The Patrol (11 page)

Before deploying, I’d heard of the drug fields of Afghanistan. We were told that the major crops of the country were opium, marijuana, and grapes (in that order). In my mind, I imagined that I would come across a few opium fields every now and again. In reality, the drug fields are everywhere.
Ubiquitous
is almost too weak an adjective to describe them. South of the Arghandab River, it’s almost impossible to walk 100 metres in any direction without hitting an opium or marijuana field. The marijuana reaches two metres tall, higher than the turret of a LAV, and grows like a weed: a few untended seeds blew into our camp and began to germinate (we destroyed them). My tour spanned the entire growing season. When we arrived, there was nothing but flat desolate mud fields.
About a month into the tour, green shoots were evident throughout these fields. By two months, brilliant pink, white, and red poppies had disseminated colour onto the landscape. By the time I returned from leave, these flowers had turned into opium-filled bulbs; a month later, these heavy bulbs were bowing their heads. There cannot be a more apt symbol for the Canadian commitment to Afghanistan than these poppies: they morphed from our national symbol of remembrance into a cruel, mind-altering, life-destroying narcotic that funds our enemies and damages our society. All my clever ideas about how to deal with drug cultivation in Afghanistan (we should buy their crops and turn them into painkillers; we should just pay the farmers and burn the crops, etc.) paled in comparison to the pure volume of narcotics that we encountered.

We continue our forward motion toward Talukan. The ground begins to break up as we walk through fields that seem to have fallen into disuse. We reach a wadi that is particularly hard to cross. The packed mud on either side makes it very easy to trip. I slow down and walk carefully to the edge of the wadi. I’ve learned from my experiences earlier in the evening, and I cautiously take a step down before jumping to the other side. Success. I turn around to make sure that Captain Michelson makes it over safely. He is a middle-aged officer who exudes quiet professionalism and is a testament to his generation. I’m amazed that he has kept up as well as he has. He falls heavily, trips, and badly rolls his ankle. I rush back to help him up. He stands up awkwardly and limps through the next few steps. I ask him if he needs a doc, but he says that he can make it. He’s a tough old guy.

We carry on with the patrol, and soon breach back into the riverbed. The patrol stops, as it so often does, and I take the opportunity to sit and relax. I hear over the radio that one of the engineers has been
injured; apparently he has rolled his ankle. I feel nothing but scorn for this unknown engineer. We all have to wait for the doc to patch him up and he will slow down the patrol until we reach Talukan, which is still over a kilometre and a half away. We wait. After about 20 minutes I see our doc, Master Corporal Jonathan Mertens, walking with a pack on his front and a pack on his back. Behind him shuffles the injured engineer, in obvious pain. I take a closer look and realize that it’s Allan, my fellow signaller and close friend. He looks pale white in the moonlight, and I feel bad for my earlier derision. Allan must have hurt himself pretty badly to need medical attention. We continue toward Talukan at a slower pace. It is midnight, and we have been on the go for about six hours. As we breach out of the riverbed, I hear the roar of a motorcycle coming up behind us. A lone fighting-age male (FAM) is crossing the riverbed from the south to the north. We stop and search him, but don’t find anything. It’s pretty obvious that he is a Taliban informer. Why else would he be crossing the riverbed toward a Taliban-controlled village in the middle of the night? His answers follow the familiar pattern of every Afghan we question:

“Where are you going?”

“To my cousin’s.”

“Why?”

“To help him farm.”

“Have you seen any fighters in the area?”

“No.”

“Have you been in the area for long?”

“About a month.”

“What about the firefight last week? Did you see that?”

“Oh, yes, some guy from Pakistan came and then he left.”

Some guy from Pakistan,
that’s all we ever hear about. If I had a dollar for every time I heard about some guy from Pakistan who appeared out of thin air, only to disappear as soon as he attacked us, I’d come home a considerably richer man.

We know he’s Taliban, he knows that we know he’s Taliban, and there is absolutely nothing we can do. He isn’t wearing a uniform or carrying any weapons, so there is no way that we can plausibly detain him.

We are soon in sight of COP Talukan. It’s always a great feeling to be in sight of the COP because you think that if they can see you, then they can see anything that might threaten you. This logic is erroneous, but it’s still nice to feel safe after a mentally exhausting period of waiting for the world to explode around and under you.

Our progress is greatly slowed by our injured, and we don’t arrive at the COP until well after midnight. I sit down beside Captain Michelson and ask how he’s doing.

“Oh, fine, just fine,” he says through gritted teeth.

“Sir, you had better take some painkillers, we’ve still got a long way to go.”

“No, no, I’ve never felt better.”

I know what its like to lie about how much pain you’re in, and I drop my pack and go find the doc inside Talukan. I ask him to take a look at the FOO and see if he can make it. I then sit down and ask Allan how he’s doing. He is lying with his boot off in obvious pain. His ankle is noticeably swollen.

“It’s not broken,” he smiles. “I’ll be good to go by the time you guys get back.” I hope he will be. I ask him how it happened, and he tells me that he’d tripped while crossing one of the innumerable wadis between Zangabad and Talukan.

“When I landed I felt a
pop
and, oh man, you should have heard me swear. ‘Jesus H. fucking faggot Christ!’ is what I said. I terrified a terp with blasphemy he didn’t understand about a religion he doesn’t believe in. He thought I must have hit an IED.”

Allan laughs. I’m glad he still retains his sense of humour.

Obscenity and the military fit together perfectly. I have met a lot of combat NCMs who don’t smoke, and even some who don’t
drink, but finding someone who doesn’t swear is a bit of a challenge. Obscenity is a tool harnessed by the lowest ranks of the military. When a group of soldiers sits together and tells stories there are no words that are off limits. Outsiders are forced either to accept what is being said or disengage from the group. Thus vulgarity has the power to strengthen the bonds within a group and, at the same time, exclude outsiders. Once you have decided to engage at this lowest possible linguistic level, you are forced to accept many other norms inherent to the group. War is not, after all, an environment known for its refinement.

There is a certain joy in abandoning all restraint on language. Being in a group where you are free to use the worst swearing in the English language, swearing that I hesitate even to type, has a powerful attraction. In an environment where we are greatly limited in the choices that we can make, having the ability to laugh at language that would make our mothers reach for a bar of soap gives us back some of our freedom.

WO Abrahams, the 6 Platoon warrant officer, sees me and gives me a bottle of cool water. We smoke together while we wait for the OC to finish talking to the platoon commander. We talk amicably about life in Talukan, rumours that it will be torn down, and some of the firefights 6 Platoon has been in. The cool water is blissful, as Talukan has the only working refrigerator between Sperwan Ghar and the province of Helmand. I try to savour every drop, but before I can finish we are moving back outside. I throw my pack on again and sit. The doc has just finished working on Captain Michelson, and he gives him some painkillers to get him the rest of the way to Mushan. It is 0100 and we are once again on the move.

We walk down a broad, straight road that leads due west from the COP. The west tower has good visibility on this road, so we
confidently walk down the middle of it. It feels good to dominate a road free from the fear of IEDs for a change. We make excellent time, and push south into the unclaimed desert below us. Nomadic herders inhabit the area. They are called Kuchis, and they set up semi-permanent camps, staying for a few months before moving on.

When we first arrived in-country, a group of soldiers who had been in Talukan for two months preceding our arrival had to walk back to Sperwan Ghar, because the helicopter they were relying on had failed to show up. They went on a patrol to buy camels from the Kuchis, but arrived during the animals’ mating season and had no luck. Instead, they bought donkeys from the local market, strapped their kit to the sides of these beasts, and led them the 10 kilometres back to Sperwan Ghar. I have a picture of a group of smiling Canadian infanteers standing in front of a donkey with three barrack boxes strapped to its side—just when you might think our modern technological army had made beasts of burden obsolete. On the other hand, maybe our modern technological army has simply replaced beasts of burden with us, its soldiers.

As we patrol through the desert slowly, not a living soul can be seen. We are making extremely good time, the moon is brightening, and the evening is growing colder. We stop every few hundred metres, and I think of the beauty of this moonlit landscape. It feels devoid of human presence, completely surreal. Everything around us is silent, and the long file of soldiers in front of and behind me doesn’t make a sound. Now that my eyes have become fully adjusted to the dim light, the landscape appears as a long line of blue-grey sand joined to a mass of blue-grey buildings that seem just out of reach. My radio continues to beep, and I continue to watch where I step. The sweat drips down from underneath my body armour and I feel cool and wet. My head feels itchy; the sweat-soaked pads lining my helmet have been rubbing my forehead for over six hours. My shoulders still ache, but more and more I’m beginning to push
that discomfort out of my mind. I scan the area and keep my head up; I avoid falling, and strength wells up inside me. I think that only those who have suffered and succeeded as we have can know this feeling of strength.

Technology provides a calm, pervasive din that breaks the spell of silence around me; I can hear the beep of my radio as messages are transferred, the squawk of our interpreter’s radio that he uses to scan for Taliban messages, and the squeak of my kit as I shift my weight.

We reach a grape field about 600 metres short of Strongpoint (SP) Mushan. It is about 0300, and I look forward to a restful sleep inside its walls. I hear the OC try to raise them on the radio: “Mushan, this is 29er. Do you have eyes on? We are approaching your location from the SE, over.” No response. “Mushan, Mushan, this is 29er, 29er, radio check, radio check, over.” I close the distance between me and the OC and pass him my handset. He speaks into my more powerful radio and tries again. Frustration begins to enter his voice.

“Mushan, Mushan, this is 29er, 29er, radio check, radio check, over.”

I extend my antenna, and try it myself, all to no avail. We call Zangabad and see if they have communications with Mushan: “Zangabad, this is 29er, do you have comms with Mushan?”

“Zangabad, wait. Mushan, this is Zangabad, radio check over … Zangabad nothing heard, out. 29er, this is Zangabad, I do not have comms with Mushan.”

“Sir, if we can reach Zangabad we should be able to reach Mushan. Either their radio is busted or someone is asleep,” I say. I switch frequencies and try again. I pull out every trick in the book, but I cannot reach them. From our location, we can see the ANA strongpoint, a dark shape in the distance. It feels strange that we can see it, but not talk to it. I begin to imagine that the SP has been
taken over by the Taliban, and that we are walking into a trap. This is utterly ridiculous, and I force my overactive imagination to stop.

The OC calls in the Operational Mentor and Liaison Team (OMLT, pronounced “omelette”) commander, and the 4 Platoon commander. He sits down and explains the situation. He asks the OMLT officer if he can send a group of ANA soldiers forward to walk into the camp. He in turn asks his ANA commander if he would be willing to do this. The ANA commander responds that he is afraid that if they walk up to the ANA-manned tower in Mushan unannounced, they will be shot at by their own men. The ANA are notoriously trigger-happy, and no one wants to take that chance. We decide to fire a para-flare, a portable flare that descends slowly on a parachute, to see if that will wake up the guy on shift. No dice. We call Sperwan Ghar and ask them to fire a 155mm illumination round from one of the M777 artillery pieces stationed there. The fire mission is approved and within a few minutes we hear the uncanny sound of an artillery shell flying over our heads.
Whiz, pop, boom!
The area is lit up like daylight—surely that will wake someone up. We try Mushan on the radio again, nothing. This is a ridiculous situation; an entire patrol of over 80 men is sidelined by someone asleep on shift 600 metres away.

It is 0330, and we are all getting tired. The OC decides that if we can’t get into Mushan, we will stay in the grape field in front of it. We will push out security and wait for dawn, before moving the rest of the way into the SP. We are rearranged into platoons and begin to filter into the thin rows of the grape fields. I can’t help but think about the snakes and spiders that must live here, and the fact that I won’t be able to see them at night. This is another mostly irrational concern that must be pushed out of my head. For the first time tonight, I feel genuinely unsafe and uncomfortable.

Setting up security takes another half-hour, and by 0400 we are ready to “go to ground,” such as it is. I don’t even take my
pack off; I just sit in the lush field and wait for our orders to be confirmed. No one is happy with the situation, and I’ve been in the military long enough to know not to get comfortable until you are sure that you can. I think about smoking a cigarette, but decide against it. It feels like every cell in my body is screaming for tobacco, but there is too much bad energy around me to risk it. Out of nowhere, I hear on my radio, “29er, this is Mushan, radio check, over.” The voice sounds bleary, like when you wake someone up with the phone.