DOVER AIR BASE, Delaware.
President Joe Biden met solemnly in private with the families of the 13 American soldiers killed in the recent attack on Kabul airport on Sunday, making him the fourth president to witness the return of fallen soldiers to Afghanistan. .
First Lady Jill Biden accompanied the trustee to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to receive the coffins and reunite with relatives, a military ritual for those killed in the wars.
The dead ranged in age from 20 to 31, and were originally from California and Massachusetts and other states. Among them was a 20-year-old Wyoming Marine who was going to be a father for the first time in three weeks and a 22-year-old Navy officer who in his last conversation with his mother on FaceTime told him not to worry because “my comrades take care of me.”
Five of them were just 20 years old, that is, they had just been born when the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that led the United States to invade Afghanistan to oust the Taliban passed. of power and eradicate the network In Qaeda that had taken root there.
The soldiers died at the end of the US military presence in Afghanistan, at a time when a chaotic evacuation was taking place at Kabul airport, where thousands of people wanted to flee the country after the return of the Taliban in power.
“The 13 soldiers we lost were heroes who gave the utmost sacrifice in service of the highest ideals of the homeland, and saving the lives of other people,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday.
“His courage and dedication allowed more than 117,000 people to reach a safe place,” he added.
Relatives of fallen soldiers often travel to Dover Air Base to be present at the time the flag-covered coffins are lowered from the plane carrying them to U.S. territory.
Aside from the serene orders of the honor guards accompanying the coffins, the brief prayers of the military chaplain are usually the only words uttered in the ritual.
Biden’s three immediate predecessors attended such ceremonies. It is the first time he has run as president, but he has seen them before.
Biden attended the corresponding event when the remains of two soldiers killed by the bomb of a suicide bomber returned to the Bagram base in Afghanistan in 2016, when Biden was about to end his term as vice president. In 2008, when he was an already requested senator from the family, he witnessed the return of the remains of a fallen soldier to Iraq.
The 13 soldiers killed in Kabul were the first U.S. soldiers to fall in Afghanistan since February 2020, when the Trump administration reached an agreement with the Taliban that the militia would cease attacks on the Taliban. US forces in exchange for Washington’s commitment to withdraw from the country by May 2021.
Eleven of the 13 were Marines. One was from the Navy and one from the Army.