The guys were really upset, and no one could blame them. They'd just lost their best friends. We were too far away to get choppered in for the ramp ceremony, so we honoured their memory the best way we could—by patrolling the next morning.
The warrant and I continued to take turns on patrols, and thankfully things remained calm in our neck of the woods. Smith gave the guys lessons on how to fire a mortar (using the mortar tube Major Obermann had taken from the Taliban), and I gave map and radio lessons, and had the boys act as the CP radio operator when the warrant was on the ground and I could watch over them and give them pointers. Our base hadn't been fired on once since that first mortar attack (unless of course you counted the recent Taliban “surface-to-space” rocket from the previous week), and we had some good hearts-and-minds victories, like the time we paid back a villager right away (out of my Commander's Contingency Fund money) for accidentally smashing his well. As a rule, we needed to stay on good terms with the farmers whose land was within grenade-throwing range. Besides, I always believed a key component in winning the hearts-and-minds campaign in counter-insurgency warfare was to find the farmer and pay for the damages you caused before he even found out you had caused them.
Hearts and minds, boys, that's what it's all about—hearts and minds.
Chapter 19
On December the thirteenth we had another comms lockdown, and everyone had the same stunned look on their faces again. So many things go through a soldier's mind when he hears that. He quickly tries to think which of his friends are on leave, which ones are still in theatre, and which ones were out on an op. Everyone holds his breath and feels sick to his stomach, waiting to find out who had been killed.
We were sent the news over the encrypted e-mail. Private Jones, Corporal Hamilton, and Private Curwin, all from 2 RCR, were killed by an IED as they worked with the PRTs, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. I thought of my friend Mike—he was an officer in 2 RCR, and he was with the PRTs. They were probably his men.
I looked at the guys sitting on the picnic benches, and I started to feel really angry. Are you going to tell them you feel sorry, again? Are you going to tell them you're “there for them if they want to talk,” again? I didn't know what to say, so I got up from the computer and left the command post.
I wandered over to the northwest sangar and climbed up. I said hi to the ANA soldier on duty, and stared over the fields and into the village. When this is all done, and those of us still alive get to go home, will any of this have mattered? I asked myself. I remembered something Shamsallah had told me, after a few weeks of patrolling with him. He came up to me and said, very seriously, “Thank you for being here. Thanks to all Canadians. If Afghanistan was rich, like Canada, and if you were in trouble, we would come to help, like you have come to help us.” No one had ever told me thanks before that moment. An old man in Kabul once thanked me, but no one on this tour had ever done that. “Thanks to all Canadians,” Shamsallah had said.
When he'd told me that, I quickly said, “You're welcome,” and we moved on to something else. But thinking about it now, after three more Canadian deaths . . .
Although I valued peace very highly, I also knew that at some point, as soldiers, we could be called to stand and act as a shield and a spear, to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. I firmly believed that the men who died had died acting as a shield, trying to protect the Afghans and to make their lives better at the same time. And there was honour in that.
I thought of the little kids who were playing on the IED haystack in Sperwhan, and how Hetsa and Longview had run to save their lives. The parents of those children would say their kids' lives were worth it.
A few days later, I helped Stamps put up a Christmas tree he had cobbled together out of pieces of wood and decorated. He placed it in a little area next to a large sign he'd labelled “Talibucks Coffee Shop.” He was a surprisingly good artist for a grunt, because he'd also drawn a caricature of Osama bin Laden on the sign, and it looked great. Everyone was getting into a festive mood. The Canadians had all received gift parcels from home, as well as tons of small boxes and letters from Canadian civilians wishing us well.
In the current war, Canada had decided to contract out some of its chopper resupply and mail-run missions to a bunch of Russian chopper pilots out of KAF. The way they flew their Mi-8 Hip chopper (erratically), the way they staggered as they walked and slurred their words, and their bloodshot eyes all pointed to severe inebriation. But we were just happy to be getting our mail, so their sins were forgivable. Every time they turned up and dropped off our supplies, we'd have at least forty letters from people back home whom we'd never even met before. It was a great feeling, and we had lots of fun with it. A school in Newfoundland sent us T-shirts from their academy, so we all wore those around when not on duty, although we looked like a bunch of escaped convicts posing as students, because we had been growing out our beards. The beards were just for morale's sake. The Afghans loved it, because a beard to them was a symbol of manliness and honour. We had fun with it because some of our guys weren't even old enough to vote, so their beards would come in wispy and freakish.
We celebrated the Royal Canadian Regiment's birthday on December twenty-first with a shot each of medicinal brandy sent to us from our HQ. We had a fun night and celebrated with steaks on the barby and some episodes of Dexter. Before we ate, the warrant read from the regimental catechism. We took a moment to remember our honoured dead, and then raised our Styrofoam cups and toasted the regiment.
I was scheduled to go on one of the last patrols before Christmas Day. So I grabbed Carns and Stamps, we got kitted up, and we went to join the ANA under Shamsallah.
We patrolled out the front gate, headed north, and cut across a few fields. Shamsallah stopped to talk to the farmers and everything seemed fine. The locals had stopped hiding whenever we'd patrol through their neck of the woods, and I had fun acting like a monster as I chased the little kids. Only once did a little guy break out in tears because I scared him, and I felt terrible. Shamsallah had some candy, though, and he cheered the boy right up.
After a few minutes Shamsallah walked over to Max and spoke in a hushed tone. I waited for the translation and wondered what was so secret.
Max walked back over to me and said, “He wants to know if those wrestling fights are real—the ones on TV.”
“You mean where they're always shouting and dressed funny and hitting each other with chairs? Stuff like that?” Max walked back over to Shamsallah to ask him.
Max walked up to me and said, “Yes.”
“Tell him we would all like to believe it's real, but—in my secret heart—I am afraid it is not. . . .” Max walked over and told Shamsallah the bad news.
We patrolled to a field just north of the bazaar. The bazaar had been shut down ever since my ANA had refused to keep a constant presence there, and since we'd almost stepped on three IEDs in the middle of it just a few days before, we hadn't been back. A young boy had run out to warn us that we'd just walked over two IEDs and were about to step on a third. On that occasion, we'd all come a little bit too close to shedding mortality's yoke, so we'd given the bazaar a fairly wide berth. But if we never again patrolled the bazaar, then the Taliban had achieved their aim. So we were going back.
Shamsallah split up his patrol, with some ANA going around a long wall by a compound, while some stayed with us. I was talking to Carns and Stamps, who were in a ditch, when I turned to look back at the long compound to our south. I thought I'd heard—
POK POK POK POK POK POK POK!
Someone had just cut loose with a burst from an AK-47, maybe thirty metres away, but is sounded like it had come from the other side of the wall. But was it incoming or outgoing?
When I heard the rounds go off, I didn't even budge. I had become so inoculated to gunfire that my first reaction was just to look at the compound and try and figure out where it came from. I should have been down in the ditch in some cover, and scanning from the
re. I had become complacent—and that will get you killed. That sounded like it came from around the corner, where the ANA had just gone. Shamsallah had started walking slowly toward the corner where his ANA had disappeared from view.
Maybe they saw someone who turned and burned, so they fired warning shots.
CRACK CRACK CRACK!
Three AK rounds screamed mere inches over my head! “Okay, everyone take cover,” I sheepishly stated the obvious, as I ran back to join Carns and Stamps in the ditch.
I glanced at Stamps. “Well,” I said, “that makes it official. We got ourselves a contact.”
Stamps looked back and smiled.
Carns shouted angrily, “Ya fucking think?” Oh yeah, that's right. Not everyone's been shot at—yet.
I pressed my radio button, “Mushan, 72C, contact, wait, out.”
Shooting continued on the other side of the wall, incoming and outgoing, and Shamsallah took off at a dead sprint across the open field to get to the corner of the wall.
“We gotta go boys, Shamsallah's off and running.” I got up to take off after him and Stamps was right behind me.
I could hear Carns say to Stamps behind my back, “Is he serious?” I guessed he was content to stay in the ditch, but that wasn't our job. You can't mentor someone from four hundred metres away. Sure, if Shamsallah was getting shot at, with dust kicking up all around him, then we would've stayed put, but the firefight had shifted and we had to go and figure out what was happening.
“Right, let's go,” I said as I took off across the field. My feet were churning up the freshly turned earth in the farmer's field and I had that old “I'm not moving fast enough and I'm getting stuck and any second I'm going to get shot” feeling. It felt like the anxiety dreams where your feet are made of cement, but this was worse, because it was a nightmare feeling and you were fully awake for it.
We finally made it to the wall, with no more incoming our way, and I snuck a peek around the corner. Against the far wall the ANA were spraying rounds into a compound behind it, but I couldn't see any targets to shoot at. After a few more seconds the ANA stopped firing, so I led my two guys down a low ditch to get to Shamsallah. Some incoming rounds snapped over our heads as we tried to duck and sprint down the ditch at the same time. By the time I got to the end of it, I was huffing like a chain-smoker after taking ten flights of stairs. Sweat was pouring off of my face, and I didn't recall if Shamsallah had ever seen me in full sweat before. It was a disgusting sight, and could turn the stomach of the strongest man, even a combat vet like him.
It had suddenly grown very quiet. Then Smith spoke over the net and said that the guys in Sperwhan wanted us to go firm, right where we were. I asked why. He came back with, “They're trying to get you a UAV!”
“After what happened the last time?” I thought for a second and asked, “What's the ETA on it?”
Smith replied, “Forty-five minutes.” Holy crap, are they for real?
“Wait a minute—they want us to go firm for forty-five minutes, to wait for a UAV they won't be able to get? And if, if, they get it, it'll fly right over us and into Iran?”
“Yep, that's about the size of it.”
“Tell 'em it's nice of them to think of us, but I'm way too scarred from my last experience, so they can poke it! We're moving. Out.”
We followed the wall and joined Shamsallah and some ANA at the other wall where Timothy had been shooting. This wall was really high, at least eight feet up, so we'd have to buddy up to get over it. I jumped and reached the top, and then pulled myself up as Stamps, Carns, and even Max pushed on my feet to help me with my girth.
“You . . . fat . . . bastard . . . sir,” Stamps groaned as he pushed on my feet.
I got my chest on the wall and draped one leg down the friendly side, the other leg down the enemy side. I scanned the alley. Nothing. I had a look into the other compound. Where did you go, Timothy? Why would—
GAAHAAAA!!
The last thing I remembered was that someone on the friendly side had grabbed my leg and shoved me over, and now I was falling through the air, eight feet to the ground, until I landed with a sickening THUD into the hard dirt in the alleyway.
“Aaaggghhh . . .” I groaned.
Damage control: Report! Assessing . . . assessing . . .
I had landed almost squarely on my head, but at the last second was able to swing it out of the way and take the fall on my right shoulder. But I felt pretty messed up; my entire right arm was tingling from my wrist through my shoulder. It felt like my right arm was one big funny bone, and the nerves were firing and screaming like crazy.
Sergeant MacVitty's cruel voice started shouting at me: You're a sitting duck, you colonial fuckwit! You've gotta get up, you gotta move!
I managed to prop myself up a bit and then spit out a mouthful of gross dust. Stamps was propped up on the wall, shouting down at me, asking if I was okay. You've gotta warn him! I tried to shout but I was winded from the fall; I tried to stand up and—
“Motherfuck—aaaggghhh!” Stamps was screaming like Icarus falling from the sky.
WHAM!
Dust kicked up all around him as he crumpled into the dirt on his side. I heard all the air shoot out of his lungs as he was winded like never before. Someone had apparently given him a healthy shove over the wall as well, and he'd landed just as hard as I did.
“Who in the hell is pushing people over there?” I shouted.
“Max gave you guys a shove, sir. He thought you needed—” Carns started to answer.
I cut him off. “Max didn't give us a shove, he freaking launched us! Max, you lunatic, stop pushing people over! No one needs your help!”
Stamps is moving, that's a good sign. Max had apparently seen both Stamps and me with one leg on each side of the wall, and good Samaritan that he was, he thought we were stuck so he gave us a push to help us over. It was a miracle both of us hadn't been paralyzed. I ran over and asked Stamps how he was doing as I scanned down the alleyway and high walls for Timothy.
“Pretty terrible. How about you?”
“You've gotta be alive to feel terrible,” I said with a big grin. “Don't worry, we'll jump Max on his way to evening prayer and kick the snot out of him! C'mon, we gotta get up and catch Carns. He's only five feet tall; Max will throw him over like it's a midget-tossing contest!” Carns had gotten propped up on the wall with Max's help, and just as I said that, he shrieked violently as Max went for a three-peat and tried to push him to his death. But this time Stamps and I were underneath Carns just enough to catch him and break his fall.
“Max, you son of a bitch!” I cursed. “What did I say about shoving people?”
I could hear a disembodied voice from the other side of the high wall reply questioningly, “Stop . . . doing . . . it?”
“Ding ding ding! Now find a way around the wall and get over here!” Stamps and I started to brush the dust off of ourselves, and when we looked at each other we started laughing.
“What is it with this place?” I asked them.
“Whaddya mean, sir?” Carns asked.
“Why in the hell is everyone trying to kill us? The coalition, the ANA, hell, even the Taliban! I mean, we're nice guys, we're easy to get along with. Why can't they just invite us into their homes for tea and crumpets and get to know us a bit? Then they'd realize ‘Hey, these guys are all right! Why have I been trying so hard to kill them?’ ”
“Can't we all just get along?” Stamps asked.
“That's what I'm talking about!” The fall on my head made me wax philosophical. “I've looked into the heart of darkness, boys, and do you know what was there?”
“A mirror,” Stamps said with heartfelt conviction.
“Exactly!”
“Are you guys okay?” Carns asked, certain that we'd completely lost the plot.
“Never better,” I said. “C'mon, let's go find the ANA.” Stamps and I faced the front while Carns walked backwards to cover our six as we walked toward the suspect comp
ound. The ANA had just started to clear it and we could hear some shouting. We arrived and watched as they collared some civilians and put them into the middle of the compound.
I asked Shamsallah what had happened and he said his men had been shot at from this compound. So the ANA did a surprisingly good search of it, but came up empty-handed. Shamsallah shouted back at the civilians, not too worried if they were upset or not, and then started to collect his men to leave.
We walked outside of the compound and I noticed an Afghan male (in the fighting age bracket) about thirty feet away, just watching us. Something seemed very odd about him. He was slowly walking toward us, and I immediately began to fear he might be a suicide bomber, waiting for enough of us to leave the compound before he charged us.
I was just about to say something when a couple of ANA walked out of the compound. One of them spotted the civvy at the end of the alley, brought his AK to bear on him, and started shouting at him. Stamps, Carns, and I took up firing positions and we all took a bead on him. Was I right? The ANA soldier shouted at the man, who started walking toward us. He was bringing a potential suicide bomber in danger close to us! GEEEWWWW!
“Stop! Stop! Max, tell him to stop!” I shouted, pointing my rifle at the civilian. Max relayed my orders, and the ANA and civilian just stared at me.
“Max, get him to lift up his shirt. Tell him to show us his chest and his back.” Max translated, the civvy lifted up his shirt to show us a bare chest and back, and then lowered his shirt. False alarm, but there's no harm in being cautious, not after today.
He continued to slowly walk over to us, then the ANA soldier nearest to him ran over and roughly shoved him against the wall.
“Max, what's going on?” Stamps asked.
“This ANA soldier is saying this is the man who was shooting at him, he recognizes him!” Then the soldier looked at the suspect's feet and added, “Besides, he is wearing Taliban shoes.” Right, Taliban shoes, okay. They're sponsored, or what?
The Taliban Don't Wave Page 35