British veteran Pen Farthing's wife is hoping for his safe return as he looks set to escape Afghanistan with 150 cats and dogs.
Kaisa Markhus revealed her husband Pen video-called her from inside Kabul airport on Friday to tell her he had made it through with the animals.
However, his Afghan workers were not allowed to evacuate with him, leaving the former Royal Marine 'devastated'.
It comes as the UK's evacuation efforts in Afghanistan started drawing to a close ahead of the US withdrawal on August 31.
Kaisa said she was overjoyed when she saw her husband safe in the airport with animals from the Nowzad rescue shelter.
Speaking to the Mail last night, Kaisa said Pen had been allowed to board a flight with 150 cats and dogs from his charity.
However, he has yet to leave Afghanistan after his flight faced delays, according to The Sun.
Kaisa told Mail Online: "The second I saw him safely inside (the airport)... you can imagine. I know Pen had a very hard choice. He faced that same choice when he was inside the airport with his staff and their families on Thursday and the animals and the staff were not allowed through.
" So, he went back to the compound to ensure everyone was safe and to discuss with them what to do. They decided he should go to the airport again with the dogs.
"He was devastated to leave his staff but knew that by removing both the dogs and himself he would remove two big risk factors."
However, Kaisa is still worried something might go wrong, adding 'I won't celebrate until he has landed'.
Speaking on Friday, she said Pen was due to fly to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.
British troops helped load Pen's animals onto a plane in Kabul last night after the charity founder raised more than £200,000 to charter an aircraft for his animal rescue operation, according to Mail Online.
The Ministry of Defence reportedly confirmed UK armed forces helped the group at the airport.
Kaisa, 30, said she cried as she left Kabul without her animals on an almost empty plane last week.
Pen claimed on social media his team and rescue animals had managed to reach Kabul airport on Thursday, only to be "turned away" due to changes in paperwork rules made by the US some hours earlier.
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Speaking to LBC, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: "I think it has taken up too much time of my senior commanders dealing with this issue when they should be focused on dealing with the humanitarian crisis."
Mr Wallace used a series of tweets on Thursday to hit out at the criticism from Pen's supporters and condemned "bullying, falsehoods and threatening behaviour" towards MoD staff.
The Defence Secretary, when asked about his tweets, told LBC: "My people were focused for the last two weeks on a humanitarian crisis.
"I had to listen sometimes to calls of abuse to my advisers, to my officials, based mainly on falsehoods, that somebody, somewhere had blocked a flight - no-one blocked a flight.
"Fundamentally, as we have seen on the media, there are desperate, desperate people, and I was not prepared to push those people out of the way for that.
"When people's time is right, they were called forward, and that's the right thing to do. But I hope he comes back, he was advised to come back, his wife came back last Friday, so I hope he does as well."
Pen previously clashed with Mr Wallace over his refusal to allow the evacuation of him, his animals and staff.
He tweeted: "You picked on the wrong person to back down. I served 22 years as a Royal Marine. We don't quit."
