The inside story behind the photo of the last soldier to leave Afghanistan

Army Master Sgt. Alex Burnett wasn’t expecting this.

Burnett, the public affairs noncommissioned officer in charge at the 82nd Airborne Division, was one of the last soldiers to board an aircraft and leave Hamid Karzai International Airport in August. Ever the photographer, he made a split-second decision once he was on the aircraft: He needed to take a photo of the last man on the ground.

That photo of Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the commander of the 82nd, has since become an iconic image symbolizing the end of the 20-year war in Afghanistan. It has resulted in one article after another, garnering national attention and, in the Washington Post, even some criticism as a “deeply fraught image, which has the potential to do lasting damage.”

But to Burnett, he was just doing his job. He wasn’t using any fancy equipment — he simply put his night observation devices, or NODs, in front of his cell phone camera. He told Task & Purpose at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, last week that he was “dumbfounded” by the amount of attention his photo received, since he’s been taking photos for the Army for over a decade and has never seen a photo get this kind of traction.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-photo-last-soldier-afghanistan-alex-burnett/