by Ray Wiss
It would also be a mistake to assume that the presence of imminent danger, which has loomed large in the previous two days’ entries, is in any way entertaining. As described in “Downregulation” (June 17), soldiers get used to this quickly. It is common to feel bored while being scared. But as boring as even my busiest day can be, one group of soldiers are a lot worse off than I am.
Individuals who have drawn shifts in the various observation posts (OPs) that ring the FOB have the worst job to which one can be assigned here. It combines the need to be constantly vigilant— a source of stress and fatigue—with the need to look at the same unchanging terrain for hours—a source of yet more stress and fatigue. If wars are 95 per cent boredom and 5 per cent terror, OP duty is 99.99 per cent boredom and 0.01 per cent “What the fuck was that?”
The graffiti one encounters in an OP reflects the mind-numbing boredom of hours spent watching the Afghan dust . . . get dustier: “I spent two weeks in this OP and nothing happened and the same will happen to you. I’m telling you it would be easier to end your life now.” A few feet away, we find the franco version: “Oubliez pas vous êtes ici pour un crisse de boutte.” (“Don’t forget you’re gonna be here for a fuck of a long while.”)
Observation post philosophy
A third one says: “They should really change that military commercial so that it says: Fight boredom. Fight bullshit. Fight each other.” The commercial in question shows Canadian soldiers saving civilians, either on search and rescue or peacekeeping operations. The captions are: “Fight fear. Fight chaos. Fight distress.”
Our army is at war, yet it produces a recruitment ad that does not mention that key detail. A little disconcerting, that.
JULY 18 | Middle of the Night Conversion
Catchy title, eh? A reference to our converting the heathens? Nope. The Coalition forces are respectful of the Islamic faith. This is about a completely different kind of conversion.
At 0230, the phone linking us to the command post rang and Red answered it: “Afghan soldier. Unconscious. ETA five minutes.” Red and I bolted for the UMS. Corporal Bouthillier, the Bison medic, joined us a minute later. A minute after that, a jeep drove up. The unconscious patient was quickly moved into the UMS. Corporal Bouthillier started an IV, and Red checked the vital signs while I proceeded with my examination. When I finished, I had a patient without any detectable injuries or signs of a drug overdose but who was deeply unconscious. Stumped, I went outside to question the other Afghan soldiers.
The soldier had been on a patrol that had returned to the FOB at 0200. A half-hour later, he suddenly collapsed. They had not come under fire during the patrol, and he had seemed fine until that point. The patient had had a similar episode six months earlier and been evacuated to KAF. He had been kept there for a couple of days, but no diagnosis had been established. I went back in the UMS and carefully examined the patient again to ensure I hadn’t missed any subtle signs of disease or injury. Finding none, I began to wonder if I was dealing with a “conversion reaction.”
Sometimes called “hysterical conversion reaction,” this is a psychological state in which stress produces a direct effect on the body: the mental feeling is “converted” into a physical symptom. This can take the form of paralysis, blindness or a number of other manifestations. The patient has very little control over a conversion reaction. It is quite different from malingering, which is the conscious attempt to fake an injury or disease.
The societal demand on Afghan men to be good fighters is extreme. To fail as a soldier is to fail at everything it means to be an Afghan man. During my previous tour, there was only one Afghan soldier who I thought might have had a conversion reaction. I was reluctant to advance the diagnosis in this case. An emergency physician should always hesitate before deciding “it’s all in his head.”
I then noticed that we had not checked the patient’s temperature, the most commonly forgotten vital sign. Since an unconscious patient cannot co-operate with an oral temperature, I ordered Red to use the rectal thermometer. As Red touched the thermometer to the patient’s anus, the buttocks clenched tightly. Seeing that, I began to relax. The patient might be unresponsive, but it was unlikely that he was sick. When Red tried again, the patient opened his eyes to look at me, then quickly shut them again.
At that point, the jig was up. While this patient may have had a conversion reaction when this all started, he was now malingering. I told the interpreter to tell him to get up and walk out. Within a couple of minutes, he did exactly that. No trip to KAF this time, bucko.
JULY 19 | Haji Baran
The title of today’s entry is based in part on one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The teacher in me cannot resist telling you about all five.
The shahadah is a verbal expression of belief that recognizes the singular nature of God and accepts that Muhammad was God’s messenger.
Zakat is compulsory charity. In Islam, you get hit for 2.5 per cent of your total income. The key question is how low your income has to be before you can cross over from payer to payee. The answer is clever, in that it has remained the same since it was established: three ounces of gold. Today, that would be a per annum income of $3,139.29 in Canadian dollars.
Salat is the requirement to pray five times a day: at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and night. Each salat is performed facing towards Mecca, the Saudi Arabian city that is the holiest place in the Muslim world.
Sawm is compulsory fasting during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims must abstain from food, drink and sexual intercourse from dawn to dusk. The fast is a way to empathize with those who are hungry and to express gratitude to God for his gifts—kind of a Thanksgiving in reverse.
The hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims who can afford it are obliged to do this at least once in their lifetime. After a Muslim makes the hajj, he or she is known as a haji or a hajja. This is a high honour in the community, so much so that many small villages in the Panjwayi are named “Haji-something,” in homage to the one member of their village who went to Mecca.
This concludes the educational session; onward with current events. One of the Afghans we most depend on in the Panjwayi is Haji Baran, the district leader. I had seen him a couple of weeks ago for a stomach ailment, which I diagnosed as gastric reflux (heartburn) and treated with antacids.
Like many powerful people, Haji Baran is mindful of his special status. The first time we met, he had gone out of his way to explain to me how he had no confidence in Afghan doctors and would only be treated by Canadian M.D.s. This is a common thing for Western physicians to hear when we are overseas. It is an unfortunate example of reverse racism, and I am always a bit offended by it. I am sure most of my developing-world colleagues are doing the best they can with what they have.
Haji Baran returned today, complaining of chest pain. This placed me in a quandary. He had been seen at the FOB for chest pain a few months ago and had been helicoptered to KAF, where he underwent a standard North American cardiac workup. The workup had been negative, and Haji Baran was returned home without any cardiac medications. There was a strong probability that he was looking forward to the same treatment today. He had intimated as much during his last visit.
A satisfied patient
The Canadian officer who had come with him remained neutral on the surface. It was obvious, however, that the happier I made my patient the better things would be for our mission. Given his stature in the community, you could make an argument that another helicopter medevac might be money well spent in terms of earning his loyalty.
The complicating factor was an e-mail we received yesterday informing us that the medical rules of eligibility had been tightened up considerably. As things stood today, there was no way Haji Baran would qualify for a helicopter medevac.
What to do? There is a simple action that goes a long way towards convincing patients that your attention is focused on them. All you have to do is sit down. Numerous studies have shown that physicians who interview patients w
hile seated are perceived to have spent twice as long with the patient as they actually did. Patients are far more satisfied with these encounters. When Haji Baran walked into the UMS, I sat us both down and proceeded with the lengthiest and most thorough interview I have done since medical school. When we were done I was convinced that Haji Baran was suffering from nothing worse than more heartburn. More importantly, he was convinced as well.*
JULY 20 | Tanker
I was run over by a tank once.
In the summer of 1980, I was at the Combat Training Centre completing the process of becoming a CF infantry officer. All my training until then had been done with small groups of foot soldiers. In this last phase, we had to learn how to operate in conjunction with the other branches of the combat arms: the artillery and the tanks.
In the June 21 entry, I described the relationship between the infantry and the artillery. The infantry go out and get into a fight. When they figure out where the bad guys are, the artillery is called to blow them to ratshit. It is a long-distance affair, the parties being at either end of a radio set.
The infantry’s relationship with the tanks is very different. Since World War One, tanks and infantry have always fought side-by-side on the battlefield. The affiliation is much more intimate than with the artillery.
The tanker instructors assigned to us wanted to make this point forcefully. They achieved this the first day we were with them by having us lie down in a straight line on a road and driving over us with a tank. I do not know what I learned by having dozens of tons of metal pass less than a foot from my nose while treads clanked a few feet on either side of me. I did listen attentively to everything the tankers said after that, so that they would not want to run over me again. That may have been their objective.
When civilians see a Leopard tank for the first time they cannot help but be overwhelmed by the size of the main armament. Pointing phallicly forward is a 120 mm cannon, not much smaller than the 155 mm M777 I have described earlier. This gun can shoot a massive shell several kilometres and destroy even well-protected Taliban bunkers. This massive firepower is great, but the Leopard’s contribution in this war goes further. The complete story takes a bit of explanation.
Although our initial deployment to Afghanistan began in Kandahar province, this lasted less than a year. By 2003, the mission was focused on providing security to the capital, Kabul. Our soldiers were based outside the city at Camp Julien. We would conduct some combat operations, but mostly we patrolled Kabul and the surrounding area on foot and in jeeps.
In October 2003, Sergeant Robert Short and Corporal Robbie Beerenfenger were conducting one of these patrols on the outskirts of Kabul when their vehicle hit a mine. By the time they were discovered, both of them were dead. In January 2004, Corporal Jamie Murphy was killed while patrolling downtown Kabul, when a suicide bomber jumped onto the hood of his vehicle and detonated himself.*
The vehicle implicated in both these incidents was the Iltis jeep. This was a “soft skinned” vehicle, meaning that it was not armoured and offered virtually no protection against IEDs and other explosives. Following these deaths, the CF was pilloried for sending soldiers to Afghanistan without such protection.
There was some justification for this criticism. The Afghan resistance had made extensive use of IEDs and mines in the war against the Russians in the 1980s, and many Taliban fighters had benefited directly or indirectly from this experience. As for suicide bombing, it was a staple of Islamic extremism. It was predictable that our enemies would launch attacks on our patrols using high explosives delivered by a variety of means.
Pain may not be the best way to teach, but it is undeniably effective. Within months, contracts were rushed through for the purchase of small armoured vehicles called G-wagons. These were used with some success in Kabul.
Even before Canada shifted its deployment to Kandahar, however, the push was on to equip our forces with the LAV. The LAV is a wheeled vehicle. With even marginal roads or reasonably solid terrain, it can get around far better than a tank. Armed with a 25 mm cannon, it packs more than enough punch to defeat soldiers on foot. Its armour is thick enough to offer good protection against bullets and moderate protection against mines and other explosions. At three million dollars apiece, a LAV costs less than half what a tank costs.
With the end of the Cold War, it was unlikely that we would ever again have to face an enemy equipped with thousands of tanks, like the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies had been. The L AV was more suitable for the low-intensity conflicts in which we might become involved. We would become a lighter, more nimble force. After dominating the battlefield for a century, the tank seemed to be on its way out (in the Canadian Army, at least).
Task Force Afghanistan was equipped with L AVs by the summer of 2006. This is an important date because at the end of that summer, in September 20 06, we launched Operation Medusa, Canada’s largest combat operation since the end of the Korean War. Over several weeks the Canadian battle group fought its way into Zhari-Panjwayi.* Among other things, these Canadians established our first crude outposts in this area. These outposts evolved into the FOBs we have today.
The fighting during Op Medusa was unlike anything we have seen since. The Taliban had massed over a thousand fighters in a determined attempt to take, or at least to attack, Kandahar City. The city had been the capital of Afghanistan during their reign, and it still held a powerful attraction for them. It was the job of the Canadians to prevent this.
Canadians may recall that period, the late summer and early fall of 2006, because a dozen Canadians were killed—more than in the previous four years combined. What very few Canadians know is that Op Medusa was an overwhelming Canadian victory. Hundreds of Taliban were killed, and their access to Kandahar City was permanently denied. Apart from the infiltrators who have come singly or in pairs to plant bombs, there has been only one meaningful Taliban incursion into the city limits since then.* This was also the last time that large numbers of Taliban attempted to go toe to toe with a Canadian battle group.
The Taliban learned from their pain as well as we had. Since they could not defeat us in face-to-face encounters, they turned to IEDs. They were mirroring the actions of insurgents in Iraq, who had learned that vehicles like the L AV could be defeated with IEDs. Tanks, on the other hand, were almost impervious to these weapons.
As our losses from IEDs mounted, an urgent call went out for tanks to be deployed with our battle group. In an astounding tour de force, the Lord Strathcona’s Horse was able to deploy a squadron of tanks to Kandahar in only six weeks.
When the Canadian Leopards took to the field, they gave us a weapons platform that was invulnerable to anything the Taliban could throw at it. Wherever one of these beasts goes, it automatically creates a circle several kilometres in diameter within which any Taliban foolish enough to fire a weapon is very likely to die.
Another important feature of the tanks is their ability to smash through the mud brick walls that surround the compounds and line many of the roads and tracks in the area. Taliban ambushes are often launched from abandoned compounds or other areas where these walls can afford them some protection. This protection can be nullified by having a tank drive through the wall, a procedure called “breaching.”
Finally, the sound of a tank attacking with its main armament is an experience that defines “shock and awe.” This element is explained by Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman in his seminal book On Combat. * Grossman calls it the Bigger Bang Theory.
The equivalent of the Leopard in the American army is the Abrams. It has the same-size cannon and roughly the same dimensions. In his book, Grossman relates that battles fought in Iraq between insurgents armed with rifles and RPGs (much like the Taliban are here) lasted only a minute or two when Abrams tanks were involved. The insurgents would break contact and flee as soon as the tanks opened fire.
When the same insurgents went up against Stryker vehicles (the equivalent of our LAVs), the battles could las
t for hours, even though the 40 mm grenade launchers and .50 -calibre machine guns on the Stryker were as lethal against insurgents on foot as the 120 mm gun of the Abrams. It seems that the sound of the tank’s gun affected the insurgents on a primal level.
There are many similar occurrences throughout history. The first time muskets were used against men armed with crossbows is an excellent example. A man armed with a crossbow could fire a deadly projectile farther, more often and with greater accuracy than could a man armed with a musket. Nonetheless, the bowmen fled in disorder when confronted with the roar of these primitive firearms. The Leopard tank gives us a similar advantage over our enemies.
A successful mission, a happy crew
Captain Sandy Cooper’s tank is named “Stephanie,” after his wife. Clockwise from left, standing: Trooper Derek (“Never-Miss”) Tonn, gunner; top right: Master Corporal Darryl Hordyk, loader, tank second-in-command (a new master corporal, but he seamlessly starts directing the crew when Captain Cooper is busy talking to his commander on the radio); bottom right: Trooper Felix “I brake forIEDs” Lussier, driver; Captain Cooper.
Most importantly, this firepower, breaching capability and psychological impact can be delivered with minimal risk to our troops. Leopards lead the way down the roads of the combat area and they routinely hit IEDs, but virtually all of the damage is suffered by the vehicle rather than by the men inside.
Basing our Leopards at Ma’Sum Ghar places them in the centre of our area of operations, making them readily available anytime heavy firepower and strong protection are required. They go out on operations as often as the infantry, and yesterday they returned from a five-day jaunt through Nakhonay (Operation Constrictor IV), during which they kicked some serious ass.*