Psychedelic Marine

by alex seymour

  While we sat in that very same—now very deadly—tree line, John’s radio aerial flopped about uselessly, and he had to maneuver it into position to hear a clear transmission. When he did this, it worked beautifully, the Taliban sounding less than twenty feet away. But then he’d gotten distracted and had let the aerial flop for a moment. I barked at him, jabbing a finger, “Fucking take charge of that aerial!” No need to flap—he’d already bent it into position, and the reception was so clear now you could hear the enemy panting between babbled Pashtun orders.

  A transmission minutes later told us they were moving an IED into position now that we were getting closer. Fuck me, this was electrifying! Fascinating, critical, life-saving intelligence. You’re listening to the live broadcasts of men who can see you and are trying to kill you, a battle of wits, more riveting than any entertainment ever created in the history of mankind. As the messages were quickly passed down through the team, our motivation skyrocketed—kill them before they kill us.

  We found cover in the tree line and took up alternate firing positions. I faced east, spotting a youth on a rooftop looking in our direction—a dicker, the Taliban scout who alerts his comrades to our shifting positions so that they can attack. The rules of engagement stated that dickers could be shot on sight once they were positively identified. Unbeknown to the kid on the roof, his face was the target in at least four sets of telescopic sights in our patrol. Lee, our patrol commander, couldn’t verify that the suspected dicker had a transmitting device. He might just be a teenager overcome with curiosity about the drama unfolding in his own backyard. The decision was made to spare him, since he couldn’t be postively identified. He’ll never know how close he came to meeting Allah that day.

  With our way cleared we set off again toward the gunfire, letting the other call sign know that we were nearly at their location. But soon shooting erupted again in our direction, and we opened fire. We all felt the frustration of engaging an enemy who was a warrior one minute and a civilian the next. The insurgents thinned out and blended back in with the local population. As soon as the shooting stopped, someone reported another IED find, so we were tasked with yomping back to the company HQ to escort the bomb-disposal team back to disable it.

  Two hours later we were still out on patrol, and another firefight erupted. Wilf, our platoon weapons instructor, caught a glimpse of a man half crawling through a field toward us. He aimed, fired, and the insurgent’s head erupted in a red mist. Wilf got on the radio and reported in his inimitable, supernonchalant manner, “Er, I think we have another situation here . . .”

  As we marched back to the Khammar HQ, kicking up clouds of dust at the end of that patrol, weariness was dragging me down. We only had five hundred meters left to go, but I had to dig deep to make it. I knew the other guys were as exhausted as I was. Our CamelBaks had run out of water hours earlier, and we had to resort to using the lifesavers—flasks that purified water scooped from irrigation ditches. After ten hours on the ground, a large part of it in a totally psyched and hyped state, I felt done in. I staggered inside the main gate, utterly spent. Thank God we had a thirty-minute break before we needed to patrol back home to Zamrod.

  During the break the company sergeant major bought everyone a slush puppy from a machine shipped in the week before. Not a usual gesture for him, but one we all appreciated. Wilf was sitting next to me. A consummate professional career marine, this was his second tour in Helmand. Now, as he sipped his slush puppy, he reflected on how he’d deal with the officers who would be conducting the investigation of his kill.

  “You worried?” asked Lee.

  “Nah. I’ll tell ’em the truth. My priority was the safety of the men.”

  The investigation was quickly closed. It was that easy.

  The morale of the marines on that patrol was soaring. You could feel the buzz. For many of the younger men, it had been their first enemy contact, and they relished the combat. Elation was written all over their faces, their banter funnier, louder, more merciless. We’d taken on board all the evil shit that Helmand could throw—heat, weight, firefights, bombs—and, in the colloquial parlance of the young men I worked with, we’d smashed it.

  As evening set in we prepared to leave Khammar. The sergeant major caught my eye, greeted me, then frowned, squinting closely. “Jesus Christ, Seymour!” he said, grimacing. “You actually look worse than a fucking AIDS victim!”

  He’d quipped previously that it looked like I’d had a hard paper route as a boy, one that started when Columbus was discovering America. Now, for the first time ever, momentarily, he looked like he was actually slightly concerned. But no, he just turned and marched back into the ops room to address more pressing matters. This was his third year here. I remember what he had said back during training at Camp Bastion, when we’d shared a cigarette during a lull in training (we didn’t smoke in the UK, but here cigarettes sustained us). He’d taken a drag and exhaled, shaking his head. “Thirty-six months of my life spent in this shithole . . .” A rueful silence followed. During that moment we both knew that our ranks and uniforms were just roles we were playing—transient, impermanent. The camaraderie in that moment had nothing to do with our environment: it was all about our age, twice as old as most of the others. My admiration ran deep. I struggled to think of him as anything other than being an inspiration—he had the secret sauce. He galvanized us, relentlessly slaving night and day for the men under his command. He knew his job inside out and was often at his gut-busting funniest when taking the piss out of some hapless marine. I secretly wished for him that this tour, his final, passed quickly and safely.

  The sun was setting as we hobbled back into Zamrod. While unloading our weapons, Matt remarked, “You did well today, mate. Strong.”

  I muttered some kind of acknowledgment, but inside my heart was soaring. That was the first chuck up (compliment) Matt had given me since the dehydration problem patrol more than a month ago. I knew we’d all put in a good effort that day, and it had been noted. Matt, the lucky bastard, had been riding the quad bike for much of the day, accompanying us on our route, and he’d seen how much the lads had to dig out. A quintessentially gruff Yorkshireman, he didn’t make a habit of complimenting people, so I knew he was being sincere. Everything was now OK in my world. Ordinarily, back in the UK, I wouldn’t have cared, but out here it was different. These men—every single one of them—never, ever capitulated. Never—not out here. They knew they were undergoing the test of their lives, and they gave it their all and would march and fight on until they dropped. Even if injured, they’d be concerned for the welfare of the other men in the patrol—a force for good.

  We heated up some beef stew, ate, and slept. But were awakened in the middle of the night to get back up for sangar duty, and then we were up for good at 6 a.m. and back out on patrol at 7 a.m.

  Later that day I saw Tosh and his team arriving from a twelve-hour patrol. I’d missed that one due to the luck of the draw. As he got de-rigged, I asked what it had been like. I knew full well, but wanted to hear this twenty-year-old kid describe it. He looked me dead in the eye, wiped his nose on his sleeve, his face practically pressed against mine, and as he ripped off his chest rig, he spat, “Disgusting!” His first complaint that I’d heard since we’d got here. He sniffed and asked, “Spare cigarette, mate?”

  I passed him a Marlboro Light and sparked it up. We smoked in silence, and I thought about his mother. Not for the first time in my imagination I told her, I dearly hope that you’re proud of your son. You should be. He’s truly one of the good guys, an asset to mankind.

  11

  Farewell to Zamrod

  T he two wireless Internet–connected laptops in the welfare tent were off being repaired, so all I had left for entertainment were podcasts on my iPod. All the shared paperback books were falling apart—literally. No one had warned us that books would disintegrate in the heat. The glue in the binding that holds the pages to the spine just melts, and after only two reads, all the
paperbacks strewn around the tent were little more than heaps of loose pages.

  In other respects things were looking brighter. In mid-August we patrolled up to 42 Commando’s HQ in Shazad, loading up on cigarettes and fizzy drinks on arrival. And, naturally, since we were at a fort that had them, we necked as much fresh food and cold drinks as we could. The chefs gave us a cooked lunch—the first one in four months, a real coup—of sweet-and-sour chicken. I also managed to get hold of a juicy pear. Fresh fruit! Then the sergeant major obliterated the downtime, crashing into the tent barking, “Seymour, get the team together now! A Mastiff ’s been hit by an IED on route Nike. We need to secure the area.”

  Before long the team was together, patrolling toward the blast area. The bomb had gone off five hundred meters south of Zamrod. The night before I had walked right over it on a patrol down to the next checkpoint at Shurin Junction. The ISAF forces had built a school there for the local Afghan children, and we had to maintain a presence in the area to stop the Taliban from blowing it up.

  On another patrol the night before, Matt had protested saying that he didn’t want to walk back to Zamrod the same way along route Nike. He had covered his face with his hands in a moment of resignation and a feeling of dread. “Seriously, lads, I’ve got a fucking bad feeling about this.”

  Taff agreed. “Yeah, I’m with you—I’d rather stick my face in a box of rattlesnakes.”

  Matt’s intuition was overruled, and we were ordered to walk the route.

  Because we’d already patrolled down route Nike the previous day, we realized we had all walked over the same unexploded bomb twice in twenty-four hours. It must have been extremely well hidden, as I’d scrutinized the entire route, and the other men had done exactly the same, watching every single step, suspicious of any unnatural ground sign. No one had seen a thing. We were lucky, and so were the marines in the Mastiff vehicle when it exploded. Despite the extensive damage to the vehicle, no one had been hurt. It takes a lot of explosive to destroy a seventeen-ton heavily armored wagon. Matt had been on the sangar at Zamrod, while most of us had been at Shazad, and he saw it detonate. The roof of the sangar nearly blew off, and the explosion lifted the Mastiff off the ground, ripping off a layer of armor, while the rest of the armor had done its job and saved the lives of the men.

  At set times during the day, the village loudspeaker would put out the call to prayer that lasted for five minutes of singing. But every Friday at four o’clock in the morning—o’crack sparrow fart—the peace was shattered by the voice of the local mullah haranguing the villagers through that same loudspeaker. If you were dead tired, returning from a patrol or just off sangar duty hoping for a few precious of hours sleep at 4 a.m., you were in for an ungodly awakening and an apocalyptic sense of woe. Was there no avoiding these men? His rant lasted a whole bastard hour, an excruciatingly shrill string of venomous curses spat upon a hated enemy. Some of the ugliest human sounds I’d ever heard. Even if you didn’t know the language, you could tell this was a vicious tirade. I asked Dashim what the hell the mullah was shouting about every Friday morning at 4 goddammed a.m., and he told me that he was chastizing the villagers for not being better Muslims. So one morning, still incredulous at the ferocity of the mullah’s rant, I recorded the full, unabridged tirade on an iPod. I planned to bet friends at home ten pounds that they couldn’t endure listening to it at the same volume we’d had to for more than ten minutes (imagine huge speakers pointed directly at your house and the volume turned to full). A tenner bet for ten minutes of grief—practically a done deal.

  The heat—my nemesis—undid me again. Near the end of the tour, I went down with heat exhaustion on patrol. We had a new, highly capable naval medic called Ruth assigned to us, living in the patrol base and joining us on patrols. The local children always swarmed around her, wide-eyed and fascinated, giving her the full “unicorn” treatment; small hands reached up to touch the blonde hair beneath her helmet, confirming she was real. Now, ten minutes after the patrol, she took my resting pulse: 177 beats per minute. Not good. After previous difficulties with the heat, I knew that this incident would mean my time at Zamrod serving with 43 Bravo was over. As this was the second heat-related incident I had had in the last five months, I would have to undergo tests to determine if I now had a predilection toward heat-related injuries. I didn’t have any say in the matter, as Yoda had already radioed the incident ahead. A Mastiff vehicle would be passing by, and he ordered me on it.

  I had fifteen minutes to get my kit packed, say good-bye to everyone, and get on board that Mastiff for the journey up to the company HQ, where a doctor awaited. I hastily said my good-byes to the lads and packed up. The Mastiff arrived; I threw my gear on the roof and jumped in the back. All I could think of as Zamrod faded into the distance was that just the day before a new solar panel had been installed on our fridge. After nearly six months in this heat hellhole, I had managed to enjoy precisely one day of chilled water.

  Afghan kids hurled rocks that clanged noisily off the side panels as we rumbled along through the dust. Imagine putting your head in a steel bucket and someone hitting the bucket with a hammer—same noise. In the space of fifteen minutes, I’d gone from being a member of the team in Zamrod to being ousted. I felt sad to be leaving the men. This was not the proper way to depart. I knew already that my days on the front line were over. As I rattled around the inside of the Mastiff, with no windows, no distracting views, I grew introspective and pondered my next big move.

  On arrival at Bastion the doctor announced, “Congratulations on joining the three hundred club.”

  “Eh?”

  “One hundred patrols in over 100°F heat, carrying one hundred pounds of kit. You’re in.”

  “Fair enough, but I’ll just take the campaign medal, thanks.”

  She told me two British servicemen had died from heat exhaustion, so doctors were paying attention to the problem. Anyone who showed susceptibility would be assigned a noncombatant role. Basically, I was about to become a REMF (rear-echelon motherfucker). Frontline soldiering always has been, and would continue to be, a young man’s game. Time to call it a day.

  Bastion provided significantly more comfort than Zamrod. I was finally able to get a full night’s sleep—every night. The food was excellent. I looked around the galley and felt proud of the men and women in there. It was huge, catering for eight hundred people. Senior officers, navy medics, army counter-IED specialists, air force, soldiers, marines, doctors, special forces, engineers all mingled, laughing and chatting. The sense of shared purpose was palpable—an enormous team that required massive collaboration, people dedicating their best efforts to this cause. Looking around the galley I almost pitied the Taliban. Physically, mentally, ideologically, they were no match for the people in this room. And, unlike the murky motives behind the recent war in Iraq, most of the people here believed, as I still did at this stage, that the cause in Afghanistan was just. This wasn’t a conflict that you could “win” in the classic military sense. But people did what was needed to make the task force succeed—providing governance, infrastructure, and security while we were here.

  Gandhi had said during the Indian struggle for independence from colonialism, “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.” We live in a complex world. Tyrants exist. Of course, you had to wonder what would happen when we left this war-torn country. The political motives for the coalition military presence here might be even murkier than those of Iraq. Who knows? Meanwhile, exit please.

  I pitched up in the medical tent with the other marines there. Three of them had been injured by a grenade thrown into their compound. One of them still had shrapnel in him, so I used the pliers of my Leatherman tool to dig tiny pieces of the grenade from his feet. The doctors had managed to get most of it, but there was still plenty left to work on. All three marines were keen to return to their units and get back in the fight. I couldn’t help but notice how different these young
men were from the young men who had been rioting in Britain’s streets the previous week. Those kids back home were causing mayhem for a pair of brand-name running shoes. Culturally, they came largely from the same social strata as many of these marines, but their values were a world apart.

  Four marines from my original company—L Company—were injured in an IED blast. Two sustained Cat A (catastrophic) injuries, and two were Cat Cs. I thought of them as I listened to a podcast later that night and heard the phrase, “All I’ve got in this world is my balls and my brain, and I ain’t breaking them for nobody.”

  I was happy to run into Yoda and Matt as they were returning from a five-day op with L Company. The worst five days of their lives. It had been even worse for the Taliban. Ten Taliban had been killed. Some of Bastion’s most formidable weapons—rockets and laser-guided bombs—had done their job during the op and taken out the insurgents. One of the marines I spoke to said you could look into the target compound with aerial thermal-imaging cameras and see the warmth still rising from the dead bodies.

  Our multiple had been luckier than most in that our time at Zamrod hadn’t been as kinetic as it had for other multiples, such as those in L Company. I heard about more firefights when I bumped into another friend, TC, a marine reservist serving in L Company. We had spent time the previous summer training in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In his late twenties, TC hadn’t been out of basic training very long but was already seasoned and extremely adept. With his wraparound antiballistic shades, green bandanna, and oversized unshaven jaw, he was like an American military caricature, straight out of central casting for the movie Predator. Back in the real world, he’d gone to university, spoke fluent Spanish, and was a pediatric nurse. This was one of the reasons he enjoyed taking on the Taliban. He cared about children’s welfare and was professionally dedicated to it. The Taliban routinely blew up the schools that ISAF forces had built. Many marines saw these jihadist extremists as an existential threat and a threat to the development of humanity. Proof was Malala Yousafzai the girl (and now Nobel Prize winner) shot in the head for attending school. Unforgivable. As far as TC was concerned, that alone provided justification enough to hunt and kill them. Over the last few months, he’d been in countless battles, and he grinned widely as he told me how much he enjoyed it.