Bad Medicine

by Terry Ledgard

  I ducked into the safety of the Bushmaster’s hull, trying to sort out the ammo tin. I spilt the bandolier of 7.62 onto the floor, searching for the opposite end to load the rounds back into the tin properly. All of a sudden, the Bushmaster lurched forwards. The foot troops had reached the relative safety of the vehicles on the dasht and we were now bugging out.

  ‘Get up on that fucking 58!’ someone yelled from inside the vehicle as we started to move.

  Fuckness.

  The bandolier was still spread out across the floor. I’d found the correct end and could get back to work, but it would be a bit messy. The rounds are usually nicely and neatly housed in the ammo tin, but I was going to have to run with an unfurled band of ammo, a bit like Rambo – which might sound cool, but is bad fucking ju-ju. With the working end of the bandolier in my left hand, I popped back into the turret. The 58 swivel-arm locking pin hadn’t engaged properly because I’d forgotten the all-important jiggle, and the forward motion of the Bushmaster as it ducked and dipped into little depressions in the ground was making the gun swing around violently on its mount. The white-hot barrel swung erratically towards my face, giving me just a fraction of a second to react. My free hand shot up instinctively, momentarily coming into contact with the lava-hot barrel as I pushed it away. Pain didn’t register but I could feel the flesh of my right palm sizzle.

  Ignoring the injury, I loaded the rounds onto the feed tray, cocked the weapon and laid down supressing fire. Within moments, my right hand – my trigger hand – was getting clumsy. Massive blisters ballooned from my palm, adding an element of oafishness to my trigger manipulation. My index finger could barely reach the trigger. I locked the butt of the weapon between my shoulder, chest and cheek, keeping the whole show steady with the unburnt heel of my right palm, contorting my middle finger to become an unnatural trigger-puller, with my left hand all the while supporting the bandolier of ammunition to prevent it getting caught on obstacles down below the turret. I felt like a multitasking soccer mum – phone wedged into the shoulder, taking care of a crying kid in one hand and stirring a pot of gravy with the other. The stakes were a tad higher than missing this week’s episode of MasterChef.

  We had almost driven back along the dasht far enough to escape the contact when we were called back into the fray. We’d taken a casualty. Reversing direction, we got back among the action, fighting our way back onto the scene. We stopped in front of a quad bike, waiting for the casualty to arrive. The injured bloke was an officer, and by all initial radio reports his lower leg was completely fucked. As two blokes helped the limping victim to the med vehicle, I expected to be dealing with a future amputee, given the sheer weight of incoming fire, so I dialled up my sensitivity switch accordingly. After a quick inspection of the casualty’s leg, I found that he’d only copped a bit of frag in his shin. Although his injuries weren’t severe, he couldn’t walk, so he’d be playing a passive role in the remainder of this contact. Regardless, the fucker was adamant that he wanted to get back in the game. Managing expectations is a crucial weapon in every medic’s repertoire, so I let him jump up on my gun.

  Meanwhile, a drama was unfolding just outside the car. I grabbed my Bang Stick and went outside to investigate to see if I could help. The commando company was bugging out, but we still needed to take the stranded and disabled quad bike with us. Riding the bike out would be tantamount to suicide, so we were trying to figure out how to get it done without loss of life. The bike was only a few metres behind our Bushmaster so we had pretty decent cover, but it was still exposed to intense fire from the far-right flank.

  A group of commandos were lined up along the protected side of the Bushmaster, each with a rocket-launching system of varying degrees of awesomeness primed and ready to go. At the pointy end of the line, one bloke was laying down suppressing fire with his M4, calling out rough ranges and target indications so that the others could dial in their missile-aiming systems accordingly from the protection of the car. I grabbed a 66-millimetre rocket and joined the line, cracking it open and dialling in the range. Each bloke in line slowly moved forwards, loosing off their payload between bursts of suppressing fire. I was next on deck, and my heart was thumping. Sporadic bursts of enemy fire peppered the area. Just as I was about to turn the corner and unleash my rocket, the bloke providing suppressing fire ran out of ammo. He quickly ducked behind the vehicle, grabbing my rocket.

  I was now the suppressing-fire dude. Fuck-balls.

  The enemy had a pretty good idea where we were at that point. Without hesitating, I ducked around the corner and played Trigger Tai Chi with my M4, not having any hope of hitting the enemy with my pissant rifle from this range, but trying my best to identify enemy fire and relay their position to the others stacked against the car. Bursts of fire came scudding in, just metres away, as I ducked behind the protection of the vehicle. Judging by the rate of incoming fire, we weren’t exactly putting an end to global terrorism with our rockets, but these little one-percenters weren’t hurting our cause either. A few more blokes in the line got their shots away.

  While all this was happening, others had managed to wrap a tow chain around the front bumper of the quad bike. We were ready to roll out, with one exception.

  From nowhere, this one genius screamed that someone needed to jump on the bike to steer it as it was being towed. It was suicide.

  ‘Fuck that, just skull-drag the cunt,’ my driver yelled.

  I could have kissed him. Given that I was the last man in line, I was probably the bloke who’d draw the short straw and have to ride the suicide mission out.

  No one had any objections, so we all mounted up and bugged out, pulling frantically on triggers like we were tugging on our own peckers as we made it back to the relative safety of the dasht, some 500 metres behind the contact front.

  Attack helicopters and fast-air (fighter jets) were inbound as we pulled up into the defensive position and started to regroup.

  ‘Fucking fuck-balls, Tezz, were you scared?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Fucking fuckity,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think I was scared, but I was rolling a fucking-fuck-fuck-shit-cock-and-balls-cuntiness level of amped, hombre.’

  This brand of profanity might be difficult for most people to understand, but I can assure you that even the most fanatical church pastor will cuss like a drunken sailor in the moments after they’ve cheated death by the skin of their teeth.

  Paul and I managed to spark up a cigarette, despite our almost motor-neurone-disease hand tremors. As the adrenaline wore off, my burn started to throb like a motherfucker. I could feel every pulse ripple through the serous fluid in my blistered hand, so I cracked a cool ice pack and held it in my damaged dick skinner. It took the edge off the pain but didn’t stop the unique burnt sensation that only a barbecued steak could possibly understand.

  As our nerves settled and composure was regained, we took stock of the damage. In terms of people, we had a few perforated eardrums due to rocket percussion – no biggie. One bloke was fragged in the shin, but he’d be fine after a bit of digging around for shrapnel and a course of antibiotics. The officer commanding had copped some frag in his ass cheek, but it was only a superficial flesh wound so it’s okay to laugh about it. In terms of equipment, everything was riddled with bullet holes, but nothing was beyond repair.

  It was the ‘what ifs’ that made my asshole pucker. We had bullet holes in fuel tanks. Luckily, the fuel was only diesel, which has a high flash point. We had mortar rounds strapped to cars. Their packaging tubes had been hit by incoming bullets – millimetres away from the mortars themselves. We had one Javelin missile strapped to a car that copped a direct hit. Explosives experts say that a bullet striking a mortar and Javelin probably wouldn’t detonate them, but I’d love to see their faces if they were standing next to one during a real life field-test. We could have been looking at a very high death toll had things played out a little differently.

  CHANCE

  I’m not a religious person. I thin
k God is the adult version of Santa Claus.

  But as I reconstructed this battle in my mind, considering timing, trajectory, bullets per square inch and sheer weight of fire, I couldn’t help but feel that conventional logic didn’t explain our lucky escape. The numbers just didn’t stack up. People should have died, many people. There was another force at play that day, I’m sure of it.

  What was it?

  Dumb luck? Superior training and weapons? Chance? Gaming theory? Was karma on my side for that one time I helped the old lady with her groceries?

  Fuck if I know, dude, but I’m happy to chalk this one up in the win column.

  The mortally wounded Javelin was no good to anyone now and had become an explosion risk, so a team was sent out into the desert to destroy it.

  The attack choppers arrived a few minutes later, and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a more beautiful spectacle. The Apache gunship is one sexy piece of aviation ass-kickery, with sleek black curves and weaponry jutting out at every angle. If you were to find just one word to describe the Apache, that word would be: hostile. If the Apache were a person, it would be that bat-shit crazy mate who takes on an entire drunken rugby team in a bar brawl just for shits and gigs. I’m just glad they were on my side.

  In the fading dusk light, the Apaches and fast-air bombed the living fuck out of the enemy mountainside. Massive fireballs engulfed the silhouette of the mountain just moments before the deafening roar of the explosions and ground tremors shook us to the core. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that the mountain looked a little shorter after the attack.

  If you take the rumour mill’s word for it, we’d come up against a Taliban force of over a hundred dudes, and killed dozens – all for the loss of a bit of shin and ass meat. You’d take those odds on a boys’ trip to Vegas any day of the week.

  A few hours later, we’d rolled back to a safer area for our night position and prepped to head back to base. The nursery patrol was all but over. We’d practised our tactics and tested our weapons quite sufficiently by that point. Despite the intense pain in my burnt hand, I had the deepest and most restful three hours of sleep that night, crashing quickly from the flipside of my drug-like adrenaline high, and I woke up feeling like a million bucks the next morning.

  11

  THE CADBURY KID

  Back at base, the tempo slowed with the last of the original commandos rotating out and elements of the SAS doing different taskings. Only a small contingent of the SAS were at base, so there was zero chance of being called out on a mission for at least a few days. Conditions were perfect for a well-deserved night off, so some lads managed to procure a couple of cartons of beer and organised an impromptu poker night. The beer rationed out to about six stubbies per person – just enough to get a light buzz on while we holded and folded.

  Playing poker with SAS blokes is quite an experience; they’re trained to read people, so my normal poker strategy was useless. They could read my tells and call my bluffs like an open book, so I had to adjust. I bet hard on good hands and bluffs, but also bet low on good hands and bluffs; my strategy was to play erratically. I hoped this would nullify my disadvantage and keep them second-guessing, leaving the rest up to chance.

  By night’s end, six beers under my belt, I’d only lost five bucks, so I’d come in under par. All in all, it had been a great night. I’d enjoyed a couple of laughs with the lads and felt slightly tipsy as I stood up from the poker table and headed back to my hut.

  That’s when it hit me.

  ALCOHOL TOLERANCE

  Back in Australia, when I was at peak piss-drinking fitness, a regular night on the town would consist of between thirty and fifty alcoholic beverages. The only adverse effects of such a big night were: overconfidence that I could actually dance, late-night cravings for fast food, and thinking that a park bench was my own bed.

  In Afghanistan, however, I’d lost twelve kilos and hadn’t drunk in over four months, so I had the alcohol tolerance of a twelve-year-old schoolgirl.

  The world somehow seemed – funnier.

  I stumbled across the gravel towards my room, defying gravity as I bounced back and forth between huts while staying upright. I was absolutely shitfaced, from six beers – I was a true Cadbury Kid: one and a half glasses and I was fucked! I managed to open the hut door and flopped into bed, still fully clothed. Just before I had the chance to pass out, the room started spinning.

  Uh-oh.

  I put one leg on the floor to slow the merry-go-round. My palms became sweaty as a familiar queasy sensation rose in my stomach.

  Fuckness.

  I jumped out of bed, just managing to cup my hands over my mouth as projectile vomit sprayed out. Still unable to walk properly, I stumbled through the darkness towards the door, tripping over the foot of another bed in an unbalanced, full-tilt sprint towards the finish line. The bed took my legs right out from beneath me and sent me somersaulting through the air, hands coming away from my mouth, vomit spiralling across the room as I unceremoniously landed on my neck with a great thud. Before the pain registered, another wave of nausea hit and I half-crawled, half-stumbled out the door, unleashing my payload onto the gravel outside.

  There were four other people staying in the hut that night, and my antics had woken every single person up. The lads cleaned up the vomit as I leant against the wall outside, still purging. Suffice it to say, I spent the remainder of the night in the sick room and woke up the next day feeling very sheepish.

  Still a tad under the weather, I attended the next day’s briefing session with the medical crew. On most days, we were fed information from around the area of operation to make sure our picture of the Taliban’s tactics was up to date. But there were times when I wished I could un-hear that shit. According to the update, a Taliban leader had strapped a suicide vest to a five-year-old child and sent him towards an American checkpoint. The kid was told that if he pressed the detonation button, he’d see a magical eruption of flowers all around him. Luckily, the kid sensed that something wasn’t right, so he let the American soldiers defuse the bomb and he didn’t get the chance to detonate.

  I’d never seen, or heard of, anything like that before. This was a brand-new Freddy Krueger, Hannibal Lecter, ghoulish type of psychopathic cuntiness that I still struggle to understand today. As adults, humans are biologically programmed to protect our youngsters, but I shudder at how sick and twisted a person’s mind must be to think that manipulating kids into martyrdom is righteous. As medics, how were we supposed to deal with kids acting suspiciously now? Should we deny them medical treatment, or let them get close enough to kill us with a suicide bomb? To me, this seemed like an escalation in the Taliban’s unethical brand of warfare; a blatant manipulation of the West’s sense of morality and goodwill.

  I was four months into my five-and-a-half-month rotation at this point. I didn’t feel homesick, but I did enjoy the odd connection with the Real World back home. I called my folks once every couple of weeks, but the communication was very one-sided. I couldn’t talk about what I’d been up to for security reasons, but I loved hearing their voices as they regaled me with stories of everyday goings-on back in Australia.

  Connections with the Real World weren’t always a positive experience for some blokes, though. A couple of lads got ‘Dear John’ letters from their girlfriends, advising that they’d found someone else while their soldier boyfriends were away serving their country. One of the blokes, married with kids, had to watch helplessly as his wife divorced him and took his kids away from the other side of the world. Bitter pills to swallow.

  Getting packages in the mail was a morale boost, though. I could buy everything I needed at the base, so there wasn’t much need for family and friends to send me anything in the post. Regardless, the handful of packages I got really lifted my spirits. In one mail run, I received a big parcel from my SAS medic mates. I took the package, along with letters for the lads, back to my room and opened it up like a kid on Christmas morning. I exp
ected a fresh batch of SAS medic T-shirts, which sold like crack cocaine on the international-base black trading market, accompanied by a wish list of what the lads wanted in return for the shirts. But what I got was entirely different. I pulled out a handwritten note from inside the package. It read:

  Hi Lover,

  I miss your touch so much and I can’t wait to feel your skin against mine as you take me from behind when you get home.

  In the meantime, here’s a few things that will get us through these dark days.

  Love you forever, Daryl

  XXXX

  Underneath the note was a cock-shaped cake of soap on a rope, a cock-shaped whistle, a dick drinking straw, a rubber dildo and the latest edition of Black Inches magazine.

  My roommates and I pissed ourselves laughing as we threw the contents around the room at each other. Even more hilarious than the contents, this package had been opened, inspected and scrutinised by some poor bastard in the army mailing system prior to reaching me. And let’s not overlook the awkwardness of the bloke who drew the short straw and had to buy this shit from the local sex shop.

  Just at that moment, the unit padre (chaplain) waltzed into the room. There was a soft-core Middle Eastern porn advert playing on the TV and gay-porn paraphernalia lying next to the padre’s bible. We’d discovered a new way to define the word ‘awkward’.

  In the days following, a new mission had emerged. Forward Operating Base (FOB) Anaconda, a small American outpost, was being overrun by the Taliban. The Americans couldn’t even hold a security post some seventy metres beyond their front gate due to intense small-arms and mortar fire. They desperately needed help. A huge contingent of SAS and commandos left base and headed towards Anaconda.

  After a few days of desert driving and occasional sniper shoots at enemy spotters, we arrived at a narrow valley that we affectionately named ‘CV Alley’. CV Alley was a tight, winding dirt road that snaked its way up to the higher mountain ranges that dominated the skyline. The winding pass was so tight that numerous six-tonne LRPVs broke constant-velocity (CV) joints just trying to navigate the hairpin turns. I was the medic with the SAS this time, sitting open and exposed on the back of an LRPV, right arm resting on a bank of 84-millimetre Carl Gustav rockets, which made for a very exciting trip. After a few painstakingly slow stops to repair the broken CV joints, the convoy moved on, eventually reaching the summit of the mountain range for our night harbour.