A Common Military Blouse and a Typical Military Aircraft Make History
It was just a common military OCP (Operational Camouflage Pattern) blouse hanging in a typical Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft. But on that day, August 15, 2021, both would make history.
The Globemaster would take off from Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan, as part of the sometimes chaotic, but always dangerous and brave Operation Allies Refuge.
The aircraft was loaded to the hilt with more than eight hundred desperate Afghan refugees. Counting the intrepid Air Force crew the aircraft carried 823 souls, including 183 children.
This particular mission would make history because the C-17 typically carries a maximum of about three hundred people when outfitted for large passenger loads using pallets with seats. This flight, however, would break a previous record set in another humanitarian mission in 2012 when a C-17 evacuated 670 souls out of Tacloban, Philippines, following Super Typhoon Haiyan.
But even more history would be made by that iconic, heartrending photo of an OCP blouse gently wrapped around an Afghan child sleeping on the hard cargo floor of the C-17 (Lead image).
That blouse belongs to C-17 loadmaster Airman First Class Nicolas Baron.
“I was just doing what I had to do,” said Baron later, adding “[I was] making sure everyone was seated and safe. My blouse had fallen from where I’d hung it up and as I was focusing on my tasks, a mother picked it up and laid it across her child to help keep them warm.” “It was heartwarming to see,” he adds.
And heartwarming it was. The image that went viral around the world added even more humaneness to another superb – albeit politically much-criticized and bureaucratically mishandled – military humanitarian mission.
Today, that “common OCP blouse” is destined to find a place in the National Museum of the United States Air Force as part of memorializing Operation Allies Refuge for posterity.
Located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force is “the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world.”
“Even before the end of the operation, the curators at the National Museum were looking for items to document Operation Allies Refuge…One item that they mentioned in particular that they wanted, was [A1C Baron’s] blouse,” says Stuart Lockhart, 305th Air Mobility Wing historian.
Lockhart adds:
It’s funny, I think any Airman would look at this and say, “It’s just a common OCP blouse”, but it’s the piece that is so recognizable…In the early phases of this operation all that we were hearing on the news was how bad the situation was and then to have this touching image come out of just a simple humanitarian gesture, it made such an impression on our country and our world. It’s absolute gold.
A modest loadmaster Baron who “joined the Air Force with the goal of being part of something bigger and for [whom] being part of Operation Allies Refuge did just that,” simply says, “I think the blouse gives a sense of hope no matter who they are or where they’re from…It makes me feel proud [of our mission] and of the crew.”
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