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normal doors and hatches closed lay down strobe light on restart check complete your left engineer start number two starting

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with three one zero ten pilot project podcast clear takeoff from with three one left

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All right, we're ready for departure here at the Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and mission aviation pilots brought to you by Skies Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison. With me today for the conclusion of our three-part series is Major Ian Wookie, a TACEL pilot on the CH-147F Chinook and Executive Assistant to Chief Air and Space Force Development in Ottawa, Ontario.

01:19.32
Speaker
Ian, thank you once again for coming back to this third and final part of the series. It's great to be back with you, Brian. i i appreciate the opportunity to share the story. Listeners can check out part one and two to hear about the slow deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, culminating in the fall of Kabul and the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy there.

01:38.33
Speaker
For this episode, we'll be talking about Ian's experiences as the last Canadian in Afghanistan, as well as his on-the-ground view of Operation Allies Refuge. So at this point you've completed the evacuation of the embassy.

01:56.25
Speaker
The airfield is relatively secure and now it's time to evacuate the people who are actually on the airfield proper and get all these people out of the country.

02:07.51
Speaker
Yeah. So this is, this is where the, the mission kind of turns from, um, security to evacuation. Uh,

02:18.30
Speaker
We managed to retain us control of the airfield. And by the 17th, we actually had their non-NATO countries start flowing into the AO to support their own missions for evacuation.

02:33.56
Speaker
So it as we look at it, operationalized refuge as ah as an American operation was how do we get these thousands of people, entitled personnel,

02:44.92
Speaker
out of Afghanistan and and how do we move them safely from Afghanistan to America or Afghanistan to a a safe location.

02:56.44
Speaker
Uh, but it wasn't just the Americans that were doing that. The Canadians were doing it. Uh, all of our partner nations were doing it at anybody who had a vested interest in that country or any sort of diplomatic mission in that country, we're starting to flow into the AO.

03:09.98
Speaker
Right. Um, so you, ah Again, it was it was almost a callback Bagram and seeing just heavy lift aircraft everywhere as we were doing the retrograde.

03:21.37
Speaker
This time it became... um pick your pick your country's c seventeen or A400M or C-130 military transport plane.

03:33.88
Speaker
Now we're bringing civilian transport planes now that we had the airfield secure and we had um some tactical air traffic control set back up again so that we could flow people in. And now we're we're bringing people in to support the evacuation mission.

03:49.46
Speaker
And now it becomes a challenge of space on the airfield. So how do you actually manage... dozens and dozens of cargo planes and passenger planes coming onto the airfield, all, all to do the same thing, but not all in close coordination with each other.

04:09.30
Speaker
ah so that, that was what we started to be able to affect was, okay, how do we, how do we help manage being an aviation task force? How do we help manage kind of the aviation movements on the ground?

04:23.99
Speaker
And the the units that had flowed in from the US brought a little bit expertise. They brought some aviation folks. They brought some planners who were actually able to help coordinate this. And now we were, our task force was trying to manage it from a from a level of, hey, we're familiar with this AO. We've been on this airfield for a few months. Like we know we know how to operate here. How how can we help affect the How can we help enable the the missions of these other nations?

04:54.33
Speaker
So whether whether it was one of our operations staff marshalling the German aircraft around our ramp to make sure that they had space to park around our helicopters, or whether it was sending a um and another planner rep over to the U.S. Marine Corps HQ where they had kind of set up the air cell to start managing the inflow.

05:15.45
Speaker
of personnel because what when they came in, like we, we didn't know what the security situation was when this contingency force came in. So the 82nd brought artillery, they brought vehicles, they brought people, like they brought equipment to actually sustain a fight because we didn't know whether we would have to.

05:35.32
Speaker
e Luckily we, we really didn't have to. Um, there was It was relatively early on, probably the first day, sometime on the 16th, when we got confirmation that there was an agreement with the Taliban and that we were now not, I wouldn't say partners or allies, but we were now working in coordination with the Taliban to make sure that we could have successful operations on the airfield, which

06:08.86
Speaker
was a complete mind mindset shift from what we've been doing for the last 20 years. Right. Yeah. But it was, it was a, it was a pragmatic agreement I'd say on, on, on both sides because we had a vested interest in making sure that we could safely and securely get everybody out of the country. And they had a vested interest in making sure that we safely got out of the country so that there was no risk of,

06:37.98
Speaker
um, bringing further forces to bear or, uh, potentially reoccupying spaces that we, that we'd left previously. Right. Yeah.

06:49.11
Speaker
Uh, so that, that was, that was a unique challenge to present to, uh, some of the folks on the ground and some of our crews. And I mean, it,

07:00.86
Speaker
It was not an easy situation to be in, especially for the force protection folks, for the 82nd troops who were who were actually securing the perimeter the airfield where they were watching the Taliban execute civilians on the external perimeter of the wall. Oh, man. Where there were daily firefights going on in and around the perimeter, right? it was the The security situation was not better, but it at least stabilized to a point where we could execute some operations from inside the airfield.

07:29.08
Speaker
Once we were able to to kind of so secure ourselves inside the airfield is when we started the evacuation operations. And that's, that was like a little bit of like good news, a little bit of purpose in what we were doing once, once we got, once we got to that phase of the mission.

07:52.82
Speaker
So the evacuation actually begins. What were the Chinooks doing in these following days? So now that we had the security situation on the airfield somewhat stabilized and it was functional, right? We were able to flow some aircraft in and we were able to flow aircraft out.

08:12.76
Speaker
The Marine Corps and the SP MAGTAF had been given the mission to do some of the security processing, ah bringing the entitled civilians onto the airfield. The 82nd still had security the perimeter.

08:25.18
Speaker
our kind of US Forces Afghanistan task force that was still there was not subordinate to the 82nd that had come in, even though we were from the same division, because we were still part of the original kind of diplomatic security mission.

08:39.29
Speaker
So we started operating in support of kind of the US Forces Afghanistan mission, which was to fly to areas outside the perimeter of the airfield,

08:51.80
Speaker
and pick up some entitled personnel who were being staged at offsite locations. So there were certain people who were ah being contacted by American personnel to be able to to get to safe locations outside of Kabul.

09:11.51
Speaker
where we would then be able to pick them up in a Chinook and bring them back to the airfield without having them have to fight through the streets of Kabul, the the Taliban checkpoints, to be able to actually get back to the airfield to be evacuated.

09:25.78
Speaker
So over the course of about eight days, from 17th, 18th, until the 25th, we flying...

09:35.74
Speaker
we were flying Three Chinooks a day pretty routinely out ah out to locations outside of Kabul to be able to pick up a number of entitled civilian personnel bring them back to the airfield.

09:53.17
Speaker
We were doing a several hundred a day to a point where I think the the final tally was just shy of the 10,000. I think we got about 9,800 people on our three Chinooks coming back to the airfield.

10:07.77
Speaker
Now that's, that's a bit of a logistical challenge in itself. As I said, the Chinooks only got about 30 seats. At this point in the mission, we were not necessarily putting in people in seats. We were, we're kind of folding the seats up on the wall of the helicopter.

10:22.68
Speaker
and fitting as many people as we reasonably could into those aircraft. So we we were bringing them back to the airfield 80 to a hundred at a time per aircraft. Wow. Which is, um it's pretty unique in terms of, uh, the missions we've been doing, but it wasn't wild considering at that time, some of the C-17s that were flying evacuation missions at a Kabul were taking four to 600 people at a time as well.

10:50.90
Speaker
Right. When then they're they're typically not taking more than 150. So and everybody was was being asked to to operate a little bit outside their comfort zone and and and do some demanding things in support of the bigger mission.

11:09.59
Speaker
You mentioned that these fleets are operating kind of way outside of their norms in terms of the amount of people they're carrying and crew rest and all these types of things. Can you describe some of the challenges encountered during the evacuation?

11:22.26
Speaker
Yeah, some of the biggest challenges during the evacuation is just the the scale of what was happening. I mean, it's the it's one of the largest evacuations, if not the largest in in in history, as far as we can tell.

11:35.74
Speaker
it it was a worldwide mobilization of militaries and and infrastructure and support facilities. Because when when you think of a non-combatant evacuation operation, and when we look at it in a military context, within that it's not just the act of evacuating someone, it's actually getting them from the the place where they are through a secure processing zone to a point of embarkation to a to some sort of temporary safe haven where they can then go for onward movement to an ultimate destination, right?

12:16.76
Speaker
And when you consider in in the context of the Afghan evacuation, specifically Allies Refuge and the American construct, because that's what I'm familiar with, the movement of people in and out of a landlocked country is is a logistical challenge.

12:32.41
Speaker
the The only way to move them out was by aircraft. And the security situation was such that civilian aircraft were not being chartered to go in there.

12:44.73
Speaker
So it was it was military and government aircraft, mostly C-17s, like the almost every C-17 in the world was rerouted to help this mission. That's crazy. All of those crews were put on wild schedules in various locations of the world to make sure you could get from a staging location in the Middle East into Kabul and then back. And even that in itself, any of those staging locations that were being used were kind of at the maximum range that those aircraft were capable of moving without fueling.

13:24.57
Speaker
So it it was a challenge too, to get them into the AO with sufficient fuel to be able to take a full load of passengers, which as I said, was four to 600 people and then move them back to wherever they came from hundreds of miles away. Like it just, it's, it's a logistical nightmare.

13:45.11
Speaker
And then when you look at it from the perspective of, okay, where are those people moving to? several of them flowed through Qatar through, uh, through the air base at Al-Adid.

13:57.43
Speaker
And there were there were periods where we had to stop the evacuation outflow because the location of the aircraft were landing, I couldn't handle them anymore. theyre All of the people that we were evacuating out of Kabul were just getting stuck at whatever they' their next stop at the temporary safe haven was.

14:16.15
Speaker
wow There were some security instances Al-Adid where you you had an aircraft land and you had panicked civilians opening emergency doors while the aircraft were taxiing and flooding out onto the runway. Oh, wow. When you consider what it takes to pack 600 people into the back of an aircraft for ay four to six hours of flying time to get them out of the AO.

14:45.30
Speaker
And those aircraft are not built with latrines on board. So you might only have one bathroom. what kind of What kind of sanitary situation are you now dealing with, right? So before those aircraft could then flow back into the AO, there was a level of sanitization that had to be done to those aircraft to make sure that they were they were safe and usable for the next mission.

15:06.97
Speaker
And then just pack the hours on it, like aircraft take maintenance. So the more hours you put on the aircraft, the more maintenance you need to do. Well, at least in in our case with the Chinooks that we were flying, the Apache that we were flying, I mean, at one point,

15:22.11
Speaker
our Apaches flew for over 36 hours straight. We just had crews swapping in and out, doing eight to 12 hour shifts, being airborne to support this mission. That's crazy.

15:35.03
Speaker
Like that, that's this fatiguing on the airframes and we had limited capacity to be able to do maintenance. We, once the department of state left, there was no fuel to replenish the airfield supply of fuel.

15:48.92
Speaker
So like, from a real life support perspective, we were dealing with the fuel and ammunition we have on hand. So we were back to kind of like whiteboard math of how many stories we were flying and how much fuel we were pulling out of the in-ground tanks on the airfield to be able to put into these aircraft to support the missions we were doing to make sure that we weren't about to run out of fuel because there was no resupply coming.

16:17.85
Speaker
Like there was there was no way to to get, more fuel into that airfield with security situation the way it was. um All of the contractors who provided, whether they were local or hired or whatever, the they were gone. Like they they were some of the first people evacuated. So how do you keep the lights on and the water running at the airfield, but like let alone in the city?

16:46.10
Speaker
and in that kind of situation too. So that we're at a point where even within our task force, we had, we had one intrepid young Lieutenant pilot who found a random, uh, Army Corps of Engineers contractor who managed to miss his evacuation flight.

17:07.13
Speaker
And the two of them were going around the airfield making sure that the water pumps were still running, making sure that the, that the power supply was still functioning and servicing the generators.

17:18.84
Speaker
Like yeah people were acting way outside of their, their, their role, just, just to make sure that, that things were still happening in this operation was still going.

17:29.24
Speaker
Wow. So that the, the challenges were absolutely insane in terms of like the scope and scale of, of what this operation was, was trying to achieve.

17:41.55
Speaker
Amidst all these challenges, how did NATO help with the evacuation? As you look at the the ISAF mission, like the International Security Assistance Force that was present Afghanistan, na NATO had been in Afghanistan from from the beginning, right? it It wasn't just an American mission. It was a NATO mission.

17:58.36
Speaker
So all of them had different vested interests in in the success or failure of Afghanistan as a country, right? So all of these different countries each wanted to make sure that they could provide to their diplomatic mission or the civilians that they'd worked with or their' their own entitled personnel to make sure that they could get in and conduct their own evacuation operation.

18:26.46
Speaker
So NATO proper was sending staff in to help do ah immigrant visa processing. All of the countries were sending their own aircraft in. But again, it was everything was happening so quickly.

18:40.09
Speaker
And the security situation was such that there there was really no time to wait. That there was not really... Well, there was no NATO headquarters left in country.

18:53.72
Speaker
So there there was very limited ability to actually be able to do any sort of high-level coordination. So every partner country was trying to flow their own aircraft in to get their home their own entitled personnel out. And it was it was one of those situations where you really just had to deal with the situation on the ground as it occurred.

19:15.70
Speaker
And there was there was no level of advanced planning that was that was going to disconnect that. So really the north side of the airfields became a staging ground.

19:27.99
Speaker
The, a couple of the, the aprons that had previously kind of been the the passenger terminal area or the the housing lodging area for the NATO mission on H-Kaya, uh, really just became a processing facility.

19:44.38
Speaker
So people coming onto the airfield, they, they generally had some level of, paperwork or documentation to to suggest that they were supposed to be there.

19:57.18
Speaker
And they were they were then kind of being individually sorted by the the countries that were on the ground or the the groups that were on the ground, the interested parties who were then doing kind of their own processing to make sure that they were getting the people that they had promised to help on the planes that were on the ground.

20:16.60
Speaker
The bigger challenge was actually sorting through the people who were outside the fence. And this is where i i wasn't there. like i I was there, but I wasn't ah wasn't at the perimeter.

20:29.14
Speaker
right that that wasn't That wasn't my mission. I was not um because not in the boots of the Marine Corps people who had to... like those Those troops standing at the gate who had to try and differentiate between...

20:45.94
Speaker
the 600 people who were coming up and waving papers in their faces and saying whether or not they're entitled. It was a logistical nightmare on the ground because there's, there's only so many ways to access the airfield, but we had from a force protection perspective, we kind of had to like really manage the flow of personnel through each of the gates that were actually open to accept these refugees and the entitled personnel.

21:16.66
Speaker
So we we had to do rotate enclosures of the gates just to try and manage the flow of people in and out. um And it it was not an easy task at all.

21:27.32
Speaker
And I ah encourage um anyone who enjoys listening to this podcast, I'm sure listens to other podcasts. There's a School of War is ah is a really good, just like professional military development podcast I listen to. And at the end of August,

21:43.13
Speaker
and They did an interview with one of the Marine Corps company commanders who was on the ground, actually at the gate, doing that, trying to do that differentiation between who gets in and who doesn't.

21:58.07
Speaker
um And it's a really fascinating interview to hear it from from that perspective of of how you're actually going to manage that situation on the ground. I don't want to say we were lucky, but our mission set was such that we didn't necessarily have to do that differentiation.

22:13.72
Speaker
We were typically, when we were doing the evacuation with our task force, we were given people who had already been processed a to put on our Chinook as like, these people are going to the airfield to be evacuated.

22:26.44
Speaker
They've been vetted. So we we didn't have the same level of concern in trying to to figure out who who gets to be where.

22:36.72
Speaker
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22:55.61
Speaker
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23:09.72
Speaker
So during all this chaos, you managed to get some help from a Canadian friend. Can you tell us about this?

23:17.56
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah it's a really interesting part of the story that that's probably always going to stick with me. um in the In the middle of all these evacuations while they were going on, but there was...

23:30.78
Speaker
There was no way to flow anything in to Kabul, right? Any aircraft that were coming into Kabul were coming in with a purpose to conduct some sort of evacuation operation, and they were flowing in empty and they were leaving full. like there There was just no feasible way to bring more people or equipment into Kabul without undoing all of the planning that we're doing to try clear the the airfield.

23:59.35
Speaker
the problem we had was ah one of our aircraft had a kind of component that that broke that we actually needed to be able to fly. And all of our maintenance parts and all of our the the components of the battalion that had retrograded Afghanistan that weren't part of the the force that stayed forward in Kabul had gone back to to Kuwait where they were where they were staged and waiting to to receive us when we eventually left the country.

24:28.02
Speaker
And they had all of our maintenance components. We had no dedicated airflow to get back into the country. It was kind of like US Air Force was doing the evacuation piece and we were managing the the situation on the ground.

24:40.92
Speaker
ah But it just so happens that the Canadian mission was also located in Kuwait. And I was able through just kind of serendipity to know the the acting ATF commander on the ground in Kuwait, who I contacted on WhatsApp, connected her with the with one of our crew chiefs who had who had the component that we needed to move.

25:11.80
Speaker
They managed to link up, and on one of the Canadian flights that was coming in to bring out Canadian evacuees, ah they managed to get this part onto the aircraft.

25:22.55
Speaker
and flown in within 24 hours so that we could get our Chinook back in the air. Another interesting piece of that story is when I, when I was standing on the ground waiting to collect the part, our C-17 landed and I went on board to say, to say hi and thanks to the crew and the, uh, the aircraft commander flying that aircraft was, uh,

25:45.40
Speaker
was an old RNC classmate and guided pilot training with. So it was just like a really weird kind of like funny seeing you here moment when when we were able to actually ah affect some some good for the mission and do a little bit of collaboration between the Canadian-American forces.

26:06.94
Speaker
And that that was just, that was really how the whole evacuation went. It was a lot of low-level coordination of people just kind of making things happen despite the the chaos around them. Wow. And I, I really appreciate that because had we not got that component, I'm not, I'm not convinced that that aircraft, uh, we, we would have been suffering to actually evacuate as many people as we, as we did.

26:31.12
Speaker
I'm not sure if that aircraft would have made it home. So. And actually, i think we can name that person who helped you from the the deputy. What was her position again? Sorry, deputy of the air Task Force.

26:44.18
Speaker
Yeah, she was she was the the deputy task force commander, actually act acting Air Task Force commander at the time, because I think the the Air Task Force commander was out of the country. But that's um Lieutenant Colonel Malin Lavallee, who's at 17 wing in Winnipeg now.

27:00.22
Speaker
Yeah, and and the reason I say we can name her is because I actually happen to have hosted a podcast for the RCAF while I was still in, one of their first episodes of the RCAF Jumpseat Podcast, where you can hear all about her experience ah during this evacuation from her perspective. So that's kind of a cool intersection of of topics and people. That's really neat.

27:23.13
Speaker
So how many people were evacuated during these nine or so days? And what do you give credit to for this achievement? Over the course of that week and a half, I think, I mentioned, I think, the the total number between the embassy of the evacuation and the the evacuation that we did as a following task force. Our task force moved just over 10,000 people.

27:45.21
Speaker
But overall, the mission, like Operation Allies Refuge and the the other countries, I think the number and came out to almost people total were moved out in nine days Which is crazy.

28:01.40
Speaker
So do a little bit of reverse math on that. you're You're talking about probably 12,000 people a day being flown on military aircraft out out of Kabul in the middle of one of the most tenuous security situations that you can imagine.

28:20.54
Speaker
it was It was no small achievement. And then and then then thing to think about, i mentioned earlier, 125,000 people getting to their ultimate destination. ah it It was literally a worldwide effort.

28:33.72
Speaker
I know from an American perspective, some of the U.S. bases in Europe, air bases in Germany, and other locations for the for the Brits and some of their staging locations the UK.

28:48.92
Speaker
the These bases were very quickly inundated with ah with people on very short notice. And the effort it took at a local level...

29:02.98
Speaker
at all these bases worldwide. And then even back to the U S and Canada, like trying to receive all of these people in such rapid succession and, and move them from one location to another without, ah without leaving people in a, in a location without any sort of support for an extended duration of time. It's just a, just a testament to how, how capable people are when, when they get focused on a mission like that.

29:30.81
Speaker
The logistics of this mission, of this evacuation, is hard to comprehend. It's literally moving an entire large city of people out of a country in nine days.

29:45.69
Speaker
Yeah, it it's it's kind of mind-blowing to look back on it and acknowledge what was accomplished. So what eventually brought a stop to the evacuation?

29:56.73
Speaker
it It was the security situation. And I think that's what everybody knew it was going to be eventually. But on the 26th of August, there was a terrorist attack outside the gates of the airfield at Abbey Gate where ah ah suicide bomber detonated an IED, which ended up killing 13 U.S. service members and had dozens and dozens of civilians outside the gate.

30:26.14
Speaker
And that was a a really challenging day because we knew from the intelligence picture that there was a risk. We knew that the security situation was such that we we could not keep up this level of evacuation indefinitely without inducing some sort of force protection risk but we'd had a week of success and there was, there was optimism that we could, we could get through to some sort of end state successfully.

30:59.74
Speaker
And, and when the bomb went out, every, everything kind of stopped. Like when that bomb went off at Abbey gate, um the, the first and foremost was Okay. okay What now?

31:11.93
Speaker
So we, we spooled up an aircraft to fly over to, to try and provide any sort of hasty Kazovac. At that point, they didn't end up needing us at all because most most of the casualties had been had been ground transported back to the back to the medical facility on the on the airfield.

31:31.47
Speaker
But at that point, it really drove home kind of the level of risk that we were accepting in continuing the evacuation. And the decision was made from from the higher levels that ah the evacuation was not going to continue in the same form that it was at the time.

31:51.70
Speaker
And that really was the the turning point where we started to shift the mission set from evacuating as many Afghans as possible to making sure that we as a that's a military force of now probably close to 3,000 troops on the on the airfield could safely evacuate safely evacuate ourselves.

32:16.12
Speaker
Right. So we, we then, we kind of had to do a strategic analysis of what assets do we have left to be able to move, move in and what, what's on the ground and how much airflow do we have left before we reach capacity to make sure that we can get all of the friendly forces out before we

32:37.62
Speaker
before whatever deadline comes. And at this point, I think the the deadline had been shifted now from, it was no longer the 11th September, but it had been set. The target was was the end of August.

32:50.46
Speaker
So at this point, you're basically starting contingency planning on how to get out of the country. What did that look like? It looked different for different groups that were on the ground. um from a forced perspective From a force protection standpoint,

33:06.23
Speaker
the 82nd Airborne troops who were securing the perimeter of the airfield, well, they were looking at, okay, how do we how do we draw down to a minimum viable level to be able to provide force protection until we have to get the last the last boots off the ground?

33:23.54
Speaker
From the U.S. Marine Corps perspective, who were kind of running the the noncombatant evacuation operation, Well, that as soon as those evacuation activities ceased and they they no longer needed that capability, they were able to kind of just um arrange themselves into chocks and flow out of the AO.

33:43.64
Speaker
From an aviation task force perspective level, like from a from the from a task force talent level, we we had to shape it as, okay, we can we can move ourselves out, but we have...

33:58.71
Speaker
all these aircraft here and we we had slowly been drawing down aircraft through the evacuation so uh some of our uh-60s are retrograded we retrograded one of the h-64s but those chinooks were still lifting and in order to move a chinook by air you either fly it or you put it in the back of a c-17 and one chinook fits in the back of one c-17 and not much else so we had to do a strategic assessment of is it worth, is it worth our time to be able to take up this precious airflow of one whole C-17 just for this one Chinook?

34:42.36
Speaker
And that, and that math kind of took place over several days where we had to assess, okay, how, how many people do we have on the ground? Like what, what equipment can, should, or should not be left behind because people aren't being left behind, right? Like that's, that's priority one. So make sure we have enough airflow to get the people out.

34:58.78
Speaker
For sure. So over the course of the next few days, we had to we had to do analysis kind of at our level to decide, okay, do we or do we not have airflow? If we do have airflow, the the a answer is easy. We can just pack up the, we can start carrying down the Chinooks to be able to fit on the C-17. But if we don't have airflow, well, what are our other options? Well, one, we can we can fly them out of the country.

35:21.62
Speaker
Okay, we'll fly fly them to where. um Afghanistan geographically is not, in a really accessible location, especially for any sort of seaport. So we, we don't have the legs to get them to a ship.

35:35.99
Speaker
So we're going to fly them across a border. Okay. Well, what, which which border we're we're probably not going Southwest to Iran. yeah Um, are there options in Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, right? Like there's like, what, what are, what are we going to do and where are we going to go?

35:53.72
Speaker
Um, And that what level of what level of coordination can be done between governments to allow us to to cross an international border, acknowledging that the Afghan air force that flew out 10 days ago didn't make it across an international border because some of the air defenses.

36:11.32
Speaker
So another option is, okay, we leave the equipment behind, but we're not going to leave functioning equipment for the Taliban. So... are we just going to destroy the aircraft and leave it? So what what do we have to do to be able to prepare to destroy those aircraft?

36:28.02
Speaker
So we were we we were creating contingencies where we had um enough destructive material to be able to make sure that we if we were to leave equipment behind, that it would be adequately destroyed and denied anybody who wanted to use it next, right?

36:46.04
Speaker
ah ultimately and lucky for us, we, we managed to get sufficient airflow into a point where we were able to get all of our aircraft out on C-17s and managed to get them back to Kuwait where we could, we could then get them for onward movement back back stateside.

37:06.58
Speaker
So a couple tenuous days there where we really didn't know, we really didn't know what came next and we were, We were planning for all eventual outcomes.

37:21.07
Speaker
Luckily, we did manage to get enough airlift to get to get those aircraft out. So you left on a C-17 with the second last Chinook from Afghanistan on the 30th August, 24 hours before the Americans withdrew.

37:34.84
Speaker
Can you describe the day you left Afghanistan? It was a lot like all of the days that came before it. To be completely honest, that... that that last two weeks in the country was a bit of, was ah a bit of groundhog day, just trying to figure out where aircraft were going and who was getting on what chalk and and what could we reasonably, what could reasonably leave at what time with, with what level of support and what force protection had to stay behind.

38:02.78
Speaker
Um, the chalk I ended up leaving on. So I, I think that the day for me was characterized by a little bit of,

38:13.05
Speaker
It was equal parts concern and relief. A little bit of relief because i spent the day helping tear down that Chinook. So it was all hands on deck, right? To be able to disassemble the Chinook to a level where we could actually push it in the back of the C-17.

38:30.60
Speaker
Acknowledging that we were getting the majority of our people out on those last chocks with those aircraft and that they were going to be safely on their way to to somewhere a little more secure.

38:42.55
Speaker
a little bit of trepidation and concern because i wasn't on the last chalk. Right. And I wanted to be there to make sure that we could still get everybody out a reasonable time. But at that point, it's, it's, it's not for me to question who who's going on, which chalk, right? Like we're, we're trying to make sure that we've got the right combination of qualification, leadership,

39:07.73
Speaker
uh, and expertise kind of distributed among the the retrograde activities. Yeah. Um, and then we, we finally loaded up in the middle of the night. So I, I never really got to, was the back of a C-17. There's, there's not really any windows and it's middle of the night. So you kind of picture this aircraft taking off and going over the horizon with the sun setting in the background. I have no, I have no memory of that. I have, I have memories of,

39:35.51
Speaker
ah sharing a few hugs and high fives with the, uh, with the folks that I was, I was on that flight with getting out to, to be able to get into Kuwait.

39:47.80
Speaker
Did you feel a sense of relief at, at leaving? Like, you know, you've, you've talked about obviously that sense of like, i wish I was there to make sure everyone gets out, but was there a sense of relief of like, okay, wow, we're out of this situation? Uh, when I landed in Kuwait,

40:04.02
Speaker
there was there was never really kind of, there was always that, that moment where, you know, like I've been around aviation long enough to know that things could go wrong. Right. Yeah. Like something mechanically breaks on takeoff and you know that you're either reporting the takeoff or you're, you're going to the alternate and taking off on a cobble. Well, the shit, the alternate's cobble.

40:24.89
Speaker
So it it it was really not until we were several hours into the flight and kind of knew we were on final approach for Kuwait when, when you could really start to feel a sense of like relief, um, relief that I could, and not, not even for me necessarily, but like relief that I could land in Kuwait and actually like call my family, which I hadn't really been able to do for the days leading up to, up to being able to leave. And that it was a tough balance, right? Trying to trying to keep people informed and trying not to,

41:02.49
Speaker
keep people informed while being focused on the mission. Like there was not a lot of communication with, with the outside world for those, for those two weeks, good, bad, or otherwise. How did your family handle that? How did your wife handle that with kind of knowing like the media has been covering it at this point. So, you know, how are they handling that back home?

41:23.46
Speaker
Uh, I'm sure it was stressful. I think that was probably because there was so much media attention, there was no way to get away from it. Mm-hmm. So the only thing that anybody back home was probably getting was those wild images on the news of people flooding the gates of the airfield, the news about the IED blast, the news about the evacuation deadline.

41:51.10
Speaker
so it could not have been easy or stressful on them. like it They knew that I was still there, that I was still working, that I was still kind of in in the middle of the mission. Um, but it probably wasn't until I was, I was out of the country and back in, back in September, uh, that we could actually kind of have those conversations and recognize that I was going to be coming home at some point.

42:17.72
Speaker
Yeah. Which must've been a huge relief, uh, for your family. and And there was actually some waiting in Kuwait, right? I think you made it back to the U S by Christmas. Yeah, there was ah there was a period of about three or four months in Kuwait. Because if I think about a big picture, right? Like we are we are one task force of several dozen hundred that are all kind of stuck now in this in this weird post-Afghanistan mission fallout.

42:52.69
Speaker
So if you think about, we like our mission was to retrograde Afghanistan. Well, the initial plan was, okay, retrograde it where? Kind of the the staging location that was chosen for our battalion was, okay, go go to go to Kuwait.

43:05.50
Speaker
um But now we're in Kuwait with aircraft and people and all of the airflow in the world had just been completely sapped. there was no airflow left to like move anybody anywhere.

43:19.54
Speaker
Everybody was trying to reconstitute in some location. Uh, the base we were at in Kuwait was a little bit, uh, overflowing with people who were not supposed to, like we, we weren't necessarily supposed to be there at that point.

43:34.49
Speaker
So there had been no planning done to put a battalion's worth of aircraft and people in that location. And then like the real life support of how, do how do you manage that? How do you, how do you flow them out? How do get the aircraft back?

43:48.95
Speaker
Um, We didn't really have any sort of logistical tail set up there to be able to successfully do any of the maintenance on the aircraft or to be able to prep the aircraft to to get home. So it took it took us a few months to really get get settled and reoriented toward redeployment.

44:07.32
Speaker
to a point where we're were waiting, waiting on airlift, waiting on sea lift to be able to get, to get that equipment home. So the the mission didn't end the day we left Afghanistan. The mission really didn't end until everybody was back home because once, once you're redeployed to a staging location, well, now you're planning the redeployment from the staging location. Right. So there was, there was there was still a lot of work to be done. So yeah, we, uh, I don't think I, I didn't get home until I think it was late November, early December.

44:35.10
Speaker
Okay. So you said you got home late November, early December. You get home, the dust settles a bit. um How did you feel looking back on everything you've been through?

44:48.06
Speaker
Did you have time to process it? Or has it just sort of been compressed into this operational experience that you went through and it's done and that's that? I'd say it's a little bit of both.

45:00.60
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, when when we redeployed November, December, i mean, the battalion went went back to work at Fort Bragg, right? So you still got to go back to work with the same people I was seeing every day through kind of January through March. The the challenge for me was um about the same time I landed back in the U.S.,

45:22.61
Speaker
uh i was getting a posting message to move back to canada so i as i said i think last last last interview it was it was supposed three-year exchange posting because of the deployment it ended up being extended to four so i was in the u.s uh from summer of 2018 until uh middle of kind of came home and so i i kind of came home and january february we were starting to make plans for actually leaving the u.s and and how to set up uh a handover for my successor at fort bragg and then come home to to start my next job back at uh back at 450 so didn't really have a lot of time to dwell on what had happened uh had some time to take a bit of an extended christmas leave period to uh

46:12.25
Speaker
to to take a break and and reset personally, but it it really just exists now as a, as a bit of ah an operational memory of a K pretty chaotic period where you were forced to, you were forced to get comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.

46:33.43
Speaker
And I've been able to take that forward with me in my career. If you could leave our listeners with a final thought, something that they should know, what would you say about this whole experience in Afghanistan?

46:49.14
Speaker
I would say that the the uncomfortable situations will occur. um You're always going to be faced with You're always going to be faced with decisions that you don't have the answer to.

47:01.63
Speaker
You're always going to be operating in an environment with incomplete information. that That hasn't changed since I've come home. Even in my new job, I'm dealing with incomplete information all the time, trying to find the best answer to the to the question I'm faced with.

47:14.97
Speaker
And whether you're leaning on somebody who's got more experience than you, like a ah mentor or family member or a colleague, it you really just have to understand that the the decisions you make are are going to be with incomplete information and you're not always going to be comfortable in the situation you're put in.

47:35.83
Speaker
But with with the understanding that your training has got you to a point where you've been put in a position a position for success and acknowledging that you're you're not alone in that, like the the whole military is team environment. you're you're never You're never operating in isolation.

47:56.28
Speaker
So it's i just I just suggest that even in the middle of the chaos, even when it looks like everything's falling apart, you're still surrounded by people who have your back and can help you out.

48:11.80
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. um No one is an island, especially when it comes to the military and leaning on your peers, leaning on your mentors. It's all really crucial. So yeah, that's great.

48:23.58
Speaker
So Ian, that does it for our chat on your time with the 82nd Airborne in the last days of Afghanistan. I just want to thank you so much, not only for being here today, but for all the important and dangerous work you've done and for taking the time to walk us through this story. I don't think it's really been told from a Canadian perspective, and I just really appreciate you taking that time. So thank you so much.

48:43.00
Speaker
Hey, thanks, Brian. i I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to to talk to you and share some experience with listeners. Yeah, it was it was awesome. Thank you. All right, that wraps up our three-part series with Major Ian Wookie and his experiences as the last Canadian in Afghanistan.

48:58.55
Speaker
Next week, we'll be taking a break for a much-needed vacation. The following week, the excitement continues as we sit down with Rock Vea. We'll hear about his time instructing at Moose Jaw and Saudi Arabia, his current job flying the CC295 Kingfisher, and the dramatic and exciting story of his ejection in a CT155 Hawk.

49:18.55
Speaker
Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest or do you have a great idea for a show? You can reach out to us at thepilotprojectpodcast at gmail.com or on all social media at podpilotproject. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF and Mission Aviation aircraft.

49:38.36
Speaker
As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three. That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.

49:51.30
Speaker
Keep the blue side up. See you.