War Dogs

by Shane Bryant

  It struck me that for all their lack of comforts, or perhaps because of it, this village would be a pretty good place for a boy to grow up. The male kids I saw were always laughing and getting up to mischief, and appeared to have free rein of the place. There was plenty of space for them to run around and they seemed to keep themselves entertained. I worked out pretty quickly, though, that it was a different story for the little girls, who, as soon as they were approaching puberty, were covered up and kept out of sight.

  The boys had the option of going to traditional Islamic school, in the village madrassa but, under the Taliban, girls had been banned from any form of study. The new government had tried to bring back education for girls, but it wasn’t unusual to hear of Taliban and their sympathisers chucking firebombs at or firing RPGs into schools where girls were trying to study.

  On one occasion I went out with some Psyops guys who were refurbishing a school and helped them paint the place. I put the finishing touches to an improvised blackboard, which, with emulsion paint, was painted straight onto one of the walls. We were pleased with ourselves when we finished the job, but one of the soldiers lowered the mood when he said it might all be for nothing. ‘Problem is,’ he explained, ‘that every time they send a new teacher out, the Taliban get hold of him and threaten to kill him. Most of them don’t stay long.’

  There were no televisions, or other electrical devices, that I could see in the places I was searching for the Canadians, but nearly every house I looked in had a radio of some sort, including the new wind-up radios that the US and Canadian Psyops soldiers handed out free of charge to civilians, so that they could tune into Afghani government propaganda.

  Now, Ricky strained on his lead as a chicken clucked past him in fright. I still couldn’t get over farm animals being so close to people’s living quarters. ‘All clear,’ I told the ranking Canadian officer. With the area secure, the Canadians set up a clinic in a building that might have doubled as the village school. There was a partitioned area inside where female medics could treat the women and girls, and a separate area for the men. Outside, a long line of villagers was channelled between two rows of star pickets strung with barbed wire, and Ricky and I switched from explosive detection mode to crowd control. Our job was to keep things orderly and prevent people from jumping the queue, which a few of them were trying to do.

  Afghanis are scared shitless of dogs and consider them to be very dirty. The worst insult you can give someone in Pashto is to call him a dog. This gave me an advantage, as I only had to point Ricky in someone’s general direction and they would usually recoil in fear and start to behave. Ricky hadn’t trained as an attack dog, except for his brief bout with the artilleryman at Cobra, but he could be as intimidating as the next German shepherd.

  Spin Boldak had a bad reputation – and still does – as one of the main conduits for the Taliban to ship people and arms from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Still, everything went according to plan during the MEDCAP. It was orderly and well run, like everything the Canadians did, and in this kind of operation, which involved dealing with a big crowd of civilians, military discipline ensured that everything went like clockwork. It was as different as could be from the bands of woolly-haired, bearded US SF soldiers roaming the country, looking to pick a fight with any bad guys they could find.

  By the time I finished my stint at Spin Boldak with the Canadians, I was due for my first vacation. It had been a little more than three months since I’d landed at Manus, with no idea of where I was going or what was in store for me.

  My initial contract with CAI was for twelve months and the deal was that I would work for four months at a time and then get 21 days off, including travelling time. It wasn’t great that travel time was included in the vacation, as it could take a while to get home, but I couldn’t complain. My contract had started around the time I was supposed to leave Australia, but because of the company’s screw ups with my initial travel arrangements, I’d only worked about ten days of my first month but had been paid for the whole month.

  Ricky and I rotated back to Kandahar.

  I walked through the gates of the pre-school where my sons, Jaylen and Kyron, spend their days. I’d arranged this with their mum to surprise them, soon after I got back to Australia from Afghanistan.

  I couldn’t wait to see my boys again. I went in and greeted the teacher, and she told me I’d find my youngest, Jaylen, in the playground. I threaded my way between the miniature tables and chairs, past the colourful artwork on the walls, and out into the playground.

  I saw my boy and it felt so good. ‘Jaylen?’

  Jaylen looked up at me, his expression blank. When I walked towards him with my arms spread wide, he turned and ran from me.

  I woke in the middle of the night and sat up on my stretcher. My hair was wet with sweat and I wondered if I’d been yelling in my sleep.

  I looked around, momentarily confused, before I realised where I was. I was still in Kandahar, in a tent, waiting for a flight out to Manus, from which I’d go home for my holidays for real. You know how when you wake from a bad dream and it takes you a second to remember what it was about, and that when you do, it sends a shiver down your spine? That’s what happened to me, and it chilled me to my core. I realised that I’d only been having a nightmare about Jaylen not recognising me, but this didn’t make it any easier to get back to sleep

  The next day, I found out that I would be flying the first leg home. Before leaving, I went to check on Ricky in the kennels. While I was away, he would be fed and watered and walked daily, but no-one would conduct any training with him. To introduce him to a different handler while I was away would only confuse him, so he got a vacation when I did. Ricky loved his work – and I was enjoying it too – but I had a feeling I’d be having more fun on my break than he would be on his. ‘See you soon, mate,’ I said to him as I left.

  My new Canadian mate, Darryl, was also due some leave, and as he was going to Thailand, I decided to spend six days there as well. We flew separately, but met up a few days later, on the island of Koh Samui. It was mind blowing. One day I was waiting for a C-17 in Kandahar, praying I wouldn’t get dicked around for days by the US military airlift system, and the next I was lying on a white sandy beach.

  I looked around the beach as I sipped from an ice-cold can of Singha Lager and drew on a smoke. There were couples, backpackers and families. They were all having fun in the sun, and most of them wouldn’t have spared a thought for the men and women fighting and dying on the other side of the world. I was all right with that, though. I wasn’t over there fighting for a cause but to get my finances straight and, after four months of tax-free pay, with fuck-all to spend it on in-country, my bank account was looking a lot better than it had in a long time. A holiday to Thailand would have been out of the question for me just before I left Australia for Afghanistan, yet here I was.

  The water was a perfect turquoise and when I waded out into it, the sun on my back, I just stood there for a while, then lowered my body into the sea and closed my eyes. I let the water rinse away the dust and shit of another world.

  Later, Darryl and I got shitfaced in the hotel bar and I ended up pole dancing on stage. We had a blast: drinking and partying and gorging on good Thai food at night. During the days, I lazed on the beach, drinking some more, and barely cooled off in the balmy waters. We also hired mopeds, and went around the island on some suicidal rides. Darryl was taking the bike riding so seriously that I expected him to show up each day with leathers and a gang patch.

  I’m into tattoos and I found a tattoo artist who drew a superb dragon on my arm, in pen. I went back to the motel and showed my girlfriend, Nikki, who’d flown in from Australia to meet me. She liked it, so the next day I went back and the guy got to work. It was so unlike getting a tatt back home, it wasn’t funny. I sat there in his studio, drawing deeply on my cigarette and sipping cold Singha while the tattoo artist did his thing. This was the way to do R and R.

  Looking
back now, that first vacation was one of my best; not necessarily because of where I went or what I did, but because I had some time to chill out before getting back to Australia. By accident rather than design, I’d given myself a chance to transition from Afghanistan back to the reality of normal life in Australia, by having six days to party, sunbake and generally unwind.

  I’d really missed my five kids during the time I’d been in Afghanistan. Their mothers were pleased to have me back – so they could get a break from the children. Unlike other blokes who’ve separated from their partners, I hadn’t been around to take care of the kids every second weekend. However, with two exes and only one of me, I had to take care of all five children for the remainder of my vacation. I was due 21 days, but, besides it including travel time, I’d already burned six on the beach at Koh Samui.

  The nightmare I’d had in Kandahar about Jaylen had shaken me up but I still wanted to surprise him the first time I saw him. I needed to prove to myself, I think, that my son couldn’t have forgotten me. I spoke to his mother, and to the teachers at Jaylen’s and Kyron’s preschool, and arranged to arrive unannounced. As I parked outside I was nervous, but I also knew that I needed to confront my fears. Maybe I’m wrong to do this, I suddenly thought. They were only one and three years old at the time.

  When I first walked through the gates, I saw Kyron playing with some of his friends. He looked across the playground and saw me, and when he stood there for a couple of seconds, just staring at me, my heart started to thump. Slowly, he walked over to me, then smiled and gave me a hug. It was so good to pick up my son, and wrap my arms around him. I kissed him and held him tight.

  ‘Where’s Jaylen, mate?’ I asked Kyron. ‘Can you take me to him?’

  He nodded, and led me by the hand to one of the classrooms, where I sat on one of those tiny chairs they have. I’d had a momentary scare at Kyron’s shyness and prayed that Jaylen would recognise me. The teacher opened the door and, the moment Jaylen saw me, he ran across and jumped into my arms, even though he was barely walking at the time.

  Because my finances were still in a mess, even though I was beginning to earn some good money, I didn’t have a place of my own in Australia, so the kids and I were shuffled from my mum’s place to my dad’s, and then to my sister’s. It was hectic, and I had all the kids scattered from arsehole to breakfast time, sleeping on mattresses on lounge room floors and in spare rooms.

  While I hadn’t been especially stressed by the end of my first four months in Afghanistan, I was after two weeks of looking after five kids.

  NINE

  Tarin Khowt and training

  October 2006

  The time at home went too quickly, but I’d mentally prepared myself to spend at least twelve months working in Afghanistan, so I figured the quicker I got stuck into my next four-month tour, the better off I’d be – financially as well as mentally.

  After transiting through Manus in Kyrgyzstan again, and having to spend a few days waiting for aircraft, I arrived back in Kandahar and was told I’d be going to FOB Ripley at Tarin Khowt, which I’d only ever transited through previously. I was going to be working with a US SF team, so I was happy about that.

  I picked up Ricky from the kennels at Kandahar airfield and, after spending a couple of days working and training with him around the base, the realisation that I wouldn’t be seeing my family and other loved ones for another four months started to sink in. Military people who serve overseas on operations in wartime might go for four or six months and when they come home, it’s all over – they’ve done their bit. This was going to be my life, though, commuting to and from a war zone for four months on and three weeks off, so I needed to get used to it. The faster Ricky and I got back to work, I thought, the better.

  Ricky and I flew into Tarin Khowt in a Chinook. It was October 2006, and there was a chill in the air that I hadn’t felt when I’d left to go on vacation. The Third SF Group had replaced the Seventh, and the new teams in- country were preparing themselves for battle, and for the long winter ahead. The dry mid-year summer in Afghanistan had traditionally been the ‘fighting season’ for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and their predecessors during the Russian invasion. Action tapers off during the bitter winter, but there were still a couple of months of reasonably mild weather left.

  There was an airstrip at Tarin Khowt that had been built by the Russian military and upgraded by civilian contractors working for the coalition to take C-17 jets. The base was in a wide open valley, with a range of mountains to the south. The town of Tarin Khowt, home to about 40,000 people, was scattered over a substantial area north-west of the base, along a river. North of Tarin Khowt was the Baluchi Valley, a serious Taliban stronghold with no coalition presence. Government control in Uruzgan was like a series of ink blots on a map. Outside the area immediately around Tarin Khowt and the FOBs at Deh Rawood and Cobra, the Taliban had a free run.

  Tarin Khowt was bigger than Cobra, and the A-Team there was supported by an Operational Detachment Bravo. Working from an Advanced Operational Base – Tarin Khowt, in this case – the Operational Detachment Bravo, or ‘B-Team’, in the US SF structure was made up of headquarters, administration and support elements that oversaw a number of A-Teams. It just happened that at Tarin Khowt there was also a resident A-Team, conducting missions, and the B-Team was supporting it and other teams in Uruzgan Province. Big brother B-Team looking over our shoulders meant things might not be quite as free and easy as they had been at Cobra, but at least I was back with the SF.

  Even though I’d worked with the Americans at FOB Cobra, it had been with a different group and so I had to begin the process of integrating with the team all over again. It was more difficult at Tarin Khowt, too, because I was put in a room outside the SF compound. Work was being done to increase the number of accommodation rooms in the compound, but the pen-pushers in the B-Team had decided that they didn’t want any civilians bunked in with the A-Team. Fortunately, the team sergeant from the A-Team, who I got to know early, and got on well with, was on my side and he was fighting his superiors in the B-Team to get me moved. This was one of the problems with there being another level of command close by – too many chiefs with not enough Indians to boss around.

  I was living with the mechanics, tradies, cooks and bottle washers from Kellogg Brown & Root which was the main civilian catering and logistics contractor in Afghanistan at the time. The team sergeant pointed out to the B-Team that I was going to be working with the A-Team and going on missions with them, so it made sense for me to integrate with them, but his argument was falling on deaf ears.

  There were some personality problems in that B-Team. One of the sergeants was an African American and when he rode his motorcycle past me one day, Ricky went apeshit and started chasing him. I heard later that the sergeant reckoned I was racist and that I was egging my dog on, which was complete bullshit. As I tried to point out to anyone who would listen, it wasn’t black people he hated, it was motorcycles. The guy just didn’t like civilian contractors and, while he was entitled to his opinion, the soldiers in the A-Team wanted me in with them and, as far as I was concerned, they should have had the right to make that decision for themselves – not have it made by some bureaucrat in uniform. I stuck to my guns. Eventually, one of the A-Team members rotated out to Kandahar and when his room became vacant, the team sergeant just let me have it and I moved my gear in.

  The A-Team guys were great blokes and I made good friends with many of them. They were an interesting group of older and younger NCOs – non-commissioned officers – who were mostly sergeants. As at Cobra, I realised that being accepted by the team meant that I’d have to do my share, both on missions and back at base. Their demolitions specialists were building a storage room in the compound, so I got stuck in and helped them with the construction work. Ricky would hang around while we worked and the guys liked having him there.

  An Operational Detachment Alpha, or A-Team, consists of twelve men: two officers and ten s
ergeants, who must all be SF qualified, cross-trained and multilingual, so that the team can work as a self-sufficient element anywhere in the world. A captain usually leads the team, with a warrant officer as second in command. The rest of the team comprises two sergeants specialising in each of the following areas: weapons, engineering, medical, communications, and operations and intelligence.

  Adam, one of the sergeants in the Tarin Khowt team, and I would go to the gym most evenings and spot for each other. He loved Ricky and I took a fantastic picture of my dog sitting on top of a gun truck with Adam behind the .50 cal. Adam was in his late twenties and had served with the US Army in Germany prior to joining the Green Berets. He had married a German girl while posted in Europe.

  As they’d just arrived in-country, the team was getting stuck into some intensive training, in which I was expected to take part. This made sense, as they needed to know that if the shit hit the fan, I could use their weapons and communications systems; that my first aid skills were up to scratch; and that I was familiar with their tactics, techniques and procedures. The first team I’d served with at Cobra was no less professional, but they had been in Afghanistan for months, so, rather than spending time training me, they had assumed that I would just pick things up as I went along.

  Adam and I and the rest of the team went out to the firing range to do some close quarter battle training – house-to-house stuff in a simulated built-up area, which, as a former army engineer, was something very new to me. This was the sort of stuff that only SF and infantry get up to in the Australian Army. There were no buildings on the range, so, to practise the close-quarter combat, simulated walls and doors had been marked out on the ground and with mine tape strung between star pickets.