by Shane Bryant
The guys on foot would actually reach their objective before we did, and would let us know if the way ahead of the convoy was clear. Our progress was slowed by the need to stop regularly so that the ANA minesweepers could get out and check choke points, and like sites, for IEDs. Ricky and I would also be called out to search if the Afghanis turned up anything.
We didn’t have far to drive – it took no more than 20 minutes – and we assumed our positions in the hills. Ryan and I were in the centre of the three American observation posts, overlooking some fields and the large village of Pasaw with its mudbrick houses, and the bend in the Helmand River. We dismounted, and I took the 240 out of the back of the truck and moved up the hill a short distance behind and to one side of the GMV so that we had a better view over the target. I set the 240 up on its spring-loaded bipod, and laid out a belt of 200 rounds and my Kevlar helmet beside the gun. Staff Sergeant George kept watch from the turret. The next vehicle in our element was about 200 metres away. I left Ricky in the truck, still tied to the floor, as I didn’t want him running around once the gunfire started. ‘Stay, boy. I won’t be long.’
‘Incoming,’ someone said over the intercom radio. We’d only just moved into our position, and Ryan and I stopped what we were doing and cocked our heads. Now I could hear it, the crump, crump of mortar rounds leaving the tubes. Ricky whimpered, as though he knew what was about to happen.
‘Here it comes,’ Ryan said.
The first bombs detonated off to the left, between us and the river, and we watched as rock and dirt volcanoes erupted into the cool morning air. The Taliban hadn’t wasted a minute in welcoming us to Pasaw. George and the rest of the team guys started opening up with their heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. I could see the smaller puffs of exploding 40-millimetre grenades walking a path into the village below.
Bullets started landing just behind us, zinging and pinging off rocks and boulders. An RPG whistled up out of the village in our general direction, but sailed wide of our vehicle and blew up behind us. ‘Fuck, man, did you hear that?’ I said to Ryan.
‘Holy shit,’ Ryan replied. ‘Troops in contact, I say again, troops in contact.’ Cool as a cucumber, Captain Mike was letting the men back at Cobra know over the intercom radio that not only were we all in position, the fight was on already.
‘Should we move back a bit into cover?’ I asked Ryan. All of sudden, our spot up in the rocky hills seemed very exposed. We had a quick debate, but then ducked down as more bullets cracked into the rocks behind us. It didn’t seem wise to move back into the path of the incoming fire, so we stayed put, even though we were in an open area.
‘Shit, it’s coming from behind us.’ Looking around us, I had worked out the Taliban fire was coming from a far-off ridgeline to our rear. George was chugging fat 40-millimetre grenades down into the village, where the RPG had come from. We were taking fire from several different directions. Holy fuck, I thought, I’m going to get hit today.
From the intercom radio chatter, we could tell that everyone was in the same situation, as guys were reporting near misses up and down the line. Another mortar went off near the next truck. I heard the deep, rhythmic ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk of a Dooshka firing from the village, and saw tracer arcing through the sky. I picked up my helmet, fastened the chin strap and grabbed the 240 by its carrying handle. I moved down the hill a bit to be closer to the gun truck, so that when I needed more ammo, I wouldn’t have as far to run over the exposed ground.
Rocks dug into my belly and thighs as I lay down behind the 240, yanked back on the cocking handle and pulled the butt into my shoulder. I looked down over the iron sights into the fields and the village. When I saw the bright light of a muzzle, I squeezed the trigger. Rounds cracked and thumped through the air above and behind me, but I ignored them and concentrated on my elusive target. It was good to be putting some rounds down range, back at the Taliban.
Big Ryan lumbered down to the truck and unstrapped the Carl Gustaf from its mount. Ryan got on the radio, gave his call sign and said, ‘We’re taking fire up here. Permission to fire the Gustaf into the village, over?’ George was hammering away with the Mark 19 at the village and empty brass casings were falling around his feet in the turret.
‘Permission granted, over.’ Ryan grabbed the launcher and a couple of rounds, and huffed and puffed his way back up to where I was. ‘OK, load me up, man.’
Ryan hefted the squat anti-armour weapon up onto his shoulder, set it to fire and cocked it, so that I could open the breech. I took a high explosive round from its plastic tube, pushed it in the open rear of the launcher, then swung the tail section closed and locked it. I tapped Ryan on the shoulder. ‘BBDA is clear!’ I yelled, letting Ryan know that I’d just checked the Back Blast Danger Area to make sure no-one was behind us, where they could be burned by the coming blast or injured by flying rocks.
Ryan sighted the Carl Gustaf on a spot in the tree line where we’d seen the winking muzzle flashes of a weapon, possibly a PKM 7.62-millimetre Russian light machine gun. I grabbed the big man around the waist and tucked myself in close to help brace him for the firing. Ryan pulled the trigger and a cloud of smoke shot from the rear of the launcher. The BBDA was swept with a shitstorm of gravel, dirt, rocks and dust as the round left the tube. I felt the kick of the shock wave from the launch thump and shake my whole body, but I knew from the three or four times I’d fired the Carl Gustaf on the range at Tarin Khowt that it was much worse for the operator. My ears were ringing. In practice shoots, we’d wear hearing protection, but didn’t worry about that in a TIC.
I tried to follow the fast-moving projectile in flight, but it wasn’t until I saw the bright flash of orange light and the roiling ball of black smoke that I knew where the 84-millimetre round had landed. ‘You’re a little short!’ I yelled in Ryan’s ear, barely able to hear my own words. ‘Unload.’
Ryan cleared the launcher and went back to the radio to ask permission to fire some more rounds. I lay down behind my 240 and, watching George’s fall of shot, opened fire in the same direction. Empty brass casings and the black metal links that held them together in the ammunition belt piled up beside me as I squeezed the trigger. By watching the puffs of dirt and shredded vegetation my bullets kicked up I was able to ‘walk’ the rounds towards the target by raising the tip of the gun’s barrel.
‘OK, we’re good to go,’ Ryan called to me. I got up and freed another round from its tube as he cocked the weapon. I opened the back of the weapon, and slid the round in and locked the launcher shut again. ‘BBDA clear!’
Ryan fired, and the boom and shock wave assaulted me once more. ‘Yeah!’ he yelled as we watched the projectile explode.
I ran down to the GMV to get some more rounds for the 84 and stopped to check on Ricky, who was cowering in the back of the truck where I’d left him. I gave him a quick pat to still his whining and he yelped to let me know he wasn’t enjoying all the gunfire. ‘Good boy, Ricky. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.’ I was concerned for him, but right now I was a dog handler second and a member of the team first. At times like this, all I could do was rely on the training I’d had with the American SF, and the basic training I’d had with the Australian Army all those years ago.
‘Come on, load me up again, Shane.’ Ryan was grinning and so was I. Despite the danger of the rounds that continued to zing around us, and the occasional mortar round that still searched us out on the hillside, I was having the fucking time of my life.
You know you could get hit any second but you don’t stop to worry about it. We could see a target – well, muzzle flashes at least – and we knew those guys down there were trying to shoot us. No doubt they would have seen the back blast from the Gustaf. But we were firing back with everything we could get our hands on and, most likely, we were riding high on adrenaline. With the noise, the dust and the rush of the incoming and outgoing fire, it was mayhem up on that exposed slope, but I really was enjoying myself.
W
e got another round away and I lay down behind the 240 again, keen to contribute to the firepower the Americans were sending into the village and the trees below. ‘Yeah!’ I yelled, echoing Ryan.
‘You wanna shoot the 84?’ Ryan called over the din of my machine gun. I looked up at him.
‘Fuck, yeah!’
I got to my feet and Ryan passed me the launcher, which was hot from the rounds he’d fired through it. I grabbed the cocking handle and pulled it back. Ryan swung open the rear and I lifted the weapon on to my shoulder. He loaded me, tapped me, declared the BBDA clear and wrapped a meaty arm around me to steady me.
Watching through the sights, I waited until I could see the winking light of the PKM gunner again. I pulled the trigger.
‘Fuck!’ I could hardly hear myself swear as Ryan and I watched the missile’s flight. The noise was even worse than when I’d been bracing Ryan and my whole body felt as though it had been slapped by a giant’s palm. The round exploded in a black and orange ball of flame and smoke, and a second later I heard the boom as the noise reached us from 600 metres away.
I got back down behind the 240 and opened fire again. When the last of the bullets in the belt was gone, I got up and sprinted down to the gun truck. AK-47 and PKM rounds were ricocheting off rocks and kicking up spurts of dirt on either side of the GMV, but I didn’t stop to take cover or cower in the truck like poor old Ricky. Ryan and I were laughing and joking with each other as I stumbled and slipped back up the rocky slope to the 240 and dropped the boxes of 7.62 beside the gun.
It was as though the gunners down in the village and the trees were zeroing in on us, because their bullets were getting closer and closer all the time. Ryan was popping off shots from his M4 while waiting for permission to fire the 84 again. When he got the word, I ran back down to the truck and got some more plastic containers out and reloaded him.
I only fired the one round from the Carl Gustaf, but Ryan must have shot eight, which was insane, as we’d been told in training that if you fired more than three rounds in close succession, the shock wave could start screwing with your internal organs. Big Ryan was like a one-man artillery barrage. I don’t know if we killed anyone, but fire had dropped off from the village and trees as a result of the constant rain of heavy weapons fire from the gun trucks.
I’m going to get shot, I thought; but it was a matter-of-fact realisation and I knew that my only option was to keep firing my 240, keep running for more ammo and keep Ryan loaded. There was a roar like a speeding train flying overhead, followed a couple of seconds later by a huge explosion out in the middle of the cultivated fields. Someone had called in the 105-millimetre howitzers from Cobra.
The sound was unbelievable. All the gun trucks were firing at once, and the 105s were screaming and crashing into mudbrick buildings, blowing them apart. From far off, the 40-millimetre grenade bursts were like cotton balls blossoming on the landscape, dwarfed both in size and volume by the artillery shells. Tracer arced out like a mini meteorite storm and through it all, Ryan and I were grinning and cursing and yelling to each other, and laughing like mad men.
Captain Mike and his foot patrol had pinpointed the other Taliban who’d been firing from the ridgeline behind us, and the JTAC called in Dude One-One, an F-15 Eagle that had been circling above us, waiting to join in the action. We listened over the intercom radio and watched the hills in between shooting our weapons. The Dude dropped three bombs and made a low-level strafing run, lighting up the enemy position with his onboard cannon. Later, Mike called in a Dutch Harrier to rake the hillside with rockets.
The enemy fire was dropping off but, without a doubt, this was the closest I’d come in two years to being shot. I was loving it.
We were getting low on ammo, so Captain Mike called it a day after a good morning’s work. We were back at Cobra in time for lunch.
I was still pumped up during the short drive back to the firebase. When we got back, there were the mundane, but essential, postmission chores to do. I helped clean the spent brass casings out of the back of the gun truck, and blasted the 240 with the air hose and sprayed it with oil. I took the empty ammo cans out and replaced them with full ones, and Ryan and I filled up the GMV’s fuel tank.
Ricky was happy to be out of the truck and moving around again, I’d throw a tennis ball for him to fetch while we were working on refurbishing the trucks. Ricky would run back to me and I – or one of the SF guys – would throw his ball as far as possible in the compound. He never got sick of playing and the guys liked the simple game too, maybe because it was a means of unwinding after the mission.
Ryan was telling some of the other guys about the number of 84 rounds he’d fired and they were relating their part in the TIC, too; mostly we were talking about how many rounds we’d fired off. There was no whooping or hollering, or high-fiving. The talk was calm and matter-of-fact. It was the SF way to downplay things and act like professionals, rather than like a bunch of gun-toting rednecks.
Mike had deliberately positioned us so that we would be at the maximum range for enemy small arms fire but, as Ryan and I had seen, we were still close enough to have been killed or wounded. ‘Check this out,’ said George.
Ryan and I moved to the back of the truck, where George was bent over, inspecting something in one of the side panels. ‘I felt it. I knew we took some fire,’ George said as he pointed out two bullet holes in the GMV’s panels.
It was no wonder that Ricky had been whining and barking, and I thanked God he hadn’t taken a bullet. Ryan and I had been moving across exposed ground, and ducking in and out of the GMV retrieving ammo, throughout the TIC. I started to come down from my high.
According to the after-action report, the team had fired 8000 .50 cal rounds, 1000 40-millimetre grenades, 9000 rounds of light machine-gun ammo, and the Carl Gustaf rounds that Ryan and I had sent down-range. In addition, the US Air Force F-15 had dropped three bombs and made a strafing run with its 20-millimetre cannon, and a Dutch Harrier jump jet had delivered a salvo of rockets. For all of that, the team captain reckoned in his report that we had accounted for fifteen Taliban killed in action and ten wounded. The most important thing for us, though, was that no Americans or Afghanis (or Australians) had been killed or injured.
Back in my hooch, I lit a cigarette and stretched out on my bed. Ricky jumped up and I ruffled him under the neck. I thought about the mission and how close the bullets had come to us. While there had been times during the TIC when I’d thought I might end up getting hit, now that I thought about it, I realised I’d never actually seriously considered the possibility of being shot. The threat of being fired on had never altered the way I thought about the job in Afghanistan or how I acquitted myself.
The truth is that I did not have to go on that mission. Captain Mike had originally judged that he didn’t need a dog handler to go out to Pasaw, because of the nature of the terrain and the threat level. I’d heard it was coming up and asked if Ricky and I could go anyway. Mike had agreed.
It wasn’t the first time I’d volunteered to go on a mission. Sometimes I’d ride along with the Psyops and intel guys when they visited villages to deliver humanitarian aid and talk to the locals to try to gain information about what the Hajis were up to. I’m not a war hero, or gung-ho, but I volunteered because it seemed like the right thing to do. Going on missions helped break the monotony of life on the FOB, and if my mates were going out to do a job, I wanted to go along with them, even if a dog and handler weren’t specifically required. I never took the place of a team guy, but if there was space on a truck, the SF guys at Cobra were always happy to have me along. The CANSOF would never have allowed this, so the very fact that that Mike and his men welcomed me made me want to get out there and do more missions, even when I wasn’t needed.
It was weird when I thought about it. When I was seventeen, and being punished for sleeping in on guard duty, I’d busted my arse running around with a pack because I thought I wanted to join the SAS. In the end, I’d become si
ck of life in the Australian Army and there was no way I’d ever want to re-enlist. Yet, here I was, volunteering to go on missions with the Green Berets to break the boredom and to be part of a team. Doing those missions wasn’t a dream come true, or the culmination of a lifetime’s effort to be in an SF unit, or anything like that, but it did seem like the right thing to do, and I was happy to be doing it.
A US Army padre came out to Cobra on a Chinook, and set up his little portable field altar in the chow hall to conduct a church parade. I’d only been to a service once before during my time in the field, when I found out an old girlfriend had fallen ill. After the service, I sought out the padre, and he and I stood by the back of a GMV and bowed our heads while he said a prayer for her. This time I went to the service because I felt I was overdue for a talk with God.
I’d been lucky and, by and large, the men around me had been lucky and it seemed right to say thanks for that. I believe in God, but I’m not overly religious. Before leaving on a mission from Cobra, the team would stand in a circle and one of the guys would say a short prayer. Unlike a lot of Australians, the US soldiers never seemed embarrassed about publicly displaying their religious beliefs.
When I bent my head in prayer during the service, I thought about Scott, the ETT, and hoped his family were doing OK, and said a prayer for my kids, their mums, and for the rest of my family. And I said thanks for keeping me and my dog alive.
THIRTEEN
Welcome home
July 2007
When Australian soldiers finish a tour of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq, they come home to a hero’s welcome. When I landed at Perth airport, I was treated like a criminal.
I’d been busting to get back to Australia and see my new girlfriend, Nat. I’d paid for an Ariana, the Afghan national airline, flight from Kabul to Dubai out of my own pocket, to save wasting time getting to Manus in Kyrgyzstan. As contractors were eligible for US military flights out of Afghanistan to Manus, we were supposed to fly there first before getting a civilian flight home. Problem was, you could wait for days for a flight from Kandahar to Manus. I didn’t care about the money, and while Ariana might not have been everyone’s first choice to fly with, doing so was no more dangerous than dodging mortars and machine-gun fire on the back of a gun truck. Besides, I didn’t want to waste a minute of this vacation.