Last man out

The two-star general cut a lonely figure. He didn’t have to look behind him to know that he was the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan after a 20-year war. Major-General Christopher Donahue, commanding general of 82nd Airborne Division, had made sure that the final passenger load for the last flight of a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft out of Kabul was complete before boarding himself. For the previous 13 days he had been in charge of the ground-troop operation at Hamid Karzai international airport, marshalling the thousands of Afghan evacuees and American citizens into planes and securing the runway and perimeter against attack. It was one minute before midnight on Monday August 30 and the spooky green image of him striding towards the plane with his assault rifle in his hand will go down in history as the final symbol of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The picture was taken by a camera with a night-vision system from within the C-17. Donahue had flown to Kabul on August 17, four days after his 52nd birthday. With 29 years of service in the US Army, it was to be his most challenging command mission. His background had prepared him for the task. Trained at the military academy at West Point, he initially served as an officer in the 75th Ranger Regiment and later as a squadron commander and deputy brigade commander with US Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in California. He was also special assistant to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and has deployed 17 times in support of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, north Africa and eastern Europe. He has already received praise from General Frank McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, in overall charge of operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the Middle East. His departure from Kabul airport will be compared by historians with similar last-out images of other military men who served in Afghanistan and had to withdraw after admitting defeat in a country which has never welcomed foreign occupations. On February 15, 1989, General Boris Gromov, the last commanding general of Russian forces in Afghanistan, walked alone behind a long convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles pulling out of the country after ten years of war with anti-communist Islamic guerrillas. “That’s it, “ Gromov told a television crew. “Not one Soviet soldier is behind my back.” The column of Russian armoured vehicles crossed the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan into Uzbekistan during the final exit. On the bridge Gromov, commander of the Soviet Union’s 40th Army, was seen walking arm-in-arm with his son carrying a bouquet of red and white flowers. Asked how he felt returning to Russian territory, he replied: “Joy, that we carried out our duty and came home. I did not look back.” More than a century earlier, in 1842, William Brydon, an assistant surgeon serving with a British-commanded infantry force recruited in India to provide protection for the East India Company’s puppet ruler in Kabul, was the last man out of Afghanistan and the sole survivor after his unit came under attack by Afghan tribesman en route to the eastern city of Jalalabad. Brydon made his escape on horseback.