Air Force crew recalls final flight out of Afghanistan: 'That image is frozen in time forever'

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Crew of last flight out of Afghanistan recounts 20-year mission

Fox News' Bill Hemmer speaks with Air Force crew members about efforts to evacuate as the Taliban was moving to retake control of the country.

One year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Fox News’ Bill Hemmer checked back in with crew members who led the final U.S. Air Force flight out of the country, signaling the end of the 20-year war. 

In Sept. 2021, Lt. Col. Alex Pelbath described the experience on "America’s Newsroom" as surreal and one of the most challenging times of his life given the loss of 13 U.S. service members.

Eleven months later, Pelbath once again recalled his mission in a conversation with Hemmer from his home base in South Carolina.

"We took off in a formation, all five aircraft in a row," he said. "And I was that last one. So that image for me is just frozen in time forever."

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Staff Sgt. Nicolas Miller-Assous, a loadmaster, was tasked with ensuring military members and thousands of Afghan allies were safely evacuated.  

"Our primary focus throughout that whole month was to evacuate as many people as we could," Miller-Assous said. 

Major Kirby Wedan also spoke with Hemmer about her experience as she led the final formation from the cockpit.

Wedan described feeling relief as well as a mix of other emotions as the crew left Afghanistan. She flew the airstrip with no air traffic control, a first in her career as a pilot.

Evacuees wait to board a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 23.  (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Isaiah Campbell)

Hemmer asked iM she still thinks about the hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies who were left behind.

"Every day," she responded. 

"What I want to convey and to talk about from this experience that I want people to know is the humanity that happened and the effort and the heart of everyone that was involved in the entire operation," she said.

Pelbath said he doesn’t believe there was a better way to evacuate the country given the constraints he was under but mourned the tragic loss of the 13 service members.

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Pelbath made one final call once all five planes in the Mobility Air Forces (MAF) had cleared the threat area.

"I reported over the radio ‘MAF safe’… That was officially the end. That was it," he said.

"And the war was over."