Getting Out Of Afghanistan

By the time we thought about leaving Afghanistan, we’d been tossing gear into the country for more than a decade. This is the story of how we moved out.

The convoy of army trucks, cranes, and flatbeds has been chugging its way under cover of darkness through the craggy mountains of eastern Afghanistan for hours. Now just a few miles from its destination, an outpost in the town of Chamkani, a stone’s throw from the border with Pakistan, the sun is beginning to uncloak the convoy’s movements. The gunners are swiveling back and forth atop armored trucks, searching the steep mountain walls for signs of an ambush. Combat engineers at the front of the line—the bomb hunters, known as sappers—scour the road for signs of IEDs. The soldiers are pretty sure they’re going to get hit. They just don’t know when.

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