When official word came in that 10 of 13 service members killed in the bombing attack at the Kabul airport were from a single Camp Pendleton unit, families at the seaside base rallied behind the unit, despite their own fears as more danger looms in these final days of the United States’ planned pullout from Afghanistan.
Nine Marines were part of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and the sole Navy sailor killed was a corpsman who had been attached to the unit. All had deployed to the Middle East together in April as part of a special crisis response force. Due home later this fall, they were routed to the airport to help secure its perimeter as Americans and Afghan allies crowded to get to the planes and evacuate.
The 2/1 battalion is known as “The Professionals.”
“I extend my deepest, heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the 1st Marine Division servicemen who lost their lives while heroically safeguarding the evacuation of thousands of U.S citizens and faithful allies from Hamid Karzai International Airport,” Maj. Gen. Roger Turner Jr., commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, which the 2/1 is a part of, said in a statement on Saturday.
They “paid the ultimate price to defend our nation and extend the reach of freedom beyond our shores,” he said. “We cherish the legacy these warriors leave behind and commit our resources to support the wounded and bereaved.”
The loss of the 10 is one of the deadlier losses for the base, which just last year mourned nine men who died in a training accident when their amphibious assault vehicle sank off the coast of San Clemente Island.
The Kabul bombing attack was the deadliest against U.S. forces since Aug. 6, 2011. Then a Chinook helicopter was shot down by militants using a rocket-propelled grenade. The helicopter was supporting a quick reaction force. That day, 30 Americans, including 17 Navy SEALs and eight Afghans, were killed.
Camp Pendleton Marines were also aboard two helicopters that collided over southern Afghanistan in 2009. Four Marines were among the 11 Americans who died. In 2010, three Camp Pendleton Marines died when their Humvee flipped over in Afghanistan’s Helmand Provence, one of the fiercest areas for Marines fighting the Taliban.
Marines who were killed Thursday are Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Texas; Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, 23, of Roseville, north of Sacramento; Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, 31, of Salt Lake City, Utah, who was living in Aliso Viejo; Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio; Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, 20, of Jackson, Wyoming; Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga; Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, 20, of Norco; Cpl. Daegan W. Page, 23, of Omaha, Nebraska; Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25, of Lawrence, Massachusetts; Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, 22, of Logansport, Indiana; and Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, 20, of St. Charles, Missouri.
Also killed were Navy Corpsman Maxton W. Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio, and Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tennessee.
As the remains of the 13 service members were en route to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware – always the first stop for U.S. forces killed overseas – those who knew them grappled with their emotions and fears for the Marines still securing the evacuations while offering their support to the 2/1 community. Flowers and American flags have piled up in front of the base’s main gate in Oceanside.
Chaplain Jonathan Cooper, of Oceanside, will officiate a vigil being planned by several wives of Marines in the battalion. Last August he spoke when hundreds gathered at a similar ceremony organized by the wives to remember the nine men who had just died in the training accident. Many of the families of those killed Thursday had attended.
His goal, he said, is to help bring the Marine community together to heal.
“There is a lot of anger surrounding the circumstances in Afghanistan and specifically in Kabul,” Cooper said. “When the news broke about the deaths of these young, brave men being from Camp Pendleton, it hits different. It hits closer.
“Even though some of these Marines call other parts of the country home, when tragedy strikes like it did this week, I think our community feels like this was their home,” he said.
“What can we do as we watch the news unfold? All our anger, sadness and criticism needs a productive outlet,” he said. “Crying out to God is a good place to start, not only for this community but for our entire nation.”
For the wives who are organizing the candlelight vigil at Del Mar Beach, it is as much a distraction as a service to the 2/1 community. They’ve arranged mental health counselors, therapy dogs and bagpipe musicians, said Divya Karl, 20, the wife of a combat engineer still standing guard at the airport’s perimeter.
So far, wives and families have largely kept to themselves, mostly communicating via texts and social media, she said.
“We will be gathering at the vigil,” Karl said. “In the Marine community, whether you worked together or not, knew them or not, a loss is a loss and it hurts.
“With it being regarded as a peacetime Marine Corps, nobody expects deaths like this to happen in combat zones in this quantity the way it used to be,” she said. “It makes it even more of a shock. One minute everyone was safe in the Middle East, and a little over a week later, this is the result.”
Most of the families of the battalion’s troops learned their loved ones were part of the evacuation efforts at the airport through social media.
“Social media has played a really big role,” Karl said. Her husband has been in the Marine Corps for three years. “Because of the nature of the deployment, they weren’t telling us anything. I knew he was in Afghanistan, but not until I saw posts on Instagram.”
Karl, who has a 6-month-old daughter, said she looked at social media partly to distract herself, but it turned out to be her main source of information.
“As much as it was terrible to read it for our mental health, it was the only way we knew what was going on.”
Another organizer, Sierra Tate, said her husband is also still standing guard at the Kabul airport. She’s only had a few moments to catch up with him since the attack.
“The day of the bombing was the longest day of my life,” she said Saturday. “All we could do is sit in our living rooms and hope that no one comes and knocks on our door and hope that no more news breaks. My heart is so heavy for the families of the guys who were lost, for the Afghan people, for our husbands who had to lose their friends and had to witness everything they’re seeing over there.”
Both women also are in constant fear for their husbands as military leaders warn of continued threats of more terrorist attacks. And, they said they worry about how their husbands’ mental health will be affected when they return.
“These guys will never be the same,” Tate said, adding this is her husband’s seventh deployment.
Home for the 2/1 is Camp Horno, located at the northern end of the Camp Pendleton base, close to the border of San Clemente. The battalion’s earliest days go back to the 1920s, when it participated in the occupation of the Dominican Republic. Marines from the battalion saw combat in major World War II campaigns such as Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa. The 2/1 also fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the end of the Vietnam War, in 1975, the battalion helped run a temporary shelter at Camp Pendleton in which thousands of Vietnamese refugees found help after fleeing the collapse of Saigon.
In the steep hills high above the home of the 1st Marine Regiment are the crosses placed in tribute to the nine Marines, members of the Battalion Landing Team 1/4, who died last year in the training accident.
It is a sacred place for Camp Horno units and their Marines and sailors to visit and remember their fallen. More crosses will soon be added, standing in silhouette atop the hills.