![]() “And they were part of, simply, what I call the backbone of America. “They were part of the bravest, most capable, and the most selfless military on the face of the Earth,” Biden said. In the weeks that followed, somber tributes unfolded from coast to coast. The suicide bomber’s vest was packed with ball bearings that tore through bodies like bullets. ![]() Her final words, as relayed later by her commanding officer: “They need me, sir.” Johanny Rosario Pichardo waded into the crowd to help screen women and children. On the day of the bombing, the Abbey Gate was swarming with people. They said they believed they were making a difference. In phone calls and text messages to relatives back home, some of the Marines talked about the desperation they saw in the faces of those trying to flee. For about two weeks, they helped control the crowd, searched those cleared for evacuation, assisted children separated from their parents in the mayhem. troops rushed to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul after the capital fell to the Taliban in mid-August last year. Another was a Navy corpsman assigned to the Marines. ![]() There was an outpouring of grief in the immediate aftermath - piles of flowers left outside the main gate at Camp Pendleton, social media posts from elected officials, crowds of people standing on street corners to salute hearses carrying flag-draped coffins.Įleven of the fallen were Marines, nine of them from the same company in the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment based at Camp Pendleton. An estimated 170 Afghans, gathered at the airport in hopes of fleeing the resurgent Taliban, died in the suicide bombing, too. withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. 26, 2021, was a disastrous punctuation mark on two weeks of chaos that unfolded as the U.S. service members killed in the Kabul airport bombing are being remembered with memorials of various kinds - charity foundations, renamed streets, a mural - in places like Rancho Cucamonga, Berlin Heights, Ohio, and Lawrence, Mass. And that’s where the sorrow and the pride linger, one year later. Most of them were based at Camp Pendleton, but they came from all over America, from small towns and suburbs.
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