by Ray Wiss
Having gotten ourselves prepared for a possible MasCal, we ended up receiving only a single casualty, a truck driver from one of the ambushed convoys. He had been shot from the driver’s side while seated. A bullet had passed through the front of his thigh and creased his abdomen. This was another one of those incidents, so common in war, that show how much survival sometimes depends on the tiniest things. Had the bullet struck him a fraction of a second later, it would have struck him at the level of the femoral artery and then ripped into his intestines. Either one of these injuries would have had the potential to kill him before he reached the UMS. As it was, all he needed were some intravenous antibiotics and a couple of bandages. We transferred him to KAF, but as a Category B (no surgery or other care needed for at least four hours).
We had finished cleaning up the UMS after the above incident when the UMS medic came by my desk and taped a “coms lockdown” sticker on my phone: all communications except those essential to ongoing operations were to cease until further notice. I looked up at the medic, and he held up two fingers. My heart sank. We go into coms lockdown whenever a Canadian is killed. This prevents the news of the death from leaking back to Canada. Cell phones and e-mail have made the world a very small place.
There is a right way and a wrong way to learn that your loved one has been killed in combat. The right way is for senior representatives of the CF to come to your home and tell you in person. The wrong way is to hear it on the news. The CF does everything it can to make sure this always happens the right way, and so far its success rate is 100 per cent.
I walked over to the encrypted communications device that allows us to watch the flow of information within the battle group. Two men killed in action: one Afghan and one Canadian.
Corporal Martin Dubé was a combat engineer who had specialized in EOD, explosive ordnance disposal. Although dominated by army engineers, this group also includes navy and air force personnel. These are clearance divers (who go after explosives underwater) and aviation technicians (who, among other unpleasant tasks, disarm bombs that fail to release from planes).
These individuals have the most stressful job imaginable: ridding Afghanistan of explosive devices. The task is almost incomprehensibly difficult. Our enemies’ main weapons are mines and other explosive-laden booby traps. Coalition forces use specialized vehicles, mine detectors and other equipment in “counter-IED” tasks. At the sharp end of the stick, we have experts like Corporal Dubé who are willing to take these things apart by hand.
Taliban mines are only part of the problem. Thirty years of war have left a phenomenal number of unexploded bombs and shells all over the countryside. Some of these explosives have been so corroded by the elements that they are harmless, but many of them are still capable of exploding if they are disturbed or handled the wrong way. Finally, there are the remnants of the numerous minefields that were scattered indiscriminately by the Russians during their occupation in the 1980s.* These devices not only impede our ability to go after the Taliban, they also inflict limb-destroying and life-ending injuries on civilians who stumble onto them.
We expend a significant amount of time and resources to rid the country of this plague. Our prime targets are the newly laid mines of the Taliban. Corporal Dubé was attempting to deactivate one when it detonated. Everything seemed to be going well, then there was a flash and a roar, and Martin was gone.
Try to imagine what his job entailed. Someone has placed a large amount of explosives in an attempt to harm Coalition soldiers and innocent civilians. That person has also rigged the explosives with additional charges so that the apparatus will explode if someone attempts to disarm it. There may also be other mines on the approach to the one that has been detected. Any one of these mines contains enough high explosive to tear a human being apart. Now imagine walking up to the device and dismantling it.
Of the many toxic byproducts of war, mines are one of the worst. The Geneva Conventions state that minefields must be well marked and fenced off. The devices must be detectable by conventional mine detectors. Most importantly, they must self-destruct or self-deactivate once their military objective has been achieved.
The majority of the mines laid in conflicts around the world were not placed according to these rules. Every year brings a tragic and predictable crop of farmers and peasants who have lost limbs or lives to these echoes of war.
People like Corporal Dubé have taken on the monumental task of ridding the world of these silent, lurking killers. For a soldier’s wages, they take on more risk in a single morning than most of us do in a lifetime. If combat infantrymen have ice water running through their veins, combat engineers must run on liquid nitrogen (–196°C).
Corporal Dubé was not based at our FOB, and his body was helicoptered to KAF. I wanted to learn more about him, but there was no time to do so. We were about to be hit by two enemies, one natural and one human, and we had to prepare for both.
First, we heard the wind pick up dramatically. I went outside and was confronted with the first full-blown sandstorm I’ve seen since serving in Afghanistan. As is evident from the following photograph, you can see this thing coming from a distance. So we had some warning, which we put to good use. We ran around securing whatever looked like it might fly off our tents and barracks, and closing whatever openings might allow the sand into our structures.
Sandstorm coming
Look at the picture again. Can you see that there is as much dark stuff coming down from the sky as is rising up from the ground? Believe it or not, in this desert region, that is rain. After we were pelted by the wind and the sand, we got drenched by a powerful downpour.
We were still dusting ourselves and drying off when I received word that the casualties from the incidents east of here were coming to our FOB. Once again, I gathered the team to the UMS. All told, I had a couple of dozen people on hand to help me. The warning had come early enough that I was able to assign specific tasks to each individual in order to improve our organization when the casualties arrived.
Then we waited. And waited. And waited. No casualties, no further reports. More than half an hour went by before we got a call telling us that the truck carrying the casualties had arrived at the gate. The driver had taken his time because they were all dead.
The dead men were civilians who had agreed to drive trucks carrying supplies for the Afghan government and Coalition forces. It is likely that they were not motivated by political convictions; they were simply trying to feed their families. And they had paid for this with their lives.
Addendum, date unspecified: I have had the opportunity to meet the rest of Corporal Dubé’s team. I will not tell you where we met, nor will I provide any photographs of them. Even these tiny hints could be used by our enemies to some advantage.
What I can tell you is that they are among the bravest and most professional soldiers you could ever meet. There is no braggadocio; these men are far past that. Discussions with them demonstrate only a cool, calm competence.
The EOD team is engaged in a very intimate war. There are probably no more than a few skilled IED men in all of Zhari-Panjwayi. When one of them rigs an IED with secondary devices designed to detonate when the primary IED is moved, he is deliberately targeting the EOD men. Similarly, the more of these IEDs the EOD men detect, disable and dissect, the more they learn about the bomb maker. This makes it easier to hunt him down and kill him.
EOD experts always refer to bombs as “devices,” a dispassionate term that matches the nature of these soldiers. Watching them take an IED apart and construct various gizmos for their next mission is like watching a skillful surgeon at work. Every move is deliberate, every action well thought out, and the “bomb techs” know exactly where they are going before they begin. It is a cerebral war for them, totally different from the primal firefights of the infantry. It is still a fight to the death.
I asked these men what drew them to a career that has so much to recommend against it, and what prompted most of the
m to return to Afghanistan for a second tour. They all answered with variations on the same theme. They are soldiers first and foremost. IEDs are the most lethal weapon our enemies have to use against us. More than anything, they want to defeat these devices to protect their brothers in arms.
JUNE 15 | The War Correspondent
The day started on a sombre note, with a memorial service for Corporal Dubé. Major Tim Arsenault, the senior officer at FOB Wilson, spoke briefly but well. You could tell that he was still quite upset about the loss of his own soldier, Private Peloquin, seven days ago.
The rest of the day was quiet. The main event was getting a chance to speak to the individual I want to talk about today. War zones are populated by more than their fair share of colourful characters. By far the most colourful I have met on both my tours so far is Louie Palu.
You have probably never heard of Louie, but you have almost certainly seen at least a few examples of his art. He is the most prolific photojournalist to work in Afghanistan. He was the “Canadian Photojournalist of the Year” in 2008, and his pictures have appeared in all our major newspapers.
Louie is about halfway through his fourth three-month tour in Afghanistan. Twelve months in Afghanistan may not sound like that much—many of our soldiers are on their third seven-month tour and are approaching twenty months in the country—but the two are not comparable. Our troops go through regular cycles of operations and dow ntime. Louie goes out of his way to attach himself to a unit about to get into a fight, then leaves them when they go back to their base to rest.
He has been with us for the duration of the recent operation and is now heading off to hang out with the U.S. Marines. The Marines asked him to come along with them, on an operation they have declined to describe. He has only been told to show up at KAF tomorrow and to report to the flight line at midnight. Is there anything about this that does not scream “Bad Idea”? †
†Louie Palu, war correspondent
The Taliban soldier I treated in 2007
(©Louie Palu/ZUMA Press, reprinted with permission)
I talked to him for about an hour, and we discovered the most amazing connections between us. During the first combat operation I participated in during Roto 4, I treated a Taliban prisoner who had been shot in the chest. It turns out that Louie was with the guys who shot him. He had helped to carry the wounded man back to my UMS.
I had seen a photograph of our medics treating the wounded Taliban soldier on the CBC website a few days after the operation. It was Louie who took the photo. I showed him a video of our resuscitation of this prisoner, and Louie recognized him.
As you can see from his portrait on the previous page, Louie has a feline look to his face. Whether he looked like that before he used up eight of his nine lives in this place, I do not know. It is most fitting he appears like this now. This guy has been in more firefights than any soldier I know. So far, not a scratch.
Louie was kind enough to let me use a few of his remarkable photographs for this book. The first appears on the previous page.
JUNE 16 | Zero Sweat
Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan carry at least one personal firearm. For most FOB soldiers, this is the C7 5.56 mm rifle, the standard infantry weapon of the CF. Specialized soldiers, such as machine gunners, tank crewmen and snipers, will carry other weapons that are matched to their particular tasks. Many of us, myself included, carry a second weapon called a sidearm. This is a Browning 9 mm pistol.
The members of the task force can be divided into two groups, based on whether their weapons will be used for offence or defence.
The infantry, the front-line soldiers, are the archetypal examples of the first group. They use their weapons to attack. I would fall into the second group. The only time I should ever have to fire my weapon is if things have gone terribly wrong and I have to defend myself against a direct personal attack. The Geneva Conventions prohibit health-services types like me from using “area” weapons, weapons that can inflict damage on a large area. This would include grenades, rocket launchers, flame-throwers and the like. Under the Conventions’ rules, I am allowed to kill the person who is attempting to kill me, but I have to do this using a “point” weapon, one that can only hit a precise spot.
Given the low likelihood that I will ever have to fire a weapon to defend myself, the CF does not expend much energy in giving me one with which I am comfortable and familiar. Rather, I am issued a rifle and a pistol at Camp Mirage from the firearm equivalent of the bulk bin at the local grocery store. The weapons are in good working order, but they need to be “zeroed.”
Zeroing involves adjusting the sights so that the weapon is adapted to the person using it. Everyone holds a rifle a little differently: our arms are different lengths, our eyes are in different places. A rifle will therefore not hit the same point when held by different people. The sights can be set to compensate for this.
I got around to this important task today. One of the platoons was running some combat firing drills, so I asked to go along with them.
I spent an hour on the range not only zeroing my weapon but also going through some of the drills with the boys. I caught a break: the last person who used my rifle must have had a body type similar to mine, because I only needed to make a tiny adjustment to the right, and my rounds started landing dead on target. I was pleased to see that, once zeroed, I was able to shoot as well if not better than the youngsters on the firing line with me. I have always been a pretty good shot, and I had practised my marksmanship a fair bit before I left.
The combat firing drills, on the other hand, were another story.
The sergeant running the show had us firing in a number of awkward and uncomfortable ways, to simulate positions in which we might end up after coming under enemy fire and hitting the deck. It was exhausting. I kept up with the youngsters . . . but only barely.
JUNE 17 | Downregulation
“Downregulation” is the process by which a cell becomes less responsive to a stimulus to which it is repeatedly exposed. An example of downregulation is alcohol addiction.
There are receptors on the outside of our brain cells to which alcohol molecules will attach themselves. Once the molecule is attached, the receptor sends a signal to the cell. This signal causes intoxication. These receptors are constantly being created and broken down.
If the cell is repeatedly stimulated by alcohol, it will start to “downregulate” the receptors, which means that fewer of them will be made.
With fewer receptors, the cell is less sensitive to the alcohol molecules.
That’s why chronic alcoholics need to drink far more than normal people to get drunk. Their brain cells no longer respond to the lower level of stimulation.
You can downregulate in other ways. Let me give you some examples.
When I got here, having my pistol on my hip was quite annoying— a big hunk of uncomfortable metal was pulling on my belt and weighing down my leg. This morning, I looked down and was almost surprised to see that my pistol was in its proper place. I no longer feel it there. Call that physical downregulation.
This afternoon, the Taliban attacked an Afghan National Police (ANP) strong point right beside the FOB. I was in the UMS after lunch when it started: three large explosions followed by a heavy volume of automatic weapons fire. The ANP counter-attacked, the Canadians drove armoured vehicles up to the perimeter and our mortars started firing bombs that were aimed to land a short distance from the FOB walls.
I stepped outside the UMS for a minute to listen to the shooting. I noticed it was much closer than it ever had been before. Then I went back in the UMS and continued reading my book.
It might seem bizarre to go back to one’s diversions when several heavily armed men intent on killing you are firing at you from a few hundred metres away. But there is shooting every day around our FOB. The Canadian and Afghan combat troopers do the job of pushing the Taliban back. They did that effectively today, as they have on all previous occasions. If t
here are no reports of incoming wounded, there is nothing for the medical team to do. So we tune the sound out and go on with whatever we were doing. Call that emotional downregulation.
The most extraordinary example of emotional downregulation occurred outside the walls of the FOB. When the attack started, a farmer had been working in his field a few hundred metres away. As the ANP surged out of their strong point to attack the Taliban, he raised his head for a minute or two to watch the direction in which the attack was going. Then, satisfied that the shooting was going to pass at least a football field away from him, he went back to tilling his field.
He continued even when one of our mortar bombs misfired, exploding close to where he was and scaring the crap out of a couple of his sheep (who were otherwise unharmed).
You can get used to almost anything. This man continues to tend to his crops while a full-scale firefight goes on a few dozen metres away. It is sad to think of what his life has been like, to make him so unflappable.
JUNE 18 | CDS: Chief of the Defence Staff
General Walter Natynczyk is the top soldier in the CF—he is the chief of the defence staff, or CDS. He takes a keen interest in the welfare of the soldiers serving in Afghanistan and visits the troops here every few months. He is back in Afghanistan now and was scheduled to come to our FOB today. At our regular morning briefing, the detachment commanders were ordered to assemble their people at 1300 in a large open area near the command post. The general likes to have what he calls “town hall” meetings, where anyone can ask him questions.