The Taliban Don't Wave (5 page)

I left the tent and put on my CF-issued sunglasses to shield my eyes from the terrible glare of the sun. When you left one of the dark buildings and stepped outside, you were temporarily blinded for a few seconds. The CF sunglasses were a great piece of kit, and I took very good care of them. They were ballistic in design, which meant the lenses were fairly soft, so that if you had shrapnel or rocks blow up in your face, the lenses wouldn't shatter outright, but would instead absorb the blast, protecting your eyes.

I left the HQ and wandered off to find the scoff house. It wasn't hard to locate; I checked my watch and then followed the big stream of soldiers heading uphill. As I followed the herd I thought about the major's briefing. It seemed that no matter who you asked about working with the Afghans, every soldier who had ever served with them invariably told only one of two stories.

One story always seemed to have the Afghans acting like a bunch of steroid-infected, rageaholic Rambos who couldn't wait to close with and kill the enemy, preferably with their bare teeth. Like a bunch of dark-side Jedi, their hatred of the Taliban had made them strong and seemingly bulletproof. That was one version of our soldiers' experience with them—the
semi-positive
version.

Sadly, too many times I'd heard the other version of the Afghan National Army experience—that working with the Afghans was akin to trying to teach university-level courses to small children with severe discipline issues who liked to bring knives to school.

Tales of joint patrols having to be cancelled because the Afghans were smoking joints were rife. Extreme cowardice or ineptitude in the face of the enemy, grand theft, mass desertions, and week-long, unscheduled R&R periods were the norm. Gross corruption in their officer corps and tales of nepotism that would make a Roman emperor blush, again, were all too common.

Some coalition soldiers said the ANA didn't want to fight because they were afraid of dying; others said it was because the Taliban ranks were filled to the brim with the ANA's immediate relatives, and it would undoubtedly make for an awkward family get-together if two cousins had just tried to kill each other ten minutes before Aunt Edna brought out the lamb casserole.

I was told it took a very special person to work well within the OMLT. Besides being a good soldier, you had to be brave to a fault, and you also had to be a diplomat and a professional problem solver, all rolled into one. Supposedly, ninety-five per cent of your workday was dedicated to sorting out the ANA's problems.

But the most important personality requirement of them all, and the only one that everyone seemed to agree upon, was that you had to possess a biblical abundance of patience, something akin to that of Job in the Old Testament.

You could never become agitated or even remotely worked up with the Afghans, and you could certainly never shout at them, or do anything to embarrass them in front of their countrymen. But you were never supposed to do these things to Canadian troops either, so I hoped it wouldn't be too difficult. Real or perceived insults, innuendo, off-colour references, jokes in poor taste, the actual laying of hands on an ANA soldier, highlighting someone's foibles, whatever . . . the list of things you could do to guarantee they would try and murder you to avenge their honour was endless.

Some former trainers had inadvertently done things that were perceived to be a gross violation against an Afghan soldier's honour, and the soldier would then, often immediately and on the spot, lock and load his weapon and mow down the OMLT trainer and anyone else who was unfortunate enough to be standing next to him. The ANA soldier would then hop over the wire and immediately join the Taliban.

As a result, the mentoring concept would often break down because trainers didn't feel it was safe to bring up any issues that could cause an Afghan commander or soldier to lose face. I learned very quickly to never single anyone out for either praise or name-and-shame, and I also figured out that I should always word my advice in the form of a suggestion or recommendation, and never as an order, purely so that the ANA wouldn't take offence.

Such was the reality of working with the OMLT. It wasn't bad enough that the Taliban were trying to blow you up and kill you, but you had to be worried about getting knifed in the back on your way to the toilet. As my grandmother would've said, “Well, that's just
swell
!”

I found the chow hall and grabbed a plate of scoff, but only after performing the mandatory hand washing. I entered the large tent and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I found my guys sitting right under one of the a/c units.
Perfect.
I was what the boys affectionately referred to as “a sweaty bastard.” My wife once told me I had a special need: that I required tons of water when most normal people didn't need any, and she was right.

“
Malzheit komradden, guten appetit!
” I said in my best Plattdeutsch as I plopped down on the picnic bench next to Hetsa. “So, find anything out?” I asked no one in particular.

Longview looked up and said, “I couldn't find my alternate; seems Captain Stephens left him back at Sperwhan. What about you, sir? Did you find the major?”

“Yeah, I found him. Good guy, gave a great briefing. Really took the time to get it into my thick skull. I think he was a bit concerned when he looked over and caught me drooling, but I explained it away as jet lag.” I elbowed Hetsa in the ribs. “You know me—
always
drooling.” The boys just shook their heads and kept eating.

“You guys continue to stuff your faces and I'll tell you what he told me, minus his expletives and sexual bigotry.” I got out my FMP so I wouldn't forget to brief them on all the salient points, and proceeded to tell them everything the major had told me. This was the
Rob Semrau Guarantee
hard at work. I didn't hold anything back or whitewash over the scary parts.

I read a book once about the SAS, the British Army's Special Air Service. They're special forces soldiers who are widely acknowledged as being the best in the world. In the book, the soldiers often talked about the “Chinese Parliament.” The idea behind this was that anyone who's about to put his life on the line for a mission was given the chance to have his say, to give input. Disagreements were common and no one took anything that was said personally. Sometimes the most junior guy on the team would come up with a better way of doing things, or suggest an idea the guy in charge hadn't thought of. Disagreements were expected, but when a final decision was made, everyone had to get in line.

In honour of the Chinese Parliament I would brief the men, and then I would always give them a chance to have their say. I did this every time I briefed them, without exception. If no one came up with a better way of doing things or had any suggestions, then we stuck with my plan, as it was.

I finished my playback of the major's briefing and looked around the table. Hetsa was absently staring at his half-finished plate and Fourneau looked visibly sick to his stomach. I'm sure I would've looked that way too if this was
my
first tour, like it was theirs. Someone once said the OMLT wasn't a good place to stick a guy on his first tour; too much stuff was guaranteed to happen and you should have some experience under your belt first. But I always thought the only way to get any experience was for someone to take a chance on you. Sometimes soldiers rose to the occasion, while other times. . . .

Only the warrant met my eyes, when he said, “Well, it looks like we're in the shit now, but it's nothing we can't handle.”

I didn't hesitate, “Absolutely right! This changes nothing,” I said, with steel in my voice. “It's what I've told all of you from the beginning. It's just
us
—the four of us. You watch my back, I watch yours, and we will live or die by each other. I promise you this—look at me!”

I paused and waited until all three were looking me straight in the eyes. “No matter what happens, I won't leave you. If that means you're so badly hurt that I can't push, pull, or drag you to safety, then I will die next to you. They will only get to
you
over
me
, because I won't leave you. I've told you this so many times I feel like a damn broken record. What we're about to do, this job, the OMLT gig, that's a special forces' job. Our spec ops [special operations forces] guys are so overtasked they don't have time to do it, but every other coalition force here has their spec ops guys doing the job we're about to do.”

I elbowed Hetsa in the ribs again and reached over and squeezed Fourneau's nose. “But the job's now landed on our plate, and the only thing really special about us is the fact that we're too stupid to know when to quit. That's our secret weapon! We're too damn dumb to know when to throw in the towel! We're going to find Timothy [a nickname I had given the Taliban] where he lives and breathes. We're going to kick down the front door to his hovel, scream, ‘Booyah!' as we rip him from his piss-soaked bed, and give him the stompin' of his life!”

The boys were smiling.
Mission accomplished.

“Now, finish your borscht and let's go win this frackin' war so we can be home in time for Christmas!”

We wandered around until we found the Batcave, the OMLT HQ at Masum Ghar. I led the boys down the stairs and smashed my head on the low ceiling.
Nothing like a good first impression. . . .

“Welcome to the Batcave,” a voice said from one of the underground offices. A young man walked out wearing an untucked brown shirt, faded Canadian-issued desert pants, and a brown baseball cap with a khaki Canadian flag patch on it, and extended his hand toward us.

“I'm Captain Stephens, the outgoing OMLT commander from Sperwhan; you newbies must be 72 Alpha.” The casual air about him, with his shirt, ball cap, unbloused combat pants, and the big smile across his face, all worked to make a guy feel a lot more relaxed, especially after everything we'd just heard from the major. I knew from my first impression that I was going to like this guy.

Nobody needs some ramrod-stiff officer type shouting at his soldiers because they have a speck of dust on their beret in the middle of the desert. On Parliament Hill in Ottawa, with the ceremonial guards, certainly, but never in a war zone. I always thought you should try and maintain the fine line between being chilled out and still getting the job done properly. If anything, when you're getting shot at, you need to be fairly calm, not wound up so tight you're going to pop. As a leader, I always felt the men needed to look at you and see a very calm example. Easier said than done when you work on a two-way firing range for a living, and like Warrant Longview would've jokingly said about me, especially difficult when you suffer from increasingly debilitating panic attacks.

“Rob Semrau,” I said, shaking his hand, “and this is Warrant Longview, my 2 I/C and the brains behind the operation; Corporal Hetsa, our automated gunner/killer; and Private Fourneau, our wheelman.”

Stephens shook everyone's hand and then passed out some bottled water and cans of iced tea. Fourneau and Hetsa went off to the movie room while the outgoing OMLT captain took the warrant and me up to the top of Masum Ghar, where we had an incredible view of the Panjway valley. Warrant Longview and I bombarded him with questions about the enemy and his SOPs, how to be proactive in a hostile environment, the weather . . . At times our little Q&A session seemed to cover the entire spectrum of counter-insurgency ops.

I joked with Stephens and the Wizard and said, “Our use of TLAs in our TTPs will lead to SOPs IOT keep us from becoming VSA or KIA in a TIC.”
Oh, how the army loves its TLAs.

We went on and on, but thankfully the outgoing OMLT captain was a very patient man who always seemed to have a well-thought-out answer to our questions. He had clearly gained a lot of experience in this war, and undoubtedly he had a good, long career ahead of him in the CF. Finally, after we'd exhausted our long list of questions, I thanked him for the excellent briefing, and we walked back down the hill toward the Batcave.