The Taliban Don't Wave

by Robert Semrau

  Ten seconds later Rich told us the incoming friendly fire had stopped. Major Hobbles picked up the radio conversation and said, “Seven Two Charlie, you owe me one, out!”

  I told the American major to get a grip of his men; they'd almost killed my friend and his Afghans. He didn't have anything to say back, so I rejoined Longview, Hetsa, and Fourneau over by the wall.

  “Hey, sir,” Hetsa said, “check this out,” and pointed toward an Afghan border cop (judging by his long hair, flowing beard, and shoeless feet). He was out in the open, carrying a large Spig 9 recoilless rifle around on his shoulder, just like Aziz had done when Sperwhan got attacked the second time. The border cop was high as a kite, singing and waving the eight-foot-long cannon tube back and forth, up into the air, and then clunking its barrel down into the dirt. All of the Afghans shouted their version of “Geeewwww!” as he'd swing it around and point it at them, as if it was a funny joke. Naturally, his finger was on the trigger the whole time.

  Finally a buddy of his, who was equally high by the looks of him, stumbled over and helped him point his BFG in the right direction, toward the Taliban village. The rocketeer shouted something, then casually aimed the Spig at the village. But at the last second his inner-ear problem must've kicked in, because he pointed the Spig up into the sky at a sixty-degree angle, and fired his round off into space.

  KERWHOOSH!

  I thought he must have taken a personal dislike to the Taliban base on the moon, or something. As his intergalactic missile launched into space, the stoned border cop disappeared behind a wall of dust kicked up from his launcher's backblast.

  Everyone started howling with laughter, because after about twenty seconds when the dust started to settle, the cop walked out of the eye of the dirt hurricane, dropped his Spig 9 roughly on the ground, and promptly collapsed in a heap. Good a time as any to take a little nap. One of his fellow cops walked over to him, swiftly kicked him a few times in the ribs, and then started laughing again. Was he alive or dead? And really, who cared?

  I had to wipe tears from my eyes, it was hands-down one of the funniest things I'd ever seen in my entire life. Then Captain Shafiq Ullah decided to finally join us as his ANA began to move out toward the village. Rich and his crew would carry on to the west and hit the village to our front from the flank, supporting us as we attacked it with a full frontal assault. Pop smoke, full frontal! Airborne!

  We marched along but before we were even close to the village, some of the high border cops ran out of a wood line to the east of the village, stormed the main gate, and began room clearing on full automatic.

  “Whaddya think, sir?” Longview asked me over the PRR, as hundreds of rounds snapped and cracked from within the village.

  “Let 'em clear it themselves. It would be pure suicide to go into the village while the high friends of Jesus lay down the law!” No thanks!

  We patrolled up to the village and then quietly passed it. As we walked next to a twenty-foot-high wall, I heard a long burst of AK fire. I looked around but nobody else seemed to notice because there were so many rounds going downrange. We were becoming dangerously inoculated to gunfire and that could lead to complacency, and that would be the end of us.

  We passed the Taliban village and took a breather in the shade. The CSM and his FOO/FAC and medic/mobile reserve unit joined us. I asked how they were doing and they were good to go. It had been a while since any of us had to patrol over twenty kilometres under enemy fire. I reminded myself to watch everyone more closely because heat exhaustion would be a real threat on a day like this. Yeah, if the stoned border cops don't kill us first!

  We marched on and laughed as the omnipresent, perpetually high border cops “liberated” a motorbike from the Taliban, put four guys on it, and tried to zoom around, much to the delight of everyone present. These guys should open their own circus. They zoomed down a very steep ditch, smashed into the bottom of it, went ass-over-teakettle, and sprawled all over each other. We passed them on the road and looked down at them, all crumpled one on top of the other in the ditch, moaning in pain. One guy seemed to be unconscious. Of course we laughed at them as we marched past. Who wouldn't? They were quickly becoming our mobile comic relief.

  Some ANA troops called me over and pointed out a possible Taliban compound. Then they asked me if I could call down artillery on it, thereby denying its use to the enemy—and they were serious. I asked them what they planned on doing with all of their fellow soldiers who were still inside the compound.

  “They will move,” an Afghan officer, whom I'd never seen before, smartly replied.

  “In time?” I asked.

  “Sure. Can you do it right now?”

  “Are you going to get them out of there, right now?”

  “Sure. Hey, hey!” He began to shout at his men to vacate the premises so that I could call down artillery (but most of his Afghans remained inside, probably still liberating items from the Taliban).

  I waited until the ANA officer walked back over to me, then I pretended to press my radio button, and moved my mouthpiece closer to my lips as I said, “Roger Young, we have an official request by the mobile infantry to commence bombardment of Planet P; how copy? Affirmative, that's a big rog. Covenant ground forces are attempting to fire the Alpha Halo!” I called Max over and said, “Please tell the officer, ‘Negative, Fleet has other plans for Planet P,’ but welcome home.” Max looked at me quizzically not understanding the Starship Troopers movie and Halo references, then tried his best to translate my mad ramblings. The Afghan officer thanked me anyway and then strolled off.

  We continued on the patrol, our feet kicking up the ever-present moon dust, an ultrafine dust powder that settled onto everything like a blanket. As we'd pass farms and compounds, several times the Taliban DEWS alert would begin to bray, letting us know we'd been compromised and Timothy was on to us. Damn donkeys!

  We patrolled for another half an hour when a massive TIC kicked off to our east. But it was all outgoing fire. And it seemed to be travelling south down the road. I found out later that night, after talking to a few Americans, that their guys had been doing spec fire (speculation fire), which meant they would fire at anything suspicious. So that explained why the TIC seemed to be moving down the road, as they travelled south. I could just see our American cousins, riding up in the Humvee turrets: No siree, I don't like the look of that rock! BANG BANG! Nope, that wadi looks suspicious. BANG BANG BANG!

  After a few more hours of marching in the terrible heat, with the odd angry shot snapping and cracking over our heads and making us flinch, we finally met up with Rich and his boys. I shouted at them to “Get back! I don't want your death wish rubbing off on my call sign!” We had a few laughs and Rich told me he had a good story for the campfire that night.

  The ANA then decided that if they continued patrolling through the fields, sooner or later they might actually come across the Taliban. And since no one wanted that, they decided to stick to the main north-south road. So that's what we did. We left the fields and dirt paths and began marching only along the road, and never left it once. If the Taliban were going to plant IEDs anywhere, it would most likely be on the main road, but that thought never crossed the ANA's collective mind. I politely mentioned it to Captain Shafig Ullah, who merely replied, “Inshallah.”

  After about five klicks, Rich's ANA officer, Captain Ghias, had had enough. He radioed for a truck to come and pick him up. After ten minutes a Ranger pulled up beside him, and he lazily chucked his Dragunov sniper rifle in the back and hopped into the box. Must be nice! He waved at Rich and offered him some prime real estate next to him, but Rich angrily shook his head no and continued marching with the ANA of Third Company.

  I asked if anyone needed water, and Hetsa said he'd gone dry. I reached into my day sack and gave him some of my spare bottles and, for a morale booster, a bottle of Gatorade I'd brought along from Sper.

  We came across the American convoy from the east, which I had affectionately labelled Sp
ec Fire Force Five, and I politely asked if they could spare any water. Maybe I shouldn't have taken the piss if I was going to beg them for water later. They took one look at us, and then offered us all we could carry. We thanked them and topped up our CamelBaks and water bladders. Damn good of 'em. Despite my apprehension about their spec fire, I loved the Americans, I really did. Sure, everyone knew they would try to kill you from time to time, but on the modern battlefield, you just came to accept that.

  But they would also sacrifice themselves to save you, and they certainly brought a lot of toys to the party, and because of that, most of the other coalition countries were extremely jealous of them. The Americans never rubbed your face in this, but you always knew that you were the poor kid on the block compared to them.

  But if it wasn't for that Apache the day before, Rich and his team would've all been killed, no question. We asked the convoy for water, but they also offered us food. If we had needed ammo or grenades, they would've just handed that over as well, no questions asked. They were just like that; they would literally give you the shirts off their backs. Many Americans later told me they were happy to have allies they could trust in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, where they felt like it was only the Brits and Aussies who really watched their backs.

  Around dusk we entered the town next to FOB Bermuda. Some guys said we'd marched close to twenty-eight klicks, other guys said it was more like twenty-three, but regardless, we'd hiked well over twenty klicks, each soldier packing on average a hundred pounds of kit, in forty-degree-Celsius heat. Shots had snapped and cracked around us all day, and once again 72C, a.k.a. call sign “Because I could not stop for Death,” had almost met a horrific end, only this time at the hands of our allies. Feel the love!

  We set up in an abandoned school until our recce element could find the exact location of the FOB. Rich and I walked into the school and found thousands—literally thousands—of man-turds in neat rows in every single classroom. The civvies apparently used the school as a community toilet. I was amazed by the tight rows and patterns they had somehow managed to maintain. Laddah, the medic, walked over and said, “Well, we can't stay here tonight; we'd all get sick.”

  I snapped back with, “Thanks, Tips!” and instantly regretted it. The heat was really doing my nut in, but that was no excuse for being a prick. I apologized to him and he said to forget it.

  Soon our recce team came back to the school and led us to the Brit FOB on the outskirts of the ville. We must've been quite a sight. We were dirty, dehydrated, tired, hungry, angry, and armed—a somewhat dangerous combination. The Brits greeted us warmly, happy to see ground troops after a month of being cut off. They took us upstairs and showed us to our room, a big, thirty-by-thirty-foot cement floor. No beds, no blankets, but we weren't expecting any. We'd been cut off from our vehicles all day, so we had no sleeping bags or warm kit. I had my toque, dry shirt, and gloves from my day sack, and that was it. And when you'd been sweating bullets all day in plus-forty heat, and the temperature dropped to near zero at night, that change was absolutely devastating. As our OMLT unit's self-appointed “morale officer,” I took it upon myself to sort us out for the night. I dumped my kit in the corner and went to find the Brit in charge—a sergeant wearing an Airborne shirt. That was a welcome sight; I knew the Airborne Brotherhood always took care of its own.

  “Allo, mucker,” I started off with, slipping into my best cockney and Para slang. “We've tabbed over twenty K to git here, mate, and we've got no warm kit, yeah? It's turnin' Baltic and we're absolutely gippin'. We had to dump kit and go OTR back at nutter central. Now things've gone Pete Tong and our jack wagons can't git to us, yeah? You've probly sussed we're completely chinned, Hank Marvin, need some serious gonk, and just wanna get our fat swods down, an' maybe have a lie-in on the 'morrow, and I don't mean a furry thing with claws! Can ya screw the nut for us, mate? An' where's a colonial git take a slash round 'ere?”

  “Course mate, no worries,” he said. “How many are yuh?”

  “Sixteen mate; cheers for that!”

  “Right, two shakes an' we'll sort ya out.”

  “That's absolutely pucker, mate; good on ya, cheers. Name's Rob,” I said.

  “Daz; no worries. You meat and veg?”

  “Aye mate, 2 Para. Did a stint and got kicked out when they sussed me mum and dad were married and not first cousins!”

  “Ha! Figures, mate. Wait one, I'll be right back.” Daz took off and collected some of the lads and spread the word to collect some warm kit for us. One of the guys, when he found out we'd marched with no follow-on vehicles or warm kit, said, “That's a bit schoolboy, innit?”

  “Oi!” I shouted from behind Daz, who got out of the way so I could address the ignorant git. “Fuck me, mate! We just tabbed over twenty klicks through multiple Timothy contacts to get here! We had a choice between packing water and ammo, or warm kit! And since we figured youse twats would actually like some company, we chose the ammo!”

  “Yeah right, sorry mate,” he quietly said. Daz then sent them off, and ten minutes later the Canadians had more than enough warm kit to get us through the night. I took the massive haul upstairs and said, “The good book doth verily say, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’” and like Père Noel, I began handing out softy jackets, long-sleeved tops, fleeced bottoms, thick socks and gloves, watch caps, and toques to all the good little children. To top it off, Daz walked upstairs with a five-by-five-metre-square sheet of Hessian sack that would cover all of us quite easily. We donned our warm kit, and went downstairs to talk with the Brits and grab some fresh soup and crackers.

  After we had eaten our fill, Rich and Major Hobbles told me over a warm cup of joe what had actually happened that afternoon, before Rich started “panicking” on the net. He and his ANA had broken off to the west, that part I knew. But Rich, who would surely be one of the lone survivors of a zombie apocalypse, had a bad feeling just as he was about to walk between two buildings. So he peeked around the corner just in time to see an American Humvee, with some young kid up in the turret, swing its mounted light machine gun around and open up on Rich and his ANA. The major cut in to say that apparently the gunner was a seventeen-year-old reservist, who wanted to be the first kid on his block with a confirmed kill. He saw brown troops and probably figured anyone brown had to be Taliban, even though they were in ANA uniform, wearing helmets, with badges and flags on their sleeves, etc., etc.

  Rich picked up the story again, in his Cape Breton accent. “Well, the ANA don't stand for that kind of nonsense.” So the Afghans, having been shot at countless times before and therefore possessed of much more clarity of mind, decided they'd been fired on too many times by white folk and began to shoot back. Joey from Podunk, West Viriginia, in the Humvee turret, shouted “Hot damn!” and really started to pop some caps at the ANA. Then the ANA started manoeuvring to get better firing positions on the Humvee they knew was occupied by Americans! Poor Rich was losing his mind, because he was trying to get everyone to stop firing on each other, so he shouted it out over the net.

  “But Samroo,” he mocked, “goes ‘doo, doo, doo, we're not shootin' at no one round here, yuk, yuk’ and does nothing to help!”

  “Hey Rich,” I smirked, “I'll tell ya what: take out your compass and shoot a bearing of twenty-four hundred, then march on it until you find somebody who gives a shit!”

  Major Hobbles cut in and said, “I decided I couldn't leave it to Rob, obviously, so I looked and quickly realized there were American Humvees much farther back, way down the line outside the village. So yes, where Rob was, no one was shooting, but four hundred metres back, out of view, was Joey from, where did you say? Podunk? Anway, he had decided he wasn't getting the kill tally he wanted with his M240 belt-fed machine gun, so he swung it out of the way and was about to bring his 40mm grenade launcher to bear on friend Richard, when I jumped up, ripped Joey out of the turret, and shouted, ‘You killed a lot of good people with your fucked-up fire mission!’ and then literally made him cry.
”

  We all had a good laugh at Rich's expense, ate some more soup, and then hunkered down for the night. For someone not used to the OMLT and its ways, it would have been a strange sight—sixteen soldiers, many of whom had almost been killed a dozen times over, wearing borrowed clothes and using their tac vests as pillows, lying side by side, laughing and farting, under a big burlap sack.

  I joked and said, “Everyone, hands above the Hessian, please and thank you!”

  Rich shouted out, “Remember everyone, what happens in FOB Bermuda stays in FOB Bermuda!”

  “The hell it does!” everyone shouted back.

  Chapter 14

  The next morning, Major Hobbles was told by his boss that where the ANA went, the OMLT would follow, and mentor accordingly. So our major explained we'd just been signed up to join our ANA as they were about to cross the desert to get back to the ANP station in Lashka Ghar. We would've been ambushed and IEDed to hell if we had tried to go back the way we'd just come, so that left us only one choice: we'd have to cross the desert to the east, then loop back up to Lash.

  In the dead of night, our sec-for guys pulled up to FOB Bermuda with our RGs, so 72A and 72C would be losing their drivers and gunners to the RG convoy, while the warrants, captains, and some of the other lads would be accompanying the ANA as they did their Cannonball Run through the desert.

  We said goodbye to our wheelmen and automated turret gunners and were about to leave the FOB when Warrant Longview had a sinking suspicion. He went back upstairs and found that Fourneau had forgotten his day sack and Hetsa the spare barrel for his C9. Hetsa's sin against the gods of war, forgetting his spare barrel, was actually a chargeable offence, but the angry father said he'd deal with it properly when we all got back to Sperwhan.

  We thanked the Brits for their hospitality, and I collected and checked off every single piece of warm kit once it was returned to me. Not that I thought anyone would steal from our kind hosts, but when you're that tired, you just forget things like that. We policed up our gear and marched out the front gate and travelled back to the school of a thousand turds. We muckled onto our ANA compatriots, and then Rich, Smith, Longview, and I hopped onto a big ANA deuce-and-a-half truck and sat down for the most bone-jarring ride of our lives. The Cannonball Run had started, and just like the movie, it wasn't funny.