by Craig Grossi
We were happy to see them. We hadn’t seen villagers come so close to the compound, and after days of firefights, it seemed like a good sign that people were out in the middle of the day. Maybe we’d driven away enough Taliban for them to regain some freedom of movement.
Then we heard a loud, eruptive thud. You could feel it in your gut, like a clap of thunder. I flinched, ducking my head, and looked out to where the couple had been. I saw the man standing in his long white shirt and pants, motionless. Behind him, where the woman and donkey had been, a black cloud of smoke rose from the ground. The caustic smell of ammonia hung in the air. The hair on my arms stood up. We knew instinctively: she’d stepped on an IED.
I quickly climbed down from the roof. Below, Ali was already talking with some of the Afghan commandos and a few marines. Ali was convinced we should go speak with the man. In spite of the impossible difficulty of the moment, we needed to make sure he knew it wasn’t coalition forces that had killed his wife. We could also help him. In the Islamic religion, a dead body should only be handled by another Muslim. Because Ali and the Afghan commandos were Muslim, they could offer to help gather remains. One of the Afghan commandos went to get a bedsheet. I put on my kit, and we walked out.
After the explosion, the man had stood for a while, looking at the blast site, frozen. Now he was moving about, beginning to collect what remained of his wife. The commandos approached him with the sheet and offered to help. Ali joined them, telling him how sorry we were. The man, understandably, began to seem delirious. He spoke rapidly, and I lost track of what the conversation was about or what was being said. For a long time, the men spoke in Pashto. I waited nearby, tense and hot.
When it felt like the right moment, I stepped in next to Ali. Ali told me a little bit in English, but nothing was making sense. I offered my condolences and gently made sure to reiterate that the man’s wife had been killed by a Taliban IED. He understood. The villagers in Sangin knew what the Taliban were doing and what they were capable of.
I sucked in a lungful of air and, feeling sick, made a final request. It was my job to record and report Taliban-inflicted casualties. I asked if I could photograph the body. The man agreed. When he opened the bedsheet, a few flies buzzed out. The woman’s head was turned away, so I couldn’t see her face. One arm was gone from the elbow down; the other was still there, but with no fingers. Her legs, if they were still there, were obscured by her dress.
My chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. I felt like I might vomit. I took a couple of photos, using all my willpower to remain composed.
Back in the compound, we gathered to talk. In the field, our brains are wired for work and for survival. Something troubling became clear: there were IEDs much closer to our compound than we’d realized. We’d practically walked over that same area on our way out for night patrols. The reality was that we were likely surrounded by many more of them.
As we were talking, I spotted Fred. He came trotting across the compound with his head held high. He had something in his mouth. If you’ve ever seen a dog with a new toy—totally gleeful and proud, practically squirming with joy—that’s how Fred looked. He plopped down and started gnawing, happy as ever. Then I realized what it was: a charred piece of donkey leg, from the hoof to the knee, almost as big as he was.
“Ugh, Fred!” I ran over and pulled the thing from his mouth, throwing it over the wall. “No!” I shouted, sternly, looking at his confused puppy face.
The next day, though, I found the stinking, rotting leg at the end of my sleeping bag. I picked it up and threw it over the wall again, hoping that was the end of it. But Fred somehow found it, once again, and brought it back in. Over the next few days, he continued to leave it around the compound, sometimes on different guys’ sleeping mats, and we continued throwing it over the wall, partly disgusted, partly amused. It was hard to be too mad. Fred didn’t know anything about the Taliban or tragedy or war. It was that innocence—especially in the dark moments—that buoyed us.
CHAPTER 5
The Delta Blues
By the time Josh and I finally arrived in Chattanooga, it was nearly dusk. The mountains gave way to sprawling city blocks, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves at a bar on a big, open lot that looked like it had once been a service station. Tables and lounge areas were scattered around, along with yard games like cornhole and oversize Jenga. We sat with my buddy Mike and a group of his friends on a cluster of outdoor sofas. Fred jumped right up onto a couch and made himself at home.
Mike—or Mikey, as I used to call him—and I had been friends since childhood. We met in elementary school, and by high school, we were skipping class together. Mikey would jump into my beat-up ’89 Mazda and we’d drive back to my house, climb out my bedroom window, and sit on the garage roof while Mike burned through a pack of cigarettes in an hour. I guess it was our form of seventeen-year-old suburban-kid rebellion. I hadn’t seen Mike in years, but we had one of those friendships where you could pick up right where you left off.
We ate dinner at a place near Mike’s house and caught up over fried chicken and forty-ounce beers. Afterward, we headed to the outdoor bar, passing by old southern homes with wide porches and green lawns. Streetlamps lined the sidewalks, and the summer night was warm. Mike and Josh walked up ahead, talking and getting to know each other while Fred and I followed. I smiled seeing one of my childhood friends walking side by side with one of my newest buddies.
At the bar, we got into a game of Jenga while we all talked and drank. I was carefully working to slide one of the big blocks of wood from its place in the Jenga tower when Clint, one of Mike’s friends, asked me the question.
“So, what kind of dog is Fred?” Clint sat down next to the dog, petting him behind the ears.
I smiled as I slid the block free and placed it on top of the now wobbling tower. By this time, I’d been home from Afghanistan for a few years, and I’d gotten used to people stopping me on the street or in the dog park to ask about my dog. Fred didn’t look like other dogs, and he was charismatic. People were drawn to him. Sometimes he’d make eye contact with someone on the sidewalk, and next thing I knew, the person would say, “Oh my gosh, where did you get this dog?” I told the truth.
“Well, I actually found him in Afghanistan a few years ago. He was way too cool to leave behind,” I said.
Clint looked up at me. Between the memorial bracelets we wore, Josh’s prosthetic, and my cutoff camo shorts, we weren’t fooling anyone—it was clear Josh and I were vets. Still, I don’t think Clint expected me to bring up Afghanistan like that. As the silence stretched on, Mike stepped in.
“Fred has a great story,” he said. “He followed you around on patrols, right, man?”
I started telling the guys a little bit about where I found Fred, describing Sangin and our mission there. I told them how amazed we’d been at Fred’s friendly behavior in the compound. It wasn’t like he’d come upon our base looking for handouts. We had landed right in Fred’s territory, and even though he probably hadn’t had any positive human interaction before, he welcomed us.
As I talked, Fred napped on the sofa next to me.
When I finished the story, I reached for my beer and drank the rest of it down. I liked having the opportunity to talk about Afghanistan in a way people—especially civilians—wouldn’t necessarily expect. Battling assumptions is something every vet has to deal with, and it can be really frustrating, particularly when you get the sense someone wants to know if you’re “okay.” I don’t mind answering questions when they come from an earnest place, but it’s never a simple task. Sometimes someone at a bar asks, “What’s it like over there?” as if they’re just asking about the weather. Then you have to come up with a way to fit the answer—this big, complicated, messy thing—neatly and casually into a few sentences. You keep it light because you don’t have any other choice. Occasionally, though, you get a chance to elaborate. That’s what Fred’s story allowed me to do: to say more, to get into det
ail. Fred, oblivious to the attention he was receiving, lay there napping peacefully.
While I’d been talking, a couple of clean-cut guys had wandered over from the bar and stood within earshot. They were big guys, tall, with muscular builds. There was something about their posture—plus their clean shaves, cropped haircuts, and polo shirts—that was a dead giveaway. They were marines.
After I finished my story, the two clean-cut guys walked up and introduced themselves. As I guessed, they said they were infantry marines with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their names were Eric and Paul, and they had both recently separated from the marines and moved back to Tennessee for school.
Paul, who had a big smile and cowboy boots that made him stand substantially taller than me, offered to buy Josh and me a beer. I held up my empty and said, “You read my mind.”
With that, the four of us made our way to the bar. The guys were regulars, so we had our fresh beers within seconds, even though the bar was crowded.
“Cheers,” we said, lifting our drinks. We didn’t need to say who we were toasting: now that we were home, any time we raised a glass with fellow marines, it was understood we were drinking to the friends who hadn’t made it back.
“Did you lose your leg in combat, sir?” Eric said, turning to Josh.
“Yup,” Josh said, taking a gulp of his drink. “I put it down in the middle of a firefight and forgot where I left it.” Eric and Paul both grinned. Josh’s sense of humor about his injury always put people at ease. “And don’t call me sir,” he added. “I was an enlisted guy just like you.”
We talked about where we’d been and what our roles were over there, about being home and going to college as vets. But soon enough, the conversation turned to Fred.
“I can’t believe you got Fred outta there, man. It’s good to hear someone was able to pull it off,” Paul said. “When we were over there, we had Maisy.”
“She was the best,” Eric added. The two marines explained how their unit had come across Maisy on one of their deployments in Afghanistan. Just like Fred, she’d become a companion to the marines, even sleeping with them at night when it got cold, curled up on their mats. They laughed when they saw Fred’s fluffy butt and expressive tail, just like Maisy’s. She had been bigger than Fred, though, with long legs, a furry, speckled coat, and a build that sounded like an Australian shepherd’s.
Eric and Paul had worked in route security, which meant they had the harrowing task of driving down village streets all day, never knowing if the road beneath them would erupt. They patrolled the well-established routes that were used to move supplies from base to base, but the fact that the roads were routinely traveled by coalition forces made them susceptible to attacks. It meant the Taliban knew, more or less, when you were coming and where you were going. It’s the kind of job that can go from really boring to really bad in an instant. And if a truck in the convoy got hit, you had to get out of your vehicle to go pull guys out, leaving everyone exposed and vulnerable.
I could see how much having a dog on a mission like that would help defuse anxiety. After long days on the road, Maisy was there to greet them when they returned from patrols, and sometimes she’d even follow their M-ATVs when they convoyed from base to base.
“She always found us, no matter how far we moved or how hot it got,” Paul said. He lifted his beer to his mouth, took a swig, and looked off.
By the way they were talking, I knew what was coming.
Paul said the unit had made their way to a permanent base and began conducting patrols out of it. When Maisy followed them there, they created a little bed for her out of some old pillows and blankets. She even had a collar they made out of woven paracord. The unit had gotten so attached to her that they’d begun the formal process of requesting permission to have her sponsored by a U.S. nonprofit that could help get her home.
Then one day, while out on patrol, the guys were ambushed. The whole platoon came under fierce machine gun fire, and one of their teammates was shot and killed. During the ambush, they suspected he’d been targeted by a sniper. It was a grueling, devastating day.
They got back to their base, completely drained, expecting to be greeted by the dog’s happy prances and tail wags, the kind of positivity only a dog can bring to a place like that. But her bed was empty and Maisy wasn’t around. There’d been a few other stray dogs on the base, too, and they weren’t there, either. The place was quiet. Something was off.
The guys slowly put it together: while they were out patrolling, the command had ordered the dogs to be euthanized.
Eric and Paul weren’t shy about their emotions. Their voices were tight and they each wiped the corners of their eyes with the backs of their hands. I looked over at Fred, who was still stretched out on the couch, lifting his head every so often to greet a stranger and receive a pet. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a story like this one. In a combat zone, some commands considered dogs a threat to good order and discipline. There were a lot of fears about diseases, and in a case like Maisy’s, the big worry was that she could become a dangerous distraction—one that could compromise the focus and integrity of a unit. What if the unit was put in a situation where one of the guys risked his life—or the life of a fellow marine—to protect the dog? The fact that Maisy was perceived more as a liability than as an asset was a bitter reality of war. In Sangin, my biggest fear was that the same would happen to Fred.
“I’m so sorry, man,” I said. I knew they would understand that I wasn’t just talking about the dog, but about the teammate they lost—about all our lost friends.
Josh stepped over to the bar and ordered each of us a shot of Jameson. The four of us raised the small glasses of amber liquid into the air.
“To Maisy,” I said.
“To Fred,” the guys replied. We knocked back the whiskey. The familiar burn in my throat matched the sting in my eyes. I think I said something to Paul and Eric about how the dog had still served a purpose, how the joy Maisy brought to their unit would stay with them forever. I believed that wholeheartedly, and I meant it. But, looking at Fred, I felt a pit in my stomach. If he’d met the same fate, I hated to think of what it would have done to me.
Back in Afghanistan, Fred had been my companion and comfort, but now that I was home, he was starting to play another role, too. In everyday life, out at some bar, it could feel impossible to swap stories about the buddies we’d lost. How do you even start a conversation like that? Fred gave us a place to begin, a way to talk about some of the things we didn’t want to say but probably needed to. He gave us a way to talk about war.
Early Monday morning, when the grass was still wet with dew and the sun was just starting to come up over the mountains, Josh and I loaded up the Land Cruiser and got ready to return to the road. The rest of the weekend had gone by fast. Mike showed us around the city and took us hiking on a few of his favorite trails. As we said good-bye, I promised him we’d try to come through Chattanooga again on the way back.
Back in the truck, Josh and I set our sights southwest. Our next city destination was Austin, Texas, but we wanted to make a few stops along the way. In Mississippi, we hoped to catch some authentic blues music and do some camping.
The drive was steady and hot. We avoided highways as much as possible. The Land Cruiser never wanted to go much over fifty-five, but we weren’t in a hurry. We stuck to little two-lane byways and rural routes, crossing through small, sleepy towns where people sat on their porches watching us go by. Old folks and younger ones, in baseball caps or cowboy hats, wearing dirty sneakers or boots with worn soles, or no shoes at all. They sat and squinted and smoked. We passed by dilapidated mills, boarded-up factories, and ghost-quiet Main Streets. Whenever the truck slowed, Fred popped up in the backseat to see what the change in pace was about. He’d yawn and stretch, stick his nose out the window, then poke his head between us for a windshield view. Once satisfied, he’d curl up again and wait for the next stop.
Clarksdale, Mississippi, is nest
led in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, just ten miles from the big river to the west and an afternoon’s drive from Memphis in the north and Jackson in the south. The town was in our path, and we knew only one thing about it: Morgan Freeman ran a juke joint downtown. It’s where we decided we’d go to hear the blues with the locals.
We rolled into town just before dinner and pulled over at the first cheap motel we spotted. The modest two-story building sat on a mostly empty, sun-bleached parking lot where tufts of grass pushed through cracks in the concrete. A tall sign out front flashed VACANCY in illuminated red script. We parked in front of the office and got out. I left the windows down, and when Fred stuck his head out, I looked at him and said, “Stay here, buddy.”
Inside the office, a flat-screen TV on low volume flickered to our right; to the left was a tall front counter. From a small office area behind the desk, I heard the unmistakable squeal of metal springs on a cot, then a small man came through the doorway, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He could barely see over the tall counter between us, but he smiled and got to work checking us in, making sure to tell us about the free breakfast in the lobby.
Handing me the key, he chirped once more, “Breakfast in the morning! Six to nine!”
“Thank you,” I said, smiling back at the clerk before pushing through the door again. We rejoined Fred and moved the truck down to the parking spot in front of our first-level door.
Inside, the room was clean, with two double beds and an old bubble TV. After feeding Fred and washing up, Josh and I headed back out again, eager to get to the juke joint.
The bar sat on a narrow road in an industrial part of town. The building might have been able to pass for an abandoned warehouse were it not for the steady stream of tourists making their way through the front door. The sound of muffled live music seeped out from inside. On a wide porch out front, a man checked our IDs, and in we went, the music hitting us like a wave as we entered.