The Patrol (13 page)

Today, about a month after I watched tears well-up in my girlfriend’s eyes at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I am sitting in Mushan looking for lunch. I go back to our tent and pull out a half-smashed new ‘08 ration. I look at the red bilingual label on the crushed package: “Lunch/
Diner
—Menu No. 3—Beef Bourguignon—
Boeuf Bourguignon
–’08.”

Seriously? Beef Bourguignon? It’s like the army went out of its way to ruin a happy memory by serving this to me in the hot Afghan sun in a half-destroyed package that was recently dropped out of a plane. I open the package and look inside at the brown goo that might once have been beef. It is possibly the most depressing encounter I have ever had with food, and I sit and consume my “meal” in silence.

It is about 1600 at this point, and the heat is beginning to let up slightly. As I eat, we are told what the plan is for the next day: We are going to advance into the village of Mushan behind a line of infantry and ANA. We will then cordon off a few compounds that we suspect contain insurgents and weapons caches. After the area is secure, the engineers and infantry will search these compounds. It’s the same old plan and is similar to most of the patrols I’ve taken part in on the tour. The big difference is that now the fighting season has begun. This will be my first daytime patrol during which the Taliban are expected to put up a fight. Almost every foray out of Mushan for the last month has gotten into contact with the enemy; we don’t have any reason to suspect that tomorrow will be different. So far we have been remarkably lucky—no mortars have landed near us, and we haven’t encountered any IEDs. The silence begins to take on an almost ominous feeling. I know that tomorrow will be different.

On our tour, we use four phrases to describe fighting the enemy:
TIC
(troops in contact) is the official way to describe such an encounter over the radio after the fact;
contact
is the word used over the radio to describe any enemy engagement (for example “2, this is 21, contact, wait out”);
gunfight
or
firefight
is the way that previous tours described any contact that lasted less than six hours;
gun battle
or
battle
is a gunfight that lasts over six hours (battles are extremely rare on our tour). Each word describes the same thing, but the context in which each is used varies greatly. For example, I wrote in my journal prior to departing Sperwan Ghar, “About to depart on fighting patrol to Mushan … I will probably be in my first TIC within the next six days.” I mistakenly used
TIC
instead of
contact,
an error I learned to correct after I had actually experienced a contact.

I throw out the remainder of my ration and lie down. I need to get as much sleep as possible, so I try to nap in the diminishing but still sweltering heat. I meet with some success, and fade in and out of consciousness as conversations about the sexual prowess and misadventures of the infantry swirl and fade around me. Sleeping across from me are the two snipers who are attached to our patrol. Their C14 sniper rifle is set up on its bipod facing me. I’ve never been hugely into weapons, but it would take a pretty committed hippie to think that this rifle isn’t cool. It is a bolt-action weapon with a five-round magazine. The barrel has spiralling grooves, and on the muzzle is a cylindrical titanium suppressor. At the end of the suppressor, a maple leaf is etched around the muzzle. I find it a unique expression of Canadian identity that a .50 cal round, fired by an extremely well-trained Canadian, must pass through the centre of a maple leaf en route to its target. The rifle is painted camouflage tan, and it looks like something out of every 12-year-old
boy’s fantasy. One of my regrets from the tour is that I never got an opportunity to fire this weapon.

On Remembrance Day 2008 my mom asked me to speak to a class at her former school (she was a newly retired grade 2/3 teacher). I worried over what I would say to a group of kids about what I’d experienced. In the end I gave a speech on how hot it was, what the kids’ lives were like in Afghanistan, and what we did there. It wasn’t exactly a dissertation, but my audience was receptive. Afterwards there was a question and answer period. Most of the questions were mundane, and I did my best to answer them truthfully and politically. One kid, however, asked me a series of very specific questions.

The halcyon days of Super Mario Brothers appear to have passed.

I wake up at about 2000 and head for the bathroom. As I pass the sergeant-major, he sits up from a relaxed position on top of his sleeping pad and pulls me aside.

“Flavelle!” he says, “we’re leaving at five tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sergeant-major,” I reply.

“Those OMLT guys are coming with us, there, and someone’s gotta watch the radio tonight.”

“Roger that, sergeant-major. Do I have to do the entire shift? Am I coming on the patrol?” I try not to hope that I will stay behind.

“Fuck, Flavelle, you’re coming on this patrol, and I don’t care who you have to muckle onto to help you out tonight, but sort it out. I thought you used to be a master corporal in the reserves?”

Chief Warrant Officer Cavanagh (the sergeant-major) is a regular force infanteer through and through. I believe that he takes distinct pleasure in reminding me that, although I was once a master corporal (the lowest leadership position in the army) in the reserves, I am now a lowly sigs corporal, which basically amounts to nothing.

“Understood, sergeant-major. So all the platoon sigs?”

“Yeah, get that Lagonia guy, and what’s his name?”

“Cunningham?”

“Yeah, and muckle onto those chimos too there, they should help out as well.”
Chimo
is the nickname for a Canadian combat engineer. I’ve asked a lot of people what it stands for, but never got a straight answer; the general consensus is that it’s the Inuktitut word for “hello,” “goodbye,” and “cheers.”

“Roger that, sergeant-major.”

Now I have the task of telling people that they cannot sleep the whole night through before a brutal patrol, when we know that the Taliban are out.
Fuck.
I wander into the open area where 4 Platoon is sleeping, nod to a few acquaintances, and ask around to find the platoon signaller.

“Hey, you seen Lagonia?”

“Yeah, man, he’s sleeping near the officer, somewhere over there, by the shitters.”

He points me in the general direction, and I totter off toward the Mushan latrine, a plywood door closing onto a plywood bench with a toilet seat attached, surrounded by porn mags. You open a plastic toilet bag (we carried a few so as not to deplete the COP’s stock), hook it onto the nails provided, and recline to read a two-year-old copy of
Hustler
with unaccustomed avidity. When finished, you unhook the bag, seal it and throw it into the garbage outside (which is burned every few days). By following the general direction of people pointing, I find Lagonia underneath an issued groundsheet on top of his sleeping bag, listening to an iPod and trying to doze in the hot Afghan evening.

“Hey, Lagonia, you gotta pull a radio shift tonight, that’s coming from the sergeant-major, I put you on from 10 to 12.” (Although writing in military time has been beaten into me over the years, I usually don’t use military time when I speak.)

“Seriously? Fuck you, man.”

“Sorry, dude, I gave myself 12 to 2.”

I wander around the camp and tell two other platoon signallers that they will have to forgo sleep tonight to listen to a radio. It is 2100 at this point, and I return to my sleeping pad. I’m not tired, but it is dark and quiet, and I can hear snoring along with muffled conversation. I lie down but I can’t sleep. I think about tomorrow, and what combat will be like. I think about home and how far away it feels. I think about the ethereal quality of morale, and how the human mind copes with stress. I think.

UNLIMITED LIABILITY. For soldiers, this phrase has a unique connotation. It means that, at some time in the uncertain future, we may need to lay down our lives in defence of our country. Specifically, it means that we may not only be asked, but also in certain circumstances forced to die in its service. This concept is entirely unique in the public service; not even police officers can be lawfully ordered to their deaths. Unlimited liability means that, technically, we can be ordered to charge a machine gun, or defend a location to the last bullet, even with the certain knowledge that the action will result in some or all of our deaths. To a teenager intent only on avoiding a job flipping burgers, the spectre of the Huns invading seemed very far off indeed when I joined up in June 2001.

As with so much else on my tour, I discovered that an intellectual appreciation of a concept has little relation to its physical manifestation. Once I chose to deploy to a war zone with the infantry, unlimited liability became a cold hard fact. The nuances of this state began to make themselves felt. I was never ordered to defend a location to the last bullet; I was, however, ordered to drive down a known IEDed route in the middle of the night. I was also ordered to
stand up and face a machine gun, and stay put during a mortar barrage. Looking back, I’m proud to say that I belong to the only legal organization that requires unlimited liability, but initially I didn’t realize how very real that prospect was.

I am sitting on a pile of sandbags with a satellite phone in one hand and my digital camera in the other. I am calling my girlfriend and my parents in Calgary, thanks to the miracle of modern technology and the misuse of Canadian army resources. I’ve memorized the international dialling code, and punch in the 15 numbers patiently. I have to make sure that the antenna is pointing in the right direction. The connection is full of static and I feel apprehensive as I hear the phone ring.
What if they don’t answer? What if they do?

My dad picks up the phone on the other side of the world, and I talk to him about what the weather is doing; I ask about my mom’s garden and the early success of the raspberry bushes. I talk about his new iPhone, the barbecue, and the fence he is planning to build. I studiously avoid talking about where I am, what is happening around me, or any part of my life other than what I’ve had for dinner. The military has gone to great lengths to ensure that I am afraid to describe my surroundings. We received countless briefings in Canada and KAF about what we can and cannot say. As a radio operator, I understand the kind of equipment one would need to intercept a satellite telephone call, and I don’t believe that the Taliban in Mushan have that capability. But I also don’t want to describe the danger I’m in at the present moment. I feel that my parents would only worry about me more if they knew where I was. I also don’t think that they can ever understand the situation I am facing. They don’t have any context with which to understand my experiences, and I don’t feel like giving it to them. It’s easier to just pretend that everything is okay, and talk about the weather.

I feel differently when talking to Darcy—as if she is supposed to share the hardship and the fear. I just feel that she understands me more than my parents do, and that she won’t flip out if I tell her that I’m scared. I picture her smiling face when I close my eyes. When I hear her voice I remember being in Europe, holding her hand, falling asleep with her on a train. She is my link to life outside Afghanistan. We can talk about the future and the past; when we do, it feels real, exciting, tangible. My dad passes the phone to her. “Hey, sweetie, how are you?” I can tell from her voice that she is smiling.

“I’m doing great, my dear. It’s sunny outside, and your dad is making hamburgers on the grill. I’ve been studying in the sun all day.” She is staying with my parents while she attends summer classes for her psychology degree at the University of Calgary. She tells me about her problems with classes, papers, and commuting on the C Train—I remember a time when those were my problems. It doesn’t seem real that people could be concerned about such things. Finally, she asks how I am doing.

“I’m kind of scared tonight, Darcy.”

“Why, sweetheart?”

“Well, it’s very, very hot outside and I have to leave in a few hours to go on a fighting patrol. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I love you, no matter what.”

I don’t know if she understands what I mean, and I don’t think she knows what to say. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. But hearing her words reminds me that there are things other than Mushan, rations, and fighting patrols. I miss her terribly. I wonder if it was the right decision to come to Afghanistan. But I don’t know how to say what I feel. We are living in different worlds. As I hear her talk, I can picture her blue eyes and long hair. I remember the world that I left, and feel like it is waiting for me at the other end of the patrol.

The conversation continues. I talk a little bit about my day, about playing Risk, about the radio shift, and about missing her. It makes
me feel better; it makes me feel like everything is going to be okay. After about 30 minutes, I hang up the sat phone and sit in the silent night, listening to those around me snore.

They say that there are no atheists in foxholes. I am certainly not a spiritual person, more of an armchair agnostic. Although I doubt that there is a God, I would rather stay out of the argument altogether. However, when I find myself inside the modern equivalent of a foxhole, my lofty intellectualism quickly erodes. Despite my convictions, I find myself becoming steadily less agnostic as the tour progresses. I don’t claim to know the answers to the big questions, but I lift up my eyes and beg anything that wants to listen to spare my family suffering. I am so afraid of what tomorrow might hold that I need the comfort of something more powerful than I am.

I look up at the stars and hope that there is a God, and that I will be protected from this place of bullets
,
razor wire
,
and death. Finally, I pray a silent prayer that I will be okay, and that if not, my family will understand and will know that I love them. It is 0200, and I only have three and a half hours before the patrol is set to begin.

I take a deep breath of the cool, refreshing Afghan air, sigh, and totter off to my beloved ranger blanket.

Waking up in an army camp conjures images of bugles, horses, and trumpets. In my experience, reveille, despite its pretentious name, is simply a series of people softly shoving and poking their neighbours awake. This noise is followed by the sounds of people waking up around you, shaking off their sleeping bags, and putting on their kit. For a few seconds I try to hide in my ranger blanket, but there is nothing I can do. The morning has arrived. By the time I finish picking my
helmet out of the sand, pulling out my smokes, and sitting down to await the patrol, orange light is beginning to show on the horizon. I sit and watch it grow, and smoke my second cigarette of the day.

The frantic activity around me has subsided into groups of people sitting around, looking large in their body armour, smoking, talking, or dozing. As the sound of an ANA soldier greeting the sun with his morning prayers echoes through the camp, the word is passed: Kit up, get on your feet. So we stand up and shuffle into position, feeling once again the weight of our packs. I look at Chris’s goggles and wonder how he gets them to stay in place so well. I smoke another half of a cigarette, and after an interminable time the man in front of me starts to walk.

We are taking our first steps into the bright Afghan sun. My stomach is twisting itself up into knots. Frankly, I’m nervous. For the last three days, the Taliban haven’t made their presence known, but we can feel them watching us from every grape hut and compound we pass. I know deep down that today is going to be the day. We plan to search most of the compounds in the village; we plan to hit the enemy where it hurts and seize his weapons before he can escape. We know that we won’t be allowed to do this without a fight.

We cross about a kilometre and a half of flat mud fields before reaching the outskirts of the village. They are completely level, and broken into a grid by tiny mud walls that allow them to be flooded. The last time we walked through these fields, they were filled with poppies drooping low with the weight of seed pods containing unrefined opium. As the harvest began, the fields were filled with young Fighting Age Males (FAMs). (Soldiers refer to them as Fighting Age Guys.) Their eyes had burned holes into our skulls as we patrolled past them. It would be these men who would take up arms against us after the harvest was complete. About a month later, we are walking through the same fields, now devoid of any sign of life, and only an ominous silence greets us.

This silence does not last long; the ANA, cheerfully running, marching, and chattering their way into position, infect the landscape with life. They leave a trail of ration garbage almost everywhere they go, and when you follow them you merely need to look for the empty packages of Power Banana Chips and Honey Nut Cheerios.

We stop along a mud wall that comes up to chest level, and I look out onto the landscape. Nothing really seems different. I can see children and goats wandering around, and the village appears to have the same listlessness we encounter almost everywhere we go. Seeing women and children is usually a good sign, as they tend to flee before the Taliban fire on us. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, so I sit down to get the weight off my shoulders and drink a bit of water. I ask Chris if he would like to get a picture together. He agrees, and I ask Peter, our terp, to take it. I have the picture to this day. You can see Chris telling Peter to turn the camera on its side. In the background stand Major Lane and CWO Cavanagh. Whenever I see this picture, I think of Chris, Peter, and that cool morning.

Peter is a gangly teenager who looks as if he has outgrown his combats. He has an adolescent’s downy moustache but acts like an adult in everything he does. I have learned that he is from a good family in Kandahar Province, and that he is a proud Pashtun—he wears a haughty expression whenever he talks. He’s told me that his parents have a two-car garage, hard to imagine in the mud-walled hicksville of southern KP. Once some Taliban got onto a bus he was travelling on and tried to kill everyone working for the International Security Assistance Force. Peter had his ISAF papers on him, but they didn’t search him. In Afghanistan, kids grow up more quickly than they do in the West, and Peter is looking forward to getting married on his next leave.

Peter has a remarkably effeminate way of smoking a cigarette, and he is one of the few terps who doesn’t rely on sycophancy. He
never covers his face to hide his identity when we are on patrol, and I think he really believes in what we are doing. He interpreted for the last rotation of Canadians, the Van Doos, and he picked up some uniquely Canadian slang. His speech is liberally sprinkled with Québécois curse words, and we finally have to forbid the blasphemy
tabarnak
in our LAV. The sergeant-major once chewed him out for not wearing a helmet, and when we walk into the village proper he sullenly wears a large green Kevlar helmet over his cheap imported baseball cap. I think he always resented the sergeant-major for speaking down to a Pashtun of his imagined stature, and he was transferred a few weeks after this patrol. He once asked for my e-mail address, but I did not give it to him. He may very well have been selling information to the Taliban, and I couldn’t take the chance.

I am a generally friendly person, and I like to meet new people and develop new relationships. But in Peter’s case, I can’t bring myself to fully trust him. It’s not that he isn’t a nice person; I enjoy talking to him about Afghan culture, his family, and his childhood. But he is Pashtun, and I’ve heard too many horror stories of anonymous e-mails sent to family members at home, or to Pakistani hackers. Maybe some of these are apocryphal, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t trust any Afghan I meet, and to be fair, none of them have earned that trust. I felt bad saying no to Peter, and I could see in his eyes that he was insulted, but it was too great a risk.

As we walk into the village of Mushan, I think again about the neatly laid out dirt roads, and the engineering feat that was required to build three-storey houses (not unlike Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan) out of nothing but mud and garbage. We walk slowly as the heat begins to increase and stop often for water breaks, or to allow searches to be conducted, or to wait for people to get
into the proper position. A line of Canadian soldiers forms itself to cover as much of Mushan as possible. We search for weapons, IEDs and bomb makers. My early-morning jitters begin to leach out of me as the Afghan sun pours in. The patrol stops being exciting or dangerous, and becomes for the most part monotonous.