Father Daniel Swartz, the last priest to leave Afghanistan when it fell to the Taliban in late August of last year, described the evacuation of Afghans, Americans and others from the war-torn nation as “like a pageant of the cross.”
“In the midst of chaos, there were countless instances of compassion. People were so willing to give themselves and unleash the full volume of their spiritual resources,” he said.
“It’s a situation you don’t try to understand at the time. You just do whatever you can in that moment. Looking back, I can see that the Lord in His wisdom allows us to better understand and experience His own sacrifice when we are confronted with crisis.
“There were many small moments during the evacuation in which I know indelibly that Christ was there, speaking to us not just of that moment, but of the past and of the future. It’s made me reflect constantly on how the Lord has worked in my own life and in the lives of others in small ways we couldn’t fully understand until later,” he said.
Father Swartz, 32, a priest of the Diocese of Columbus for nearly six years and a U.S. Navy chaplain, spoke in public for the first time of his experiences in Afghanistan on Tuesday, April 5 at the Columbus St. Thomas More Newman Center near Ohio State University. The talk was part of the center’s weekly Buckeye Catholic praise and worship service for OSU students and others.
Father Swartz was deployed to the Middle East to serve as chaplain for 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Division. After being evacuated from Afghanistan, he spent about a month in Kuwait and then returned to the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton to await his next assignment.
He was given a few days of leave last month to visit his family, who are members of St. Agatha Church in Columbus, and then began ministry at the Naval Base Guam, which he reached in time to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass and Holy Week services. He has been with the Navy since the summer of 2019 after serving as parochial vicar at Gahanna St. Matthew Church and the Perry County Consortium of Parishes after his ordination.
At the time of the evacuation, Father Swartz was a part of the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force (SPMAGTF), groups of infantry marines units capable of fast deployment and rapid crisis response.
“These guys were on an ongoing mission which allowed them to be anywhere in the Middle East within six hours,” Father Swartz said. “We had QRFs (quick response forces) in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan, so I kept bouncing around the Middle East and seeing my guys.”
He said this was similar to his service among four parishes in Perry County or the equivalent of what it must have been for Father Edward Fenwick and other pioneer Ohio priests who traveled on horseback from place to place in the early 1800s in what’s now the Columbus diocese.
Father Swartz said because of the possibility they might have to perform such duty, the QRFs had been practicing noncombatant evacuation operations designed to get people out of a particular area. Those units were called to the Afghan capital of Kabul when it became apparent the Taliban was preparing to take control of the city.
Father Swartz said that after landing at the Kabul airport, thronged with people trying to leave the country, “I’ve never seen people move like that before. It was like a liquid wave with its own kind of intellect, with my guys trying to corral these panicked people clustering around the airport and planes.
“All of NATO pretty much was there and then some –France, Turkey, New Zealand and Australia, even some Japanese, Swedes, Poles, Belgians, Germans, the Italian Carabinieri, British paratroopers – all trying to get their people out.
“In a situation like this, you just take what you can carry. We weren’t sure what the Taliban was going to do. Most of the officers preparing for the evacuation wanted to bring in fully tactical units who were armed for whatever could happen.
“A chaplain doesn’t carry arms, so I wasn’t a priority to go. But someone high in command insisted, ‘We’re going to bring a chaplain, the boys are going to need one’ so that’s how I ended up being slated to go to Kabul.
“We knew the airport runway was compromised, so we made a combat landing – just drop the plane on the tarmac and come out. We stepped off the plane and heard all these shots being fired – just like a firefight. You can tell from the sound of the bullets what country is firing them,” he said.
“I’ve never seen fear, panic and desolation mixed so heavily. Kabul was a concentrated can of chaos. The Afghans who wanted to leave had abandoned all their vehicles at the airport, so we hotwired them and did whatever we needed to do to help people.
“I traded parts of my kit to get Gatorade for my guys. Cigarettes were great for bartering with the Turks. We’d break the doors down on abandoned structures to get to stocks of anti-malarial medicine and other first-aid supplies. No matter what we found, it was useful.”
Father Swartz said he was in Kabul for about 10 days but couldn’t tell exactly how long because time became irrelevant as the evacuation force tried to get as many people out as it could. He said more than 100,000 people were processed and flown out of Afghanistan during his time in Kabul. “No other airborne evacuation even comes close to that,” he said.
He said that at some point, he learned that priests he knew were in Kabul from the United States and other NATO nations had been evacuated, and he concluded that he was the only priest there.
“That scared me a little,” he said. “Priests are called to serve a community, but what happens when that community no longer exists? That was a hairy situation. But I calmed down when I realized that the Lord had sent me here for a mission, to be a priest to these persons at this moment.”
On Thursday, Aug. 26, 13 people were killed in a suicide attack at the airport. “Ten of them were my boys (Marines),” Father Swartz said. “We got the message that there were mass casualties, meaning the units at the scene were stretched beyond capacity. As I put my body armor on, it seemed the entire atmosphere at the airport changed. The north side of the airport had been fairly peaceful. Now every unit was on high alert.
“I got to the hospital unit, and an Army chaplain, Col. Pinkie Fischer, said, ‘Father, quick. Just get in there.’ A triage point was established to separate the injured, heavily wounded, and the dying; my guys were interspersed throughout the three areas. I gave the Last Rites to those that I could.
“You don’t think, you just go – instincts kicks in. I’ve never seen anything like that day. It was almost like the Hollywood version you see of war, only in real life, real time, with sights, smells, and sounds. With some (injured) guys, the fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and they wanted to get out and go fight.”
Father Swartz said he began ministering to the dead and wounded at about 5 p.m. and finished between 3 and 4 a.m.
“I was worn out,” he said. “I didn’t have words. I just sang the Ultima in Mortis Hora (Latin for “in the last hour of death”), a hymn traditionally sung at the funeral of a Benedictine monk, which I learned from Father Jacques Daley, my spiritual director, when I was attending St. Vincent College,” a Benedictine institution in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
“Because ours is a faith of truth, we can meet a crisis,” Father Swartz said. “Through all your life, you do the spiritual groundwork so that when the storm comes, it can serve as an anchor. Father Jacques showed me the care God has for my soul, and singing the Ultima connected me with Him at I time I needed that care.
“I’ve never been more certain of my faith than I am now,” Father Swartz said. “But I know the devil is alive and working. I’ve never had a greater experience of evil as a living, thinking, moving thing than I had that night at the airport. I learned the Cross isn’t given to us just as a symbol, but as a living opportunity to unite ourselves with God.”
He said that before the attack, he had an opportunity to go to Jesus’ baptismal site in the Jordan River with some of the Marines he serves. “Their souls came alive,” he said. “These tough guys – you could just see their souls come alive. I was very thankful to have those experiences before we went through the crucible together.”
He also said that as the military is becoming more aware of how soldiers’ feelings affect them, Marines frequently have taken him aside and told him of their emotional reactions to combat or to personal events and of sins they have committed.
“It is a movement of the heart when the soul reaches out because it desires healing. We are not always sure what that healing looks like or what it will entail but we reach out in faith and in trust.”
Father Swartz will soon be leaving to become the base priest to the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine military members based out of Naval Base Guam. In the interim, he has donated a number of items from his military experience to the Columbus Museum of Catholic Art and History.
