One Dog at a Time

by Farthing, Pen

  The young lad had panicked at the sight of a large fighting dog running towards him.

  Without waiting he had shot Dushka.

  The gentle giant fell to the ground and died by the rear gate.

  On hearing the shot Klaus had raced to the rear entrance but when he got there it was all over. There was nothing he could do except drag Dushka to the burns pit.

  Klaus hadn’t seen Patches since then. I imagined he was still off roaming the alleys, trying to find his friend.

  Out of pure emotional frustration and anger I had shouted at Klaus, asking for the lad’s name. I wanted to kill him.

  Luckily for both our sakes Klaus had refused.

  The heavy drone of the C130 transport plane as it rose steeply into the cold blue air of the Helmand desert had an instant calming effect. Squashed into a canvas seat, I looked around at the weary faces staring vacantly back at me.

  I didn’t feel like talking; besides, even if we had wanted to the engines were too noisy.

  I imagined we were now flying high above the mountains I had spent so much time daydreaming about. I knew I wouldn’t be opening that adventure business among the Afghan people any time soon.

  I thought about all that had happened over the last five months. A phrase that we marines use popped into my head. ‘At the end of the day it gets dark,’ I said to myself. ‘At the end of the day it always gets dark.’

  There was nothing you could do about that.

  There was nothing I could do about what had happened in Afghanistan.

  I closed my eyes. All that mattered now was the fact that for this tour, I was going home for good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Homecomings

  AS WE GROUND to a halt on the motorway, I quickly wound the window down to get some air into the car. The shimmering heat was reflecting off the black tarmac.

  Lisa had the right idea. She was snoozing, her head back against the headrest in the passenger seat.

  I seemed to have picked a busy day to be driving towards London.

  Everybody in the country seemed to be on the move. Or not, as in our case.

  Today was a special day. Even more so than the outings with Fizz and Beamer that had remained our end-of-week focus, the escape that let us unwind from the stress of work.

  Living with dogs had become a part of our lives, so much in fact that we’d decided to take on a couple more. We’d spoken to Fizz and Beamer about it and they didn’t seem to have any objections to us expanding our canine family, especially as we had plied them with biscuits when we had asked.

  Which was why, despite the slow-moving traffic on this baking hot June afternoon, we were on our way to visit an animal quarantine centre on the outskirts of London.

  To say the four months since I’d arrived back from Afghanistan had been an emotional rollercoaster ride would have been the understatement of all time. So much had happened in such a short time.

  Readjusting to life back home had at times been difficult. When I’d arrived back at RAF Brize Norton, Lisa had collected me so I didn’t have to get the ambulance home.

  Fizz and Beamer of course came along to greet me. It had taken a few minutes to calm the pair of them down in the back of the car before we could drive off.

  I’d celebrated my arrival back at the house with a beer before heading out for a steak in the pub and a few more pints. I was soon strutting my stuff on one foot around the floor of our local like a man possessed, trying desperately to avoid knocking my strapped ankle against any of the bar stools.

  I had been given sick leave but there were a few lads already back home with injuries far worse than mine. I made use of my time by helping them to arrange transport and welfare visits. It also kept me around camp in case there was any news from the lads still out in Afghanistan. But normally there was nothing new to hear.

  Until, that was, I got an unexpected call to go and see the CSM. As soon as he welcomed me into his office and asked me to sit down I knew something was wrong.

  ‘You were in Kilo Company weren’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, why?’ I said, cautiously.

  There was no beating around the bush, there was no point.

  ‘Marine Ben Reddy was killed yesterday. The company were caught in the open by a Taliban ambush. Several other lads were injured,’ the CSM said.

  I just sat there. Immediately I pictured Ben’s big smiling face. The lads good-humouredly compared him to Silas, the assassin albino monk in The Da Vinci Code. Ben hadn’t minded the likeness; at least he had been given a nickname that was associated with a hard-man – unlike mine, which came from being related to a Victorian bike, although most of the lads wouldn’t know what a Penny Farthing looked like.

  Ben had been a true Royal Marine who had wanted nothing more than to muck in with the rest of the lads no matter what task they had been given.

  In Now Zad, Ben had been one of the lads who’d taken an interest in the dogs. He’d been over to say hello to Nowzad, RPG, AK and the rest many times. He’d also kept an eye on the stray cats that roamed the compound. I hadn’t known it at the time but he had asked his mum to send small packets of cat food through the post to Afghanistan so he could feed them.

  He was only a young lad in his early twenties who had been determined to serve his country. He had paid for that determination by making the ultimate sacrifice.

  ‘His coffin will be arriving at Brize Norton in a few days; we have a Bearer Party already sorted,’ the CSM said, dragging me back into the room.

  I knew that. They had already carried out the sombre duty for our unit three times before during this deployment.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said without hesitation.

  ‘What about your ankle?’

  ‘What about it?’ I replied, perhaps a little curtly.

  I might not be able to carry his coffin but I could lead the young lads who would. It would be our honour to carry him back on to UK soil.

  Carrying Ben from the C130 transport plane and out on to the tarmac at Brize Norton was one of the most important roles of my time as a Royal Marine. The day had been overcast and the eeriness as Brize Norton fell silent just added to the poignancy of the moment.

  Meeting Ben’s parents Liz and Phil after the repatriation ceremony was emotional; I just didn’t know what to say. It took every ounce of strength not to choke up. Our small Bearer Party just tried to be strong for them in that moment.

  The turnout for Ben’s funeral in Ascot where he had grown up was fantastic. Present and past marines made the trip. Even Prince Philip was seated in the church. I took great comfort from the fact that there were too many people to fit in, such was the level of support for Ben’s family. I hope it helped them deal with their grief.

  In the true spirit of Her Majesty’s Royal Marine Commandos, we made sure that evening that we toasted a marine who had been killed in the service of Queen and Country.

  The drinking went on into the dark hours. Those with the sorest heads the following morning claimed to have toasted him the most.

  Within weeks the rest of the unit started to return home from Afghanistan as the army took over their duties in Helmand. For a while everything that had happened on the other side of the world was forgotten as marines and families were reunited. As the company was reunited too, drinking far too much became the order of the day.

  The Royal Marines’ contribution to the campaign in Afghanistan was soon being recognised. The OC was awarded an MBE for our time in the isolated Now Zad compound.

  Yet despite the fact that the company were back on British soil, I didn’t quite feel that I could just leave it all behind. There was a part of me that was still in Afghanistan and I had a feeling always would be.

  It was just as hot still as we pulled into the gravel car park of the animal quarantine. Lisa had timed her snooze to perfection and was just waking up.

  The high metal galvanised fences made the place look like a prison, which I suppose in a way it was. />
  The quarantine manager Rebecca introduced herself as we entered through the large gate.

  ‘How are they doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Great, I don’t know why you were worried,’ she replied.

  ‘I wasn’t really,’ I lied, smiling.

  It had taken a lot of paperwork to get this far. We had learnt fast and had come across a few stumbling blocks, but eventually, with Rebecca’s help, we had overcome them.

  As Rebecca led us through the six different locked doors to get to the quarantine area, the sense of being in a jail got even stronger. Neither Lisa nor I could get back out without a member of staff accompanying us.

  ‘You can visit when you want,’ Rebecca said as we walked along the final corridor. The glass sealed doors at regular intervals all housed excited barking dogs from all corners of the world. The noise was almost deafening as they pawed against the plastic viewing slots.

  Rebecca stopped at the first of the two doors that we had come to see.

  I turned to Lisa. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready,’ she replied. Even if she wasn’t it was too late. There was no going back now.

  Rebecca opened the door and I slipped inside.

  He was curled up in the far end of the small enclosure. He looked skinnier than I remembered him. He wasn’t barking like the rest of the dogs in the quarantine. When he heard my voice, however, I saw his stumpy tail beginning to wag itself silly.

  ‘Hey, Nowzad,’ I called out as he bounded over to me.

  We hadn’t seen each other for nearly five months but that didn’t matter. He knew who I was.

  He had definitely lost loads of weight. I could see his ribs through his sandy coat. He buried his head under my armpit as I rubbed his head.

  ‘What did you think? I’d leave you in Afghanistan? No chance, lofty.’

  The way the dogs’ story had panned out since I’d left Afghanistan had been another succession of highs and lows.

  A month after I had returned from Afghanistan an email arrived from the rescue telling us that eleven of the puppies we’d sent them had died from an outbreak of parvovirus. All of Jena’s litter had died. Only two of Tali’s puppies were still alive.

  I was gutted. After all they had been through. I felt hopeless inside.

  But within days we had been given some good news regarding Jena. The American aid worker who had first set up the rescue, although she had not returned to the shelter, had seen our pictures of Jena. Immediately she had fallen for the homeless ‘little chocolate Helmand mom’ as the rescue staff called her.

  And with that Jena had just started living a pampered pet’s life in America.

  Lisa and I had celebrated the news with a few pints. It didn’t make up for the puppies but it helped.

  Closer to home, the other good news was that more local newspapers had run stories on my rescue attempt and we were now being inundated with cheques. The only problem with this was they were all still in my name, which wasn’t good. So one night over a pint or two Lisa and I decided to do something that was going to change our lives.

  ‘Why not launch a charity? We’ve got enough money now to do some good,’ I had suggested, testing the water. ‘Maybe we could even eventually help fund the rescue centre.’

  ‘Not like we have enough to do already,’ Lisa replied sarcastically as she took a sip of her cider.

  ‘It won’t be that bad,’ I said naively. ‘The main thing is that we can get people to send cheques to a proper charity bank account and not to me.’

  And so we had spent countless hours poring over applications to form a charity. The name of the charity was the easiest bit of the application.

  ‘Nowzad Dogs, it has to be,’ I had said aloud.

  The response to the charity was instant and phenomenal.

  Soon Lisa and I were spending most of our spare time dealing with emails and the donations that were slowly but surely trickling in.

  The security situation in Afghanistan was still not the best and communicating with the rescue at times was frustratingly slow. The centre struggled to get hold of the desperately needed medical supplies. By the time they reached their remote location they were either damaged by the sweltering heat or out of date. That was, of course, if they had made it there at all. A lot of supplies were simply stolen.

  The communication problems had also made it hard to keep up with news on the dogs. I was becoming particularly worried about Nowzad. Since seeing that photo of him when I was at Bastion, I had known that he hadn’t settled in well at the rescue. They had asked me what I intended to do with the fighting dog; they knew nobody would want to look after him.

  I had shown Lisa the email that voiced their concern for Nowzad. I had let her read the email and then looked at her.

  She did that mindreading thing again and just gave me her ‘whatever’ smile back.

  We both knew what we had to do.

  Nowzad needed someone with huge patience to train him. I doubted there was anyone around who fitted that bill.

  Well, apart from me and Lisa, that was.

  The problem was that, until Jena, I’d never heard of a dog leaving Afghanistan. The admin that would be involved didn’t bear thinking about. I’d learned the hard way that moving dogs around within Afghanistan was next to impossible. Moving them out of the country to the West, with all the red tape involved, was a complete non-starter. But we had to try.

  Over the following weeks, with huge help from our supporters and the Mayhew Animal Home International, we had sorted out the paperwork and the money needed to pay for two animal cargo flights to the UK.

  I somehow convinced Lisa that if we were going to take in one dog we might as well take in two.

  The words ‘You owe me, Farthing’ will live with me for ever.

  Tali was coming to live with us too.

  The two remaining puppies were still too young to travel; I hoped they would be okay left at the rescue for now. We would sort their futures out in due course.

  Getting Nowzad and Tali to the UK wasn’t cheap. The cost of keeping the two dogs in quarantine for six months was mind-boggling. The operational bonus I’d received on returning from Afghanistan was soon disappearing before my eyes as I wrote out another cheque to support the running costs of the rescue for the time they had housed our dogs.

  But to me it was worth it. I had shared so much with the dogs of Now Zad; I had to do everything possible to get them back.

  And now they were here.

  I’d spent a minute or two playing with Nowzad when Lisa was let into the quarantine run by Rebecca.

  We’d agreed that she had to be careful approaching him. He had never liked strangers and was highly likely to react. When he sensed the new arrival in his run, Nowzad broke off to cautiously stroll over to Lisa and sniff her legs.

  Lisa rubbed the top of his head.

  ‘See, told you it would be all right,’ I said cheerfully.

  But without warning Nowzad snapped at her legs. Not too aggressively but enough for Lisa to jump sideways.

  ‘Bugger.’ I grabbed him and gave him a stern telling off. ‘Nowzad, remember what happened last time you did that?’

  Lisa warily walked back towards him; luckily for both me and Nowzad it would take a lot more than a snarl to put Lisa off.

  ‘Okay, that was your one chance to impress, nice one, Nowzad,’ I berated him.

  Suddenly it dawned on us that Lisa, Rebecca and the other female staff here were the first women he’d ever met.

  After spending half an hour running around the small enclosure with him it was time to introduce Lisa to our other ‘new’ dog.

  We left Nowzad lying tired out on the concrete floor as we walked the few yards to the next kennel.

  We had no idea what the two of them would have been like together so we had made the decision for them to spend the six months’ quarantine on their own. Time to socialise them would come later.

  The moment I appeared at the plastic viewing grille Ta
li went completely berserk running around and around in circles. She carried on like this as I walked in until she finally came to rest at Lisa’s feet. The two of them hit it off just like that. Tali had found her owner. It was as natural and easy as that.

  Lisa’s nickname for Tali came easily too. She took one look at the slightly scary way Tali pulled back her lips to reveal her white teeth when she was playing and was immediately reminded of her least favourite movie monster.

  ‘Come here, little Alien,’ she smiled.

  After spending about an hour with Nowzad and Tali we said our farewells.

  Apart from the quarantine requirement, they both needed medical attention including worming. They would also need to go through the slow painstaking process of having the numerous ticks they each carried removed. Any worries I had about leaving them there were lifted by the main keeper, Rebecca, and her staff, however.

  I could tell during the following months Tali was going to become the little darling of the quarantine with people fussing over her all the time. Even other owners who had their own dogs in quarantine were already taking time out to see Tali, who didn’t mind in the slightest.

  Rebecca was an expert at bringing out the friendly side in dogs. She assured me that she would work hard on bringing the best out of Nowzad in the weeks ahead.

  As we left the quarantine I was quietly confident that all would work out well. I would travel up to see the two dogs as often as I could. When the BBC had stated an interest in filming the dogs Dave and John had immediately joined me in the long journey to the rescue. Dave had hoped it would improve his profile with the ladies. Me and John had just laughed.

  And still they were both scared of Nowzad, feeding him biscuits through the fence while I sat with him.

  As I drove home I felt like it was the beginning of a new day. For the past five months or so my head had been filled with thoughts of what might have been if things had been different during my time in Afghanistan. From now on it was going to be about the future, not the past. It was all about what we could achieve now.