care of the mechanics and tanks and planes and
what have you so we don't think much about what the construction engineers are doing so you probably
find that pretty frustrating yeah i mean everyone in the military has a specialty right so there's
a million jobs that need to be done so you have to make sure that we have guys in the field of
operations that are able to complete those tasks when needed and it's really through that effort of
being an army engineer that you came to work with a couple of afghanistan men and got to know them
and their families set that up a little bit because it's really the cornerstone of the rest of the
story yeah so when i was in afghanistan in 2019 and 20 the first part of my deployment was up in a
city called mazari shari which is the second largest city in afghanistan it's in northern afghanistan
right on the side of the hindu kish mountains it's one of the most beautiful places i've ever
seen in my whole life and on that base we were stationed on a nato base up there that was ran by
the german forces but on that base there's two men two afghan nationals names abdull and mohammad
who i developed a very strong relationship with um started as a working relationship and turned
into a friendship so they were contractors and they would essentially supply us with whatever
materials that we would need to accomplish our mission so you know going through like the military
pipeline of getting materials while you're in afghanistan can be very time consuming it could
take you know multiple weeks or months to get things but these guys could get them there on like
the next day right so they were very useful to us we worked with them every single day but they also
took really good care of us so they bring us home cooked meals from their wives just because they
knew that we were eating deployment food for a whole year so like i said just really turned into
a friendship and they took great care of us so when i left mazari shari to move on to my next
base in afghanistan you know i went in said goodbye to them and it was pretty much with the
understanding that we were never going to see each other again um not knowing what was coming
down the road right not knowing that the taladan was going to recapture afghanistan in summer of
2021 so um that's kind of to tee it up how are the how the relationship started with them and if i
understand it right these men abdull and mohammad were brother-in-laws yes that's correct so there's
a tight family relationship among them and and you and your team were some of them were at least
brought into that and got that sense i take it yes absolutely and as time goes on and you're out of
afghanistan but in 2020 a year later or so you begin to see what's going to happen walk us through
what you were watching from the outside and had concerns about yes so obviously the talaban
starts um encroaching on all of afghanistan and taking perimeter cities slowly as they march
towards kabool by this point all us troops have left afghanistan we've made the decision to give
up bagram the most probably the most strategic base um in all of asia in the middle east um
and you know when i when i look back on it on my deployment i can see signs of where things were
going wrong right like i was there during the doha agreement that trump signs and i remember
the afghan contractors that were there coming up to me after hearing about it and saying sir like
you can't leave because if you guys leave we're all going to be slaughtered is exactly what one
of them said and again i like i couldn't see the writing on the wall but they could see it so clearly
like they knew exactly what was going to happen um you know all of our intelligence assets were
saying that the afghan national army the afghan government that we put in place is going to be
able to hold up after we left for you know different periods of time but most of them said you know a
year five years ten years infinite um of course all of them are wrong because you know as soon as
we left the Taliban took control of the country and i think five days or something um it it it happened
so fast and the i would say the american planning was so bad um that these these inevitabilities just
crashed upon uh the afghan nationals that had been working with uh the u.s military didn't it
yeah yeah i mean in my book i do a deep dive into you know exactly what the failures were at the
highest levels as well as doing a deep dive into what the do d report says happened versus what you
know boots on the ground were saying that happened but there's just so many failures at the highest
levels that um you know we ended up paying for in blood unfortunately well in your in your words
uh in the book the withdrawal was a clusterfuck and everybody knows it was and unfortunately a lot
of afghan nationals had to live with that cluster this is uh everybody from interpreters and translators
and drivers and as and as abdull and mohammed were uh folks working on the construction side
materials logistics i mean it it's a pretty big group of people plus their family members
that are sort of left in the lurch isn't it yeah it is and you know those people are a lot of those
people are still there you know hundreds of thousands of our allies are still stuck there and
they're a lot of them are in hiding and on the run from the taliban um because if they get caught
um there's a very very strong likelihood that them and their families will be killed so
so there was something there was there was something created uh and we're talking to
michael cook author of life and death at abbey gate michael there was something created it called the
special immigrant visas siv i don't know that the general public actually understands what
that was supposed to be and how it actually worked yeah so the special immigrant visa commonly
referred to as the siv was a visa um that came into existence in the early 2000s i believe during the
iraq war and essentially the visa was supposed to get awarded to our local allies that had worked
with us for a certain amount of years i want to say it's two years so if you're in iraqi um if
you're in afghan and you devote your service to the united states um and help us against our enemies
we're going to make sure that you're protected um should you ever need protecting and we'll bring
you here to the united states under a special immigrant visa that was that was the point of it um
the program was wildly unsuccessful because they just weren't prepared for the amount of people
that were going to be applying um again just backed up very poor government planning at the
highest levels so due to uh the influx of applicants and um not enough resources to process them
that's you know why so many of them got left behind uh in those summer months of august 2021
well and some of it was just you know whoever planned this thing or thought this thing through
you had to prove up that two-year status you had to prove up how important you were to the american
cause it's not like there was somebody sitting in a desk cranking out paperwork on the computer system
was there no and one of the big problems actually was that a lot of paperwork got lost so um these
contractors or these afghan allies that were working for like a third party like an american
contractor you know anytime those contractors would go out of business all that paperwork would be
lost so now we get stuck with this position where we have these afghan allies that have devoted their
lives to the united states and helping us while we're overseas and now we don't have any of their
paperwork to prove that they're qualified for these visas so just one of the uh failures yeah there's
this view that well we'll vet people well if there's no paperwork or not a cooperating government you
can't vet them there's no way to do this and while this may be made sense in creating the siv
program boy it did not work at all did it no it was um i said i'm with senator bloom and fall
after the evacuation and when i was writing my book um and he straight up told me that the system
is completely broken uh it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up you talk in the book about
what happens at abbey gate and also talk about kind of what happens afterwards the digital
duncurg i want to talk about but give us your view on what happened at abbey gate there in in
august 2021 yeah so i guess there's a few ways to go down that path but abbey gate was essentially
an entrance that's the uh himid karzai international airport which is in kibble it's the the civilian
airport that's at kibble um that's the airport that the u.s. government decided to run the
evacuation out of um why we decided to run out of there a civilian airport and not bagram a military
base that was very well fortified it's a big mystery um but essentially abbey gate was one of the main
gates um where a lot of people ended up escaping but also was the site of the um suicide bomber
the isis k suicide bomber then killing 13 of our troops and it was just utter confusion at the gate
there was no good way to get good people out we while a lot of people evacuated over that week
um not nearly enough which sort of left people like abdull and mohammed in this uh position of
getting in touch with old friends like yourself and saying what can you do for me yeah how did
how did that develop and walk us through that uh a couple of days of craziness trying to make
something work thousands of miles away yeah so i had kept in touch with abdull and mohammed um via
whatsapp uh after deployment so um you know communication kind of slowed a little bit
in the years that um that passed but then you know july and august of 2021 when the talban's
coming up on kibble is really when our communication picked up heavily so um at that point both men
and their families had fled from mazah shriek down to kibble because that was the last remaining
stronghold of the afghan national army and the afghan government so the talban essentially had
them surrounded as well as all of our allies surrounded so i get a call from our face time from
abdull and i'll never forget that kizyu is holding his little daughter his baby daughter and i'm
sitting in my kitchen with my mother and we're FaceTiming and you know i remember my mother had
to step off screen because she was just so devastated because she she understood what
was about to happen not only to abdull and mohammed but to their families and their daughters
you know these daughters are if they survive they're going to grow up in a country where
they're not allowed to go to school they're not allowed to work they're not allowed to leave their
their homes without a mail escort or without their faces covered i mean all their entire
futures are being stripped from them in the moment that we're having this phone conversation
so that was obviously very tough but abdull just you know essentially asked if i could help them
find a way out and that's really when we started looking at the visas and found the special immigrant
visa process so i reached out to senator debbie stabbina here in michigan her and her team were
amazing and very helpful in trying to expedite the process of getting these visas going
unfortunately there just wasn't time to get a visa in those short weeks right i mean it takes
can take years um and a lot of people that applied for i said these still don't have case numbers
today you know years later so at that point we we pretty much just knew we needed to make a
run for the airport because even you know debbie stabbina was set up for failure by the state
department because the guidance that she was getting and passing on to me was have them shelter at
home wait for the call to get their visas and then they can proceed to the airport well you know
like i just said that was never going to happen so at that point we knew we had to make a run for
the airport and um you know they had a pretty disastrous first run at the airport um they
ran into a tailband checkpoint mohammed got roughed up real good um they beat him with their
rifles and um when i you know when i ended up seeing him a few months later he was still
covered head to toe and bruising so at that point we knew we needed to make some deeper
connections and that's really what led to the digital duncork network of people um essentially
the underground group of people that were working online veterans and civilians alike
just to try to find ways to help these afghan allies get out of the country and this digital
duncork uh network is working outside really the us government process if i understand it
it was i mean there was a lot of there's a lot of active duty military and there are a lot of
veterans a lot of guys and girls that understood the processes that were would need to take place
but weren't subjected to the same red tape that um you know a government evacuation was so we were
able to kind of uh run a little loose outside the lines which was a lot more effective than you
know whatever the government was doing and you go through in the book which is a easy good
informative read life and death at abbey gate you go through various talk about various individuals
who helped along this process because you were stumbling in the dark you didn't know how to
make this happen and everybody was learning from everybody else and and the line i wrote down was
about the individual courage displayed not only by the afghan nationals but also by
civilian veterans active duty military that individual courage which was running up against
the inept bureaucracy it had to be frustrating yeah it was and like you said we didn't you know
we didn't really know what we were doing we just knew that it had to happen fast so i think one line
in my book is we we were building the airplane mid-flight is essentially what we were trying to do um
so we were setting up all these essentially joint operation centers online um through all these
encrypted messaging apps and just passing information as fast as possible um on what was
happening at happening at the airport in different ways and there's a whole range of people who help
out on this i mean uh some some sort of uh big names maybe maybe bigger influences than others but
but a whole range of people are helping on this effort that not only you are engaged with but
but you know tens of thousands of other afghan nationals are trying to get out
yeah yeah i mean it's like everybody um if you are useful you were put to work so um whether that
not you were uh you know a famous politician or just some veteran like myself that deployed
afghanistan a couple years prior um everyone was put to work and um did whatever they could to help
this was in a uh a 24-7 exhaustive effort as you were writing about what you're trying to do in
the time zone differences and and i just felt reading it how exhausted you were but how exhausted
abdull and mohammed and their family was yeah and i can't even imagine because i i do remember
how tired i was because you know when it's daytime over there it's nighttime here so i'd
stayed up every single night for probably a week in a row and i was exhausted but i i kept putting
myself in their shoes i mean they're being they're being hunted by a brutal enemy and just trying to
escape with their lives you know and adding small children into that equation is just terrifying for
any american to even think about but that's the situation that they were in so i knew
and everyone else working on it knew that there was nothing that was going to stop us
start to give everything we had and it was it was really some active duty uh military
marines and others who are sort of violating or breaking bending protocol to make some of this work
and and that's an amazing part of the story that those men and women active duty men and women
ought to get credit for their humanity and what they're doing right for the country absolutely i mean
i hate to say that the marine a lot of the marines were set up for failure at the gates as well
but they really were i mean the state department just really botched this evacuation and they just
weren't the the marines that were at the front lines were not giving the proper guidance to execute
this evacuation properly so yeah like i said a lot of times they had to kind of go against policy and
just do what they knew was right to save lives so i was just so proud to share this same uniform as
those men and women that that stood on the front lines that abbey gates um i do want to say before
we run out of time that abdull and mohammed and the family was able to get out and relocate um give us
that synopsis quickly yeah thank you for asking they're doing great um they uh i won't say exactly
where they live but they live very close to me um i get to see them constantly i'm going over to
their house this weekend for dinner um kids are doing great and have are fluently speaking english
and they're in school and playing soccer and you know the money each have jobs and they're um
have their own uh apartments so they're doing fantastic um and we're just so happy to have them
here safely well it's an american success story and we hope they are embrace it enjoy it uh michael
kuk author of life and death at abbey gate if somebody wants to read your very candid straightforward
account of the fall of afghanistan the operation to save our allies where can they find the book
yeah anywhere you buy your books um amazon obviously barns and noble uh you can go to my
website which is michael kuk dot com that's m-i-k-a-e-l kuk dot com uh and you can purchase it there as well
well your service to the country in the army was uh really quite noble but more importantly the work
you did afterwards to honor a commitment made to these afghan nationals and their families is even
more noteworthy so michael we are very happy to have you here on veterans radio yeah thank you so
much i really enjoyed that conversation as stated at the outset i wanted to talk about afghanistan
today because we're approaching the two-year anniversary of the pullout of afghanistan
and actually the u.s. state department just issued its afghanistan after action review report
two years later um and it details the shortcomings that led to as a quote the deadly and chaotic
us withdrawal from that country after nearly two decades on the ground close quote um it points out
insufficient senior level consideration of worst case scenarios and how quickly those might
follow um it details findings of the tumultuous final weeks there and the biden administration's
frenzy withdrawal it has criticism of the trump administration before that as well for
um laying out a plan to withdraw and giving the enemy an opportunity to get ready for that
but really sharper criticism around the biden's administration's uh activities and not anticipating
how quickly the government would fall it's actually much more critical than the white house
summary document that was released in april of 2024 this is one of those government reports that
you see or hear about with plenty of recommendations that probably nobody will ever follow the report
will go on a shelf somewhere stored in a server um but it did identify 11 recommendations and
that maybe one of the main ones was the need to identify and plan better for worst case scenarios
and that's probably obvious to all we want to salute our afghan veterans those over a 20-year
period who devoted their blood sweat and tears and blood at times uh to the mission that was set
out for in afghanistan i don't know that we can necessarily look at how it ended and view the
entire war that way much like we look back on vietnam and the chaotic ending in vietnam uh a
different view of the entire war and and what was accomplished similarly for our afghanistan veterans
uh a lot to be proud of uh you took the call you did the work and we do appreciate it so we did
want to focus today on that particular era of military service which involved so many people
the department of defense says 832 000 american soldiers served in afghanistan
now that's a much smaller number than the approximately 2.7 million american men and women
who served in the republic of vietnam during the war and that's that would be boots on the ground
but it's still a significant portion of our population uh from an all volunteer army that's
the other big difference right vietnam had the draft to bring all those folks in here these
were all volunteers uh both active reserve and national guard who were called and put to the test
so again we uh appreciate that service and wanted to recognize this two-year anniversary
on veterans radio we can't tell these stories and bring them to you and honor our veterans
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all of these folks help bring these stories to life it's pretty amazing when you look back
because we've been on the air for 21 years um that we've been on the air for the entire time of the
entire time of the afghanistan war we've told a lot of these stories i i gave reference to it was
just one of them uh earlier that we did and if you go back in the archives at veterans radio
dot org and put in afghanistan you'll find a lot of other interesting stories that dale or myself
have had recorded and preserved for history and that's what we do we at veterans radio tell the
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and with all that we're doing and we couldn't be more appreciative so i'm jim fausone i've been your
officer of the deck today uh bringing you these stories about afghanistan and highlighting the end
of that war keep us going here on veterans radio dale will be back next week and until next week
and veterans radio you are dismissed