The Taliban Don't Wave (20 page)

Aziz smiled proudly and shrugged.
Just another day at the office
, as far as he was concerned. I asked him if he would mind if I started calling him “Lieutenant Killer” from then on, and he said he would be proud to be called that by me. He went on to say he wasn't sure if he had actually killed any of them, so I cut him off and said, “Trust me, you just killed them all.” I got on the radio and basically said, “Well, that takes care of that.” We marched back to our shacks, completely free from any more incoming enemy fire of any kind. We were elated to still be alive, with no casualties on our side, and happy to know Timothy would have a large burial party detail to take care of before sunset.

As we walked back to our shack I congratulated the warrant, Fourneau, and Hetsa for getting their “gold combat badges,” for engaging the enemy with their personal weapons, just like I had. The warrant smiled, but Hetsa and Fourneau both looked at the ground. I had a sneaking suspicion that Fourneau hadn't fired his weapon, but I didn't realize Hetsa didn't get a shot off either. I asked him why he hadn't fired and he coldly said, “I didn't have any targets. I couldn't see anyone.” I could relate to that. The haze draped over the village had made it tough to see anything. I dropped the matter and brought everyone in for high-fives.

I looked them in the eyes and said, “I'm proud of you fellas. You all kept your heads on a swivel and that's what you gotta do when you find yourself in a vicious cockfight! But seriously, congratulations guys, on our first
proper
firefight. We're all alive, two of us belong to the ‘righteous and sacred order of the gold combat star,' and Timothy had his front teeth kicked in from Aziz's boot-stompin'.”
A good day out.

I asked Ali to monitor the Taliban Icom radio traffic, to see if we could get any int regarding their KIA (killed in action) and wounded, or figure out where they would be taking their injured fighters. Aziz was walking next to me, still proudly bearing his anti-tank cannon on his shoulder, so I asked Ali to question him as to where he thought Timothy would take his wounded.

“Pakistan, obviously,” Aziz responded. “They will flee across the Registan Desert to the south and cross the border into Pakistan. That is what they do.” As we rounded the corner back to our building, several of the ANA were gathered around Lieutenant Mujahedeen, who was obviously telling a funny joke because everyone was laughing it up. I asked Ali to find out what was so funny and report to me later.

I went back inside and started writing my contact report on the computer when, after a few minutes, Ali called me outside. He told me the joke, but I didn't find it funny, not at all. He went on to say that the ANA were spreading it around like wildfire, and soon everyone on the base would know. I thanked him for letting me know, and then I walked across the narrow alleyway and knocked on the OMLT artillery guys' door. Captain Brannon answered, and I asked him if we could talk in private outside.

I took us around the corner and then quietly said, “Brannon, I know you're artillery, and no one expects you to get involved in firefights.”
Although technically speaking, the defence of the base is everyone's responsibility,
I thought to myself. “But what you absolutely cannot do, is get all kitted up, ready for war, and then
not
come out to fight with the rest of us.”

He snapped back angrily, “What're you talking about?”

“Brannon, I don't want to get dragged into a scrap, okay? I'm just trying to help. As an OMLT mentor, you know how the ANA pride themselves on being a warrior culture, and if one of them, namely Lieutenant Mujahadeen, sees you peek your head out your door, sniff the wind, decide the firefight isn't to your liking, and then duck back inside, they're going to mock you for that. So like I said earlier, if you don't want to come out and get your gun off, that's entirely up to you. But don't get kitted up, poke your head out, let them see you mentally debating the pros and cons, and then go back inside. That's a shameful thing to them, so for your sake, don't do it again.”

Brannon swallowed and quietly said, “Fine.”

That was all I had to say, so we walked back to our respective buildings in silence, and I made a few mental notes.

Ali told me later that night the Taliban had been talking on their Icom radios after the firefight. They reported they were firing on the infidels and doing just fine, and even had
us
on the run, until someone fired a cannon shell at them killing three men outright and wounding several others. The Taliban were still fighting the good fight, but the infidels fired another cannon shell, and this time it killed four guys, including the local Taliban area commander, and wounded several more. After that, they'd had enough, cut their losses, and fled to parts unknown (a.k.a. Pakistan).

The ANA, as expected, took the next day off for admin issues, so just for fun, I went down to the interpreters' building and taught them how to play the kid's card game Uno. The OMLT weren't the only soldiers with their own interpreters. The battle group had around five or six working just for them. I took an Uno deck with me wherever I went in the world, and the interpreters loved it because it helped them practise their English. They were good guys, and happy to be working with Canadians, but they all lived under a terrible shadow of death, and worse, hideous torture, if the Taliban ever discovered they worked for the infidels. But they came to work every single day, always smiling and cheerful. Of course the pay was very good and they couldn't make that kind of money working anywhere else, but there was more to it than
just
money.

Every single interpreter that I met believed with all of his heart that we were there to help, and they all wanted to help us in any way possible as we tried to improve their country's security. Sadly, it often seemed to me that the terps believed in us more than we believed in ourselves.

Chapter 11

One morning in mid-September, 72A and about fifty ANA under the always “stellar” leadership of Lieutenant Aziz were summoned from on high to join a British battle group made up of Royal Marines for a week-long op—Operation Array—in Salavat, a large town southwest of Kandahar city.

Naturally, hilarity ensued.

We drove into Masum Ghar that afternoon with no electronic countermeasures package on our RG because it had never worked and we couldn't find the time to get it into KAF for repairs. It was meant to stop the IEDs from exploding, but since we didn't have one, we'd just have to rely on the Wizard's magical protection spells!

Once there, we were quickly briefed on the plan and then, later on, watched
Braveheart.
That night, 72A had to sleep under a parachute jerry-rigged between some buildings, since there was no room at the inn. We talked for a bit and then dozed off, but I was awakened by the sound of a cat getting torn apart and then dragged off by a mongoose, right under the table I was sleeping on.

The next morning we joined a huge convoy of armoured vehicles and watched as our engineers' bulldozers smashed through about three klicks worth of farmers' walls and fields in order to get us to the LD (line of departure). “Hearts and minds, boys,” I said as I waved to the angry farmers who were cursing us. “Hearts and minds.”

Our column split in two, with me and the lads heading north to join the Royal Marines, while Captain Rich and his merry band of Afghans broke off to the south with November Company as part of the Canadian battle group going to a town called Nakahonay. I mentally wished Rich good luck and sent him and 72C, a.k.a. call sign “Dead Man's Bread,” some good vibes.

We formed a vehicle leaguer (from the Afrikaans word
laager
for “camp”) and circled our wagons, then one of the Royal Marines cleared his vehicle-mounted .50-calibre heavy machine gun and had a Neil Diamond right next to a fellow soldier's head, making him deaf in one ear. I walked over and checked on him, and gave him the only thing I had to ease his pain: some Aspirin. I thought to myself,
You know what they say about Royal Marines—they're not Paras! Poor deaf bastard.

That evening as we prepped for the next day's patrol into Salavat, we heard a massive KERTHUMP in the dirt behind us, not really sure what had just happened. We shrugged our shoulders, said good night like the Waltons family and then hunkered down for some sleep, or like we used to call it in the Paras, “gonk.” I had created a fashionable hobo blanket out of a long cardboard box that I used to keep myself off the dirt. There was no room in the RG, so we slept next to it, under the stars, and wondered if Timothy was stalking us as we tried to sleep.

The next morning we discovered what had made the
kerthump
sound. I saw a howitzer carrier shell from an illumination round stuck nose-end in the dirt. It had just missed our vehicle.
Huh. Fancy that.

Seven Two Alpha and our ANA joined up with a platoon of Royal Marines and patrolled into Salavat. Our mission was to clear the town of Taliban forces, but it was eerily deserted, which gave the Royal Marines captain a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. Lieutenant Aziz invited himself into a compound where he was confronted by some angry FAMs. They told him there were no Taliban in Salavat. Aziz told me he believed them. When I asked him why (every single piece of int on the subject pointed to a contrary hypothesis), Aziz said, “Because they are good Muslims, so they would not lie to me about that.”
Really? Seriously? Wow.

As we walked out of the village (because according to the good Muslims, all the Taliban had left), Ali ran up to me and told me the Taliban were talking about us over their Icom radios.

“Really?” I asked, all intrigued. “What are they saying?”

“Well, sir, it is actually very funny. One Taliban asked the other Taliban if we were still in the village, and the other Taliban said, ‘No, they have left.' Then the first Taliban said, ‘Ho, ho, ho, they are so gay!' and the other Taliban said, ‘Yes, they are so very gay!' The Taliban have called you ‘gay,' sir,” Ali finished, and began to laugh.

Well, now it's official: the Taliban have called me gay.
I looked at Ali and said, “If they mean ‘gay' like in the Old English definition: as in carefree, fun, full of joy; then yes, Ali, I'm very ‘gay!' ” Although I didn't quite think that's how Timothy had meant it.

On our way out of the village, some Brit snipers hiding up on Salavat Mountain saw two FAMs running with weapons take cover in a compound near us. The snipers guided us in as Aziz led us into the suspect compound, where his men performed their usual half-assed search, and as per, came up with nothing. The Brits weren't satisfied, so they started shooting the locks off of the civilians' locked boxes or “tickle trunks” with their 9mm Sig Sauer pistols. They'd obviously watched too many movies, because trying to shoot off a big lock with a 9mm round just doesn't work. Ricochets began to whang around the compound with every shot.

BANG! WOOOO! BANG! WEEE!

Aziz, never a big fan of the Brits, flew into a rage and demanded the Brits stop this shameful thing. He had asked the homeowners if the Taliban were there and they had said no, so why were the Brits trying to shoot off locks? To Aziz, it just didn't compute. I had to think quickly,
Who do I piss off—the Brits or the ANA?
It was a Brit op, but I had to continue to patrol and work with the ANA.

I had a moment of clarity and came up with a solid idea. I asked the Brit captain if he knew the old good cop/bad cop routine, and when he said he did, I told him to whisper to his men over their PRRs to hurry up. Then I really tore into the Marine captain with every combination of the F-word I could possibly imagine. Hell, I even made up a few for good measure. I knew it was the only swear word the ANA understood, and after thirty seconds, Aziz was so embarrassed over the loss of face the Brit captain was suffering from my frothing mouth, that he quickly collected his ANA and left the compound. The Canadians and Brits in earshot had to turn their backs to my swear-fest because they were afraid of bursting out laughing.

The Brits finished their search, found nothing of interest, and packed up to leave. I concluded with a “Fuck, fuck, fuckety-fuck!” and stormed out of the compound in a fake rage. I was instantly swarmed like a hockey player whose goal had just won the Stanley Cup. The ANA were all around me, shaking my hand and slapping me on the back, for courageously standing up to the imperial Brits, with their posh once-upon-a-time-we-ruled-the-world attitude, and putting them back in their place. Even the normally stern Aziz marched over to me and said, “Thank you, Captain Rob, thank you,” and vigorously shook my hand.

Later on I got the Marine captain to come over and “apologize” to Lieutenant Aziz, which he graciously did, placating the ANA. The captain was a good sport. A lot of guys would've told me to go to hell, but he was game and I appreciated that.

That night in the leaguer I approached the friendly Canadian captain who had been assigned as an LO ( liaison officer) between the Canadians in the south and the British with us. He hadn't been able to get me a Brit radio, and I couldn't communicate with the Brits during the entire operation because their radios were encrypted differently and they weren't allowed to give me one. Top secret, don't you know,
what what!
Nor had he sent up my patrol report to my major in the south. I politely asked him a few more questions, and then I got a sinking feeling. After pondering some of the other things the LO
hadn't
done, I said, “Look, I don't want to seem like a prick, but do you even
know
what an LO is supposed to do on an op like this? Do you know what your job is?”

He quietly replied, “No . . . can you please tell me?” So I spent the next ten minutes explaining what an LO was supposed to do on an operation with different coalition forces working together. It was hard to be upset with a guy who was so honest.

The next morning the Brits didn't want to come out to play guns, so as we marched past them, I raised my right shirt sleeve so they could see the glorious 2 Para cap badge tattooed on my shoulder. I shouted loud enough to wake the dead, “That's right you crap hats! You stand down while 2 Para does the biz!”

“Fuckin' 'ell,” they shouted back, “we've come 'alfway round the world, only to get slagged off by a feckin' Para!” They hooted and hollered at us as I continued to proudly show off my tattoo of the “cap badge that meant something,” unlike their crap-hat badge!

We'd only been patrolling for a few minutes when we saw two FAMs observing us, not far from the leaguer. The ANA banged off some warning shots and we gave chase as they fled back toward a large compound. Somehow the suspected Taliban youths managed to escape, but inside the large mud hut we found several sleeping bags, some rice, a few grenades with some PKM ammo (for a Russian light machine gun), and a teakettle still boiling. We'd just missed capturing Timothy with his knickers down. The Canadian LO radioed me to let me know the Brits were coming to join us after all.
How kind.

The ANA immediately began pillaging anything of worth (they had to recoup their losses from the Great Afghan Kitchen Fire of Oh-eight), and before their major could order them not to, the Marines lobbed in some thermite (sort of like white phosphorous) grenades that burned at a thousand degrees and set the sleeping bags on fire.
Good old Willy Pete!

That got the ANA's blood up and they went to check out another suspicious two-storey building to the south. Warrant Longview went inside and found a victim-operated IED that Aziz, after scrutinizing it, said was “saw blades, used to cut wood.”
Hmm, yes. They're saw blades all right, and once someone or something steps on them and the two steel blades touch each other, they complete the necessary electrical circuit to make the attached explosives go “boom.” But well done, Aziz. Good effort.

Lieutenant Aziz. Good kid, tries hard. Bottom third of his class.

The ANA rounded up a half-dozen sleeping bags, a couple of hundred rounds of rusty PKM ammunition, some Chinese grenades, a copy of the Quran (which the occidentals were very careful
not
to touch), a couple of bags of tea, a large bag of rice, a small bag of marijuana, and about twenty pounds' worth of plates, knives, spoons, forks, cups, and a brand-new pressure cooker, all pillaged to replace the kit they'd lost in their kitchen fire. The ANA began backing up their Ranger trucks to load their booty.

Ali walked over to me and quietly asked, “Sir, what should they do with the things they are not stealing?”

“That's not called
stealing
, Ali,” I quipped. “In war, that's called
liberating
!”
Or is it pillaging?
I then asked him, “Isn't it obvious? Burn it. Anything the ANA aren't taking, they're going to burn, to deny its use to the enemy.” He cringed and quietly asked about the yellow water jugs. Surely they couldn't be used to hurt anyone?

I cut him off with, “We're leaving them with nothing they can use! Burn their sleeping bags, burn their sandals and water jugs,
burn everything
!” The ANA were way ahead of me. They had already made a large pile of the leftover belongings and were pouring cooking oil over it. Then, one of the soldiers ran up to the pile and lit it with a cigarette lighter. The pile of Taliban gear quickly went up in flames, and it felt good to watch Timothy's possessions burn.

He would IED our soldiers from over a klick away, and no one would even see him do it. He would shoot at us and try to kill us, and then as we were closing in on him, he would drop his rifle, pick up a shovel, and suddenly he became a farmer, and there was nothing we could do about it. He would line up innocent civilians against a wall and gun them down. He would hold kangaroo court sessions, but with deadly consequences, where he would prosecute and convict people for listening to radios or flying kites, and then bury them in the sand until only their heads were showing, and then force their neighbours to throw stones at their faces until they were dead.

If Timothy came back to his hut and found his sleeping bags, tea, food, water jugs, and spare sandals in perfect condition, right where he'd left them, then he'd get a good night's sleep and just go back to trying to kill us the next day.

This way, when he came back to his safe house, he'd find his food gone, his ammo and IED components confiscated, and his sleeping bags, water jugs, and sandals all torched. Now he'd be cold, hungry, thirsty, tired, and without any ammunition, and most importantly, he'd be scared. He'd be scared because we knew where he lived. Now he'd be in no condition to conduct operations. Now he'd have to go far away to get resupplied again, and he couldn't kill us, because he'd be too busy trying to find food, water, ammo, and a new safe house. It only made sense that the ANA would burn his things. If the ANA had asked me, I would've happily torched the pile with my own Zippo lighter.

We collected up the gear from the safe house and made our way back to our leaguer. That night, 72A ate Taliban rice for the first time, and since it had been only recently pillaged, it was still amazingly fresh. The ANA macerated it in their own blend of liquid herbs and flavours, and then boiled it to perfection and added raisins at the end for effect. It was incredibly aromatic and delicious. They offered some to the Brits, who devoured it. I told everyone since it was Taliban rice, the reason it was so delicious was because of their secret ingredient—hatred.