The Patrol (26 page)

I grab my ranger blanket, which is still wrapped around the foamie on the outside of my pack, and crawl up into my bunk. I listen to the other 15 guys in my room go through similar motions. My pack sits on the ground, wet with sweat and covered in dirt. Someone turns out the light, and it becomes darker than it was sleeping out under the stars in Mushan. There is absolutely no light in the room and I close my eyes. The bed and pillow are comfortable, my ranger blanket smells of sweat, and I smell of soap. It is 0530 and I sleep for the next 12 hours straight.

The patrol that had begun seven days earlier was over, but my tour wasn’t. I spent the next three months in-country. There would be more patrols. The majority were mounted in LAVs; we would roll into an area and either perform a resupply mission or conduct a fighting patrol into a hostile village. On one such resupply mission, I saw my first Taliban die. I was hanging out of the rear air sentry hatch, watching as earth movers tore down the HESCO Bastions in Talukan, when the children that were around our LAV ran away. The next hint that I got that something was wrong were the machine gun rounds pinging off the armour beside me. The 25mm cannon on our LAV fired just as I figured out where the rounds were coming from; it felt like I was getting punched in the head. I watched the Taliban fire a machine gun, then I watched the cloud of dust that used to be him billow outwards. Around me the roar of battle swirled, the sharp bangs of machine gun and automatic rifle fire mingling with the bass thump of mortars being fired.

There was only one other major dismounted patrol that I was part of, called Operation Timis Preem (“lawnmower” in Pashtu, which recalled Optimus Prime, the Transformer). We broke into an Afghan compound north of the river and set up an observation post for a few days while a battle raged around us, just out of our area of responsibility. Allan and I sat on the mud roof of this compound, smoking cigarettes, looking for the enemy. We left our poo bags inside the blown-up door of the compound, and laughed at the neat row.

I drank more coffee and pushed more buttons in the CP. I set up new antennas and new lines, ate ice cream, conducted thousands more radio checks, and counted down the days until I could go home. I handed over to Mike Company, Royal Canadian Regiment’s signaller, and endured the final LAV ride between Sper and KAF, dipping and smoking at the same time. There were more games of poker, more cigarettes, more laughs, and more deaths. The world continued to turn.

The story of my tour does not end with this patrol, but something fundamental inside me changed during it. This patrol was my baptism by fire. There was something about the heat beating down on me that day in Mushan, or the leg that would never end in the dark Afghan night, that changed my perception of myself. I no longer wanted to be in Afghanistan, but I had no choice but to be there. Patrols that had once been exciting adventures and opportunities to prove myself became a dangerous game. Many of my friends in the infantry said that they’d rolled the dice enough times. A lot of them wanted to get out after our tour, but most are still in—the army, Afghanistan, and warfare are what they know and what they excel at. I never truly excelled at war, and I never loved it. I think that this patrol was the moment when I had rolled the dice enough times, when I’d taken enough chances.

Growing up in an asphalt big-box-store society, where easy
credit, easy intoxication, and easy pleasure abound, it felt good to do something truly hard. Our society constantly tries to exert a protective hand toward its population: cigarette smoking is discouraged as it causes cancer, highways are barricaded to prevent rollovers, signs point out the safest ways to travel and inform us when a poor decision is made. Every product has been vetted by experts to ensure that it will not harm us. Milk is pasteurized, sharp edges are taken off toys, Tim Hortons coffee is marked “Hot! Be Careful,” and for our French friends, “
Chaud! Attention
.” Everywhere the message is the same: follow the rules and you will live a long, happy life; don’t follow them and we will inform you of your mistake. We live in a society that has been baby-proofed for adults, and we have come to think that absolute security is our birthright.

Afghanistan is different. There is no way to know which choice will end in safety. There is nothing to prevent you from walking down the wrong road; in fact, you may be ordered to do so. There, you have to make real decisions. There, all you have is your group. Everything that we do in Afghanistan is important, if not for the country or the world as a whole, then at least for us as a group of soldiers. There is no more training, no guiding hand, and there are no more second chances. On the patrol, for the first time in my life, everything was real.

The result is that I’m one of very few people who can say that I chose to risk my life for something that I believe in. Although the act of risking my life was far from comfortable and led to some very serious second thoughts at the time, I still did it, and it was very real. Now when I sip on Starbucks or read
Hustler,
I can say that, for a few brief months, I truly lived.

I AM NOT SURE she has any idea what she is getting herself into. I am sitting on the tarmac of Edmonton International Airport on board a military commuter plane filled with my chalk of soldiers who are returning home. The customs agent is young and attractive. I don’t think she understands the depths that our depravity has reached. Her black hair is held up with pins, showing off her long, thin neck. Her uniform blue shirt reminds us of the uniforms that we wear, and her stab vest reminds us of our body armour. She is identified only by her badge number, which is printed on a tag sewn onto her vest.

“Hey, I already got your number,” someone shouts, and everyone laughs. I think that she can feel her authority falling away.

“Hey, beautiful, you feel like supporting your troops?” someone else yells. Some of the soldiers ignore her, and continue to crane their heads out the window or fiddle with their kit before getting off the plane; others use their eyes to undress her as she tries to explain that she just needs our customs cards. She holds them high above
her head and points, emphasizing the simplicity of her request. We are tired of filling out forms and being told where to put our paperwork. Instead of listening to her, we go through the familiar routine of fantasizing about our sexual exploits, trying to imagine situations where an encounter might be possible.

“Maybe if she’s at the bar after we get off the plane, I could buy her a drink and—” This is the Canadian military; there won’t be a bar.

The catcalls continue as she walks up and down the aisles grabbing our cards, and every combat soldier’s head turns. We have long since given up the stigma against staring at women; going so long in between sightings of these elusive creatures, we believe it is our right to ogle.

“I would sip from a bowl of her shit,” a friend of mine says. Although she ignores the comment, I think that it is loud enough for her to hear. I don’t laugh; I just stare. What could she possibly think of us? We’ve stopped caring about the answer to that question. The customs agent tries to keep some semblance of dignity as she walks off the plane, but she moves too quickly to fool us. Whistles, cheers, and laughter follow her. I still have my customs card in my hand. We have arrived back in Canada.

Between Scotland and Edmonton we watched in-flight movies including Will Smith’s
Hancock
; we had already watched a pirated copy purchased at KAF. Generals had recorded messages to run between the in-flight films, telling us what an amazing job we had done, and how proud our nation was of us. They were obviously reading cue cards and were not particularly adept at it. Most of us didn’t even take off our iPods. The high point of the journey was when two CF-18 fighter jets took up positions, one on each wing, while their pilots waved at us. I had never seen a fighter jet from the air.

When we finally get off the plane and look out onto the tarmac of
Edmonton International Airport, we see a long line of senior officers and NCMs waiting to greet us. The line stretches from the terminal all the way to the ramp that leads down from the plane. Most wear green CADPAT. Their epaulettes are covered in bars, maple leafs, or the surprisingly garish Canadian coat of arms for the most senior non-commissioned officers. The line is filled with men in uniform who seem past their prime, men who probably still reminisce about the “good old days” of the Airborne Regiment, the old army. Their uniforms are clean and pressed. My uniform is still permeated with Afghan dust, and my pack reeks of sweat. I have waited so long for this day, and amazingly only one emotion is stirred up in me by the sight of Canada, my beloved home: I am consumed with hatred.

I finally make it to the terminal after shaking so many hands that I have images of the after-game routine in children’s soccer. I stand incredulous as I watch a line of volunteers giving out Tim Hortons coffee and donuts, asking each person if there is anything they need. When I get to the front of the line, a kind, middle-aged woman asks where I’m from. “Calgary,” I reply.

“Oh, that’s so close, is someone picking you up?”

“No, I don’t think so. I have to go back to Shilo before I can go home.”

“Well, do you need to borrow my cell phone?”

“No, I should be okay.”

“If you want, I can give you a ride to Calgary right now. We can just leave and you can be back with your family in four hours.”

“No, thank you.” Although my mind briefly flirts with the idea of going AWOL (absent without leave), I am a bit too institutionalized for that. I am also confused. Why is she being so nice to me? It feels like a trap, as if, were I to say yes, she would take me to her car and hit me over the head with a sock full of pennies. After seven months in Afghanistan I am no longer willing to trust a 40-some-year-old volunteer handing out free coffee.

I sit in the terminal building while those around me hug their families. I watch
Two and a Half Men,
and stew in my own rage, while trying to figure out why I am so angry and how Charlie Sheen keeps getting work. Later, after another plane ride, and another emotional scene in Shilo, I write this entry in my journal.

I am part of a new generation of soldiers, whose formative experiences in uniform were shaped by the explosions of IEDs, the crack of bullets, and the sight of our friends dying. We are the future of the Canadian Forces, and of Canada: we can never allow the things that we know to be forgotten. We must pass on what we have seen to all Canadians, so that they know what we are doing in their name.

In the end, a flag is just a symbol, but it is one that we all wear with pride. It is the only national symbol that escapes the reductive pragmatism of the weary-eyed infantry. I saw it fly proudly above Zangabad, when we should have torn it down as a possible enemy aiming marker. Our efforts have put our mark on Canada’s flag. We need others to understand this. “We stand on guard for thee” is something few can claim to have done. But, after looking out over the moondust of Zangabad, waiting to be attacked while the Maple Leaf billowed proudly above us, I can say that we truly did. In the end, I don’t know if the Maple Leaf stands more for us than we do for it. Maybe one can truly know Canada only in a far-flung observation post, unwashed, unshaven, and dirty. I am sure that this was where I learned to know myself.

It is almost a year to the day after this patrol began, and I am standing in uniform at the Calgary Stampede.
This is going to be one Gucci go
, I think as I arrive.
Watching the women walk by for a few hours, free food, free admission, and an excuse to be at the Stampede every day
. So I sit at a table in front of a communications truck and answer stupid questions for eight hours a day.

I watch Canadian society walk past me, as I sit representing the Canadian Forces. For the most part, I see fat people eating fatty foods, ignorant people proud of their ignorance, and loose, drunk women looking to have their self-esteem stroked by a man in uniform. In a gesture of goodwill, someone gives us his tickets to the chuck wagon races, and I feel like I could hug him.

I am walking out of the Stampede grounds, back to my car, and trying to look like a soldier as people turn and stare. I pass a sign that proclaims “Calgary, the friendliest place on earth.” I wait at a crosswalk and watch a V12 pickup truck speed through a red light. I then watch a man in a suit run out into the middle of the street to give that pickup both middle fingers and scream, “You fucking asshole!” I wonder if it has all been worth it. I wonder if I can ever truly fit in again.

As time has passed, most of my memories have lost their sting. The sharp edge of experience has been blunted by more experience. I think about going back for one more game of poker, one last cigarette, or one last conversation under the starry Afghan sky. A few days after I got home I told Darcy that if I ever said I wanted to go back, she should punch me in the head repeatedly until I changed
my mind. Now as I approach completion of my graduate degree, I think seriously about it. The exhaustion, despair, and danger that were the reality of this patrol have been replaced by memories of the good times. I get e-mails that say that they need qualified signallers for the last rotation, and I fantasize about just one more day, just one more roll of the dice. But there is no such thing as just one more.

The decision not to go back makes me feel I’ve lost my manhood; it makes me feel like a coward. I didn’t know what those words meant until I went; I only learned what it meant to be a man in Afghanistan. I wrote in my journal on the day that I arrived back in Canada that “I think valour and honour will come, but we were too tired, sweaty, and pissed off to realize it at the time.” That sounds like a fairly accurate assessment. As time passes, anger is slowly replaced by pride. The growing hatred I felt for the Afghan people after seven months in their country has waned, and I read books like
The Kite Runner
and
The Places in Between
and think about Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, which meant little to me when I was on the ground.

I sit in graduate classes where we argue about the nature of security studies and the role of constructivism in shaping international geopolitics. I read Clausewitz, Buzan, Sun Tzu and more academic papers than I could shake a reasonably sized stick at. In my spare moments, I wonder what my friends are doing. When I look around a room filled with eager young scholars debating some obscure academic point, I’m cognizant that they no longer understand me, that I know things my intellectually self-aware peers do not.

I am in Kingston, Ontario. It is almost two years to the day since the patrol ended. Kingston is where signallers do trades training, and learn how much fun it is to party with a group of guys they’ve
never met. The base is separated from the downtown hub by about a kilometre. In between the two is the Cataraqui River, over which is the bridge that I am standing on, naked.

You have to cross this bridge to get from the bars to the base. Every year a group of guys, and ideally a girl or two, take off all their clothes, walk out onto the bridge, and jump into the river. They then surface, put their clothes back on, and try to get out of there before the cops show up.

I am drunk, and decide that it is a good idea to “jump the bridge.” I take off everything but my socks (I don’t want to cut my feet on the rocks), shimmy out into the middle of the bridge as cars pass over it, and look down. All I see is a black maw. I can’t tell where the water starts; it looks like the drop goes on forever. I glance at the people on either side of me, similarly naked and drunk, then look down and realize I can’t do it. I don’t have the courage. I stand, paralyzed, for a few seconds and then tell myself,
You are not going to jump into the river; you are simply going to step off this ledge
. This sounds plausible, so I will my feet to move forward as if I were simply stepping off a stair. Instantly, I feel the whoosh of air pass my ears and am engulfed in the black water of the Cataraqui, exhilarated as I have almost never been. I swim to shore, cut up my hands on the rocks, see the cops coming, and put on my pants as quickly as possible. (I figure if I am going to go to jail, I should probably have pants on.) An attractive female police officer chastises us—as instructors, we should have known better, she scolds. We walk, tails between our legs, dripping river water and blood, back toward the base.

The feeling of paralyzing fear and the blackness that I saw as I stood, naked and frozen, on the bridge brings back unexpected memories. I remember squatting behind a mud wall in Mushan, heart pounding in my chest while RPGs flew over my head, too terrified to stand up. I remember the complete blackness that separated the two sides of the wadi that I fell into, smashing my face against the ground,
and giving myself a bloody nose. But most of all, I remember how to conquer my fear—trick myself into thinking that I am doing something mundane, simple even, then allowing my muscles to carry me through the motion. I think that jumping into the river, drunk and with a group of friends, was the best therapy I could possibly have had—even if it took a little while to sink in.