by Sandra Lee
As on the trip to Shahi Kot Valley, the plane was blacked out — standard operating procedure flying into a desert runway in the middle of enemy country — but a couple of dull red lamps glowed, creating what would have been a romantic ambient mood in any other circumstance. The USAF crew all wore night-vision gear and noise-cancelling earphones.
Most of the Australians, including Jock, had never flown on a Globemaster before and were impressed with the show the American aircrew put on. Thirty minutes out from landing, the wartime hosties revved up the action, signalling to the troops to check their equipment and chains. Crew members manned the weapons systems and countermeasures in case al Qaeda fired a missile at the aircraft, although there was absolutely no way the USAF would be flying a fully loaded operational aircraft into a hot landing zone.
Ten minutes out from Rhino, the crew began barking out orders. Jock put his NVGs on and removed half the chains pinning his sixbie to the floor. Almost ready to roll. The rest would come off once the plane hit the dirt runway.
‘Five minutes,’ the crew hollered.
Each soldier at the front turned around to the man behind and held up his hand with five fingers clearly splayed and displayed. The message was passed down the line in the same way.
Two minutes. Two fingers. Weapons were cocked. Jock’s 9mm Browning pistol had fourteen rounds in the magazine instead of the fifteen it could take. He believed in safety precautions and missing a round meant there was less chance the pistol could jam. Jock was meticulous about safety and always kept his weapons effectively combat-ready. He was renowned for never going anywhere without them. Even when manning the radio in the communications tent, or the chook pen as the signallers called it, he would have had his M4 slung across his back. You never know, was his private motto.
Jock could feel the plane banking and knew it was almost showtime. His heart was pumping a couple of thousand beats per minute. There was no messing around.
‘You have to be more switched on than any time in your life,’ Jock says. ‘If you don’t have everything turned on and running at high speed, then you are not going to be doing your best. And your best is the only thing — that’s all you’ve got. You don’t get a second shot and your mate might not either. So if you are not going to do it for yourself, at least do it for him.’
Jock was focusing on his own job and the blokes with him. There was no point in worrying about what might occur once the Globemaster hit the runway in the middle of al Qaeda country. At that point, the soldiers couldn’t do a thing about it and worrying about hypotheticals got them nowhere.
‘All you can do is react to it and make sure you’re 100 per cent good to go and those around you are, too,’ Jock says. ‘You are just going to take it as it comes on the ground, and if your shit is all ready then you are going to be able to better deal with it than if you’re still trying to put your socks on.’
Bang. The C17 hit the dirt and the engines screamed as the pilot set himself up for a short landing, braking hard. Jock strained against the pressure of being thrown forwards off his sixbie. The back ramp came down.
‘Go, go, go, go, go,’ the air crewman roared, swinging one arm in the direction of the blackened desert outside while chopping the soldier sitting on the quad on the arm with the other hand.
The quads raced off, kicking up a cloud of dust behind them as the wheels found traction with the ground.
Jock revved the handlebar on his sixbie, got the chop on his arm, sucked in a huge gutful of Afghan air and hooned down the ramp and into the sands of Afghanistan, not knowing what to expect. Would Ahmed the camel driver be there to greet him with a hail of bullets from a Kalashnikov or an ancient World War I Lee Enfield rifle? Or would it be plain sailing?
He was in hostile country. Thousands of al Qaeda and Taliban were reported to be in the region. Anything was possible. But the men needn’t have worried. The welcoming committee consisted of a couple of Australian SAS who had flown in an hour earlier and a bunch of Americans who’d set up a defensive perimeter along the dirt runway. They were inside fortress Rhino within minutes and joined Mattis’s MEU.
So this is Afghanistan, Jock thought. Nothing to it.
FOB Rhino is a walled white-brick compound that runs about 200 metres long and 200 metres across and sits in the middle of a flat desert plain of shifting sands in the middle of nowhere. Depending on which way the wind blows, the wall either towered above the soldiers on the ground or came in around chest height, thanks to the mountains of sand that collected against the bullet-riddled compound walls. Guard towers were on every corner, standing sentry over a mosque, workshops, sheds and shower facilities.
According to the accepted history that gets rolled out with every new arrival, a rich emir from the United Arab Emirates originally owned Rhino and used it as a falconing lodge. But there are those, like Jock, who favour the alternative and possibly more accurate version: that it was a heroin processing plant in a country notorious for its production and trafficking of heroin.
Soon after the war began, an American Marine unit overran the compound and an AC-130 gave it a thorough hammering. Whoever had been there previously was long gone.
‘There were 40mm and machine-gun holes all through it. It had been well pasted,’ says Jock.
The Marines set up a perimeter wall 100 metres out from the compound to act as the first protective barrier against al Qaeda. Humvees with Stingers mounted on them were parked inside the walls, and some were armed with TOW (tube-launched optically tracked wire-guided) anti-tank missiles. The Marines’ vehicles were also armed with state-of-the-art radar and infrared capability that could sweep out up to sixteen kilometres and detect things coming in.
The atmosphere was electric. The Marines were another example of can-do men, and it resonated with Jock and the Aussies’ SAS creed of ‘Who Dares Wins’. With their motto of Semper Fidelis, Latin for ‘Always Faithful’, the Marines were as patriotic as Jock had ever encountered.
‘Everyone was fully anticipating heroic deeds and all that sort of stuff — big battles,’ Jock says now. ‘Everyone was really fired up to go because this was the first big battle. Everyone cut their teeth in Timor … and so everyone knew this was the big chance. We were already on the stage and we were waiting to join in. Everyone was in very high spirits and looking forward to getting on with the job. Champing at the bit. And the Americans loved it.’
When Jock had first laid eyes on the Marines’ top dog, Brigadier General Mattis, he had been unimpressed. Mattis was a small, wiry bloke who could have slipped by like a shadow. To Jock’s way of thinking, he was Mr Nobody, but that was nothing new. It was what he thought of most officers. That changed, though, when Mattis opened his mouth and addressed the Australians.
‘I don’t care who you are; I don’t care if you’re a cook, a cleaner or a commo guy. You will get on that wall and you will fight,’ Jock recalls Mattis saying.
Jock is a Gen X pop culture soldier and, as Mattis spoke, Jock instantly thought of the crusty Marine played by Jack Nicholson in the movie A Few Good Men. ‘You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall,’ Nicholson’s character, Colonel Nathan Jessep, said in one particularly ballsy scene.
Mattis had the same powerful delivery.
Jock remembers Mattis saying gung-ho things like, ‘These people will not treat you decently. They are not the same as us. It’s a big embarrassment [to them] for us to be here and they are going to try and dislodge us out of Afghanistan. These people killed my relatives. We appreciate you being here, and you have got to be here for the right reasons. You can’t be here and not kill.’
The SAS Regiment’s 1 Squadron all bunked in with the Marines, including the squadron’s deployable signal troop and support staff such as the mechanics, armoury and electronic sight technicians. They worked, ate, slept and shat right alongside each other.
On the first night, an al Qaeda patrol probed the camp. A white Toyota Hilux truck — favoured by al Qaeda and Taliban forces i
n Kabul and Kandahar — drove through the desert with a herd of camels. The sentries spotted the truck and called a stand-to, a drill that has all soldiers man the post on full alert, ready to fight. The soldiers set off illumination mortars that lit the night sky like daylight, followed by a string of flares that hung in the sky for minutes illuminating a huge slice of the desert. For the next hour, night was day as a quick-reaction force in light-armoured vehicles with big chain guns drove out to engage the truck. Helicopters also swept the desert in search of al Qaeda.
‘Elusive Ahmed disappeared into the dunes, and unfortunately he was never questioned as to why he was in the vicinity. Amazingly he got away,’ says Jock now.
After 90 minutes, the soldiers were just about to receive the ‘stand down’ order to leave the perimeter wall when an old Huey helicopter came in to land about 200 metres away. The downdraft from the chopper’s rotors was churning up the dust from the runway, browning out the landing zone and blinding the pilot.
The pilot misjudged the chopper’s height from the ground and slammed the aircraft into the runway, coming in on its side like a Hollywood stunt.
Booooom. A huge orange fireball exploded and the chopper caught fire.
‘What the fuck was that? Was it shot down?’ someone yelled.
‘Nah, mate, it was just landing,’ came the reply.
‘Ah shit, no poor bastard is getting out of that.’
Jock just felt sick in the stomach. For fifteen minutes he watched as the ammunition rounds and rockets on the Huey exploded, shooting out everywhere. It was too dangerous to get anywhere near the downed chopper. The troops on stand-to were gutted; the Marine chopper had just completed a desert sweep looking for the Hilux.
‘We were just thinking, those poor bastards, they were dead for sure,’ Jock says. ‘The next day there was a little bit of the tail rotor, the rest of it was a blob of dust and twisted metal and ash; hardly anything recognisable.
‘But we found out that they actually all survived! That was the good bit. They all got out a bit battered, they all got out alive — probably three or four of them.’
Jock was at Rhino for several nights, during which time SAS men were tasked with patrols in the vast flat desert region around the base. They were often out for several days at a time — the longest of all the Special Forces — acting as Mattis’s eyes and ears and providing intelligence on the enemy, and building a reputation as some of the finest soldiers around.
Shortly after arriving at the FOB, the Americans brought in the infamous ‘American Taliban’, Johnny Walker Lindh. The twenty-year-old US citizen and Muslim convert had been captured by the Northern Alliance while fighting with the Taliban.
During interrogations by agents from the CIA and FBI, Lindh revealed that he’d trained at al Farooq, an al Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and had met Osama bin Laden. He was moved to Rhino after an uprising at the prison near Mazar-e Sharif, where he and other Taliban fighters were being held. During the uprising, a CIA agent, Johnny Michael Spann, was killed. It would not be repeated at the base.
The fact that an American traitor was on camp was of no consequence to Jock or the 400-odd Marines and SAS troops.
Jock says: ‘It was just like, “Oh, you know Johnny Walker is here?” “Oh, is he? Stiff shit.” No one really cared too much. We were looking for real enemies, not some little dickhead idealist or misguided fool.’
The sojourn at Rhino came to an end four days before Christmas. Gilmore had been invited to deploy his SAS squadron further north to secure the Kandahar airport and prevent the Taliban from regrouping in their region.
‘This was a calculated move to basically prevent any Taliban force from re-forming, if they hadn’t already done so,’ Jock says.
The coalition needed to take the airport so they could get troops and supplies in-country.
Before they left for Kandahar, Brigadier General Mattis gathered the troops for an impromptu farewell and motivational speech. The Commander of CentCom, General Tommy Franks, had flown in to greet the soldiers from the MEU and the SAS. Fully armed Marines and Aussie troopers, most of whom hadn’t had a proper shower for weeks, crowded into a huge shed or spilled outside under the warm afternoon sun — one of the wonders of being in a mountain desert with winter approaching.
Mattis stood on a raised platform at the front and once again left the Aussies with no doubt about what he thought of them.
‘You added great firepower to my unit and I was more than happy to have you on board when I saw that you were looking for a job,’ Jock remembers the brigadier general saying.
Mattis also addressed the gathered Americans.
‘We wouldn’t be here standing so strongly without allies like this.’
Jock was impressed. The American general was truly polished and sounded as if he’d been born with a sound bite in his mouth.
‘He thanked everybody very much and got it through to his boys how important his government and his bosses saw the Australians on the ground in Rhino — as invaluable,’ Jock recalls.
‘Mattis reiterated that we were there, in no uncertain terms, to fight al Qaeda and Taliban; that they would have no mercy on us; they will not treat prisoners as we understand prisoners are to be treated; they are not good people; they are going to do bad things to you if you get caught or your mates are caught.’
Before leaving, Mattis had one last gift for the troops. Cheerleaders!
It was coming up to Christmas and the US Army traditionally provided entertainment for the troops abroad as a way to lift morale. They’d been doing it since World War II, when a volunteer group called the United States Organization — USO — sponsored visits to war zones by entertainers like Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters.
The troops at Rhino had to make do with the television comedian Drew Carey and lounge-crooner Wayne Newton.
General Franks kicked off the show. Flanked by a team of heavily armed soldiers who provided close personal protection, the four-star general thanked the soldiers for their personal sacrifices in serving their country in Afghanistan, and then launched into what seemed to Jock like a pretty good stand-up routine.
‘He was just so funny, he was one of the better entertainers on the day,’ Jock recalls.
Franks’ team, though, didn’t crack a smile. They were there to do a job; protect the boss, not laugh at his jokes.
Carey was a former Marine, a jarhead, who stood on stage telling blue jokes and swearing, much to the amusement of the Yanks. Rhino was a Marine base, and once a Marine always a Marine. Brotherhood. Jock thought he was a dickhead.
Newton belted out a couple of classic standards that only the geriatrics among the troops would know, and there weren’t too many of them. But they loved him just the same. Jock recognised Newton when one of the Americans obligingly pointed out that he was in the movie The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. A showman from the old school, Newton mingled with the soldiers, asking questions about their hometowns and how long they’d been away.
Newton grabbed Jock’s hand.
‘G’day, mate, how’re you going?’ Jock said.
Newton instantly recognised the accent.
‘Hey, you Aussies —’
Jock cut him off. ‘Look, mate, I haven’t got time to talk, but you’re the worst fucking Elvis impersonator I’ve ever seen. Keep working on it.’
Jock was having a lend of the singer, but the Yank didn’t fully appreciate or understand the idiosyncratic Australian sense of humour which centres around taking the piss.
Not that it mattered to Jock. He was on a mission to meet all of the five beautiful cheerleaders from the Miami Dolphins. He didn’t know a thing about the football team that the women led the cheers for, but he was happy to see them doing a dance routine in their aqua-green and orange colours just the same. He had twenty minutes before they left.
‘There was a big buzz and we all stank,’ Jock says with a laugh. ‘We were unshaven and filthy. Everyone was tooled up; we’ve
got guns on, bristling everywhere. We’re walking around with Minimis and M4s.’
The soldiers had all been through basic training and knew how to move in large groups. Shoulders first. Jock drew an imaginary bead on the cheerleaders and made his way through the crowd, pushing Marines out of the way.
‘I’m making good ground on these cheerleaders who are giving out free cuddles to all the smelly Marines — I wanted to save them from that fate,’ he says. ‘And this immovable uniform suddenly appeared in front of me and it wasn’t getting out of the way like all the rest of them.
‘And I’m like, right, smart arse, and as I looked up, about to react to this show of force, I’ve seen four big silver stars about eye level.’
It was General Tommy Franks.
He looked Jock in the face, registered that the soldier had recognised him and the silver stars, and smiled.
Jock recalls: ‘He’s gone from a look of “He’s going to hit me” to “Oh, you dickhead, you didn’t know it was me, did you? See the effect I have on people.”’
‘G’day, sir,’ Jock said.
‘Soldier,’ Franks replied.
Jock slid by and, whooshka, got his first cheerleader.
‘She had just finished freeing herself from a stinky little Marine and I’d pushed the next one out of the way, so I was first,’ Jock says. ‘She said hello and asked me my name and where I was from and gave me a big cuddle, and I wouldn’t let her go. Held her for longer than what she probably thought was necessary. And having pushed it as far as I could, I said goodbye.’
The cheerleader moved on to the next bloke and Jock tracked her move, jockeying into position for another cuddle, pushing another Marine out of the way.