The Patrol (6 page)

However, I don’t have a choice. In Calgary, I made exactly one decision that got me to where I am today, and that was volunteering to go overseas Everything else was decided by others, all of whom are getting paid more than I am.

Earlier in the tour I was in KAF with the rest of headquarters. We had been forced to leave an operation while it was still ongoing, to escort the OC to a “war council.” I was screwing around with some radios in the back of our LAV and I got the speaker to work. What I heard floored me. “0, this is 2. 9 liner, over.” 0 is the command call sign. The CP in Sperwan Ghar’s call sign was 2. “9 liner” is the short form for a medical evacuation request. People gathered around our LAV as we heard the details come across. An IED strike had taken out one of 5 Platoon’s LAVs, and we were requesting a medevac for an injured person. As soon as the OC and sergeant-major returned to the LAV, we floored it back to Sperwan Ghar, where we were told to wait for further orders while the OC sorted out the situation on the ground. We sat and watched a pirated copy of
EuroTrip
while we waited to be told what was going on. No one so much as loosened their boots. About an hour later, the sergeant-major walked into our room. “Kit up, we’re going to link up with 5 Platoon in Talukan,” he said.

This order seemed blatantly ridiculous. The road that we were to travel was infested with IEDs. Moreover, no one had had eyes on it for the last four hours since the IED strike that took out one of 5 Platoon’s LAVs. We were sure that the Taliban would have planted more IEDs to prevent exactly what we were planning to do. Too bad. We were going.

At that moment I realized just what an important thing choice is. Not the choice between shopping at Walmart or shopping at
Superstore, but the ability to choose whether to participate in things that directly affect your safety. I had given up that right. I was going to get into the back of that LAV, stand air sentry, cross my fingers and toes, and hold on. That was my only choice.

The cold, hard reality of military life is that no one makes any effort to treat you as an individual. You are a soldier; that is all. It is refreshing to be reminded that no matter what our third-grade teachers taught us, we are not all unique and delicate flowers; we are people who together form a community. Communities function best when their constituent parts don’t hold too closely to ideas of their own intrinsic value. In the military we are painfully aware that each one of us is merely a cog in a much larger machine. The machine breaks down if we don’t do our best to perform that role. Hauling a radio so that an officer doesn’t have to, or pushing buttons on an obstinate piece of kit, may not seem like immensely important roles, and they aren’t; but they are cogs that keep the wheels turning toward success. The military doesn’t view us as unique, and it doesn’t need to. Subsuming yourself into a larger and more important entity carries with it an immense feeling of freedom. Not the freedom to decide, but the freedom to no longer have to.

When we arrived in Talukan after a charmed ride down the IED-infested road between it and Sper, we found out that Terry Street had been killed. Terry was a good man. I remember that he would come into my office in Shilo in an attempt to avoid work. He was young, quirky, and funny. I’m glad that I got the opportunity to know him before an IED ended his short life. He was one of those guys who was the centre of attention and the leader of the crowd. He was well liked within his platoon and outside it as well. That was the only night I couldn’t sleep in the entire tour.

I take off my pack and drop it in a heap beside me. I sit and lean back to back with Chris on the sharp rocks that surround our camp. Until basic training I’d never known how effective a seat two people can make. I can’t think of a better symbol for camaraderie than two soldiers sitting down and leaning against each other so both can be comfortable. My bayonet digs into my thighs as I sit. I smoke and pass my tin around. The inevitable has arrived, and there is absolutely no going back. I take out my night vision goggles and attach them to my helmet. Each one of us will walk outside that gate into the maw of Panjway in just a few short minutes. Why be uncomfortable when you don’t have to be?

I’m not nervous as I sit, waiting. Instead, I think about how I’ve been allowed into the circle of infantry. I tell jokes and pass smokes around and feel happy to be among them. My overriding concern is not the upcoming patrol, but the fact that I appear to be included in the group. The infantry form a circle reminiscent of those formed by the gorillas in the movie
Instinct,
in which Anthony Hopkins plays a scientist who, after studying a pack of wild gorillas, slowly becomes one. A line flashes through my mind: “Suddenly, just like that, it happened. I was no longer outside the group. For the first time, I was among them.” This might sound a tad melodramatic, but it’s how I feel. I am proud to be inside the circle, and for a few moments that is all that matters.

This pleasant and peaceful interlude doesn’t last long. Before I finish my smoke, the lead elements are on their feet and pushing toward the front gate. We are behind both 4 and 9 Platoon in the order of march, so I still have time to finish my cigarette. Finally, I see people around me standing up. I throw my bag over my shoulder, lean over, and do up the waist strap and the chest strap. I start walking. The weight feels unbalanced, and I swing from side to side as I walk, to get a feel for my pack. I unclip my handset and inform call sign 2 that we are departing. It is about 2000, and the last remnants
of twilight are diminishing. We can hear the call to prayer echo from the mosques near Sperwan Ghar. I cock my weapon, loading a live round into the chamber, and place it on safe.

The first time I was issued live rounds in theatre was the first time I’d been given bullets without someone standing behind me making sure I didn’t do anything unsafe. It was an immensely powerful feeling. In Canada, the military is extremely cautious about how it gives out ammunition, accounting for it carefully, and making soldiers give a “statutory declaration” before leaving a range. The declaration is “I have no live rounds, empty casings, or pyrotechnics in my possession, sir.” But on our first day in Afghanistan, a large box filled with loose 5.56mm rounds was put in front of us. There were full metal jacket, tracers, and armour-piercing bullets mixed together in a jumble, left over from the previous tour. We could take as many as we wanted. I filled up my magazines most of the way with about 25 rounds each (one shouldn’t fill them all the way, as the first few rounds are liable to jam). About a month later, as we left the wire on my first combat operation, I had the unique and slightly terrifying feeling of loading a live round into the chamber of my weapon. Although I had done this a few times in training, now the round was loaded for the express purpose of engaging the enemy. It was strange to feel the metamorphosis of a rifle, which I had grown accustomed to carrying since I joined in 2001, from a lifeless burden into the killing machine that it was designed to be. After four months in-country, the novelty had worn off, and I accepted the live round in my chamber without much thought—just another day at the office.

Getting outside of the front gate is a bit of an ordeal. We have to walk around the mountain top and down a steep hill. Every few metres we stop as the platoons ahead of us work out their spacing and try to get the proper pace established. It feels like waiting in line at a grocery store; walk 10 metres, stop, wait, wonder why you
are stopped, start, walk 20 metres, stop, repeat. Finally, we pass the front gate. We’ve gone about 400 metres and my shoulders begin to express how unhappy they are with the amount of weight that I’m carrying. We walk silently even before we get outside the gate. It’s not that the patrol is noiseless; I can hear the muffled rustling of people’s kit, the quiet beeping of my radio, and a few whispered interchanges in front of or behind me. It’s not even that we walk in a particularly stealthy way; we just do our best not to make any noise that could give away our position. We are all trying to put on our “game face,” which is an important skill to have when patrolling in Afghanistan. The game face is more a mental than a physical change; it’s a mindset that a good soldier adopts when outside the wire. We are supposed to act like hunters, observing everything as silently as we can. We need to be mentally prepared for anything this country can throw at us, so we act the part. If you pretend long enough, eventually your game face becomes who you are. The silence makes me feel alone as we walk outside the gate. The world closes in as I try to focus on my surroundings and maintain “noise discipline.” It’s not that the Taliban won’t see us coming—they probably have sentries posted in one of the nearby mud buildings—but silence is just a good habit to get into. A long line of soldiers, many of whom can’t shut up for more than five minutes when they are in Sper, stretches silently and almost surreally toward the horizon.

We are walking down the main route outside of Sperwan Ghar. This route has been IEDed a few times, so we try to avoid stopping on any culverts, or pulling too far off onto the shoulder. We reach the main culvert, where we have previously discovered a number of IEDs. I take a knee on the rocks and look out at the landscape. There is still enough light that I am once again struck by the beauty of our surroundings. We can see children wandering in a field, and farmers going about their daily business. The green fields surrounded
by brown mud walls give way to the openness of the late evening sky and the riverbed beyond them. I feel comfortable kneeling on one knee with my weapon resting on my thigh. After about five minutes in this position however, I begin to wobble as the weight of my pack makes it difficult to balance. It feels like I’m trying to stand on one leg, and my knee and thigh begin to ache. I look around at the infantry; they seem to be having no problem. I sigh and wonder how long it will take the lead soldiers to confirm that there isn’t an IED placed underneath the culvert.

Earlier on the tour, I was sitting in the CP, whiling away the long hours of a radio shift with a copy of Patrick O’Brian’s
Master and Commander
and a cup of coffee when I got a call from one of our observation points (OPs) stating that a “fucking jingle truck” had broken down on the road leading to Sper.

“Are they doing anything suspicious?” I asked.

“I don’t know, it’s a truck broken down by the culvert.”

There wasn’t much I could do. “Okay, observe it and let me know if anything interesting happens.” I hung up the phone. “Hey, Sergeant, there’s a truck broken down on the road,” was all I thought to pass on to the duty officer.

Three hours later, when I was sitting on the picnic table, smoking, drinking water, and trying to get up the nerve to go for a run, I heard a dull explosion in the distance. It was an IED. The “broken-down” truck was covering some Taliban who were digging in an explosive at the culvert. It had blown up a vehicle coming down the road to Sper. Luckily no one was killed. It just so happened that a reporter for
Legion Magazine
was in the vehicle behind it, and a vivid description of the IED strike later appeared in that magazine, the IED that I had missed. I was pulled into the command post and grilled for about a half hour: “What exactly did you hear? Why
didn’t you enter it into the log? People could have been killed. Your job is to pass information, and you didn’t.”

I didn’t know what to say. I blamed myself for that IED for a long time. In the end, I realized, it was a fucking truck broken down on the road. What was I supposed to do? Call out the fighter jets?

As I think about this, an ANA Ford Ranger comes flying down the road doing “mach chicken” (very, very fast). There are three Afghan soldiers in the back, one hanging onto a .50 cal machine gun, and the other two looking bored as they go over the ruts and bumps on the gravel road. They pass right over the culvert that is being searched. I see the soldiers in front of me shrug, stand up, and carry on. We begin our shuffling procession again.

I can’t believe how slowly we are walking, and people begin to close up naturally. This is bad; it is of the utmost importance that we maintain spacing of between five and ten metres when we walk. That way, if one person steps on an IED, it doesn’t take out the person in front or behind him. Also, if we get lit up, a cluster of soldiers provides a convenient target, and it’s a lot harder to sort ourselves out after the rounds begin to fly.

We stop again and I find myself standing right behind the OC, so close that I could almost touch him. Major Lane stands even closer to Chris, who turns around and points at me, “Fuck, Flavelle, watch your fucking spacing.”

I feel like an idiot and resolve to make a more conscious effort as the patrol progresses. The OC does not. Chris later tells me that he wasn’t actually yelling at me, but hinting at Major Lane. His pleas fell on deaf ears, and Chris had to endure the OC’s close presence for most of the patrol.

If I could use only two words to describe Corporal Christopher Nead, they would be
powerful
and
precise.
Chris is short and stocky, with blond hair that spikes everywhere when he lets it grow (he once said, “War is hell—on your hair”). He is occasionally referred to by his friends as a “troll doll.” He bought every addition that one can buy for his personal weapon (a C8 carbine), and when we deployed he had a brand-new ACOG sight (immensely superior to the one we were issued), a rail-mount system to better secure additions like a laser sight or flashlight onto the barrel, and a dual magazine holder. I once held his weapon and was amazed at its weight (C8s are generally much lighter than C7s like the one I carried). Chris works out often and seems to bristle with power. He is a qualified Canadian sniper.

Canadian snipers are among the best in the world. The very word
sniper
carries with it an aura of hardcore. Whereas the Communication Reserve is about as far down the credibility totem pole one can get, snipers are the celebrities of the military community. Everyone looks up to them, talks about them, and to a certain extent wishes they could be one of them. Almost everyone knows that a Canadian sniper, Corporal Rob Furlong, once held the record for longest confirmed kill (2,430 metres, or 1.5 miles). At my unit in Calgary, I would have had about as much chance of interacting with a sniper as I would with Peter Mansbridge or Jarome Iginla. Chris Nead lives up to the reputation of Canadian snipers as being highly disciplined: he even managed to quit smoking while on his sniper course. He is also jolly, slightly vindictive, and an immensely interesting person to know.