He Was the Last Dog Out of Kabul. He Sat at the Aircraft Door for Ten Minutes Before He Would Board. Nobody Could Figure Out Why. Then Someone Understood.
August 30, 2021.
The last American military flight out of Kabul.
Every soldier boarded.
Every piece of equipment was loaded.
Flint would not board.
K-9 Flint II was a Belgian Malinois
with a Special Operations element
whose designation this account will not confirm.
His handler was Staff Sergeant Kwame Asante.
They were the last on the tarmac.
The aircraft was ready.
The ramp was down.
Asante gave the command to board.
Flint did not move.
Asante gave it again.
Flint sat.
In six years together — Flint had never refused a board command.
Not once.
Asante knelt beside him.
He looked at the aircraft.
He looked at the tarmac.
He looked at the perimeter wire — still lit, still standing,
still the wire that had been their wire
for fourteen months.
He looked at Flint.
Flint was looking at the wire.
Ten minutes.
The loadmaster radioed: we need to go.
The pilots radioed: we need to go.
Everyone radioed.
Asante said:
“Give us a minute.”
They gave them a minute.
Flint sat and looked at the wire.
Asante sat beside him on the tarmac.
He did not rush him.
He did not command him again.
He sat.
He understood — in the way you understand things
when you have worked beside something
for six years —
that Flint was doing something
that had no protocol,
no training,
no authorized procedure.
He was saying goodbye.
Not to Afghanistan.
Not to the mission.
To the wire.
To the fourteen months of perimeter they had walked together.
To every night they had stood at that wire
and kept what was inside safe
from what was outside.
He was not going to board
until he had finished saying goodbye to it.
After ten minutes — Flint stood.
He turned.
He walked up the ramp.
He found his position.
He lay down.
Asante boarded behind him.
He did not say anything.
The ramp came up.
The aircraft lifted.
Asante wrote, in his personal log, the following morning:
“He wouldn’t board until he was ready.
I’ve given that command six hundred times.
He’s never refused.
He refused last night.
For ten minutes.
He sat and looked at that wire.
I sat beside him.
I think he was saying goodbye.
I think he was doing the thing that none of us knew how to do —
that all of us needed to do —
and he was doing it for us.
He was looking at the fourteen months.
He was looking at the wire.
He was honoring it.
He didn’t know how to just — leave.
He needed it to be finished properly.
I didn’t rush him.
Because I needed it too.
I needed someone to say goodbye to it properly.
He did it for both of us.
He always did things for both of us.”
Still Here. K-9 Flint II. Special Operations. Kabul.
August 30, 2021. The last tarmac.
He would not board until it was finished.
He looked at the wire.
He said goodbye for both of them.
He always did things for both of them.