Airman who helped save Afghan kids’ lives finally gets his due after paperwork snafu

Master Sgt. Matthew Parker received the Distinguished Flying Cross with a “C” device for combat in recognition of the care he provided in flight on Aug. 27, 2021, to three Afghan children who had been badly wounded in the Abbey Gate bombing in Kabul. Parker is a critical care air transport respiratory therapist with the 86th Medical Squadron at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. 

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — Master Sgt. Matthew Parker has finally received recognition for helping to save the lives of three children after one of the deadliest days for U.S. forces in Afghanistan more than three years ago. The official record of his actions to aid the critically injured Afghan children on a C-17 military flight from Kabul to Qatar on Aug. 27, 2021, was lost. A respiratory therapist on a critical care air transport team, Parker received no award for the mission or for his deployment to the Middle East during the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, others with whom he had deployed received awards within months of returning home. When he reached out to the unit he was assigned to in Kuwait, they told him, “ ‘We have a folder that says Parker, but there’s nothing in it,’ ” he recalled. “All my paperwork was apparently routing. It was signed, but it got lost,” Parker said. The snub left Parker salty as he dealt with traumatic memories from a deployment that had him wondering whether his Air Force career might be over. “I had a lot of things that I saw, a lot of attacks,” he said. “I was having trouble sleeping, focusing. With no medals from my deployment, I thought, ‘I’m never going to promote.”

Parker credits Air Force leaders for stepping in to change that. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross with “C” device, the nation’s highest award for extraordinary aerial achievement, earlier this month at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he is assigned to the 86th Medical Squadron.

Parker was based in Ohio when he deployed to the Middle East. His team went to Bagram Airfield and closed the aeromedical evacuation squadron at what had been the U.S. military’s largest base in Afghanistan. They had moved to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait to set up operations for critical care air transport missions when they got the call that there had been a bombing in Kabul. The airmen were told to grab as much gear as they could and take off as quickly as possible. “They said, ‘We still don’t know what you’re getting but we might fill up this entire plane with bodies or patients,’ ” he said.

The Abbey Gate suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport on Aug. 26, 2021, took the lives of 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. That number would have been higher without Parker and others like him. When Parker’s team arrived at a Kabul hospital, it “looked like a movie where you see people covered in blood (and) in shock,” he said. The crew airlifted 11 Afghan children and their families. Three of the kids were missing limbs and had to be sedated. Parker oversaw the placement of endotracheal tubes to support breathing in each of the three. At one point, one of the tubes had to be attached to the inside of the aircraft with a parachute cord to keep it from kinking and blocking the patient’s airway. One of the children kept waking up because of the rough flight, Parker said. The plane landed in Qatar, where Parker escorted the children on a bus headed to the military hospital. He had to hook up two of the patients to one oxygen tank because of a shortage. Awards were far from his mind in the days and weeks that followed. But as the years passed, the career-damaging realities of being a senior NCO without so much as a medal to show for a combat zone tour sank in. Unbeknownst to Parker, a new paper trail had started with his name on it.

Gen. Mike Minihan, the former head of Air Mobility Command, wanted to recognize more airmen who had helped with the Afghanistan withdrawal. “(Minihan) said, ‘If you did anything of note, get your paperwork in. I want to sign off on it before I retire,’ ” Parker said. Parker found out about Minihan’s efforts days before the general retired and figured that, once again, it was too late for him. But the air crew on Parker’s flight submitted a packet in time for everyone on the plane that day, he said. “Soon after, I looked on my personnel record, and (the award) was scanned in there. … Now I just really feel like I can close that box and put that away,” he said. Parker also received a commendation medal for sustained acts of heroism or meritorious service during the deployment. Most importantly, Parker later heard that the children he treated on the evacuation flight in 2021 were recovering in the United States. The Distinguished Flying Cross is a reminder of “that success story,” he said. “This is something that I know one day my kids will have on their mantel and will be proud of.”