Great pride and a lot of emotion: Minister who led Kabul evacuation reflects five years on
Holding back tears, Veterans & People Minister Calvin Bailey explained how the Air Mobility Force he commanded in 2021 stood and clapped the Parachute Regiment as they boarded the last flight out of Kabul.
Mr Bailey was a wing commander and the OC of 70 Squadron when he was tasked with this key role on Operation Pitting, the mission stood up to evacuate Afghan people who served alongside British forces after the Taliban seized back control.
Five years on and he's reflecting on what must have seemed an impossible mission.
Over a hundred flights and more than 15,000 evacuated
"There was a massive amount of apprehension and fear in a way, as we were departing to go there. And when we arrived, we were really in the thick of it," Mr Bailey told BFBS Forces News.
"All of the aircrew were in this kind of rigid cycle. And if at any moment we had taken someone out, we could count the number of people that we weren't going to be able to extract from Kabul."
Over the course of just two weeks, the RAF flew more than 100 flights and British forces personnel evacuated over 15,000 people from the Afghan capital.
"I think all of us were just determined to make sure that we did as much as we could with the time that we had. And I think... everyone was very much in that mindset. That brought an awful lot of pressure on people," he explained.
"Because as successful as we were, there was always going to be a number of people who we weren't going to be able to get to, and we were just trying to close that number by as much as we could."
Two months before the evacuation, British forces ended a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan, which defined a generation of British servicemen and women, so the almost unprecedented airlift that was Pitting felt deeply personal.
"I finished flying training on 11 September 2001. And so I had only ever known Afghanistan as being an ongoing thing for almost the entirety of my 24 and a bit years," he said.
"A lot of my experience and time away had been in Afghanistan. So, there was a very, very strong emotional attachment."
The desire to change careers
The minister also credits his experience on Op Pitting and his disappointment with some of the politicians involved with his move into politics.
"It's very simple for an individual to take orders, pick up their kit and get up and go. What you leave behind is quite a mess. I'm very acutely aware of us doing that to our people as a result of having it done to me and done to my family," Mr Bailey said.
"And I at the time thought it was great disrespect that others weren't prepared to make that sacrifice in the cold comfort of Whitehall. And that is a position that I don't want our service people to find themselves in again."
And the reason for his emotion when he talked about the soldiers from the Parachute Regiment on the frontline of Op Pitting dealing with chaos, crowds and danger?
"We knew that not everyone would be able to thank them, and whilst they would be so immersed in that operation and the difficult situations in which they had found themselves, we wanted to communicate that from as much of the nation as we could, to say thank you to them," the Veterans & People Minister said.
"So great pride, but also a lot of emotion, as you can see."
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