We would have to adapt the dogs’ training to what we learnt in combat situations. Initially, in training our ‘enemies’ would carry on with a great noise. But we learnt that the insurgents in Afghanistan actually just froze. So we had to train our dogs to react correctly regardless of the targets’ actions or reactions, and whether they were moving or not. There were many ways of training the dogs to tell the difference between friendly and enemy forces. Eventually their ability to do so was amazing, and enabled them to weave around and among operators to engage an enemy threat.
It was February when we arrived in country; there was still snow in the mountains. The whole country smelt crisper and harsher at that time of year than in late summer, when I’d last been there. New grass, new growth, new year, new fighting season. Devil proved his worth on one of our first jobs. We were clearing a house, and some armed Talibs had hidden deep inside a room. If we’d walked in, one of us may well have been shot. Instead, I sent Devil in first and he got the fighter with the weapon and broke his arm. I was elated for Devil, and my mates became total converts. You can do all the training in the world, but you never know how a dog will react until you’re in the real thing. Just like a soldier. And Devil knew exactly what he was doing.
On the first few jobs, Craig and I and our dogs were switching between the ground assault force and the AFS (aerial fire support) birds to assist in catching squirters. Soon, we were proving ourselves so useful that we were asked to go on the first lift. Troopers were being cut out to fit us in. In the helicopter you get a five-, a three- and a one-minute call before landing. Devil lay under my feet. Eventually he learnt that the precise change of the engine’s pitch before the one-minute call was his signal to sit up and be ready. He really understood and liked his role. And the squadron’s attitude changed from ‘We’re not sure’ to ‘We’re not going out unless we have a dog with us’.
Added to that was the morale boost the dogs gave us. When I was having a bad day, just giving Devil a pat and telling him my thoughts, or tickling him behind the ear, improved my outlook. As for my mates, when I brought Devil into the lines, it was no longer, ‘Hey, Donno.’ It was, ‘Hey, Devil! How are you, mate?’ I might as well not have been there. I couldn’t let him over-socialise, though, because he’d start to lose his edge. The guys were always trying to pat him or sneak him something to eat. We had a rule that if they got caught, they had to come training with us and take an attack from Devil.
After a hard day, or waiting for extraction from the helicopters, I’d let Devil just be a dog and sniff around. My rule was, if I can rest, he can rest. I saw on the guys’ faces how he took them back home, to their own dogs. It was such a simple thing, to pat a dog and see him wag his tail. Then he’d come back to me, put his head in my lap and rack out until the chopper came. I knew he’d be my mate, no matter what.
The tempo of work was accelerating. In our first thirty days, we did twenty-two or twenty-three jobs. Our OC had us on the front foot, capturing and killing the Taliban leadership. He said he was going to work us to the bone for three months. ‘We’re going to kick the arse out of them. We’re not here for a holiday. Let’s do our job as effectively as we can.’ Being told that upfront, we were keen to work for him. It was good to know where he stood and what was expected of us. The other bonus for this trip was our SSM (squadron sergeant major) was Deano, my troop sergeant from 2008. As well, our troop sergeant was Daryll. So that meant we had experienced ‘ground up’ soldiers in those influential positions.
Even though the enemy leaders replaced themselves quickly, the effect of losing them gave the regular Australian Army and ANA enough time to get in and set up the legitimate governance the people were wanting. Our targeting was helped by the higher quality of intelligence we were getting compared with previous years. It was better organised, so we could fuse that information with what we’d picked up on the ground. For instance, intel might have been telling us that Taliban leaders were coming from Quetta to Tarin Kowt, and giving us a few days to get them. But with our experience, we knew that Quetta to TK is like Sydney to Dubbo, and they could be in and out in a day. So the mission was launched more speedily. The war was definitely turning our way, due to the coherence and accuracy of the intelligence we were getting. We were also being assisted by divisions among the enemy. The Talibs were surprisingly quick to rat each other out. Some of the informants were very close to our targets, and were keen to have them knocked off.
A lot has been alleged about us being used by the partnering force intelligence to settle personal feuds; there were suggestions that they would lead us to target individuals not because they were part of the insurgency but because they were someone’s old enemy. I’m not saying this never happened, but the reports of it were exaggerations. The fact was, we would never take one man or one group’s information as the last word on targeting. We took our intelligence from a number of different sources, crosschecked and corroborated it, and only went after someone if we were sure he was an enemy. If the Afghans said, ‘Get this bad guy in this house,’ we wouldn’t just roll out and prosecute. We’d get a lot more information through our own intelligence systems. It’s a bit of a myth that coalition forces are easily used by locals to go after their personal enemies.
*
The excitement of going out on a job is a feeling that will never leave me. In my life I like to bring out the boy, the sense of adventure and the unknown. I think your excitement needs to come out no matter what it is you are doing. If you don’t then you just become a cranky, grumpy person.
I still get excited going out on missions. It’s hard to curb that enthusiasm sometimes and not hoot, yahoo and show that excitement. I’m jumping out of my skin on the inside, but I try to remain calm and focused on the outside. I used to get really bummed out when there was a possibility of a job on and it looked like a go but then for whatever reason it was turned off. It takes a while to learn how to deal with that and realise that you sometimes need to be patient. Within half an hour of getting the word, we would be on the helicopter. I sat with Devil at my feet, the blades turning, lifting off into the unknown. It is almost euphoric when you have that confidence. You are excited, but also retaining control of your emotions. Even now, if I shut my eyes, I can be back there.
We did a lot of jobs where the dogs were beneficial. We went up to Char China, where we’d taken out those thirteen Talibs on the dry riverbed a couple of years earlier. As we landed, the helicopter’s rotors kicked up a big cloud of dust that smelt like goat shit and fur. I was running from the landing zone to link up with a patrol in the green belt. Devil’s lead was clipped to my belt. It was a hot morning and beside the track, a strong radiant heat was coming off the compounds we went past. As I was running, I noticed an Afghan paralleling me, darting from building to building. I couldn’t get a good read on what he was doing, but his demeanour was suspicious. Innocent people usually just stood and stared at us. He was moving in a tactical way.
Devil and I made it to the centre of the village, and came into a tight alleyway. The residents had been burning rubbish, and there was a strong smell of scorched plastic. Right beside us was a pile of smouldering ashes. All of a sudden, a big local mongrel came tearing down towards us. Our dogs are trained to be neutral towards other animals. We don’t want them to be distracted by animals and potentially miss a threat. But this dog was frothing and hell-bent on charging at Devil. At the last moment, as it leapt, I shot it three times. The last shot was very close to Devil’s face. The dog dropped dead, and Devil just stood looking at it, no doubt wondering what that was all about. My heart was racing.
Having heard the shots, one of our guys came over, and I explained what had happened. I mentioned the suspicious man who’d been paralleling us. There had also been a lot of Talibs squirting from the target area to get weapons and set up an ambush or to get away. While we were talking, we heard some shots from a poppy field where another patrol was. It was a
dangerous spot.
Just then, my mate saw the man who’d been tracking me. He was moving between two mud walls behind a house. Just as he snuck towards us and raised his rifle, my mate shot him.
Soon after, we had to clear the area and join the other patrols. I sent Devil into a house in front of me. He had a camera mounted on his back, and I could watch the picture on a screen on my chest. He went into a dark bedroom and began sniffing a bed.
I poked my head in and said, ‘What is it, mate?’
I could see someone under there. Strangely, Devil wasn’t attacking them. My mate and I went in, and I called Devil back and clipped him up. In the bed were two kids, aged about four and seven, sound asleep. Devil had known not to engage them. Under all the pressure of the noise and danger around us, he made that distinction. I was very pleased that he was smart enough to tell the difference.
We went outside the village, where our patrols had already swept the poppy fields twice, looking for the squirters. A river ran past the village, with a steep bank dropping from the fields to the water. The river was running fast, cutting away the bank with fresh, deep snowmelt. A footpad of hard-packed earth ran along the top of the bank, cutting in between each field. These were high-traffic areas and vulnerable for IEDs, as the enemy knew we’d be walking along the footpads. If they hid in the fields or down the riverbank, they could have the drop on us.
Typically for early in the poppy season, the day was thick with pollen, and the fields, which had been drenched with water, had a cabbagy smell. I was struggling with my breathing and a runny nose from hay fever. I sent Devil 50 metres ahead of me, let him search, and waited. Then I went up and joined him. At one point, when he picked up something on the wind, he gave a head-flick. As a handler, you’re looking for those indications. His hair started standing up, his tail was upright, his ears forward, all the mannerisms of excitement. My mate and I paused. Devil followed the scent, and we pushed up behind him. He stopped. He’d found a pair of shoes on the top of the riverbank, and down below on a sandy patch were some footprints.
We looked further up river, where Devil was now headed. My mate, a New Zealander, saw a couple of broken branches and some markings on the riverbank. Fifty metres ahead of us, Devil did a double head-flick and dived head first into a hole in a tree stump overhanging the riverbank. His tail was going like mad. His battle jacket was catching, stopping him getting into the trunk. We patrolled up to his position. I pushed him with my foot. He got in and grabbed onto something he’d scented. It was an elbow. Devil was pulling back on it, dragging someone out. I saw the tip of a weapon and shot the Talib as he emerged. He fell into the river. Devil was still attached to his arm, and the water began pulling them both down. I was yelling commands to Devil to let go, but the current was taking him and I was thinking, Fuck, I’ve lost my dog.
Next minute, Devil popped up and swam back over, all excited and spinning around. He’d done his job all right, probably saving our lives. That insurgent in the log was a real danger to us, and would have got us if we’d walked another 50 metres. It just showed what Devil brought to the patrol.
The river had cut a little island in the next bend, and the bank fell away. Devil now ploughed in and swam across to the island, having smelt someone on the opposite bank. If any enemy fighters were there, we were in a tricky spot, vulnerable from the high ground across the water. I lost sight of Devil. Again, I had that sinking feeling that I’d lost my mate. I was genuinely concerned for him and ran down looking for something that suddenly seemed impossible: a tan dog in a brown jacket in a brown river.
I yelled to my mate, ‘Have you seen him?’
He hadn’t. Just as I was feeling panicky, I looked down into an eddy, and there was Devil, paddling on the spot, fighting the current. I jumped in, waded across and dragged him out. I couldn’t be angry with him for doing his job. As we got out of the water, he wanted to tear across again and go after whatever it was he’d scented. As we were being extracted on the helicopters, the enemy across the river ended up having a crack at us: a few bursts of PKM fire and RPGs, just to remind us they were still there.
It was a satisfying day for Devil and me. We, as a troop, ended up getting all eight of the enemy we’d targeted, and came back to base exhilarated. Devil had saved my life, and my mate’s. We were busy and right where we wanted to be.
*
Changes in the Mirabad Valley, an area very close to Tarin Kowt district centre, indicated how well the war was progressing for us. In April, after my birthday, we did a couple of successful jobs there. On the first job, our intelligence was so good that we just about landed on top of the target, a fully rigged-up senior Taliban fighter, and got him trying to escape across a river. Then we went after an insurgent who had been intimidating and murdering civilians since the previous year at least, and had escaped from 1 Squadron on their trip. As we flew in, we saw men squirting everywhere, darting between trees and trying to blend in with the farmers. I was on the AFS for this mission. It’s like police work: good guys don’t run away. I remembered my own actions in the Coffs Harbour mall. If I’d done nothing wrong, why would I be running from the police?
We identified a secondary target and fired smoke markers at him to pinpoint his whereabouts for the ground force. He went into a building and tried to make another run for it. We were going to land in a paddock, but I let the TL know that if he dropped me in with Devil, we could pick him up while they talked us on. But at the last moment he ran into another building and the TL aborted.
As patrols on the ground began to close in on the building, we watched from above. A few minutes after going in, the target came out, dressed in a woman’s green shawl, leading a cow. It was a pathetic disguise and fooled nobody. Suddenly he let go of the cow, ran down the riverbank and then doubled back into a compound. We finally landed and followed, and the women and girls were out the front pointing into a room. He was not from there, they said, and they didn’t want him in their place. We found him hiding behind some cushions and got him out.
We took our captured ringleader and some other suspects to our extraction point that was near a police checkpoint. What happened then illustrates the low price of life in a country that has been at war for decades. The Afghan police commander had our earlier target under guard. He knew him well. The suspect had killed the family of a friend of the police commander’s, and had tried to kill him too. He had been a really nasty piece of work in that valley, and the police commander was not about to let us have him. We wanted to take him with us, but the police commander stated that we would only release him again in a few days. What he did next was too fast for us to react. The police commander settled the matter by walking over to the insurgent, taking out his AK and shooting the man dead. As can happen in Afghanistan, a three-year-old boy was with some other people milling around, watching it all. He started crying at the loud noise of the gun. One of our terps gave him a fruit juice. He began sucking on it quite happily.
There were serious repercussions from the episode. A coalition eye in the sky had been watching the whole thing, and the drone operator in Kandahar rang his bosses in Dubai and said he’d seen an execution of a captive. We had to answer some interrogatories to explain how that wasn’t the case at all. It was a very quick and uncontrolled action by the police commander, his way of settling a dispute. As a group, we had no real qualms about a really bad guy being taken out of the area by the responsible Afghan. He was, all in all, a strong and effective presence, running his area with very little coalition help. He was so effective that the Taliban launched a yearlong campaign to assassinate him. Unfortunately, after many attempts, they were successful, getting him with an IED. He was one of the few local authorities I encountered who was true to helping the people and fixing the place up, undeterred by threats. It was a real shame that he paid the ultimate price.
But this was the cost of success. The Mirabad Valley became very quiet, and the l
ocal government was able to establish itself. The Talibs stopped going into the valley, saying it was too dangerous, whereas up until 2008 it had been the reverse, with us having been wary of going into a non-permissive area. In these small but significant ways, village by village, valley by valley, we were making progress.
*
My bond with Devil was growing exponentially. I knew now that if I didn’t trust him, I would get myself killed.
On one job, he found some enemy fighters with rifles and RPGs hiding in thick vegetation only five metres from where my mates were. On another, we were in the backyard of a house and he was staring at the dirt. I said, ‘What are you staring at? There’s nothing there.’ I went over and had a scratch. Devil was insistent and I chose to trust him. I sat him down and called an engineer with a metal detector, who found a big buried bag of machine gun rounds. I was amazed that Devil had sniffed it out. To him it was no different from a training run, while to me it was the best thing in the world. Our methods and training – all the hard work – were paying off. On yet another job, Devil went up to a normal-looking rock wall and stopped. I thought he was giving me a ‘falsie’, or false indication, trying to trick me into giving him a reward such as a tennis ball to chew on or a pat. In our early days he’d been a shocker for trying to outsmart me with falsies. I thought he was doing it again. But he’d found the wind pooling with a scent in an indentation in the wall, and lo and behold there was a stashed-away AK and chest rig, all bombed up and ready to go. Just like that, a weapon that could have been used to kill one of us or intimidate the local populace had been taken out of circulation.
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