The Taliban Don't Wave

by Robert Semrau

  The Canadian FOO/FAC, the artillery observer, spoke over the net and said his guns were good to go—I only had to give him a target. I looked over the grape field and saw signs of life returning: some men, women, and children had begun picking grapes again and moving through the trenches. I looked farther south, on what I guessed was Timothy's E&E (escape and evasion) route, and saw a dozen large birds fly up and out of the trees, startled by something moving quickly underneath them.

  “Negative,” I said over the radio to the FOO/FAC. “The enemy has fled to the south, I have no viable target, I have no eyes on.” He's certainly keen. But the FOO/FAC wasn't satisfied; he acted as though he hadn't heard me, and repeated his offer/demand to shoot his guns at something.

  Okay, I don't have time for this. “Seven Two Charlie, the enemy has fled to the south. They are gone. I have no grid for their position to give you! There are now women and children working in the fields. This TIC is over. I am closing the book on this one. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Seven Two Charlie, out.”

  I had seen this before: it was probably the FOO/FAC's first time outside the wire, and possibly his last, so he desperately wanted to be able to say he'd done the job he'd trained for years for and shot his guns. He probably thought I was some thick idiot who couldn't take the hint, but I wasn't going to risk the lives of civilians just so he could say he called in artillery. Besides, we were way too close, danger close, to where the guns would've been dropping their high-explosive rounds; and if they were so much as a tiny bit off in their calculations, we'd all be turned into a red, gooey paste!

  Shamsallah took point on the patrol and continued south for another twenty minutes, before he took us down a different path that headed west. We took a break in the shade, and I sipped down lots of water. I looked at my watch: it was getting close to 1100 hours and the sun was beginning to burn our faces. I forgot to put on my usual SPF-forty sunscreen, and I knew my combat shades would leave me looking like a fried raccoon by the time the day was over. I asked Ginge how he was doing and he said fine. He was in his element, having the time of his life, just like on the patrols I'd managed to get him on back in Sper. It was fun for me to have somebody who was keen along for the ride.

  We continued marching west for about ten minutes. We would glance over walls and speak to the farmers and villagers if they could be bothered to stick around. I didn't blame them for hiding—I think I would have as well. Every now and then we would see kids and I would act like I was a monster and give chase. I had found that children all over the world loved to be chased, and these little village kids were no different. If I thought it wouldn't get them killed in a riot, I would hand over some gum, but only if they were out of view of the rest of the kids.

  We had passed out of a village and continued to follow an elevated, narrow road when we heard a thump to our south. Mortars firing! The sound was unmistakable. That means they're close, probably within a couple hundred metres. I walked over to Shamsallah, but he didn't need to be mentored. So far, he was easily the most aggressive ANA soldier I had ever seen. Finally, somebody who wants to do the job!

  He spoke on his radio to his sergeants and our column began to wind south toward the Taliban mortar team. I listened as the Canadians back at Zangabad began to talk in the usual clipped tones and laconic language of radio chatter. The mortars were getting closer to the engineers. Not if we can help it. . . .

  We patrolled for a hundred metres until we lost track of the mortars. The loud thumping had gone silent. They must have spotted us and gone dark. I told Ginge to scan around for dickers, somebody watching us.

  I saw a two-storey building with a narrow staircase leading from the ground floor to the top, so I told Ginge to follow me as I quickly scaled the steps. They were incredibly narrow, and my armour and tac vest had a tendency to make me look fat, so I tried not to fall over the edge as we rapidly climbed the stairs. I watched the top of the stairs and not my feet, in case Timothy was waiting for us.

  We reached the flat-top roof of the compound and scanned all around. It was empty, so I led us to the southern edge to try and get eyes on the mortar team. Just then we heard the thumping coming from behind a high wall, maybe one hundred metres away. I looked through my scope, but the wall was covering the shooters from view. I shot a bearing on my compass, and then oriented my map to north and placed my compass down on the map. I did some mental math (a challenge for me even at the best of times) and came up with an approximate grid for the enemy.

  The battle group radio chatter was cutting in and out; we were too far away with too many high walls and compounds between us and COP Zangabad. I wasn't getting their signal, but thankfully Sean was up a roof near the COP acting as the RRB, so I sent him our locstat and told him we had an approximate best-guess position for the enemy. He acknowledged and said he'd pass it up to “higher.”

  I looked down and saw that some ANA had followed us up the stairs but had gotten off at the first floor rooftop. They were talking and pointing to the south, right at the position I had put Timothy at. Always nice to have an independent second-party verification of Timothy's position.

  I turned and spoke to Ginge, saying, “Right, me ol' China-plate mate, let's head down the stairs and try to mentor the ANA over to that long wall.” I walked over to the edge of the roof and glanced down to see Shamsallah and Omer with several ANA discussing the next phase of our kill/capture mission.

  Suddenly Sean's voice was talking over my radio. I couldn't hear what the other party was saying, but Sean was definitely pissed as he said, “Negative, negative, you're not listening to me! I have just received a locstat for call sign 72C. They are danger close to the enemy, I say again, danger close! If you fire, you'll kill all of them!”

  When Sean said we were danger close, he meant we were within four hundred metres of the enemy, so if the Canadians fired, they would certainly kill us too—because when those artillery shells landed, they could easily cover a four-hundred-metre spread. And if they were even a tiny bit off when calculating their firing solution . . .

  Holy crap! The FOO/FAC was doing his thing again! My tired brain began to slowly piece together what was happening, based only on Sean's side of the conversation, and I didn't like the scenario I was coming up with.

  The Canadians had an amazing piece of kit called the lightweight counter-mortar radar (LCMR), which (when a certain number of prerequisites came together on the battlefield) could give a fairly accurate location for the enemy's mortar position. And judging by Sean's heated conversation with the FOO/FAC, the LCMR had given the artillerymen the exact location for Timothy's mortar team.

  But according to Sean, who could hear both me and the battle group, call sign 72C, a.k.a. “The Best and The Last,” were too close to Timothy for our guns to fire. Well, they could fire, but we'd be turned into a reddish-brown, mucky paste along with Timothy.

  However, this apparently wasn't a big concern for the FOO/FAC. I could only hear scattered bits of his side of the conversation, but there was no mistaking his intent when I heard him callously reply, “Good, they can call the fall of shot.”

  Garrhaaaa! We're danger close, you asshole! Danger close!

  By his comment he meant it was good that my call sign and ANA were close to the enemy, because we would be in a great position to adjust and correct his artillery fire, and make sure he was on target. He's going to kill us all. We've gotta make a break for it, before it's too late! Don't just stand around like an idiot, Rob! Do something!

  I looked at Ginge and shouted, “Move, Ginge! Get off the roof!” He just stared at me as I ran past him. I stopped, turned around and grabbed him by the shoulder, and dragged him roughly behind me. He didn't have my commander's radio, so he didn't have a Scooby-Doo clue what was about to happen.

  “Our guns are about to fire and they don't care that we're danger close. We gotta get the Afghans and run for it!” I stood on the rooftop, pointed back toward the road, and shouted down at the ANA, “Move move
move! Omer, tell the ANA to run back to the road!” I ran down the stairs two at a time. Shit! We're not gonna make it!

  I had just come even with the first floor rooftop when time . . . slowed . . . down. An ANA soldier had his RPG up to his shoulder and looked ready to fire his warhead at the far wall. Unfortunately for Ginge and me, we were directly in line with his lethal backblast.

  “Backblast, backblast!” I screamed as I threw my body backwards to stop Ginge and throw us back up the stairs. I smacked into him with a thud as we managed to get slightly around the corner wall of the first floor when I heard a massive WHOOSH and everything in my world turned red and black. It felt like someone had just hit me square in the nose with a baseball bat at full swing. I heard something pop in my right temple as shooting pain flooded my head and stars swarmed my vision, blacking it out.

  I'd been concussed before, but this was ten times worse.

  “Aaaggghhh,” I moaned loudly, and while some distant part of my brain registered shame at crying out, I was unable to control my response as sickening waves of pain shot through my head and face and down the back of my neck. A mixture of snot and blood began to drip out of my nose as tears flooded my eyes. (I was to find out five months later that the pop I had felt was a blood vessel bursting in my brain from the blast. An MRI test showed I had a brand-new five-millimetre cyst in my right temple, what the doctor called minor brain damage.)

  My brain, bruised as it was, for some reason thought it was incredibly important that I register where the ANA soldier's RPG warhead had gone, so through a veil of tears and stars I managed to make out the vapour trail from his rocket and saw it explode harmlessly into a tall tree, about a hundred metres off target. Atta boy!

  That action took all of my energy, and I began to teeter uncontrollably over the edge of the stairwell, but Ginge grabbed me roughly by the shoulders and pulled me back. He was shouting something to me, but my ears were ringing so badly his voice sounded like it was underwater. I coughed as I swallowed dirt kicked up from the backblast and, with each cough, violent jolts shot through my head. I tried to wipe away the red mixture running out of my nose as I sat down hard on the stairwell and tried to get a grip. Too many stars . . . I can't see . . . What . . .

  After what felt like ten minutes but was probably closer to thirty seconds, Ginge's voice finally started to get through to me. “Sir, sir! Holy shit! Are you okay?” He was looking over my shoulder to see if my face was still where it should be. We had all seen videos of soldiers accidentally walking behind a backblast, and most of the time (if they were close like we were), they were simply turned into a red mist.

  “I'm okay, Ginge, I'm okay,” I heard a voice say. “Are you okay?”

  “I'm good, sir. Just take a minute, don't move.” I registered concern in his voice. Maybe he can see blood coming out of my ears. I raised my hand to my right ear but besides the terrible ringing, there was nothing coming out of it. I . . . what happened . . . ?

  I heard the disembodied voice of Sergeant MacVitty from 2 Para swearing at me and telling me to “Move, move! Get on your damn feet and move!” and suddenly I remembered why we had been running down the stairs in the first place.

  “We gotta move, Ginge! Incoming artillery . . . we gotta get off the stairs and away from here, now!” I teetered to my feet and almost passed out as the pain exploded again into red stars. I struggled down the stairs and jogged over to Shamsallah, every step sending jolts up and down my body. “We gotta move. The Canadians are going to fire artillery—we gotta get outta here, right now!” Omer's face dropped and he quickly translated for Shamsallah, whose face turned white as he realized a grisly death was only seconds away. He shouted in Dari and the sound made me cringe like I had the world's worst hangover, but there was no time for a pity party, so I started grabbing ANA soldiers around me and flinging them in the direction of the road.

  “Herd them toward the road, Ginge. Get 'em moving!” I shouted. Ginge wasn't a small guy, and when he began manhandling the ANA and launching them toward the road, they finally got the hint and started jogging. I sprinted up to the lead guy and grabbed him by the arm and dragged him after me. I looked back to see Shamsallah literally kicking his men in the ass in order to get them moving.

  Finally the message sunk in and everyone started running for their lives, pell-mell toward the road, all dignity abandoned. I looked back for Ginge, who was trying to pass me as I sprinted. He was laughing and had turned our flight for survival into a church-picnic foot race! I dug deep and picked up the pace just enough to stay barely ahead of him. I wasn't going to have him taunting me for the rest of our potentially short lives!

  After sprinting for close to three hundred metres we were almost back to the main road. I looked behind me; there were about fifteen ANA still behind us, trying desperately to catch up. The ringing in my ears had let up enough for me to hear Sean still arguing with the FOO/FAC. In ten seconds, we'll be clear, behind good cover, and hopefully far enough away, maybe four hundred metres max. The last stragglers were about to come into our hiding spot behind the high wall when Sean asked me for an update. I told him we were clear, and he quickly passed it up to the FOO/FAC, who immediately sent up his fire mission to the guns at Sperwhan. I ran back and grabbed the last couple of stragglers and dragged them into cover behind our wall.

  Everyone was panting and wheezing. I heard static radio traffic from the battle group followed by “Shot out,” a radio message that meant rounds were incoming.

  “Take cover, take cover, everyone get down!” I shouted as Omer took up the shout in Dari, and soon everyone was ducking safely behind the wall.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  My head pounded every time the deafening explosions detonated over Timothy's position. It was like being at a rock concert, with the bass thudding in your chest. Shrapnel began to whistle through the air over our heads as I hugged the wall tighter. Sucks to be you, Timmy!

  I didn't want to, but as the closest Canadian with a radio it fell on me to correct the fall of shot for the artillery. So I slowly peeked over the edge of the wall as the next explosions detonated in quick succession. My eyes took in a terrible sight as high-explosive rounds air-burst over Timothy's position—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!—raining down shrapnel in a 360-degree arc. I could see a sharp flash in the air as the rounds exploded about a hundred metres over the ground, followed by black bits of steel raining down in a deadly cone overtop of the enemy. Anyone caught in the open and not under hard cover would've been shredded alive. I radioed Sean and made one correction: to swing the artillery more to the west, where I thought the Taliban mortar pit had been hiding. It was a moot point, however, because the air-burst rounds had covered so much area they'd probably shredded that zone anyway.

  I looked back at the compound where I got to taste RPG backblast for the first (and hopefully last) time. If we'd stayed there, I was certain we would've been killed too. We were well within the deadly radius of the air-burst cone. I can't wait to meet you, Mr. FOO/FAC! I hope you like the taste of raw fist, 'cause you're gonna eat it!

  I leaned against the wall and slumped down into the dirt, kicking up a pile of moon dust. I looked around at the ANA. Everyone except Shamsallah seemed badly shaken up by recent events. Make sure and tell them the Taliban don't wave, when we get back. Although that wouldn't have saved us today.

  After the FOO/FAC's little demonstration of peace through overwhelming fire superiority, I didn't think I would have a hard time convincing the ANA that sometimes, juste pour s'amuser, the coalition would try and kill them.

  But I'm sure they never would've fired until we said we were clear. I don't think . . . they would've fired. I hope . . .

  I looked at Ginge and smiled. This was all terribly new to him, but he seemed to be handling the fact that his own side had almost wiped him off the map pretty well, all things considered. I thought of something and then angrily asked myself, Was that on your war to-do list? You dickhead! Not laughing now, are ya? />
  So much for the curse of 72C being lifted by the Wizard's magic! Evidently call sign “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” was alive and well, headache notwithstanding. But you've gotta still be alive to feel a headache!

  I waited until I was sure the incoming artillery was finished before I peeked over the edge of the wall again. Everything was silent. I stood up and dusted off my butt, and took a long drag from my CamelBak. I'd gone through a lot of water so far and didn't have much left. Raw fear will do that to a guy.

  I looked over the field and did some math. About three hundred metres to the compound; one hundred metres to the tall wall separating us from Timothy's mortar. If we head back there now, to recover the mortar and search through the red pulp that used to be human bodies for any int, we can still be back in time for lunch. Luckily I had some latex surgical gloves as part of my TCCC (tactical combat casualty care) bag, for rifling through the bodies. I was just about to ask Omer to translate, when Shamsallah barked an order and everyone started heading north up the road, back toward COP Zangabad.

  I walked over and got Omer to find out what was going on.

  “They want to go back for lunch,” he calmly said.

  “Right, but what about the mortar, what about their weapons? We should go and collect them, so the Taliban doesn't recycle them and use them against us later.”

  Omer translated and Shamsallah said, “No. We will head back now.”

  Suddenly we all heard the thump of mortars being fired again, and even though my ears were still ringing, it sounded like the sound was coming from exactly the same spot as before. I sadly realized the whole gong show we'd just been put through had probably been for nothing. I looked at Shamsallah, who looked right back at me.

  I was about to say, “Well, we've gotta go back and finish the job,” when he sussed out what I was thinking and quietly turned and began walking toward Zangabad. I guess getting air-burst artillery shot over your head was an only-once-a-day sort of thing for the Afghans.