“It's Dick, boys! Thar be Moby Dick! Death, death to the white whale!” I cried, laughing away at my own cleverness as I passed Aziz in a dead sprint and rounded a corner. I stopped laughing the moment my face smashed into a mud wall, and then like a bunch of Keystone cops, everyone smacked into the back of me. I spit out blood from my fat lip and started to say, “How could one guy get over a wall like—”
Ali cut me off, translating for Aziz who was dictating between ragged breaths, winded from his sprint. “You must smash it down, Captain Rob. We cannot all climb over!”
“How in the hell am I supposed to—”
“You must hurry, Captain Rob. He will escape!”
I wanted to shout, “Who will escape, you mad bastard? There's no one even there!” but decided to take it on the chin and do something I'd always wanted to do, namely, kick down a mud wall whilst in hot pursuit of a suspect.
Images of a hundred cop shows and, for some reason, The Littlest Hobo flooded my mind. I handed Fourneau my rifle and said, “Don't get all gropey!” as I started delivering vicious front kicks like I'd learned at the Ninja Dojo of Inner Wisdom and Sacred Pain back in Saskatoon many years ago. If only the Hard and Soft Masters could see me now!
The Canadians and Afghans alike formed a protective half-circle around me, but instead of watching their arcs and scanning for the enemy, everyone was facing in toward me as I really laid into that wall, boot stomping it with everything I had. I began to hum the theme song from The Littlest Hobo, or as my wife called him, le chien qui sauve le monde. There's a voice, that keeps on callin' me / down the road, that's where I'll always be / every stop I make, I make a new friend . . .
SMASH! SMASH! I was making some progress, but in the heat, I was really starting to feel it too. Sweat was pouring off my face by the time I finally got the wall kicked down to where it was only four feet high. I grabbed my lead chucker back from Fourneau, shouted, “Follow me—I'm bulletproof!” and leaped over the smashed blocks, eager to win my Roman legion its first corona muralis for being the first soldier over an enemy wall. I had always been a big history buff, and sometimes the oddest thoughts would pop into my head. I immediately scanned left and right, my weapon tracking everywhere I looked, just like I'd been taught.
I shouted “Clear!” when I realized I was alone in a courtyard. I quickly told the guys over the PRR the layout of the fields, but I hadn't cleared them yet, and so far there was no activity. Don't really like being alone. . . . I looked back at Fourneau, who was struggling to get over the four-foot wall. I was on my own until he came over, but I couldn't just sit around and wait. Timothy was getting away!
We were in a farmer's field surrounded by high walls, so I immediately began scanning down each row until I had made it to the end. The ghost we'd been chasing was nowhere in sight. I ran up to a shoulder-high block of mud and hopped up onto it, slung my rifle, then jumped up another couple of feet and gripped the edge of the wall and pulled myself up, until my chin was peeking over the edge.
I saw some fields and more huts, but no one running for his life, nor any civilians, period, so with a grunt I pulled myself all the way up and threw a leg over each side of the high wall. I thought everyone must be at the town meeting at the north end of the village.
Aziz ran over and jumped up next to me. He was surprisingly agile. That, plus he had about eighty pounds less gear on him. Fourneau was next and quietly said, “I'll never make that, sir.”
“Sure you will. Jump with everything you've got, and I'll muckle onto you and pull you up!”
“Sir, I don't think—”
“Get the fuck up there, Fourneau, right now!” The warrant shouted at the back of Fourneau's head, startling him in his moment of self-doubt. The Wizard had jacked up Fourneau a few days ago for not being able to follow me over a wall, and now it was happening all over again.
Fourneau leapt and floundered, but I had a death grip on his tac vest shoulder, and no power on earth could make me let go. “I'm not . . . going to . . . let you fall.” I said, remembering Cliffhanger, one of Stallone's seminal movies.
The warrant got beneath him and gave a healthy shove and that was all I needed to hoist my fire team partner up beside me. I looked at Fourneau and smiled. “Told ya. Now you get scanning, I gots to do the occifer thing!” I quickly checked my GPS and sent up a locstat and sitrep. I asked the Canucks to our east if they'd seen anything, but they had zero activity to their front. Aziz really was seeing ghosts.
I helped get everyone up and over, and then slowly slid down the wall, careful not to land with too much of a thump. Just letting yourself fall to the other side was a quick way to make the front page of Safety Digest (the CF's magazine dedicated to tales of admonishment), so I tried to hug the wall and slide down, but it didn't matter. I landed with a good, hard thud. When you wear that much kit, you're going to land heavy, and like my Brit Para instructors always said, “Sometimes you just got to take it. Nuffin' ye can do!” I knew to breathe out, though, so at least I wouldn't wind myself.
I scanned around but there was no one to be seen, although Aziz had seen another ghost and took off again at a dead sprint.
The warrant shouted behind me as I gave chase. “Enough's enough!” He was right. It was easy for the ANA to sprint around; they were carrying two mags each and that was it—no body armour, maybe a helmet, maybe not.
I jogged up next to Aziz as Ali struggled to keep up with us. We came to an intersection, and I guess we chased the ghosts to the other side, because Lieutenant Aziz was finally satisfied. Our exorcism was a success. He collected his men and marched us to the southwest of the ville, where we entered into the deep grape-field trenches.
I got on the net, thanked the Canadians for their patience and for coming out to play, and said the ANA were satisfied and now heading back to Sper. The Canadian platoon gave me roger and made their way to the road to head back in, probably to check the culverts at the same time.
I heard some choppers in the air to our north, and radioed the command post to find out what was going on. The CP sergeant said, “American general's ground convoy. Heading to Masum.”
We were cutting through the grape fields when Ali ran up to me and said, “Sir, they are talking to each other on Icom, and one of them asked the other if the ANA searched him or his motorbike, and he said, ‘No, they only talked to me, and then let me go!’”
Holy crap! We had only seen one motorbike all day, back at the town shura. “Please tell Lieutenant Aziz that!” I told Ali.
He translated, excited like me to finally have some solid int, but Aziz saw the barn and, like a good trail horse, was on his way back to his stable.
“No, I do not believe him. That is not the same person,” he said over his shoulder to us.
And how the hell would you know that? I wondered. “But Lieutenant, we're only one hundred metres away; we could go back and still catch the guy, and search him and his motorbike and—”
“No, we have done much running today, and we have not had any water since three o'clock this morning, so we must go back now.”
I could understand about the water; I had easily drunk at least two litres so far, and they had had nothing, but we were running around like idiots because of you, jackass! We never got any solid int leads like this, so it was a fantastic opportunity, and he was just letting it slip through his fingers. And that was that. He continued marching and I tried not to pout, but I was not impressed.
We followed a ditch and then marched into a deep wadi, or dried-up riverbed, and then followed it until it led us to an open patch of ground. I looked around and realized we had all marched out into the open and Aziz would need to disperse his men; we were one big gaggle of troops, waiting to get mowed down or killed with one RPG or IED. The ways the enemy could kill us were almost limitless, so why make it easy for him by bunching up?
“Sir,” Longview said quietly, and then much louder, “SIR!”
I spun around to see one of the American Kiow
a helicopters, high up in the air in its over-watch position of the convoy, make a slow, half-circle in the cloudless sky until it was in line with us, about a kilometre away. It was now flying in our direction and covering the distance between us a little too quickly. Everyone around me stopped dead in their tracks. We all realized at the same moment that thirty-five armed men had just popped out of a wadi and were now huddled up in one big group, just like the Taliban would do!
Co-lishun' furces would-unt bunch up like thaht! I could hear the American pilot saying to his gunner, in a thick Texas drawl, as the gunner's thumb clicked up the red switch to make his guns hot.
“Nobody run, nobody move . . . ” I said as calmly as I could. “Ali, tell the Afghans not to move or run, or the chopper will kill us for sure. Everyone wave!” The gunship's nose dipped and its engine screamed with the strain. He was commencing his strafing run!
“Big, friendly waves!” I shouted. “Wave, wave you sons of bitches, WAVE LIKE YOUR LIVES DEPEND ON IT!” I had packed a Canadian flag for just this sort of occasion, but try as I might (and I was really trying), I couldn't get my side pouch open without using both hands, and my sense of self-preservation told me every guy and his dog needed to be waving at that exact moment with both arms.
It must've been a ridiculous sight: thirty-five fully grown and splendidly bearded men, armed to the teeth, waving like a bunch of kids on the playground, trying desperately to get the quarterback's attention: Throw it to me, I'm open! I'm open!
When his nose dipped and his engine began to scream, my heart dropped into my ballbag. I felt sick to my stomach and thought, This is it. This is how I'm going out: a blue-on-blue, killed by my own side, by a guy from Skokie, Illinois!
The pilot must've been a big fan of theatrical suspense, because he waited until the last possible moment to get his guns off before he turned his chopper on its axis, making it bob left and right as if to say, Hi, you're all pretty damn lucky! and then he veered off, going back to protect the convoy and scare the living crap out of somebody else.
“Jesus wept for the city of Jerusalem!” I whispered, and suddenly, everyone was laughing hysterically. I felt like an old man who had to wipe his eyes and blow his nose after a good guffaw. The adrenalin monkeys were riding us like crazy and we felt high the whole way back. But after a moment like that when the adrenalin is surging through you and making you feel invincible, when your body starts to finally come down off that natural high you hit the pavement pretty hard, and usually face first. Suddenly you can't keep your eyes open anymore and you just want to pass out and sleep for three days.
When we got back to our shack, Fourneau dropped his kit in a heap and collapsed on his bed, and I knew exactly how he felt. I would've liked to crash out too. The angry father tore him a new one, insisting that he get up out of his wank pit and top up his water and brush off his weapon. I followed my own SOP, and then began writing the report as the warrant went to the computer, Fourneau went back to bed, and Hetsa fired up the Xbox. I wasn't quite sure how to write this one up. That whole situation had been sort of novel for me.
I thought of something after our near-death experience, so I asked Captain Shafiq Ullah if I could speak to his men. He agreed and got Lieutenant Aziz to assemble them. They stood neatly at attention, but it was brutally hot and they were still observing Ramadan, so I wanted to do this as quickly as possible.
I asked Ali to do his terp thing as I got their CSM, Khan, to stand the soldiers at ease. I shouted in my best General Rommel voice, “Soldiers of the Afghan National Army, all of the Canadians are very impressed with you. It is an honour to be here, fighting alongside all of you. We can only imagine how hard it must be to patrol, every day, in this heat and dust with no food or water. We are amazed by your strength.
“I want you to remember what I am about to tell you, because one day, it may save all of our lives. If we are on a patrol, and you see some Canadians, the British, or Americans, but they have not seen you, your life is in danger. Sometimes, the soldiers the coalition countries send over here are very young. Many times, it is their first combat tour. Many of them have never been shot at before, and they are scared. If you pop out of a wadi, or from behind a wall, and they are not expecting you to be there, they may fire at you and kill you, or call in a jet, helicopter, or artillery. That is why, what I am about to say, you must remember . . . ” I waited a few seconds to increase the dramatic tension.
“The Taliban don't wave! To give a big, friendly wave—this is surely blasphemous to them! So, because the coalition forces know the Taliban don't wave, if you ever find yourself about to be shot at, by a soldier or a helicopter, do not run! Do not take cover! If you do that, they will think you are Taliban for sure, and they will fire on you. The best thing you can do is before they shoot, stand perfectly still and give a big, friendly wave, and keep waving until they wave back. Just like what we did this morning. Obviously it worked, because we're all still alive.”
The Afghans began laughing as I shouted, “Like this!” and gave a huge, flamboyant wave. I got the Afghans to copy me, and although we were all laughing and having fun, I was dead serious about what I had said. And I didn't know it at the time, but the Taliban-don't-wave trick would save all of our lives, many times over.
Later after we'd showered and had lunch, I went to the command post to use the encrypted telephone. I called Sean, our 2 I/C, at the OMLT HQ in Masum Ghar. We called each other all sorts of nasty names, as was our custom, and then I got down to it. I explained how Fourneau's fitness had been lacking as of late. I mentioned the patrol a few mornings back, where the ANA wanted to patrol to a small village called “Little Reggae” to the south of Sperwhan. They had gotten lost and confused when they could no longer see it as we passed through a small village, and the warrant had to take their recce guys by the hand to extricate them from the village. But that wasn't the problem. The issue arose when we came upon four hundred metres of open ground between the small village we were in and the one we had to patrol to.
Captain Shafiq Ullah was completely convinced we were going to get fired on from Little Reggae, so he said we'd have to sprint across the open ground, like soldiers at Gallipoli. I considered requesting smoke shells to screen us, but our guns were currently firing to the north, so someone needed them a lot more than we did. We began to run across the open ground, and had probably gotten halfway across when the warrant started shouting at Fourneau over the PRR. I spun around and realized that I had lost him. I asked the captain if we could halt to let Fourneau catch up. Shafiq Ullah said, “He is only one man,” and I could see his point, if indeed we were being fired at. In a situation like that we couldn't risk everyone's life for the one guy who couldn't keep up, but that wasn't the case here.
I said we really had to go firm, to let him catch up. The warrant shouted at him again over the PRR: “You'd fucking better catch up to the sir, right now!” Fourneau ran up to me and smashed into the ditch beside me and started apologizing, but I cut him off and said we'd talk about it later, because right now we had to get going. I gave him a minute to catch his breath, but we were all terribly exposed so we had to move. We continued running, and again, Fourneau fell behind. The warrant ripped another big strip off him.
I relayed the story to Sean, and mentioned how Fourneau, on a couple of different patrols, had left me to climb small walls or cross streams on my own, while he would go out of his way to try and find an easier route.
“Now, to be fair to him, some of the walls were quite high, and the bridges narrow, but we have to follow where the Afghans lead, and Fourneau's ten years younger than me, and twenty years younger than the warrant, so he should be able to keep up,” I told Sean. I also mentioned that after the first time he'd ditched me to find another route, he was told to never do it again, and in the future, I told him to let me know any detour plans and I would go with him. I just didn't want to turn around and find him gone. That tends to violently age a commander, especially when the enemy would
love nothing better than to capture a Canadian alive so they could cut his head off on the six o'clock Al Jazeera news.
“So what you're saying,” Sean replied, “is you're a bad leader and you're putting his life at risk with your unnecessary heroics?”
“Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, ya got me!” I snorted.
“No, I get it. He's becoming a force-protection issue. He's not covering you, he's not going the same routes, and he's leaving you exposed.”
“Yeah, but he's not doing it on purpose. I mean, he's not being malicious, and it is incredibly hot here. Of course, you wouldn't know because you can't leave the safety of the Batcave to go on patrol, because you're too important to the cause, but . . . He's a good guy, he's just struggling on the PT side. Everything else, he's doing great. I don't want to get rid of him, but, well, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. You live in a world of fear, and he ain't helpin'. How are you holding up?” Sean uncharacteristically asked.
“Aw, you know me. My tour 'stache and adamantium-laced bones will protect me! Give it some thunk, all right? Thanks for nothing, out. Ksscchh!” I hung up on him before he could get the last word in, as was my custom.
I cornered Fourneau that afternoon, and he said he was really sorry for letting me down. I accepted his apology, but then said we needed to seriously discuss what had been going on over the last couple of weeks. I told him I considered him to be a very good and bright soldier, but his fitness was letting him, me, and the rest of the team down. I explained that I knew he was trying, and I was happy with him, overall, but his fitness level had put all of us at risk the other day.
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