The next few patrols were milk runs, and you didn't hear 72A complaining. I had been watching the guys from the start, monitoring their behaviour and attitudes for signs of stress. Longview was the gold standard for us, always switched on, always good to go. Hetsa was really starting to act like an old vet; he'd seen some action and was beginning to swagger, maybe a bit too much for the angry father. Fourneau was a different matter, and I was becoming quite concerned. At the end of each patrol, he'd perform the mandatory water top-up, dust off his weapon, and then crash out hard on his bed space. Clearly he hadn't made peace with his version of the Almighty, and no matter how hard he tried to hide it, it was obvious he thought he wasn't going to survive this tour.
I talked to him privately on several different occasions, and did my best to reassure him that he was going to be fine. I took him with me to the gym, I took an interest in his video game progress, and I started a 72A SOP of watching Battlestar Galactica (the new series) after every patrol, knowing he was a big fan of science fiction. We had fun with it, and wouldn't start the show until everyone on our team was seated on the comfy couch.
One thing was for sure, we'd all lost weight. Of course, we'd been sweating like damn pigs for the better part of three weeks, but there was more to it than that. Living in a state of near-constant stress begins to wear you down, degrade you, and make you less combat-effective, and sadly, less normal. The things you would've found funny back home don't make you laugh as much anymore, and you begin to lose interest in the things you once enjoyed. I recognized the effects of constant wariness and stress on myself and the team, but recognizing it and finding a way to stop it were two different things. Slowly, everything began to feel grey.
It didn't help that the ANA artillery was beginning to fire their heavy rounds into the mountains to the south. They were meant to call the CP, who would then call everyone to let them know it was the ANA firing, and to not crap themselves when they heard a massive cannon shooting only metres away from their shack. As so often happens in war, the message never got properly passed, and we would literally jump inches off the ground when they fired, our hearts beating out of our chests for a good minute.
Someone would shout “Sonofabitch!” and we would all nervously laugh, not really finding it funny. Our whole building would shake and dust would fall all over our kit. The first time it happened, I flinched so violently I twisted my neck out of whack. On top of that, the Canadians would be firing their howitzers too, at all hours, and again, with usually no warning given, so you couldn't prepare your heart not to freak out.
I had some extra fun thrown into the mix because, at least once a week, I'd wake up to a mouse climbing up my arm or on my face as I slept. I'd shout “Gaahaaaa!” and violently shake until it was bucked off of me. There was just no need for that. . . .
Captain Sean often radioed me to see how we were doing and if we needed anything. “Yeah,” I'd respond, “a 2 I/C with a functioning spine!”
I liked to give Sean the gears, but I credited him for acting as a great shit shield between me and Major Hobbles.
It probably didn't help Sean that I liked to remind him that this was his first combat tour. Whenever I would rudely point that out, he'd tell me that he'd been to Bosnia. Then I'd tell him that tour didn't count. I'd go on to tell him that within the Canadian military, none of those so-called tours before Afghanistan counted, for anything. If you hadn't been to the Stan before, you were a nobody, and nothing you had done previously counted for squat! I was only joking, but I knew a lot of people within the CF actually believed that crap.
“Numbnuts,” he opened with over the secure net, “next time you go on patrol—that is to say, if you ever go back on patrol and stop screwing the dog with all of your admin days off—check out the local area and see if you can find a good place to set up a donkey pen, over.”
“HA! Good one! Over, ksscchh!” I laughed. Sean had a great sense of humour.
“No, I'm serious, someone in KAF has a full-time job of trying to get donkeys to the Afghan army. They're meant to start using them for long-range resupply missions, over.”
“Donkeys? Donkeys? In the year 2008, when we've got this marvellous invention called the four-stroke internal combustion engine, they want to try and convince the ANA to use donkeys? I thought we were trying to get them out of the twelfth century? Over, ksscchh.”
“Well, I saw the officer myself when I was back in KAF; he calls himself the Assman. It's his full-time job, trying to get donkeys to the ANA. I'm serious, so quit screwing around and try to find a suitable place to put a donkey pen, out.”
“You don't out me, I out you! Out! Ksscchh!”
“Hey dickhead, have you been making the ‘ksscchh’ radio static noise this whole time?”
“Don't know what you're talking about, 72A, OUT! Ksscchh!”
Lieutenant Aziz found me later and asked if I'd heard anything about donkey pens. It seems his HQ had told him the same thing: to find a suitable location to begin maintaining a crack team of donkeys that were earmarked to resupply the ANA over countless klicks of hostile enemy territory. We both thought it was some sort of a practical joke.
Later that afternoon I saw the ANA artillery officer, the one Captain Brannon (the OMLT artillery mentor) was advising. He was the ANA officer who had been pestering Stephens for parachute flares, and Stephens (being so close to catching his “freedom bird” home at the end of his tour) sort of snapped at him, telling him he wasn't an effing supermarket for the ANA. I approached him and through Ali, I said I'd found some para flares, and if he could find some time, I'd give him a demo on them.
Without a word he silently abandoned Captain Brannon and followed me over to my OMLT HQ, where I radioed the command post to tell them we'd be test firing para flares, and they shouldn't be alarmed.
We fired a few until he got the gist, then I handed him several and told him, “Good hunting. Oh,” I added, “and of course, try not to use them all at once.” That was akin to telling a kid on Christmas day, “Don't open any of your gifts.”
Tears welled up in his eyes as he shook my hand vigorously and thanked me. Of course, that night several para flares could be seen drifting lazily in the sky over Observation Post Brown, where he was stationed at the T-intersection north of Sperwhan Ghar, and I think some non-affiliated Taliban donkeys were mercilessly gunned down in the confusion, but what the hell. If he wanted to use them to kill Taliban (and hopefully not any more donkeys), then I would find some for him. We literally had huge ISO containers (giant steel shipping containers) full of them back in KAF that no one seemed to be using. And I didn't know it at the time, but I had done my good karma deed for the day. That one would come back to help me, not haunt me like some of the things I had done in my lifetime.
Chapter 10
As if on fatalistic cue, Strong Point Sperwhan Ghar was attacked for the second time since we arrived. This time we were sitting at the picnic table as Ali was giving us a Dari lesson, when rounds began to crack overhead and smack into the cement of our buildings, pinging and ricocheting around the barracks. Suddenly a dull THUMP came from the hill as mortars began to fall onto it. An RPG warhead screamed over the buildings, flying just over our roof.
“Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen!” I shouted as I held open the door to our shack for Longview, Hetsa, and Fourneau. “Go go go!” I shouted as I slapped them on their butts like Coach Green, my old high school football coach, as they ran past. I ran over to the field phone as the snipers were talking over the net, picked it up, and told the CP that Sperwhan was under attack (and if the vapour contrails of the RPG rockets were anything to go by) from the west.
We quickly kitted up, a very sombre tone falling over the team as we struggled into our vests and gear. We knew this attack was a lot more serious than the last one. Last time it had been a few village yahoos taking potshots, but this was different. Now there was a lot of incoming machine gun fire, rockets, and mortars. I shouted, “Dress me, Hets
a!” and then led the team into the mélée.
ANA were running everywhere in total pandemonium, shouting and cursing. Ali poked his head out from around a corner and I shouted at him to go back to his building and get on the ground and stay there. No interpretation was needed; the situation was remarkably clear. Find the enemy and kill him, before he killed us. Simple really, as long as we weren't killed before we could even find him.
I spoke into the PRR as we took off running towards the sandbags, the sound of rounds snapping into the buildings and overhead. “Wizard and Hungo break right, Fourneau on me; hard and fast into cover!”
I sprinted out from between the buildings and into the open area, and suddenly all hell broke loose. Rounds whizzed and cracked all around us; mortars exploded on the hill as RPG rockets screamed overhead; the snipers on the hilltop were returning fire with their high-powered rifles; an ANA soldier with a PKM light machine gun was blasting away into the village to the west, shouting at his number two on the gun to find more ammo.
I was running as fast as I could, but it felt like I was in a bad dream; my legs were kicking and pumping with everything I had, but the smooth stones were being churned up as I ran and it felt like running in thick sand, as the sickening CRACK CRACK sounds passed over and in front of my head. I almost fell over but righted myself as time slowed down. Multiple RPG warheads flew over top of us as rounds snapped and cracked in front, overhead, and behind us.
It seemed like something out of any of the hundreds of war movies I had watched in my life, but this is real, this is real, I had to keep telling myself, because it all seemed so incredibly surreal. You could hear the enemy shoot, then when you heard a snap sound it meant it's close to you, but when you can hear the crack of a bullet, you know it's too close; the cracking sound is the bullet breaking the sound barrier, right next to your head. The louder the crack, the closer it was to freeing you from your mortal coil.
I was running toward the sandbag emplacement. I could see the berm; it was only a couple of feet away now—c'mon, c'mon!—and I made it, slamming into the wall. I looked back, and Fourneau was still twenty feet away. “Move, damn it!” I screamed at him, scared I was about to watch blood spray out of his body as bullets tore through him. I suddenly realized the best way to help him was to get my rounds downrange to suppress the enemy and force Timothy to get his head down.
I peeked over the berm and scanned the village. A ghostly haze was hanging over it, and I couldn't see anything. No movement from behind the walls or in the alleys—just haze and dust. Finally off to the right I saw movement and a long-barrelled weapon—there!—and I brought my rifle up and over the berm, sighted on the movement, and started firing. I shot a quick, three-round burst, and went to fire again, but all I heard was the dead man's click. No bang, no recoil, nothing. Stoppage! I tilted my weapon to the right and saw an empty shell casing half-sticking out of the breechblock. With my left hand I racked the slide back to clear it, then I rammed the forward assist, took aim, and fired again and again. A couple of ANA soldiers ran up next to me on my left and began firing their AKs over the berm and into the village.
I ducked behind the sandbag wall and looked back to see if Fourneau had made it. I saw his arm and leg hiding behind a wall at the back, thank God.
“All right, you sons of bitches!” I heard Forrest Gump's momma say in her loving, motherly tone. “If anyone ever tries to kill you, you try and kill them right back.” Good advice. I moved four feet to my left, noticed the ANA were hiding behind the berm, and popped back up over the sandbags, quickly scanning for the enemy.
Incoming rounds began snapping all around me with a sickening SNAP SNAP SNAP! CRACK CRACK CRACK!
I looked to my left and saw that the Afghans were still hunkered down as a line of automatic fire was being punched into the sandbags, only two feet away from my face, getting closer with every snap, until the crack sound happened right next to my ear and sand spit into my face, little rocks pinging off my ballistic glasses.
Now anyone with any real experience getting shot at would've told you the best thing I could've done was immediately drop my head as quickly as I could. But I had never been shot at that closely before and I'm embarrassed to say, even with all of my training and some good experience under my belt, my brain began to play the circus song—doo doo dudda dudda doo doo, doo doo—with a nature show voice-over narration: The human eye is attracted to movement . . . So even though rounds were passing danger close to my face and kicking up sand all around me, my brain said, If you move slowly, you won't attract their attention, so I slowly, very slowly, slithered down out of view, and took a few breaths. What the hell just happened there? Obviously I already had their attention! Idiot! The ANA soldiers to my left looked at me and pushed their palms to the ground as if to say, Stay down, moron! And when the Afghans have to mentor you to take cover, you know you're doing something terribly wrong!
Okay, I thought to myself, until my brain stops working against me, maybe I should send up a contact report. I hadn't heard anyone do that yet. As rounds continued to smack into the sandbag berm all around me, I hunkered down and broke out my map, GPS, and compass. I looked at the Afghans, who were hunkered right down, not budging, and I guessed they had decided to wait until Timothy took an interest in somebody else.
I quickly sent the contact report over the net so the rest of the base would know the enemy's grid location on the map, his strength, and what he was doing (trying to kill us), and what the OMLT team was doing (trying to kill him back), as well as the start time of the contact. The CP said, “Roger, ack,” and went back to doing their thing.
I radioed Longview on the PRR and asked how they were doing on his side. He and the dirty Hungo were good, and I could tell from the shooting and sound of outgoing 40mm grenades from the warrant's weapon that he was having a right ol' cockney knees-up. The Wizard, finally gittin' some! Longview had told me at the start of the tour that one of his war to-do list points was to fire every weapon in the CF and Warsaw Pact arsenal. Well, that's two out of the way.
The enemy fire continued; snapping and cracking noises screamed through the air as incoming rockets and mortars splashed into Sperwhan's hill. I was peeking over the top again when something gave me a tap tap roughly on the shoulder. I spun around and found myself staring down the barrel of a massive boom-stick.
My eyes slowly tracked up the barrel from its pointy end all the way to its middle, where Lieutenant Aziz, wearing nothing but camo pants, flip-flops, and his green army shirt, was carrying the massive stovepipe Russian Spig 9 recoilless rifle firmly on his shoulder. It was called a rifle, but it was really a cannon: the damn thing was over eight feet long, and there he was, carrying it on his shoulder like it was a hockey stick. I looked at him and smiled. He had used the loaded Spig 9, with his finger on the trigger, to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. Well, you got it!
Still holding the cannon, he motioned with it, as if to say, “Kindly get out of the way.”
“Yeah, just let me . . . get out of . . . the way here. No problem,” I said. “You want to kill Timothy by firing a weapon from your shoulder that's meant to be mounted on a freaking truck, then be my guest!” The weapon he was nonchalantly carrying around was designed to kill tanks!
In World War II the Germans had their dreaded 88mm artillery guns and tank cannons. Well, the cannon on Aziz's shoulder was a 90mm! I squatted out of the way and went over to the side to find some hard cover at the end of the emplacement when I bumped into Fourneau, who hadn't budged (as far as I knew) for the whole firefight. He was sitting on his bum, his rifle under his shoulder, his hands resting on his thighs.
“Fourneau—what the hell?” I shouted. “We need every gun in this fight, what're you . . . ” Then I remembered that Aziz was about to fire his nuclear missile at the enemy, and would undoubtedly be showering Fourneau and me in melting hot backblast and dust. The Spig 9 was supposedly a “recoilless rifle,” but this was an oxymoron, because you still didn
't want to be anywhere near its so-called recoilless backblast. Once fired, the rocket would fly out one end, and a molten lava propellant (backblast) that would melt your face off flew out the other end of it.
“Move, move!” I pushed Fourneau around the corner. We were still in cover from the enemy, but now relatively safe from any backblast.
Aziz walked stoically up to the berm, swung his BFG (big f-ing gun) over the sandbags, and took aim. Holy crap, he's really going to do it! I flung my body over Fourneau's back to cover him as we both hunkered down, “Breathe out! Backblast backblast!” I shouted as a massive KERBAAMMM! reverberated through the air. We were instantly struck deaf from the noise, blind from the dust, and mute from the backblast, which sucked all the air out of our lungs. I had been winded before from sports, fights, whatever, but this was unlike anything I'd ever felt; it was like an elephant had just trampled on my chest. All I could hear was ringing in my ears as I checked Fourneau to make sure he was okay. I pulled his head around to see his face, and all I could make out were his lips silently moving to say, “Holy shit.”
I shook my head then squat-walked over to Aziz, who was still standing above the berm, completely exposed to incoming enemy fire, but not worried in the least. I shook my head again to try and get some hearing back and soon realized the incoming firing had died down considerably. Now there were only four or five guys left still shooting at us.
I got up and walked the last few feet over to Aziz, looked over the berm, and saw a huge mushroom cloud forming in the village, right around the spot I had been shooting at. I thought mushroom clouds were the exclusive domain of nuclear weapons, but after that, I realized if an explosion was big enough, it would always suck dust up into the air.
Captain Jay, the outgoing Canadian artillery observer on top of the hill, shouted over the radio, “The Afghans have just fired their cannons into the village!”
The Taliban Don't Wave Page 18