Bad Medicine

by Terry Ledgard

  Our joint group got into formation and patrolled to the target on foot. In contrast to most people, I’d opted to carry only one night-vision monocle – pretty much everyone else was rocking two. I just didn’t trust the tech. The NVGs severely hampered depth perception. They convert ambient light into a two-dimensional display of varying shades of green that makes it extremely difficult to tell whether you’re stepping into a deep ditch or a shadow. I trusted my parentally issued Mach One eyeball more than I did the technology, but using one NVG monocle came with a trade-off. While moving across seemingly benign ground, I’d keep my naked eye closed and my open eye focused through the monocle. But when suspect terrain approached, I’d close the night-vision eye and use my naked eye to safely navigate the obstacle with greater depth perception. One eye was acclimatised to the dark, but the other was tuned into the bright-green light of the monocle, which sent mixed signals to the different hemispheres of my brain. The net result was a splitting headache that no amount of Panadol could subdue. The increased odds of remaining upright trumped the headache, though.

  An hour into the walk, I was kneeling in a deep wadi (dry riverbed) when I noticed my right thigh glowing through my monocle. My leg looked like a bloody Christmas tree. What the fu . . .

  The squadron sergeant major (SSM), who looked like he’d killed more dudes than cancer, caught up to me and calmly ripped me a new asshole. ‘Quick, turn off that fucking light,’ he hissed.

  My head-torch, which had easily passed muster in the training rounds of this op, had incredibly switched on inside my leg pocket. I’d even wrapped the bloody thing in my bandana so this wouldn’t happen. The tension on my taut fabric pocket had created enough pressure to turn the fucking thing on. I quickly removed and reversed the torch batteries so that it couldn’t happen again. I was so embarrassed.

  While the dim glow of a shrouded torch light would be hard to see under normal circumstances, especially in a low-lying ditch, we had to assume that the enemy had every night-time capability that we did. They might have seen the glow!

  With that little incident rectified, we moved on, and a wave of relief washed over me when I found that I wasn’t the only fuck-up that night. Others had made the same blunder along the slow trek to the target that I did. A small mercy.

  Eventually, the group stopped and prepared for the big hit. The SSM started organising the troops, assigning me and the bomb-detection bloke (and his explosive-sniffing dog) the task of watching a nearby mud-brick compound that neighboured the target: ‘This is where you boys post up until we initiate contact. No early warning will come from this compound. I repeat: no early warning will come from this compound.’

  So there we lay, barrels pointing just above a small berm (or ledge) between us and the compound. As the rest of the lads crept forwards, we kept completely still, silent, hearts beating out of our chests. A dog bounded out from behind the compound, barking its tits off in our general direction. It could probably hear or smell us and its barking was drawing a lot of attention. The dog’s owner poked his head through the front door of his mud-brick hut, peering out into the night. My explosive buddy and I exchanged glances through our NVGs, silently begging the dude not to take further interest. There was no way that he could see us in the darkness, but his dog was putting on one hell of a convincing show. Neither of us had silencers, so shooting was the last thing we wanted to do. It could blow the op, losing us the element of surprise.

  Our fears were soon cast aside.

  Boom!

  The hit was initiated off in the distance. It had started.

  The outer door of the target blew so far off its hinges that forensic scientists would struggle to identify a single molecule of its remains. In that instant, my explosive buddy’s bomb-dog broke off its leash and hoofed it in the opposite direction, startled by the violent noise. It scampered straight into the unoccupied Badlands whence we came. I seriously doubted we’d see that dog again.

  No time to ponder. We were ushered forwards to the target compound, where we watched and listened.

  Ffft ffft. The sound of compressed gases escaping silenced rifle muzzles somewhere close by was followed by terse whispers.

  Ffft ffft. BANG! More silenced shots, followed by a grenade blast.

  Peering through my single NVG, the sky looked like a scene from a Terminator movie. Green helicopter infrared beams raked across the compound from helicopters overhead, illuminating the ‘squirters’, or runners, sprinting about the place like headless chooks – trying to get away. I patrolled slowly to an unmanned corner of the compound, crouching low, and scanned my arc of fire from the relative safety of the mud-brick perimeter. I stayed in this position for the next few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. My body surged with adrenaline as I quietly hoped that none of the distant gunfire that I could hear had winged any of the boys. I had a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it was unfounded – on this occasion at least. None of the lads were clipped that night.

  As the first rays of the morning sun poked between the distant clouds on the horizon, our mission was complete. The hit had been clinical – every enemy target had been taken down without loss of Australian life. Having bagged two medium-value targets, we bugged out to the LUP. As we escorted our new Taliban friends back across the undulating rocky landscape, Reuben, the missing explosive-detection dog, appeared from nowhere, trotting back to his handler and giving him an affectionate lick on the face as if nothing had happened.

  Back at base, the high tempo of the American FSB became the norm. All of the Kilos volunteered to help, whenever and wherever we could. We Aussie medics had just finished having a brew with the Yank surgeons when a high-priority job came through. An American soldier had been shot in the chest. The Yanks were all over it; the casualty was one of their own – so we Aussies stepped aside out of respect. We watched helplessly as an American soldier was stretchered into the surgery. The chopper medic did CPR on the run, as a trail of blood dripped onto the floor. Swarms of soldiers rocked up to the FSB, offering blood donations, but the casualty was already spent. This resuscitation was over before it started. He died on the operating table.

  We all sat around, dejected. No one said a word – what could you say?

  But the beauty of the FSB was that there was always another emergency, there was always another chance to make good. And the Americans made up for this loss tenfold over the next week. A hundredfold the week after. And a thousandfold over their whole rotation in Afghanistan.

  My nerves settled once the first mission outside the wire was out of the way. I was now more experienced, and I’d hopefully ironed out all the stupid shit (like the torch incident) from my game. The next op was more laid-back. We were en route to a nearby village that we’d heard had been experiencing some serious bad-guy attitude over the last few weeks. Our job was to stamp out the nonsense and win some hearts and minds in the process. Teaming once again with the commandos, we slowly snaked our way through the dusty Tarin Kot township neighbouring the base. This time, though, instead of riding exposed and dirty on the back of an LRPV, I was manning the rear MAG 58 machine gun on a heavily armoured Bushmaster vehicle. The Bushmaster is one supremely awesome marvel of a mechanical monstrosity. Weighing in at a formidable twelve tonnes, it boasts the armour of an underground bomb shelter with the top speed of a narcotically enhanced cheetah.

  I was now a member of the Special Forces medical team, which was geared for the more humanitarian side of this particular mission. We were a group of mostly commando medics who could provide a frontline resuscitation capability and a more general aid service. This drive was a different ball game to my first trip because it was done during daylight hours. Kids were playing in the streets, and it was the first time for me that local tribal differences became blatantly obvious. Kids chased after the convoy, cheering as we rolled through one part of the town, but stopped in their tracks as we approached a crossroad. I was a little bemused. After we crossed the threshold, a new bunch of
kids chased us, but this time they cussed at us and threw rocks! I narrowly missed being smacked in the head by one little bastard whose rock just zipped past my right eyebrow, landing harmlessly on the other side of the road. In the space of thirty metres, the temperature had gone from tropical to glacial. Cheeky little fuckers.

  The convoy rattled on. Manning the rear 58 was an arm wrestle, especially mounted on a behemoth Bushmaster. The vehicle had incredible suspension that insulated every bump at seating level, but I bounced around like a rodeo clown in the turret. It was impossible to maintain a steady firing position. I tucked the butt of the gun under my arm and locked my elbows in tight, pulling the weapon towards my chest in an effort to control it. My arms felt like jelly by the end of the day, but at least the muzzle always pointed where I wanted it.

  After a few days of bouncing around the desert, and what seemed like an eternity of isometric weight training on the 58, the convoy arrived at our destination on a hillside overlooking the besieged town.

  The Uruzgan province of Afghanistan has three types of landscape, in no matter which direction you look. Rugged mountain ranges invariably dominate the distant horizon. Rolling, barren hills occupy the mid-ground. Lush, green vegetation grows in the valleys of the rolling hills, usually following a river or stream of some description. These valleys are known as the ‘green belt’, and more often than not are where Afghan towns are situated.

  So there our convoy sat, on the rolling, barren hills overlooking the embattled township. Waiting, watching. When night fell, we set off on foot and swept through the town like a dose of salts. But we only managed to seize a few rogue AK47s, two low-value Taliban targets and a supply of opium that would make Pablo Escobar feel unworthy in the illegal drug trade.

  At sunrise, we moved into the town again and went into ‘hearts and minds’ mode. The first order of business was opening up the lines of communication with the local elders to figure out exactly what was going on and how we could help. A terp (interpreter) put the word out on the bush telegraph and a number of elders soon emerged from their mud-brick houses to have a chin wag.

  The Afghans celebrate an incredibly rich culture steeped in a mixture of Pashtun, Persian and Muslim tradition, and this was never more evident than observing the ‘shura’, or meeting. The elders welcomed us, offering our hierarchy cups of traditional chai tea as they sat in a perfect circle discussing the more pressing matters facing the village. When the meeting adjourned, orders were disseminated around the group.

  We learnt that the locals had a few issues, but the Taliban weren’t on the top of the list despite the fact they’d destroyed the town’s mosque a few days earlier. A local ‘warlord’, for want of a better term, had amassed a small army of heavily armed assholes and was now ruling the region with an iron fist, setting up roadside checkpoints to extort money from the poverty-stricken locals, beating them (or worse) when they couldn’t pay the toll. These guys became the primary targets. The second issue was the ruined mosque, which the elders hoped we could rebuild, and the third was that a lot of the villagers had a swag of health problems and no access to any kind of medical assistance. Our mission was defined. We got to work.

  7

  HUMANITARIAN AID

  A small contingent of Dutch engineers came along for the ride on our humanitarian mission and got straight on with rebuilding the mosque. While the construction work was going on, the medical team ramped up for humanitarian aid – setting up tarpaulins, treatment tables and mass dumps of medical supplies in anticipation of the coming hordes.

  The locals didn’t disappoint. Before we could formally open for business, Afghans massed in droves for treatment. Over a hundred patients flocked to the area in minutes, making no discernible attempt to organise themselves. Their MO seemed to be ‘first in best dressed’ with a hint of ‘survival of the fittest’. But we couldn’t jump in just yet, as security was paramount. We still needed to canvass everyone for weapons and suicide vests. The last thing we wanted was a jack-in-the-box surprise suicide attack.

  With security tighter than a Bloods rap concert in Crips territory, we opened six medical-treatment stations that were going full noise all day. The process was incredibly slow because we only had two Afghan terps between the six of us. After the first few hours, one of the medics noticed that we’d only been treating adults but there seemed to be scores of kids that we hadn’t seen yet.

  What is going on?

  We soon realised that the adult males had been pushing in front of the kids! And all the adults seemed to be after was a free hit of morphine to feed their opium addictions. While I’m sure there must have been cultural and social-stature forces at play, pushing in front of kids just wasn’t cricket. We asked the blokes running the security checks to make sure that kids got the inside track from there on in.

  An endless stream of malnourished, sickly babies and toddlers soon swamped the treatment tables. One in four were scarily thin, with bony ribs jutting out of their chests and protruding pot bellies ballooning out over their diapers. They were lethargic and in visible agony, many suffering from ailments that a healthy baby would normally shake off. The worst of these kids would struggle to survive the month without treatment. The best we could do was hand out powdered baby formula and children’s vitamins by the mega tonne, but it wouldn’t solve their underlying problems.

  A few of the kids were knocking on heaven’s door, so we treated them immediately and gave the parents a couple of US dollars to buy a ride back to the American surgical base, where they were better equipped to deal with long-term illness. Band-Aid solutions wouldn’t do much good here. What these people desperately needed was a stable government and a reliable health-care system, which would take years to bed in. On the one hand, it felt good to be helping these kids, even if it was in a short-term capacity, but we were medically helpless to improve their longer-term outlook.

  In a brief change-up to the endless stream of sick babies, an elderly bloke fronted up to my treatment table. He had a heinous-looking cut on his forearm. Even through his tan skin, the brachial vein was an angry shade of red. This was early-onset septicaemia; his blood was infected with bacteria. It was a potentially life-threatening emergency. Wasting no time, I threw an IV cannula into his vein like a dart, quickly rigging up an antibiotic infusion. Two IV bags and one gram of antibiotics later, the red vein had settled to a pinkish colour, and, through a terp, the old bloke advised me that he needed to take a shit. Carrying his IV bag, I escorted him to a secluded place where he could do the doo. But he wasn’t satisfied with this location and moved down towards the village river.

  What is he doing? Does he want to wash his face?

  Without the terp, I couldn’t tell. Without so much as a flicker of reservation on the old boy’s face, he lifted his Afghan man-dress and squatted over at the bank of the town’s (drinking supply) river, while I turned my head away in shock. With a nonchalant groan, he dropped the kids off at the pool. Wiping was a luxury reserved for the Western world, and I instantly understood why his arm was so manky.

  Later that afternoon, another elderly chap limped towards my table. I had noticed him standing patiently in line for most of the day while we treated the kids. He had a long, grey beard, and although Father Time had clearly whooped his ass over the years, he had a kind and sincere look in his eyes. Through the terp, the old man described what was ailing him, but as I started to move my medical observation gear towards him, he shied away. The terp had been distracted between treatment tables and had messed up the translation. It wasn’t his symptoms he was talking about; it was his wife’s.

  I explained that I couldn’t really help without seeing the patient, so the old man insisted that I come to his house and see his wife. This was very odd. In all the hundreds of patients that I’d already seen, no one ever suggested that I see their sick wife. It was culturally taboo for a male to touch an adult female, even on medical grounds. Something wasn’t right, but the old bloke had a genuine quality abou
t him that I couldn’t dismiss.

  With my boss’s permission, I put together a security team and we followed the old man as he slowly limped to the other side of town. I couldn’t believe it: I was making a house call in war-torn Afghanistan! When we reached his compound, the boys did a quick sweep of the grounds – nothing untoward going on outside. With cultural sensitivity in mind, just the terp and I stooped to enter the old guy’s house through the freakishly small doorway – the fewer males eyeballing his wife, the better.

  It was dark but cool inside and I quickly did a sweep of the room to make sure there were no weapons or explosives, which there weren’t. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, as my gaze settled on the old man’s wife lying on a bed of hay in the middle of the room. She was gaunt and supernaturally ashen grey. Her eyes seemed like they’d sunk inside the bony recesses of her orbital sockets. I’d seen this look before: she was dying in front of my eyes. I unshouldered my medical pack and spread equipment all over the floor. As I started my primary survey and took baseline observations, the terp translated all the basic information from the husband – he knew which questions to ask at this point.

  Initial signs didn’t look good. Afghans have a different concept of time than we Westerners do; they don’t need to keep a tight track of the weeks, months and years. This made it extremely difficult to ascertain how long she’d been sick. Even so, I understood that this woman had a long-term illness, that she was dying slowly and very painfully, and that she probably only had a matter of weeks left on this earth.

  The husband was squatting next to his wife’s head, trying to convey all the information about her condition. He reached down and gently stroked her hair. This was very unnerving. I’d never seen or heard of an Afghan male showing open affection towards his wife in front of a stranger like this. ‘I know you Americans are great doctors. Please help nurse my wife back to health. She’s all I’ve got,’ he pleaded. The pitch of his gravelly voice rose into a strained whine as tears streamed down his face.