A Line in the Sand

by Ray Wiss

  It was a legendary military wake, and it almost made up for the botched ramp ceremony. Almost.

  Addendum, September 19: I warned Major Bouchard this morning about the run-in that I’d had with the padre the previous evening. She was as incensed as the rest of the French Canadians had been and told me not to worry about it.

  Addendum, November 20: While I was at KAF, Major Jourdain informed me that he had lodged a formal complaint with the battle group about the padre’s performance. In response to this, the senior padre phoned Major Jourdain at FOB Sperwan Ghar. After some discussion, she agreed that the way the ceremony had been handled was regrettable and that the combat team deserved an apology. She said that she would deliver the apology in person when the combat team returned from the FOB a few weeks later. She never did so.

  Incredibly, it turns out that this was not a unique event. I have since learned that the ramp ceremony for Corporal Nick Bulger was mishandled in much the same way, only this time it was a near-unilingual francophone trying (and failing) to properly read an English text. True to its Canadian roots, the padre branch has fucked things up in both official languages.

  SEPTEMBER 19, MORNING | A Farewell to Arms

  Major Jourdain, Captain Lussier and the other Cobras were flying back to the FOB this morning. I went over to bid them farewell a half hour before they left. Once again, they cheered me for what I had said to the padre the night before. We all agreed that Jonathan had deserved as much.

  I made one last round of handshakes, spending a little longer with Corporal Girard. After Vince, he was the one I was most concerned about. I was relieved to see that he appeared to be in good spirits. I then had the chance to have a longer conversation with Major Jourdain. I know he feels the loss of his soldier acutely, but when I asked him what came next, he answered with a steady voice and clear eyes: “We will soldier on.” Then they boarded their vehicles and were gone.

  I was no longer a member of a combat team. After 107 straight days in the combat area and over 2,500 consecutive hours “on call,” I was no longer a FOB doc. Almost certainly, I will never be one again.

  SEPTEMBER 19, AFTERNOON | Logistics

  After lunch, I spent a couple of hours tearing through the KAF bazaar, where Afghan merchants come to sell all manner of textiles and handicrafts. I had a long list of people I wanted to buy gifts for, and very little time. My haggling, therefore, was limited and perfunctory. Several Afghan merchants did well today, but I was able to go to the post office this afternoon and ship home several boxes full of souvenirs. These will be distributed to good effect among friends and family. Wandering around KAF, I was reminded of a topic I had meant to write about earlier.

  A chasm exists between those who serve at KAF and those who go into combat. There are two reasons for this. The first is the natural bravado of young combat troopers. With considerable justification, they see themselves as the elite. With less justification, they occasionally denigrate those who do not accompany them into the combat area.

  The second reason has to do with the inevitable “bad apples” that appear in any group. Life at KAF is much more scheduled and orderly than life at a FOB. The FOB troopers can accept this. But they cannot accept being told that an item they require before they head out on a combat operation cannot be delivered to them because somebody at KAF has “gone home for the day” or is on “Sunday routine.”

  I am not making this up. Things slow down on the weekends at KAF. Most of the time, this is of no consequence to the people on the FOB. But the few times that it is, when someone who has never been shot at declines to work overtime to help us out, it provokes intensely negative feelings.

  The reality, as in all these types of situations, is that the few bad interactions FOB people have with KAF people get reported and discussed endlessly on the FOB. That is unfortunate, because the soldiers in the “support trades” work hard in an environment where their contribution goes almost unnoticed.

  In the June 3 entry’s footnote I describe the way Master Seaman Carole Dubois detected an error in my pay for my previous tour, an error that had occurred more than a year earlier. When she told me I was entitled to these payments, I replied that there was no rush to pay me since I was headed to the FOBs and would have very little use for cash. She contacted me in August to sort through this issue.

  This proved to be far trickier than she had anticipated, requiring numerous e-mails back and forth between us. After a few days, I noticed that it did not matter whether I e-mailed her at 0600 or at 2300; she would always reply immediately. This soldier was probably putting in longer hours than anyone else in the theatre of operations. And let no one say her work was not vital. Our soldiers are not rich. They and their families depend on people like MS Dubois to ensure that their pay flows smoothly into their bank accounts, so that there is always money for their families’ mortgages, clothes and groceries. If this does not happen, the combat troopers will be unable to focus on their tasks and the impact on our combat effectiveness will be disastrous.

  The same can be said for all the soldiers who serve in the support trades, such as logistics personnel, mechanics, cooks and many, many others. And yet, when these soldiers come home, they often get an almost embarrassed look on their faces when they are asked what they did. When talking to civilians, they will often use a generic term: “I was a supply technician” or “I worked in administration.” Those same civilians will often look at the soldier quizzically. The unspoken message is that their service was less worthy than that of the combat troopers.

  This is particularly unfair to those who serve at KAF but who risk their lives daily driving supplies out to the FOBs. They are exposed to a high degree of danger not only from IEDs, suicide bombers and ambushes but also from mundane accidents. A number of Canadian soldiers have been injured and six have been killed in such collisions.

  The best contribution of the support elements—great food! (Surf-and-turf night on a FOB? Wow!)

  So I would like to take a moment to recognize all those Canadian men and women who served in the essential support roles, without which the war-fighters would not have boots, beans or bullets. You will likely never be “mentioned in dispatches” nor receive any medals for bravery, but we could never win, or even fight, without you.

  Addendum: Those wishing to learn more about the unprecedented challenges involved in keeping the CF combat troopers supplied in Afghanistan are encouraged to read Lieutenant Colonel John Conrad’s What the Thunder Said.* Lieutenant Colonel Conrad ran the logistics for the first Canadian battle group deployed to Kandahar province in 2006. The fighting was intense, and the infrastructure was a pale shadow of what it is today. The achievements of the logistics branch during that spring and summer were phenomenal.

  SEPTEMBER 20 | Ultrasound, Again

  The reward for good work is . . . more work.

  I spent the morning dealing with a balky laptop that, after performing flawlessly on the FOB for nearly four months, began crashing every ten minutes. This was a problem because I had been asked to teach a course on advanced emergency ultrasound to the people at the KAF hospital. My presentations on the subject were contained in the malfunctioning computer. If I could not get it working again, the course would have to be cancelled.

  It took three hours of intense CPR (computer programmer resuscitation) on the part of the good folks in the IT department, in particular Todd Doucet, to revive my abused laptop. They got me operational in time to supervise the outpatient clinic in the early afternoon, after which I went to the hospital to give my course. There is something admirable about a group of doctors who are so committed to their continuing medical education that they will sit in a dusty tent on the edge of a deafeningly loud airfield to learn new techniques from a visiting expert.

  The course went very well. Having taught a course in basic emergency ultrasound at the Multinational Medical Unit (MMU) on my first tour, introducing advanced techniques to the same institution made for a nice continuation o
f the saga.

  SEPTEMBER 21 | Out of Afghanistan

  Last day at KAF.

  I swung by the medical building to say my last goodbyes. While I had enjoyed my interactions with Major Bouchard, Sergeant-Major Racine and the rest of the medical company, these had been long-distance relationships. There was none of the melancholy I had felt two days earlier when saying goodbye to Major Jourdain and the members of Combat Team Cobra.

  I reported to the airfield at the prescribed time and then spent two hours in the waiting area before being called to board the plane. The army likes it when you’re early for things like this.

  The flight to Camp Mirage was uneventful and boring. I had forgotten to bring anything to read, so I sat there, trying (and failing) to sleep. Even with high-quality earplugs, a Herc is a very noisy place.

  On arrival at Camp Mirage, the first order of business was to hand in my weapons. After my first tour, it had seemed natural to return my rifle and pistol. On this tour, I had been exposed to much more danger; on one occasion I had even been in a straight-up gunfight. As a result, I had grown attached to these firearms. They have been a source of comfort and security, and I was sad to part with them.

  That feeling only lasted a few minutes, to be replaced by hunger. If I needed a reminder that I was off the FOB, I got it as I entered the mess hall. I was still wearing the Afghan scarf many of us wear in the combat area to shield our faces from dust. A lieutenant colonel took one look at me and got up from his table to inform me that I was improperly dressed. Considering that I had spent nearly four months wandering around the FOBs with the same scarf, that struck me as humorous. But military discipline asserted itself and I complied.

  SEPTEMBER 22 | Mirage

  I spent the day at Camp Mirage doing the last bits of out-clearance paperwork and getting my travel documents in order for the trip home. This is called a “buffer day,” which I think serves to protect those leaving KAF from the vagaries of Hercules transports. Should your departure from Afghanistan be delayed by twenty-four hours, you will still be able to go on decompression on time.

  It has been an unsettling day. On the one hand, I am extraordinarily happy that I have gotten out of Afghanistan alive and uninjured. But the feeling I had four days ago—the feeling that the FOB had become so familiar it was almost like home—has persisted. I feel disoriented.

  I ended up wandering around the base, unsure of what to do with myself.

  SEPTEMBER 23 | Decompression

  Most Canadian soldiers who go on decompression are sent by plane to Cyprus. They stay together in the same hotel, watched over by counsellors of various stripes. These counsellors hold sessions in the mornings to smooth the reintegration of the soldiers back into Canadian society. They discuss ways of coping with post-battle stress, things to watch out for when reacquainting oneself with one’s family and other challenges a returning soldier might face. The rest of the day is given over to recreational activities. Much of this recreation involves alcohol consumption. The hotel therefore outfits one room with padding to act as a drunk tank, and CF medical personnel are assigned to the local hospital to deal with the inevitable alcohol overdoses and fisticuffs.

  By some fluke, no one else who was eligible for decompression left KAF at the same time I did. For a small group or, in this unique case, a singleton, it is not cost-effective to rent a plane. I would therefore be sent by myself in a car to a hotel on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

  Well, not entirely by myself. The army feels that soldiers on decompression, particularly those who have been exposed to combat, must always have some kind of mental health person available to them should they wish to discuss anything. When I showed up for my pre-decompression briefing, I learned that I would be escorted on my decompression by . . . a padre.

  I politely listened to his pre-departure briefing, an hour-long compendium of bromides about dealing with stress. The emphasis is on drinking less and talking more. There was one other soldier in the room with me for this briefing. He was a member of Combat Team Cobra whose behaviour in Cyprus last time had been so atrocious that he had been banned from the island. He would also be going to the Middle Eastern hotel I was headed for, but for some reason he was not leaving for several days.

  Around midmorning, the padre and I got into a minivan and headed for our hotel. It was about a two-hour drive, and I knew the padre would want to try to talk to me. He seemed like a solid individual—cut from the same cloth as Captain Cholette, the “combat padre”—but I was still quite angry about the way the ramp ceremony had been handled and did not want to initiate anything. We therefore spent the first half hour in silence. Finally, the padre couldn’t help himself and asked me how my tour had gone.

  I decided to tell him in detail about the ceremony and how the troopers had felt about it. He agreed that the KAF padres had been extraordinarily insensitive. It felt good to hear that, but it did not make me want to spend my time off with him. When we got to the hotel I told him politely that I would see him in three days, when it was time to go.

  I went to my room, got a book and settled in for a two-hour soak in the first bathtub I had seen in four months. I then went to a neighbouring hotel, where I spent well over one hundred dollars on an elaborate meal that lasted nearly three hours. And then to sleep, in a room all my own, in a bed twice as big as anything I had slept in since May.

  SEPTEMBER 24 | Disconnected

  This is weird. I am here by myself, surrounded by rich tourists from Europe and the Middle East. The room is comfortable, the food is amazing and it’s fun to watch North American television again. But I feel cut off from my military family.

  I have trouble imagining that anyone would think it would be a good idea to send a guy who has spent four months on a FOB to decompression alone. Almost certainly, my name and my time came up and a clerk booked my hotel reservation automatically. No one noticed I would be going by myself until yesterday morning.

  The way I feel right now, I think it was a mistake for me to come. I should have asked the CF to send me home immediately. Barring that, I should have stayed at Camp Mirage. Being around other people in uniform would have been far more comforting.

  SEPTEMBER 25 | We That Are Left . . .

  I was wrong. Coming here was not a mistake. Something happened today, something that could not have taken place anywhere else, something that had to happen before I went home.

  When Jonathan was killed on September 17, I went into “doctor” mode. My concern was for the men around me. I was in a unique and privileged position to be able to help them through this difficult time. My run-in with the padre had accentuated this by making me feel even more protective of these men, if that were possible.

  This mindset persisted until I bid Combat Team Cobra farewell on the 19th. This disconnected me from my own grief. In the days that followed, the frenetic pace of my pre-departure activities kept me distracted. It wasn’t until this morning that my own reaction to Jonathan’s death bubbled up to the conscious level.

  I didn’t recognize it at first. I was only aware that I had no appetite for breakfast. So I went for a walk on the beach. I spent several minutes looking at the ocean. There was no one around me. In that setting of utter calm, my grief hit me full force. The pain was physical, an awful tearing feeling inside my chest that made it hard to breathe.

  I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much as I did this morning. This period of uncontrollable emotion lasted at least ten minutes. Perhaps it was longer. Thinking back on it several hours later as I write this, I cannot accurately gauge the time that passed.

  Eventually, the emotional weight of the moment abated, and I began to be able to control the physical manifestations of my grief. As I achieved this control, my mind cleared and I began to look at Jonathan’s death more analytically. What came next was even more unpleasant. It provoked an intense wave of nausea, something I find even more disagreeable than pain.

  Survivor guilt.

  Jonathan was less t
han half my age. What right did I have to be going home to my family when he would not? What might he have achieved in his life, if he had had the chance?

  The pure grief reaction had caught me by surprise. But my medical training allowed me to anticipate, if only by a few seconds, this next wave of emotion. Like Vince had on the helicopter, I went to a dark, dark place. Thankfully, I was not there all that long.

  As soon as I could, I sought out the best remedy for these kinds of situations: hard physical effort. I spent the rest of the day hiking in the mountains inland from the hotel. I pushed myself as hard as I could, revelling in the feeling of the air coming into my lungs, the sun on my face and the sweat on my skin.

  Standing on the hilltop, I knew I would grieve Jonathan’s death, and the death of all my fallen comrades, for the rest of my life. I now viscerally relate to the veterans of World War Two who, more than sixty years on, shed tears on Remembrance Day.

  But grief does not necessarily imply distress. I regret Jonathan’s death, but I still believe in the cause for which he was fighting. And that makes all the difference.

  By the time I came back down, I was famished.

  And ready to go home.

  SEPTEMBER 26–27 | Home

  I spent a good part of the morning talking to the padre who had escorted me here. With part of my grief and anger processed, I was able to open up and have an honest conversation with him about my tour. It was very beneficial. He was an excellent listener and counsellor— the Canadian soldiers who spend time with him will be well cared for.