I was greeted by nothing but a blank stare. Maybe I should’ve stuck to French at school. If Harry had been around to interpret I would have asked the man with the birdcage whether he knew of any truck drivers. But he wasn’t around so there was no chance of that.
Trying again to communicate, I held up my right hand across my heart, a universal peace greeting. It meant letting my rifle hang by my side on its sling but Afghan custom dictated that the only thing you did with your left hand was wipe your backside so I had no choice if I didn’t want to offend him. I nodded goodbye and left him.
The alleyways all looked the same and none had names or markings. If there was such a thing as a postal service out here, the local postman would have his work cut out.
With the walls of the compounds on either side of us we had no way of knowing which one led where with any certainty. To no one’s great surprise a few minutes after turning back into one of the smaller alleyways a radio message came up the line telling us we had missed our first checkpoint.
The boss wanted to check out a small building that was being used as a school and to meet the village elder to discuss any support we might be able to offer in the form of reconstruction or aid.
The lead section regained their bearings and headed off while the section I was attached to held position for a while before heading back the way we had come and into another series of alleys and cluttered buildings.
I followed slowly, keeping tabs on the marine in front. With no breeze in the alleys it was still relatively warm. The smell of rotten food and human waste stung the inside of my nostrils.
Whenever the patrol stopped each of us had to take a quick look around before crouching down to adopt decent fire positions. The weight of the kit made sure we conserved energy. The getting up and down as we stopped was becoming hard work for my old knees in particular; they really didn’t like the stop-start that patrolling entailed and given the amount of revolting stuff on the floor I was also careful about where I put my knees.
The message came up the line that the boss had arrived at the centre of the village and had asked to talk with the elder. A flurry of activity indicated that the local men had gone to seek him out.
I walked up the line of crouched marines, stopping now and again to check on a few of them. The centre of the village was just an open area of barren wasteland no bigger than a normal-sized swimming pool. There were low mud walls and a few empty wooden stalls that jutted out from the ends of several unkempt buildings.
By now a group of local men and kids had formed. Most wore the faded blue grey shalwar robes that were traditional in these parts. A group of shoeless children were grouping around the marines who had taken up positions around the open ground.
I approached the boss and Harry the terp. They were both deep in conversation with a tall distinguished old man wearing an immaculately clean white turban. His grey beard was one of the longest I had seen and tumbled down on to the top of his chest.
As I walked past them on my way to tell a marine on the opposite side from me to look outwards and not inwards as he was currently doing, I caught snippets of the conversation.
‘Boss, the elder says he is still waiting for the promised medicines, food and school equipment that he was told would be here by now,’ Harry was saying.
The boss responded to Harry, but I was by then out of earshot. I could guess what he had replied though. Without the security that this region desperately needed no aid agencies would attempt to deliver anything. The locals would have to work with us to deny the Taliban freedom of movement. Only then could we provide the resources the villages badly required.
The conversation in the middle of the village lasted a few more minutes and ended with all three shaking hands before the boss signalled it was time to move.
The outskirts of the village ended sharply and I found myself once more about to step into the open expanse of the desert plain.
I felt a tug at my sleeve and looked down to see a small brown-haired girl with piercing green eyes staring up at me. She could not have been much more than ten or eleven. She held out a grubby hand in my direction.
‘Hello little one,’ I said as I crouched down so I was level with her. ‘Let me guess. You want a pen, eh?’
I did a quick check around to make sure I wasn’t going to be swamped by hundreds of her friends. The coast was clear so I fished out a pencil from my top pocket and a couple of boiled sweets that I had placed there just for this reason.
She grabbed them from me, an oversized grin spreading across her face. But instead of running away she stood and spoke to me in quick-fire Pashtu. Luckily I looked up to see Harry a short distance away walking alongside one of my corporals.
‘Harry, can I borrow you?’ I shouted over to him.
He jogged over and said hello to the little girl who surprisingly stood her ground.
‘I have no idea what she is saying, mate. Can you translate for me please?’
Harry spoke to the girl and they exchanged words as I listened intently, unable to understand anything.
Harry looked at me. ‘She wants you to teach her to write,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘Oh,’ I replied. The youngster was staring up at me as if I was about to give her a lesson there and then. Harry was still looking at me too, his piercing dark eyes testing me, waiting for the answer he already knew I was going to give.
‘I can’t, little one, not yet, maybe soon,’ I said, talking more to Harry than the child.
He looked at me a moment longer before he translated it into Pashtu. I pulled out my small black notebook and opened it towards the back where the remainder of the blank pages were. I ripped out a handful and held them out to her. ‘This is all I can give you for now, okay?’
The little girl didn’t need Harry to translate; she reached for the paper and with it securely gripped in her hand promptly turned back down the narrow alley towards the centre of the village.
‘Harry, is there a school here?’ I asked him as we moved off to rejoin the patrol that was now fanning out into the cool crisp wind blowing from the north.
Harry replied without looking up. ‘Yes, but there is only one teacher there. He uses an old building as the school but he has no materials. It is not well attended any more.’
As we patrolled back northwards across the rough desert floor I wondered what we could do to improve the lives of these people.
My attempts at trying to rescue the dogs seemed fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things. But as we headed back to the compound, it was bubbling back towards the forefront of my thoughts again.
I’d failed miserably to find a truck driver in Barakzai or any of our local area patrols and I probably wasn’t going to find one in time for the trip to Kandahar.
It was looking like I had only one option left. It was time to break some rules.
CHAPTER TEN
Lift Off
ITRIED TO SPEND as long with the dogs as I could over the next few days. I even missed out on some opportunities to sleep so that I could sit down and enjoy the quiet moments with them in the run instead. I was going home so I knew I would have nearly a day on a plane to catch up with sleep and with no major patrols planned we had lots of time on our hands.
Nowzad would recognise my voice immediately as I rounded the corner to the run. He would push himself up on to all fours from his curled position on the red cushion and push his nose through the bars of the run, his little stumpy tail wagging from side to side. RPG would just dance around behind him while Jena made her normal high-pitched squealing until I opened the gate and forced my way inside.
A few broken biscuits would do the trick and quieten them down. It often made me wonder if it was me they were happy to see or the food I offered.
‘Probably the food isn’t it?’ I would tease them.
Perhaps it was hard for some to understand but the dogs were a source of companionship. They didn’t ask questions of me, they never got a ‘sad’ on
with me because I hadn’t been around to see them. But they were always happy when I did turn up. It was kind of relaxing to just sit there and make a fuss of them. Jena, in particular, was the ultimate soft dog and loved nothing more than rolling on to her back so you had no choice other than to rub her belly.
In my desperation to see the dogs make it to the rescue, I had now formed the only plan that had a remote chance of working. And it was a very remote chance at that.
Although simple it was fraught with massive pitfalls and ran the risk of severe reprimands if it went horribly wrong.
Koshan had confirmed to Lisa that the Afghan driver he had lined up, who we now knew was called Fahran, wasn’t willing to try coming to Now Zad again. However, instead of coming to Kandahar as had been previously suggested, he was willing to drive to Camp Bastion.
I was sure Fahran would have no trouble finding Bastion. During the brief spell we’d spent there I’d witnessed hundreds of ‘jingly’ trucks forming outside the camp every day, attempting to sell goods and supplies to the Afghan people. Any local person south of Kandahar would know where it was.
We’d agreed to go for it and I had told Lisa to tell the driver to drive to Camp Bastion for 6 December, the day I was due to fly out for my R & R. I asked her to make sure that he knew to place a sign in the window of his truck with my name clearly written on it.
My job now was to get the dogs to Bastion. And there was only one way to achieve that. The dogs would have to fly with me on a military helo.
This was, of course, a really risky strategy as I didn’t have permission.
The plan was fraught with possible pitfalls. What if bad weather barred me from catching my helo flight on the allocated day? How long would the truck driver wait?
If the helo did arrive on time, would my plan work? The idea was that me and one of my lads, Mase, would run up the ramp with the dogs hidden in boxes. We were gambling that the loadmaster would be too preoccupied with looking out for incoming mortars and would simply assume the boxes were carrying equipment. If he noticed I had three dogs on board it would be too late. We would be airborne. I could face the music later. And anyway what was the worst thing they could do: send me to the front line?
Getting to Bastion was only the start of my problems. Even if I got the dogs to the camp there were still too many variables that could go wrong.
I would have to successfully rendezvous with the driver. If we didn’t meet up in the small window of time that I would have before my military plane home, I would have nowhere to put the dogs. I would have to just walk out the front gate and release them. Bastion was situated in the middle of a barren wasteland; it would be an instant death sentence.
Leaving them on site at Bastion was not an option either. They would be shot.
Even so, if the timings were right there were other things that could go wrong.
If Camp Bastion was attacked and the camp locked down, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to leave to hand over the dogs to the truck driver.
Then there was the stress the dogs would experience being cramped in a small cardboard box for possibly two or three days and facing a helicopter ride, not the quietest experience in the world.
The odds on this working were about as good as the odds of me winning the lottery, but it was the only plan and it had to work.
Dave was the only one who wasn’t completely onside with my strategy. ‘What about the noise of the helo mate; they’ll be scared stupid,’ he’d reasoned.
He was right of course. The deafening sound of the helo would be terrifying, but I had no option.
‘I know, I know,’ I said quietly.
Despite this, however, he helped me to build some new travel boxes. They really would have to be tiny. The dogs would be able to stand up, but little else. But what choice did I have?
It was less than three hours before the flight that was going to take me and Mase on R & R would land at the Now Zad LS. Suddenly it struck me that Fahran, the driver at Bastion, might have a mobile phone. Perhaps I could get through to him and find out if he made it to Bastion? I ran to the sat phone to call Lisa who, luckily, was at home.
‘Lisa, can you see if you can get the driver’s phone number from Koshan? I’ll call you in 30 minutes; it is now or never, okay?’ I said, the anxiety obvious in my voice.
When I got through to Lisa again it was only an hour before the helo was due to land. Koshan had been reluctant to hand it out, but Lisa was persuasive. I scribbled the number she gave me down on my notepad.
Harry was in the ops room and offered to ring Fahran for me. The sat phone seemed to take for ever to connect with the Afghan mobile. Finally, I heard Harry saying the customary Afghan welcome. But the conversation was over a lot quicker than I expected.
Harry turned and looked at me.
‘Sorry, my friend, this is not the driver.’
‘Are you sure, Harry? Check the number again; what was his name?’ I asked frantically, waving my notepad.
‘It is not Fahran and he told me not to ring again,’ he replied.
I checked the number on my pad again. It corresponded identically with the dialled number on the sat phone screen.
‘Bollocks.’ I kicked the HESCO block in front of me. I had repeated the number as Lisa said it to make sure it was correct. Had she written it down wrong in the first place? Had Koshan palmed her off with a wrong number?
I tried calling Lisa but it went straight to the answerphone. She was at work and unable to answer her phone. I didn’t bother leaving a message. I had nothing to say.
‘Sorry,’ Harry repeated again. He knew how much it meant to get the dogs to safety.
I touched his upper arm. ‘Don’t worry, mate. Marines always have a back-up plan.’ I smiled as reassuringly as I could.
‘This really isn’t one of your better ideas, Pen,’ Dave said as we put the finishing touches to the new travel crates.
‘Thanks for reminding me Dave, but what else are we going to do?’
‘You get caught, you know you’re fucked, don’t you?’ He looked directly at me. ‘Is it worth the risk?’
‘What do you think?’ I replied.
Surprisingly Nowzad hadn’t minded being picked up. It was the first time I had ever attempted it. He didn’t fight either when I placed him into the extremely confined cardboard box. We had reinforced the inside of the box with metal strips so that it was crush proof and lined the base with the T-shirts from the larger crates for comfort.
‘Sorry bud, it’s for the best,’ I said as he squeezed into the confined space.
Nowzad’s sad eyes just reflected the resignation of whatever was happening to him.
We placed all three boxes with their precious cargos into the pickup and set off for the rendezvous with the resupply helicopter. As I stood in the back holding their boxes in place, all three dogs were looking back up at me, confusion in their eyes.
The two expanding dots on the horizon were unmistakable. The faint chopping sound of the inbound Chinooks was building. The corporal who had taken over from me prepared the smoke flares that would signal our presence on the LS. I had only a few minutes. It was time for the last throw of the dice.
I had found a phone number for Arnie, the corporal in charge of the security detail at Bastion during my last nighttime duty. I knew he had a vehicle and the necessary passes to be able to drive out to the holding area of assorted jingly trucks that formed outside Camp Bastion.
I had got to know Arnie during our last winter training deployment in Norway. We had trained together in the gym from time to time and then refuelled with Norwegian beer afterwards in the local town. It hadn’t taken much to convince him to have a look for the driver.
With the helicopter within minutes of landing I needed to know how he had got on. The signal from the sat phone was weak. For a moment or two I could only hear static. But Arnie’s voice was soon coming through. And his message was clear.
‘No joy, mate,’ he said matter-of-f
actly.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked. Deep down I had known this was going to be the answer, but I was still gutted.
‘Yes, mate. I have driven round all the vehicles; no signs with your name displayed in any truck windows.’
Reluctantly I accepted the truth. It was over.
‘Okay, Arnie. Thanks mate for looking. I owe you,’ I said.
‘Damn right you do. Beer tokens when we get home mate.’
‘Roger. Stay safe,’ I said as I hung up.
The corporal who was standing in for me now on the LS was popping smoke to signal the helo. The game was up.
Dave stood next to me; he knew what I was going to say.
‘The driver isn’t there.’ I looked at the three boxes sat waiting on the flat bed.
The noise from the incoming helicopters was growing louder.
‘Look after them?’ I said to Dave.
‘No worries, mate, it is not as if I have a lot else to do, is it?’ He held out his hand. ‘Enjoy your R & R and come back with a new plan.’
I shook his hand and then touched the dogs each on the nose. Nowzad tried to lick my gloved fingers through the bars as he always did.
‘Sorry, guys,’ I whispered.
I grabbed my small day sack from the back of the flat bed along with my rifle and signalled Mase that we were going. The helo was making its turn to get in position for the landing on the rough desert floor and was already swirling up a cloud of dust and dirt. As it prepared to land on the deck we both broke into a jog, heading for the back of the helo. I didn’t look back as we ran into the maelstrom.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
R & R
One Dog at a Time Page 15