The Patrol (21 page)

Word is passed: the OC is going to make a statement. We shuffle over to where he is standing and form a horseshoe around him. I stand at the outskirts of the crowd. I try to force myself to think about what has happened, and what we’ve gone through, but nothing comes to my mind.

“What can you say about a guy like Corporal Arnal? He was a real soldier,” the OC begins. I don’t remember the rest of the speech. I didn’t really process anything that he said. I stood there sullenly with my arms crossed, seeing and hearing nothing.

The OC concludes by saying that 4 Platoon will be evacked by choppers tomorrow, and that this is good news. I don’t grasp the immediacy of what is going on around me, and when everyone else starts to go back to their sleeping areas, I follow in a daze. Looking back, I don’t know if anyone could properly explain what they felt on that cool and quiet night, while the OC tried to console us for the loss of someone who had stood upright, walked, laughed, hated, loved, and fought with us less than an hour before. I don’t know if there is anything anyone could say that might mitigate that reality. Maybe it was enough to stand in the cool silence of the night and listen to one man talk. I don’t know.

I find Allan, who is staying in the engineers’ area on the north side of the camp. I sit beside him and pass a cigarette; we smoke
in silence. I try to say something negative about the OC’s speech, but nothing comes to mind. I try to think of something funny to say, but can’t. In the end we sit quietly, leaning against a HESCO Bastion, and looking at the clear night sky, which is filled with millions of stars. I stare at the moon for a few minute until a cloud comes from the south, moving quickly to eclipse it.

“Hey, man, check that out, it’s a cloud!” It’s not poetic, but it’s what I say. I try to remember the last time that I saw a cloud; I can’t think of a single instance in the pure blue or black skies of Afghanistan. We watch the cloud cast shadows across Zangabad, and think about nothing. After a while, Allan says that he feels like he has a 50-metre bubble around him where nothing dangerous ever occurs. I agree, though my bubble is much smaller.

After what seems like a long time, the engineers start to funnel back to their cots to sleep. I realize that I should probably be doing the same, and wish Allan a good night. I go back to the area where HQ is sleeping and find my kit piled in the moondust. Most of the rest of HQ are lying on their cots talking quietly or sleeping. I find an open one and go through the familiar process of laying out my ranger blanket and sleeping pad. I rest my pack against a HESCO Bastion, and put my chest rig, flak vest, and rifle in a neat pile in front of it. A cool breeze blows, and I feel cold in my sweat-soaked shirt. It is surprisingly refreshing to be cold. I take off my shirt and lay it on top of my pack. I unzip my boots, take off my socks, and lie down in my cot. I take off my glasses as an afterthought, and put them in my boot, a trick I learned long ago on basic training when I lost my glasses one morning. It has been seven years since I completed my basic training, and nothing is the same; only those little tricks drilled into a sleep-deprived mind, never to be lost again. On the surface everything may feel the same, but it never will be. Something inside of me has changed. I have found the Minotaur.
I close my eyes and am lost once more to oblivion. Later, I would write the following lines;

IT IS ABOUT 0200 WHEN I PASS OUT in COP Zangabad. Alberta is 10 and a half hours behind Kandahar, so in Calgary it is 1530. As I fall asleep on the other side of the world, my girlfriend is sitting in class at the University of Calgary. The grounds of the U of C in summer are beautiful. The fields are green and the trees are bursting with leaves. There is a faint fragrance of flowers intermixed with fast food when one walks past Mac Hall, the central point of campus. On sunny days like today, students sit underneath the Prairie Chicken, a massive abstract metal statue. They nap, or discuss their classes, or their pastimes, or their ideas. White notebooks and blue pens contrast sharply with the green hill that invites all who pass by to relax and take a break. A little farther along, there’s cheap food and beer at the Black Lounge, where students absorb the sun on the patio.

Before they banned smoking I used to sit there and read philosophy, or history, or fiction while drinking beer and water, and working my way through a cigarette pack. I can remember reading
Sartre, Camus, and Fussell on the patio. I remember thinking that I understood the world when I read these books, that I was narrowing in on the answers to the big questions, that I could give an intelligent opinion about whether existentialism was a valid school of thought, or whether Napoleon should have invaded Russia or changed his tactics at Waterloo. I remember thinking that all this knowledge was good and important, and that I could change the world, if only given the opportunity.

As I sleep on a cot in Zangabad, my girlfriend sits in her class in Murray Fraser Hall and listens to her prof speak in an enlightened fashion about the development and practices of Western religions. She is planning on writing her term paper on Islamic wedding practices, and before I left on patrol I e-mailed her a few suggestions about how to research the topic. Goths, preps, keeners, hippies, hipsters, and Albertan conservatives sit beside each other and try to make sense of the world around them and the development of Western religion while I sleep under the Afghan stars. Students frantically write notes on lined paper and try not to lose the thread of the prof’s argument. They type quickly on laptops while carrying on virtual conversations with their friends. Outside, the Black Lounge promises cheap drinks and good times. The Canadian flag flies proudly above a small pond two swans call home. In Zangabad, two sentries stand underneath the same flag and look through NVGs and thermal optics at the landscape around them. In Calgary, a reference to the origin of the term
jihad
makes my girlfriend think of me for a few seconds. She refuses to worry, however; she is proud of me and thinks that I am trying to make a difference. “Either way, he could be hit by a bus tomorrow. At least this means something to him.” She stops thinking about me and resumes doodling on her page and trying to pay attention to the lecture. At the Black Lounge,
a waitress serves a student his fourth beer while he tries to come up with a witty way to introduce himself to the pretty girl sitting at the next table.

In Shilo, the news of Corporal Arnal’s death is travelling quickly along predetermined channels. Secrecy is paramount, as no one can know the horrible news before the family. The military has gained a lot of experience over the course of seven years in Afghanistan, and the padre, the assisting officer, and deputy commander are putting on their dress uniforms to make a trip they wish they did not have to make. In Shilo, the order goes out to the duty sergeant: fly the flags at half mast, you will get more information when the comms blackout is lifted. There can be no personal communications in or out of theatre until the family has been notified. In Zangabad, we sleep while the machines and systems that sober, intelligent people have put in place begin to do their honourable work.

Sandflies trapped in our ranger blankets eat our flesh as we sleep. In Calgary, my girlfriend goes home to my parents’ house for a barbecue supper. The young student sitting at the Black Lounge drinks enough beer that he feels confident enough to talk to the pretty girl at the next table, not realizing that he has drunk too much. He returns to his table dejected, frustrated with all women everywhere, and listens to the chorus of jeers from his friends. The sentries in Zangabad stand sleepily underneath the Canadian flag, looking at a landscape that they long ago memorized in detail. The car filled with sombre men in dress uniform departs the base, and its occupants worry about the task they have been called on to perform.

In KAF, the night duty officer liaises with his American air force counterpart to arrange helicopter transportation to Zangabad the next day. He has no luck with the Americans, so tries the Dutch, who are flying Chinook helicopters sold to them by the Canadian government in the 1990s. He manages to book transport for the following day; forms are filled out and signed, operators tap furiously
at keyboards, and flight manifests are organized. As the world turns, so too does the military machine. The message is sent to the battle group command post, which sends it to the company command post, which sends it to the Zangabad command post. At each point operators log the data, and make a note to inform the duty officer when they wake up in the morning. Battle group is nervous that the Dutch will change their minds and cancel the transport. Company is nervous that battle group will fuck things up again. Zangabad has no faith left in either and accepts the presence or absence of the helicopters as the whim of God or lieutenant-colonels, both of whose logic is utterly impenetrable.

In Calgary, it is midnight. Darcy has had supper, gone for a run, done a little bit of research for her paper, and checked her e-mail one last time in vain. She is now asleep. At the Black Lounge, the young student has now been drinking beer with his friends for eight hours. He is no closer to hooking up with a pretty girl. In Zangabad, it is 1030 and already blisteringly hot.

Until the sun comes up, I don’t move an inch. By 1030 I’ve lost my battle to remain asleep, and wake up in a pool of my own sweat, which has collected at the bottom of the cot. I blink in the bright sunlight and feel hungover. I sit up, throw off my ranger blanket, look disparagingly at the sweat and salt stains that have soaked the green fabric of the cot, and put on my boots. Around me life carries on as normal. Some of the infantry are engaged in simple tasks, like re-sorting the mountain of bottled water to our left, or improving the tents that are strung along the HESCO Bastions, ensuring that they provide the maximum amount of shade. Most are sitting around and demonstrating a casual disregard for normal standards of dress and deportment. Many lounge in their underwear. Tobacco is chewed or smoked, water is sipped, and rations are passed. There
are pictures of women in various states of undress taped to the table outside the CP. It feels like just another day in sunny Afghanistan, but at the same time it is different. The laughter is a bit too strained, the jocularity a bit too violent. Although 24, who have been in Zangabad for almost a month, seem relatively nonplussed, 4 Platoon is for the most part sitting quietly under their tents, speaking in hushed tones. Arnal was immensely well liked.

I grab my toothbrush and bar of soap and stand up. I’m wearing blue underwear, the socks that carried me from Mushan, and unzipped boots. I make my way over to the ablutions area, stumbling as if I were drunk. I find a bottle of warm water and brush my teeth before washing my face in a basin. I look at myself in the mirror, which was once the rear-view mirror of a LAV before it was blown up nearby. I’m surprised to see that I look like the infantry. My hair has grown long and is matted with dust and grease, my face is dark brown, and my hands are blistered and cut from numerous encounters with the Afghan vegetation. I make a stern face at the mirror and try to remember what I looked like before I deployed; fat, puffy, and white, if I recall correctly. For a second I am consumed with hatred for what I used to be, and pride with the way I look now.

Masculinity, chauvinism, and vanity all play an important role in the makeup and outlook of the average infantry soldier. These three elements, when combined with camaraderie, form the worldview of the majority of those around me in Zangabad. It is important to bear in mind that the group of people that I’m standing with, and washing myself beside, are here because they wanted to be. They didn’t just want to be in the Canadian Forces, or Afghanistan—they wanted to be at the front, the tip of the spear. They wanted to fight. As much as bringing stability to Afghanistan and promoting the development of the country are important factors in their motivation, an infantry NCM only has one primary job: to close with and
destroy the enemy with maximum speed and aggression. Not only do the majority want to fight, there are better-than-even odds that they will. At some point they will probably come under enemy fire, if not on this tour then the next, or the one after that. They have to be better than their enemy. The mindset that leads an average person to want to excel somewhere like Zangabad must inherently be aggressive. Masculinity and chauvinism naturally come to the fore in an environment that is almost utterly devoid of women.

Most infantry soldiers have devoted a large portion, if not all, of their lives to excelling in combat. They are not vain in the traditional sense; rather, it is a love of “being hard” that motivates them, a pride in the suffering and hardship that they endure, often with a smile. A casual glance in the mirror does not necessarily lead to a flexing of muscles (although it is known to happen), but rather to a grim appreciation of and pride in the man who stares back. More often than not, this appreciation is contrasted with the “other” military, those who do not fight or train to fight. It is vanity that allows us the luxury of being able to look down at the rest of the world, those who don’t do what we do. It is pride that allows us to suffer cheerfully, bitching all the while. This outlook is at the core of any fighting formation and has been present to a lesser or greater degree in every army that has ever existed. The army can spout its doctrine that “we are all one team” as much as it wants; the fact remains that the combat arms generally, and the infantry specifically, will always act as if they were a breed apart, especially when they are engaged in actual combat.

As I catch a glimpse of myself, I am surprised at the man who looks back; I feel as if I were one of that breed apart and feel a surge of pride and vanity.

On my way back to our sleeping area, I see Kevin Lowe talking to some other members of 24. I go back to my cot and pick my soiled
T-shirt out of the pile of dirty clothing I used for a pillow. There are fresh sweat stains, and the shirt feels wet as I pull it over my shoulders. I sit down beside Kevin and light a cigarette. He scrounges me a breakfast ration, and I open it with the smoke hanging out of my mouth. The ritual of opening rations exists even here, and I hope against hope that there is going to be a chocolate bar in my breakfast ration even when I know that there never will be. I cut what the army laughingly calls
bread
in half. The French words printed on the package are
petit pain;
or “little pain”—which basically sums up rations in general. I spread mustard on one half with my Gerber, and take out three of the four sausages from the pack. I place them on the mustard side, wipe my Gerber on my pants, lick off the remaining mustard, close the sausage sandwich, butt out my smoke, and dig in.

Little rituals such as this are an important element of army life. If I threw a sausage ration at a civilian or a brand-new soldier, they would look at it, read the labels, slowly and cautiously open the packages, and take tentative bites of what they find inside—all the while expecting to be disgusted. Seven years in the reserves, and one year of training and deployment with the infantry, have taught me how to make a functional sausage sandwich in less than a minute. Strange little skills and actions like this have a calming effect on soldiers. Moreover, it is these unique skill sets (eating a ration, packing kit quickly, cleaning a weapon) that separate soldiers from civilians. From the first day on basic training, seemingly bizarre lessons are taught, and their importance is continually reinforced: the folded-over portion of your top sheet must be exactly 30 centimetres long; your hangers must be separated by precisely the width of a credit card; your weapon must be disassembled and placed in exactly the proper order on your bed; your beret must be worn at all times outside, but can never be worn in a mess hall. As the soldier masters these bizarre skill sets, he begins to look down on those who
cannot perform them properly. Officers who salute sloppily or in the American style, flailing their arms like birds’ wings and with their hands at a 45-degree angle downward, are derided quietly behind their backs. Courses who march improperly are “all fucked up,” and judgments are instantly made about those whose berets are improperly formed. These skills can be acquired only through difficult and often painful repetition. They propagate themselves throughout the generations, and strange historical terms like
reveille
and
mufti,
whose origins predate the First World War, are still used every day. Those who are on the outside cannot know these skill sets, or these insider jokes, and will always remain on the outside, no matter how many war movies they watch. Those who are on the inside and are being true to their army selves usually look down on all those who are on the outside. It is the little things that separate soldiers from civilians, and the same that separate fighting soldiers from those we call WOGs (soldiers who do not fight). The world of an infantry NCM is very small, often confined to his platoon of no more than 40 people. To a greater or lesser degree, all those outside this group are the “other.” When an infanteer is suffering in a COP, with no air conditioning, no fresh food, and constant danger, can he really be blamed for begrudging those who made different choices? I don’t believe so; it is only fair that the infantry are allowed their vanity and pride in exchange for their suffering.