I was a private once, and I knew what it was like to be treated like a mushroom—kept in the dark and fed on shit. I wasn't going to be that type of officer. My bottom line was to treat people the way I wanted to be treated. I read a book once called Ethics 101 and that was its entire premise: follow the Golden Rule.
I walked over to the other vehicles and collected the warrant, Fourneau, and Hetsa. “How was the trip, boys?”
Longview looked up and said, “Uneventful, thankfully.”
“My thoughts exactly. Warrant, take the guys with you and do some old-school recce [reconnaissance]. Try and find your warrant counterpart; they're supposed to be on the ground here somewhere, waiting for us. For when we get to Sperwhan Ghar, find out the answers to the three most important questions to an infantryman: Where do we eat, how's the food, and where do we sleep? I'll meet you guys for lunch and we can swap notes. Any questions for me? Besides the obvious . . .”
The warrant looked at me with a quizzical look on his face. “And what's the obvious?” he asked. Fourneau and Hetsa stopped what they were doing and looked at me.
“How do you stay so damn handsome in a war zone? Obviously!” I slapped him on the shoulder and walked off in the direction of some buildings that had a headquarters air about them. A corporal said I could find the OMLT major in the main briefing tent and pointed it out to me. I rounded the twelve-foot-high blast walls and went inside. I stood off to the side while my eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom.
An older officer and a young sergeant seated at a large table in the middle of the tent looked up from the map they were studying and assessed me, hard. I wasn't wearing a beret or helmet so, in military-protocol terms, I wasn't supposed to salute. Instead I snapped my heels together and brought my arms down to my sides, the position of attention sans beret, and loudly stated, “Sir, my name is Captain Semrau. I'm the new incoming OMLT captain slated to go to Sperwhan Ghar. My four-man team just got into Masum a few minutes ago. I was told by my major back in Canada to find you here so that you could give me an OMLT SOP briefing as well as an AO briefing for Sperwhan.” The officer stood up and walked over to me, extending his hand.
“At ease, Captain. My name's Speers; this is Sergeant Little,” he said, turning and pointing to the sergeant at the table.
“Sir,” he said, nodding his head.
“Sergeant,” I responded, nodding back. I shook the major's hand. “Rob Semrau, sir, just came in on the Bison train.”
The major laughed. “No nasty surprises on the trip in?”
“No, sir.” I said. “The Taliban don't know I'm here yet, but they'll know soon enough!”
“Nice.” He pointed to the chair next to him. “Have a seat and we'll get started.”
“Thanks,” I said, and sat down on the hard chair. I looked at the map; it was huge, with lots of different areas and symbols marked out on it.
The major started talking, using his best “briefing room” voice. “After we're done here, I'll send you off to find Captain Stephens, the OMLT captain in Sperwhan you're replacing. I've told him to take you up the hill here and point out some features of Masum and its surrounding area, then you guys'll hop into some RGs [mine-protected armoured personnel carriers] and head over to Sperwhan this afternoon. Over the next few days you'll do some patrols with him, all the while conducting your left-seat, right-seat, and he'll be there to answer any questions you may have. For now, I'll do this AO briefing, then you and your guys can enjoy our fine cuisine in the dining hall.” He looked me over to make sure I'd caught all that.
“Sounds good, sir. I don't think I've ever been on the ground before with the outgoing guy, so this'll be a first for me,” I said, happily surprised. It was supposed to be that way, but for any number of reasons, it never seemed to happen. This'll be a first.
“Yeah, I know what you mean, we've been trying to get this right for a while now but it finally seems to be working with our incoming and outgoing flights. He's a good captain and he's had some great experiences there, so use the time wisely and get as much out of this as you can before he's gone.”
“Will do, sir. Do you mind if I take notes so I can pass this on to my men?” I reached into my hip pocket and pulled out my trusty field message pad (FMP). You can't be a good officer without one or, better yet, several.
“Go right ahead. For now,” he said, pointing at the map with his pen, “we're obviously here, at Masum Ghar, Ghar being Pashto for mountain. Don't know if you knew that or not . . .”
“No, I didn't. I've been working more on my Dari . . .”
“Keep practising. Learn a few greetings in Pashto, what the villagers speak, but certainly focus more on Dari, the ANA's language. If you can't talk to the locals, your interpreter [terp] always can. But if your terp gets hit and you can't speak to the ANA, you'll be in a right shit state.”
“How are the terps, sir?”
“The usual—some aren't that good, and most are terrible. Okay, Masum Ghar is a sort of political hub for this AO. Whoever your battle group major is going to be in Sperwhan, he'll have to come here to the local shura [a meeting of local nationals] once every couple of weeks to discuss their never-ending issues. Obviously we've got our base here with some of the tankers, some artillery boys, lots of engineers, and some Afghan police. Also the QRF [quick reaction force], if you ever need them, will launch out of Masum to come and help you. The OMLT and POMLT [Police Operational Mentor and Liaison Team] here patrol the local area once a day, focusing on the bazaar, or market. We've had a few SIGACTS in the bazaar with some IEDs, a couple of shootings, and Masum itself gets rocketed and mortared almost daily from the surrounding villages and hills. We've done clearance patrols but haven't had much luck in stopping them.”
The major then gave me some very elaborate instructions for when I would be operating out of Sperwhan; conditions that had to be met before I could patrol, and some possible circumstances that could stop me from patrolling. He described several of the key local national (LN) players in my neck of the woods, who could end up either helping me or actively working against me, depending on what kind of mood they were in that day.
He elaborated on the contacts the Canadians had in the past with the Taliban: ambushes, small-arms shootings, rockets, mortars, IEDs. He gave me a very good heads-up on the type of action we could expect in the Sperwhan area. Apparently we weren't going to be bored there. The enemy had been quite busy trying to kill us over the last six months, and I was told my OMLT team could expect the same less-than-cordial reception.
“And here I thought one of the tenets of their religion was being hospitable to strangers in their land?” I asked the major with a smartass smile on my face.
“Yes, indeed—how terribly rude of them. You'll quickly find out the Taliban are what we call hypocrites,” he said with a big grin. The major sighed. “They'll murder their own people for smoking or drinking alcohol, but they'll produce ten thousand tonnes of heroin a year and then sell it all over the world to poison everyone else!”
The major then pointed to the map and showed me that Sperwhan was actually fairly close to Masum, only about five klicks southwest as the crow flies.
“As you can see,” he said, pointing at the map, “one of our problems here is the fact that we've got only one road connecting Sperwhan to Masum—Route Kelowna. If you look at the map, you'll see as you carry on farther west on Route Kelowna, past Sperwhan, that it's also the only road connecting us to our much smaller combat outpost bases, namely Hajikan, Talikan, Zangabad, and Mushan. Only one road in and one road out is going to lend itself nicely to getting IEDed all to hell, which is exactly what's been happening.”
“Sir, I thought the ANA were sending engineers to sweep Route Kelowna daily for IEDs?”
“They are. And they're getting ambushed almost daily as well. The Afghan National Army can only send a small team of ‘engineers’—and believe me, I use the term very loosely—kitted out with old American equipment that couldn't find an atomi
c bomb buried under the road. When they're close to finding something, the Taliban usually detonate it and use it as a signal to initiate their ambush.”
I'd heard of that before. That technique, not surprisingly, is called an IED-initiated ambush. The Taliban would set up an IED in the middle of the road and then lie in ambush and wait until someone stepped on or drove over it (or they might just detonate it themselves with a command wire or radio-controlled device), and then pop up and shoot the hell out of anyone who was still alive. They would use the shock and fear that often paralyzed soldiers after an IED went off (and the fact that everyone in their kill zone was most likely deaf and concussed from the blast) to mop up any survivors.
“Mark my words,” the major continued, “at some point in your tour you'll probably end up going to rescue the ANA engineers after they've been hit.”
“Nice,” I responded. Poor bastards.
“Well, at any rate, you can see why the ANA has become so damn fatalistic. But back to the briefing. . . . In order to get to your base at Sperwhan from Route Kelowna, you've got to travel south on the only road you can take to get there. It's called Route Brown.” He pointed to it on the map. “It passes over three water culverts buried under the road, and guess what?”
“They get IED surprises planted in them daily?”
“You're a smart man, Semrau. You've been here before?”
“I fought in the Clone Wars before, sir, but only in Kabul where, thankfully, we didn't have to deal with any of this.”
“Well, you're in the real war now, son. But you'll get used to the daily rhythm of shootings, rockets, mortars, and IEDs. You'll get used to it, or go batshit crazy! Hopefully the former, but the ANA you'll be working with are supposed to be a good crew. You'll be with the First Company of 72 Kandak, 502 Corps. They've just come off two months' rest and refit, so I'm sure they'll be rarin' to go.” The major looked at me and smiled.
I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not. Would they be good to go or not?
I suppose Yoda's words rang true when he wisely said, “Frivolous, speculation is, when patience will reveal all.” I always told Rich any time you could quote Yoda in a war zone, it was a good day.
The major wrapped up his in-depth briefing and told me to call him twenty-four/seven if I ever had any problems. I really liked Major Speers. That was exactly the type of briefing you hope to get when you're new in country, and I thanked him for taking the time.
His final words of advice to me were, “Give 'em hell and make them pay. Watch out for your men and stay safe. And let the ANA die for their country. Don't you die for it. Let them go first, let them take the risks. Learn when to mentor, and when to act.” Good advice. He wished me luck, shook my hand, and told me to go and get some chow.
I left the tent and put on my CF-issued sunglasses to shield my eyes from the terrible glare of the sun. When you left one of the dark buildings and stepped outside, you were temporarily blinded for a few seconds. The CF sunglasses were a great piece of kit, and I took very good care of them. They were ballistic in design, which meant the lenses were fairly soft, so that if you had shrapnel or rocks blow up in your face, the lenses wouldn't shatter outright, but would instead absorb the blast, protecting your eyes.
I left the HQ and wandered off to find the scoff house. It wasn't hard to locate; I checked my watch and then followed the big stream of soldiers heading uphill. As I followed the herd I thought about the major's briefing. It seemed that no matter who you asked about working with the Afghans, every soldier who had ever served with them invariably told only one of two stories.
One story always seemed to have the Afghans acting like a bunch of steroid-infected, rageaholic Rambos who couldn't wait to close with and kill the enemy, preferably with their bare teeth. Like a bunch of dark-side Jedi, their hatred of the Taliban had made them strong and seemingly bulletproof. That was one version of our soldiers' experience with them—the semi-positive version.
Sadly, too many times I'd heard the other version of the Afghan National Army experience—that working with the Afghans was akin to trying to teach university-level courses to small children with severe discipline issues who liked to bring knives to school.
Tales of joint patrols having to be cancelled because the Afghans were smoking joints were rife. Extreme cowardice or ineptitude in the face of the enemy, grand theft, mass desertions, and week-long, unscheduled R&R periods were the norm. Gross corruption in their officer corps and tales of nepotism that would make a Roman emperor blush, again, were all too common.
Some coalition soldiers said the ANA didn't want to fight because they were afraid of dying; others said it was because the Taliban ranks were filled to the brim with the ANA's immediate relatives, and it would undoubtedly make for an awkward family get-together if two cousins had just tried to kill each other ten minutes before Aunt Edna brought out the lamb casserole.
I was told it took a very special person to work well within the OMLT. Besides being a good soldier, you had to be brave to a fault, and you also had to be a diplomat and a professional problem solver, all rolled into one. Supposedly, ninety-five per cent of your workday was dedicated to sorting out the ANA's problems.
But the most important personality requirement of them all, and the only one that everyone seemed to agree upon, was that you had to possess a biblical abundance of patience, something akin to that of Job in the Old Testament.
You could never become agitated or even remotely worked up with the Afghans, and you could certainly never shout at them, or do anything to embarrass them in front of their countrymen. But you were never supposed to do these things to Canadian troops either, so I hoped it wouldn't be too difficult. Real or perceived insults, innuendo, off-colour references, jokes in poor taste, the actual laying of hands on an ANA soldier, highlighting someone's foibles, whatever . . . the list of things you could do to guarantee they would try and murder you to avenge their honour was endless.
Some former trainers had inadvertently done things that were perceived to be a gross violation against an Afghan soldier's honour, and the soldier would then, often immediately and on the spot, lock and load his weapon and mow down the OMLT trainer and anyone else who was unfortunate enough to be standing next to him. The ANA soldier would then hop over the wire and immediately join the Taliban.
As a result, the mentoring concept would often break down because trainers didn't feel it was safe to bring up any issues that could cause an Afghan commander or soldier to lose face. I learned very quickly to never single anyone out for either praise or name-and-shame, and I also figured out that I should always word my advice in the form of a suggestion or recommendation, and never as an order, purely so that the ANA wouldn't take offence.
Such was the reality of working with the OMLT. It wasn't bad enough that the Taliban were trying to blow you up and kill you, but you had to be worried about getting knifed in the back on your way to the toilet. As my grandmother would've said, “Well, that's just swell!”
I found the chow hall and grabbed a plate of scoff, but only after performing the mandatory hand washing. I entered the large tent and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I found my guys sitting right under one of the a/c units. Perfect. I was what the boys affectionately referred to as “a sweaty bastard.” My wife once told me I had a special need: that I required tons of water when most normal people didn't need any, and she was right.
“Malzheit komradden, guten appetit!” I said in my best Plattdeutsch as I plopped down on the picnic bench next to Hetsa. “So, find anything out?” I asked no one in particular.
Longview looked up and said, “I couldn't find my alternate; seems Captain Stephens left him back at Sperwhan. What about you, sir? Did you find the major?”
“Yeah, I found him. Good guy, gave a great briefing. Really took the time to get it into my thick skull. I think he was a bit concerned when he looked over and caught me drooling, but I explained it away as jet lag.” I elbowed Hetsa in the ribs.
“You know me—always drooling.” The boys just shook their heads and kept eating.
“You guys continue to stuff your faces and I'll tell you what he told me, minus his expletives and sexual bigotry.” I got out my FMP so I wouldn't forget to brief them on all the salient points, and proceeded to tell them everything the major had told me. This was the Rob Semrau Guarantee hard at work. I didn't hold anything back or whitewash over the scary parts.
I read a book once about the SAS, the British Army's Special Air Service. They're special forces soldiers who are widely acknowledged as being the best in the world. In the book, the soldiers often talked about the “Chinese Parliament.” The idea behind this was that anyone who's about to put his life on the line for a mission was given the chance to have his say, to give input. Disagreements were common and no one took anything that was said personally. Sometimes the most junior guy on the team would come up with a better way of doing things, or suggest an idea the guy in charge hadn't thought of. Disagreements were expected, but when a final decision was made, everyone had to get in line.
In honour of the Chinese Parliament I would brief the men, and then I would always give them a chance to have their say. I did this every time I briefed them, without exception. If no one came up with a better way of doing things or had any suggestions, then we stuck with my plan, as it was.
I finished my playback of the major's briefing and looked around the table. Hetsa was absently staring at his half-finished plate and Fourneau looked visibly sick to his stomach. I'm sure I would've looked that way too if this was my first tour, like it was theirs. Someone once said the OMLT wasn't a good place to stick a guy on his first tour; too much stuff was guaranteed to happen and you should have some experience under your belt first. But I always thought the only way to get any experience was for someone to take a chance on you. Sometimes soldiers rose to the occasion, while other times. . . .
The Taliban Don't Wave Page 4