The Patrol (2 page)

IT IS ALMOST A MONTH since I returned from Afghanistan, and I am awake in the middle of the night at my parents’ house in Calgary. I have just woken up from a dream of getting too far in front of my LAV. I need to smoke. I put on my army sweatpants and a T-shirt before opening the door quietly. As I sneak down the stairs, I make sure to step over the creaky floorboard that I’ve known about since I was a kid stealing cookies. All of a sudden, I am walking carefully on moondust, watching for IEDs under the starry Afghan sky. I am looking for boot prints on the newly vacuumed carpet of my suburban childhood home. It is only safe to step in boot prints.

I sit in the back of a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV, pronounced “lav,” not “L-A-V”) in Shilo, Manitoba. We have been in the field for three weeks, the longest consecutive amount of time I’ve spent in the field for my military career. I am a reservist, a part-time soldier who trains on weekends and in the summer, each year completing another course that teaches me a skill set the military wants me to have. I did my basic training in 2001, before 9/11. I did my trades course in 2003, my advanced trades course in 2004, my leadership course in 2005. In 2006 I taught basic, and in 2007 I am preparing for war.
Normal career progression
the army might call it. I am a signaller,
a Canadian soldier responsible primarily for installing and maintaining radio and communications systems.

It is a hot summer day in Shilo; when I go outside I can hear the incessant noise of insects, and the sun beats down onto a field of grass that has been crushed by the tires of armoured vehicles. In the back of my LAV, I sit reading a copy of Anthony Swofford’s
Jarhead.
The headset that I use to talk on our radio net is halfway on my head, allowing me to listen to the conversations in the command post (CP), a tent that we set up off the back of our vehicle, and to the two radio nets I’m responsible for. I am engrossed in Swofford’s account of life as a marine, but at the same time I’m keyed up to hear “2”—my call sign. When it comes over the radio I replace the bookmark, put the book on the seat beside me, and respond by using the Press To Talk (PTT) switch on my headset (the army has such clever names for things like that).

“2, this is 0, what is 29er’s current location?”

“2, he is collocated with my call sign at this time.” (He is standing outside my LAV.)

“0, roger, inform him that we will be contacting him via Lima Lima.” (Telephone.)

“2, wilco, out.”

I poke my head outside the LAV, inform the company commander that 0 will be giving him a call, sit back down, take out Swofford’s book and find my place again.

I am working with the infantry—B Company Second Battalion PPCLI, to be precise. The regular force, the Patricias, hard as fuck.

The old guys, those who were in for the last tour in 2006, tell stories about combat in hushed tones, as if they were afraid that someone was going to overhear them. They’ve earned their stories and they relish them. Over the past few weeks, when I’m not on shift, or when we are standing around smoking, waiting to shoot a range, I listen wide-eyed to tales of fighting against RPG-armed
insurgents, pulling people out of burning vehicles, and getting “lit up” for hours or days or weeks. The infantry are very careful with their stories, and most tell them only when they are separate from the higher ranks, the officers, or those who have not gone to war. I feel privileged to listen in silence, taking slow drags on my cigarette and sipping bottled water.

The first half of the field ex is complete, and the last ranges are being conducted this morning. Sections assault plywood villages and play “Don’t Shoot the Baby,” while LAVs rise up behind them and fire 25mm shells over the heads of the advancing infantry. It is taken as routine work, just another day in the field.

But today is a special day. We are going to be “issued” beer for the first time since deploying to the field. Two beers per man, perhaps. Over the course of the week, talk of a buddy’s failure to distinguish between civilian targets and insurgents at the range has dropped off. Now we talk about the beers. Will we get to have more than two? What will the first one taste like? The army has been dangling them in front of us for almost a week, and we are starting to feel like Tantalus, the booze always just out of reach. The company “smoker” will involve competitions like throwing rocks into tiny holes to see who is the best at throwing grenades, flipping truck tires down a road to see who is the most powerful soldier in the company, and playing section-level tug-of-war to see which is the strongest section. The “canteen,” a battle box full of goodies, will sell cigarettes, pop, and chocolate bars. We will wait in line for a half-hour for our beers. This is our afternoon’s vacation from training to go to Afghanistan.

After another chapter of Swofford’s book, I get the message over the radio. The last troops are packing up and moving back to my location. The smoker is on.

I am part of the headquarter’s tug-of-war team, and we win four competitions in a row. I feel happy even as my hands become blistered. We chain-smoke cigarettes as we toss our rocks, and I don’t
do too badly. It reminds me of playing horseshoes. Maybe I’m starting to fit in with the infantry. Then the circle I’m standing in closes off as someone turns their back to me. Maybe not.

I wait in line for my beers and watch fistfights break out around me. A big, tall infanteer beaks off a shorter guy who has never been overseas. They are shoving each other in a matter of seconds. Later they will probably drink beer together. I feel like a kid at Christmas as I watch the line slowly advance and the veterans butt in with their friends. After we’ve drunk our two beers I stand at the side and watch them scream lines from the movie
300.

“Patricias! What is your profession?”

“
Aaaoooo!
” is the response. Loud.

Someone suggests a game of joust and volunteers are canvassed. Soon they have gathered up two stretchers, two boots, a roll of duct tape, and two long plastic poles. Six guys stand beside each stretcher, with one kneeling on it. I volunteer to be the one kneeling because I want to prove myself. Two infantry soldiers are selected instead. On the signal, the stretchers are lifted onto the shoulders of the six, and the two groups of men run at each other. The soldiers kneeling on the stretchers wear helmets and body armour. They hold the poles, each with a boot duct-taped to the end of it, and lean forward like medieval knights. When the two groups charge at each other, one of the “knights” is struck in the mouth by his opponent’s pole, which knocks out two teeth. He lies sprawled out on the ground in a pool of blood. I’m glad that I wasn’t accepted as a volunteer. We agree on the story that he took an elbow while playing rugby, and a medic is found. While he waits, the toothless infanteer drinks beer, which mixes with the blood in his mouth. Someone else finds his teeth and gives them to him. He is already telling the story, and a group of soldiers gather around him and pat him on the back.

I retreat to the CP, manage to get another two beers, and eat a barbecued hamburger off a paper plate. The patty came out of a box,
and I smother Heinz ketchup and mustard all over it. A typical army smoker. We listen to music off a laptop and drink our beer slowly. I have been up for at least 18 hours every day for the past three weeks. I am extremely tired. I can hear the party going on behind our CP; a bonfire has been started and the smoke rises over us. It is a cool Manitoba summer evening, but I am warm and content in my fleece. I go to my tent, which is separated from those of the rest of the company. I read a few pages of Philip K. Dick’s
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,
which I’d left beside my cot. I pass out with my headlamp still turned on, music blaring outside my tent.

Before I started training for the tour, I studied history at the University of Calgary; I drank a bit too much beer with my friends and argued about
Star Wars
(Han obviously shot first) and the Progressive Conservative Party (an oxymoron?). I joined the reserves when I was still in high school, a 17-year-old kid who knew everything there was to know about the world. Eight years after I joined, I decided it would be a good idea to deploy to Afghanistan. Even though I was a full-time university student and part-time soldier, I always identified with the military. And when there is a war on, soldiers are meant to fight in it, not to drink too much beer with their friends and talk about things they think they understand.

I spent seven months in Afghanistan, deploying shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday in February. I’ve now spent ten years in the Communication Reserve.

Signalling is an unglamorous job. I like to think that we have harnessed the power of lightning, that we are warriors of the electromagnetic spectrum. But mostly we just drink coffee and press buttons. We are seldom mentioned in any historical document, despite our presence on every Canadian battlefield since the First World War. We are a living means to an end; we are the army’s
tongue. “746 Communication Squadron: you can talk about us, but you can’t talk without us”—this is the unofficial motto of my unit.

When I decided to volunteer for an overseas deployment, I had no idea where I would end up. Unlike in almost every other trade, signals reservists can augment any formation, from the lowliest infantry company to the command of Task Force South itself. The simple fact is the army needs radios, and wherever there’s a radio there’s a signaller.

On this rotation, five soldiers from my home unit deployed, and we were flung to the Afghan winds. I was attached to the infantry, Bravo Company II PPCLI specifically. My friend Allan would be attached to 1 Combat Engineering Regiment (1 CER). Allan is a good signaller and a good friend. He is one of the funniest people I have ever met, and he covers his loathing for the world in general with a wry humour that brightens the lives of those around him. He would spend the majority of the tour with me in Patrol Base Sperwan Ghar, the first time two signallers from my unit would be engaged in combat together in recent memory. He is still in the military, running marathons and climbing mountains by himself for fun.

With the exception of Allan, I would not see a single one of the men from my unit throughout my deployment. But when we reunited in Calgary after seven months overseas, we didn’t skip a beat. We had all suffered and sacrificed more than we could have imagined. Our normal reservist training cycle back home would never be the same.

I knew from the moment I signed my contract what being attached to an infantry company meant: fighting. The next 18 months of my life would be like nothing I could have imagined. I lived and worked with the infantry non-stop for that entire period. I took part in live-fire ranges, was issued the best equipment available to the Canadian Forces, and came to know every radio system in the army inside and out. When I deployed, I was a fully
prepared signaller; as it turned out, this would not be enough. The fickle nature of the radio system that forms the backbone of the Canadian army resulted in the need for a signaller to accompany patrols. I, a lowly communications reservist, would spend a considerable portion of the next seven months patrolling with the infantry, attached at the hip to the company commander. Looking back, I realize that I had no idea what was in store for me. By the end of my tour, I was a completely different person. I left behind a lot of what was good about me in the grape fields of Panjway, but I brought a lot of experience home.

This is the story of one patrol in Afghanistan. This patrol will never enter the history books, except possibly as a half-sentence in an official history. Even then it will be noticed by few but the most ardent students of Canada’s military past. Similar patrols are carried out by many different nationalities every day in Afghanistan. Their common nature is epitomized by the hardship and the camaraderie that make up the personality of this new conflict. It is the story of the patrol during which I discovered more about myself than I could have thought possible, so much so that I still have trouble navigating through the memories, the emotions, and the feelings. It is a patrol that haunted me at night for almost a year after it was over, until I would wake up and remember that I was in Canada and that everything was okay. This patrol served as the focal point for my broader Afghan experiences. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It defined how I see myself as a man, and how I see men. This is the story of how I earned my stories.

I do not claim to have done as much as others on my tour. I spent the majority of it sitting in an air-conditioned room, monitoring radios and passing information on as quickly and accurately as I could. I do not claim to be a hero, nor even to have acted heroically. I do not even claim to have been in as much danger as many in my company. I know soldiers who have jumped in
front of machine gun bursts for their friends. I know of a group of sleeping soldiers who had a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) pass through their tent and lodge itself in a rucksack. That RPG had “
22
” written on the back of it, the call sign of the platoon that it almost wiped out. (We figured that the Taliban had begun calling their shots.) Instead, I merely claim to have been there, and to have recorded what I experienced.

This book does not address many of the questions raised by Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. It is not about whether we should be there, and it is not about how we got there. Instead, I write with a singular purpose: I want the public to understand what we are doing and how we are doing it. I want our sacrifices and our triumphs to be more than a poorly registered blip on the evening news. I’m tired of the misconceptions and arguments built on foundations of poorly understood truth. Canadian soldiers are being asked to do an immensely difficult task. I merely try to explain what this task entails, and how we are going about doing it.

After I returned, a lot of people asked whether I thought we should be in Afghanistan. My honest answer was and is that I don’t know. In fact, I think that I understand the war less now that I have returned from it than I thought I did before I departed. But now I understand how and why I do not understand; I have seen with my own eyes the quagmire that this conflict has engendered. I am forced to view questions of honour and morality through the lens of experience, yet I’m not sure that questions of this type even mean anything anymore. I have not returned a hero, as some might have you believe; rather, I have returned convinced that heroism is a quality best relegated to the imagination and one that bears little foundation in reality. We all did our jobs to the best of our abilities, and some people’s abilities and experiences led them to do extraordinary things. A new chapter in the annals of our military history is writing itself, enshrining the deeds being done every day
in the name of our country. These deeds are being performed, not by heroes but by well-trained professional soldiers.