The Taliban Don't Wave (7 page)

“That's some good active listening, Fourneau. Well done, good catch. Why the hell not? I mean, it would be rude not to, right? Coming all this way and everything, and then walking around as though we were in Algonquin Park, dressed in forest green? Sure, I told you before, we live or die by each other, and that means we get in trouble together—as a team! Remember that time in Germany when you got busted for trying to solicit that male prostitute, and I had to speak Sauerkraut and explain to the Five-O that where you come from that's all well and good, and certainly not a chargeable offence?”

“No,” Fourneau said, without hesitating for a moment. He didn't seem to get that I was joking.

“Well, I remember!” I said, “But that's neither here nor there. It'll look cool as hell! We'll call it ‘combat paint,' and we'll spray-paint everything we've got! Besides, nothing makes a better shit shield than an officer! If someone gives you stick, you just say, ‘Our officer told us to do it!' Now hand me the can!” This looked like a lot of fun. Hetsa handed me the can, and yep, there it was—“khaki brown.” Although I couldn't see anything written on the can about how long it was supposed to last. I took my issued ballistic sunglasses off their spot on my shirt collar and quickly snapped out the protective lenses.

“Sir, I don't know about that . . .” Fourneau started to protest.

“Everything means just that, Fourneau. Ev-er-y-thing! Call sign Seven Two Alpha doesn't do anything by halves. We half-ass nothing! Like Homer Simpson once said, ‘We use our whole ass!' Now go get your sunglasses and take the lenses out so we can spray-paint the frames! We'll be super cool, like the first kids on the block with an Atari 2600!” They both looked at me, either unsure of what an Atari 2600 was, or trying to decide whether I'd just given them an illegal order. They stood their ground, hesitating.

I looked at both of them and said, “Go on, git!”

I laid out my frames on the milk crate and gave them a good spraying down, making sure to get them from every angle. By the time Fourneau and Hetsa came back with theirs, I was already done. Fourneau looked them over and said, “Cool, that really worked!”

I looked at them with pride; my shades had gone from a dark forest green to a
combat cool
light brown. “I know. It looks awesome, eh? You guys crack on, and I'll go and get my kit.”

We spent the next twenty minutes spraying down everything we had with combat paint splotches: our weapons and magazines, our sunglasses; I even covered the sight picture on my scope so I wouldn't get any paint on it, and then sprayed down its green rubber protective cover.
Much better.
I took off my black belt and gave it a couple of swipes of combat paint. By the time the warrant walked into our ad hoc spray-painting and chop shop, we'd gotten everything we owned combat-painted up.
Dy-nooo-mite!

“Oh . . . my . . .
fuck
!” the warrant growled in disbelief. “What have you guys done?!”

“You said you were okay with it, Warrant!” Hetsa quickly protested.

“Yeah, but I also said, ‘Don't rip the ass out of it,' and you guys have sprayed down everything you've got!” The warrant had nudged Fourneau and Hetsa aside so he could see the extent of our handiwork, and more importantly to him, assess the damage.

“Well, not quite everything,” I interjected. “We haven't done the radios—I didn't think that'd be a good idea, and we haven't done our pistols yet.” My smile slowly began to fade.
Crap, maybe we did overdo it. A bit.

“For the love of God,” the warrant shouted. “Don't spray down your pistols! You've done plenty enough!”

“I know, but check it out, Warrant. Seriously, how cool does that look? Check out the shades!” I said as I held them up, trying to impress him with my artistic spray-painting.

“Okay,” he started to smile a bit. “I'll admit, that looks pretty cool . . . but seriously, guys . . .”

“Look, Warrant, we can sit here all day and debate semantics, or you can go grab your kit, and we'll help you give it a good ol' dose of combat paint!” I said, hoping he'd be game.

“Aw . . . fine!” The Wizard slowly walked off to his bunk, shaking his head, probably thinking to himself,
I can't leave the kids alone for a minute!

Someone once said that the army was just like the Boy Scouts . . . except
without
the necessary adult supervision. Sometimes, like that day, the saying rang true. And although it may have seemed childish, moments that could lift up our morale were few and far between, so you had to take them or make them wherever you could. Morale in a war zone wasn't something illusory: it was a tangible, living entity, and you had to take precious care of it.

We finished off with our kit and did a combat re-org, getting everything laid out the way we wanted it. Under our beds, in our tac vests, in our day sacks, everything had to be organized just so. If we got “stood to” at 0100 hours, we had to know where everything was and how it was laid out. When we had finished helping the warrant, we walked over and had supper and relaxed for the rest of the evening, trying to come to grips with the brutal heat and choking dust.

That night, we said good night in the
Waltons
fashion, taking the piss as everyone wished each other a good night, pleasant dreams, and “don't let the bed bugs bite.” I told the guys that if I started screaming in my sleep, they should just ignore me. If I continued screaming for more than a few minutes, they should throw a bucket of water on me. “But whatever you do, don't ever touch me to try and wake me up! For your own safety . . .”

I then suggested we start a new tradition. After we'd said our good nights, I would say, “This is who we are,” and in unison they would say back, “So say we all.” We tried it out and had a laugh, so we decided to make it a 72A tradition from then on. I always said
make war fun
, because I knew how scary this place could be, and how our morale was about to take a massive kicking from the constant grind of patrolling and facing one's own mortality. Because I had three previous tours under my belt, I knew how hard things were going to become, so I made it my personal mission to always try and keep our team's spirits high.

The next morning, before the patrol, I was sorting out my kit on the picnic table outside of our shack when the boys came out to join me. I looked at the guys' trouser pants tucked into their boot bands and feigned shock.

“What the hell, boys?” I asked, pointing at the warrant's trouser bottoms.

“What?” he asked, not sure where I was going with this.

“Don't you know? Boot bands are Canada's secret weapon. You can't patrol outside the wire with boot bands on! What if you're killed, or worse, captured, while still wearing your boot bands? Haven't you guys ever heard of OPSEC?”

Hetsa, always quick to stick it to the Man, said “Are you saying we don't have to wear our boot bands, sir?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying! We don't wear boot bands anymore, not outside the wire, not in Sperwhan proper. We're OMLT,” I said, quoting Stephens. “We dress to kill! Now get 'em off, get 'em off! And if anyone gives you crap, you just tell 'em Captain Samrow said you don't have to play their game anymore!” I didn't have to tell them twice; even the warrant quickly shed his tight boot bands. We had a laugh, and sat back down on the picnic tables, waiting for our cowboy brethren from the PPCLI.

Well, do something productive
, I thought to myself. “Let's do a PRR [personal role radio] check. I'll start,” I said, all excited. It didn't matter what I said: only the four of us could hear me on the PRR. The warrant and I were the only guys on our team with radios that could communicate with the battle group.

“In today's news,” I opened with, “the Human Torch was denied a bank loan.” Whenever possible, we liked to quote from one of our favourite movies,
Anchorman.

Hetsa joined in the fun. “I love Scotch,” he said over his PRR. “Scotchy, Scotch, Scotch!”

Fourneau picked up the ball and ran with it, saying, “I have many leather-bound books, and my apartment smells of rich mahogany!”

Warrant Longview finished off with, “I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal.” We smiled at our cleverness and went back to being bored.

I got up and pointed my rifle toward the hill, the safest direction I could find, and made it ready, then made sure both of my weapons were on safe. As we were supposed to be mentoring the ANA, it wouldn't do for my weapons to accidentally go off. I had put some oil on them, but not too much; you didn't want too much oil that would soak up all the dirt and grime in a desert country.
Tended to jam one's weapon quite nicely.

I then gave them the time off my watch, so we could synchronize our watches. My watch was based off of Stephens's time. We'd done the same thing the night before in the CP (command post), at my request.

The captain and his crew came out, seemingly very disinterested. I suppose it was all the same old bollocks to them, having done this a hundred times during their tour. We all greeted each other, then Stephens called me into his building and closed the door behind us as the others walked off to find the ANA.

“Look Rob, I'm not trying to jinx us and say the shit's about to go down or anything, but if bullets start whanging down range, I'll be in command of us. All of us. I know you're a captain too, but I'm the guy who's been here and . . .”

“Stephens, I read ya loud and clear. If the shit goes down, then I suggest you give all the reports and returns to higher HQ, and you can treat me and my boys like a crack team of Imperial stormtroopers just waiting to get sent off to the flank to start sniping folk! We'll be ‘rifle section number three' and you can order us around. I'm not going to get into a pissing contest over who's in charge during a two-way range. You don't have to worry about me
or
my team . . . you just tell us what to do, and it's as good as done.”

“Sounds good, thanks. I just wanted to make sure we're singing from the same song sheet. I'll call the CP and let them know we're heading out.” I listened as he called it in, giving our estimated departure time, saying he expected there to be forty ANA and eight Canadians on the patrol, and giving our estimated return-to-base timing. The CP acknowledged and told him good luck.

We quickly found our guys in the open area behind the ANA buildings. Unfortunately, our little patrol was missing one important,
mission critical
asset—the Afghan National Army.

I realized Stephens's team and mine weren't on the same PRR channel so I asked which one they were on so 72A could switch over. I thought to myself,
That could've been bad.

We waited ten more minutes until Stephens's 2 I/C said, “Here comes their recce element,” and pointed over my shoulder toward the ANA buildings.

We turned around to see a lone ANA soldier walk slowly, methodically over toward us. He was wearing an old American, forest-green camouflaged uniform and carrying his AK on his shoulder and holding it by the barrel, as the ANA liked to do. He came to a full stop in the middle of the open area and just stood there, looking at the ground, extremely bored. After another five minutes, some more soldiers bumbled into the rendezvous (RV) point, and finally, their CSM arrived and started shouting at everyone to hurry up. Finally, their officer walked over, and Stephens introduced me to him.

“Captain Rob, this is Captain Ibrahim, the ANA First Company commander.”

“
Ah
salaam ah'laikum
,” I said, placing my right hand over my heart while saying
hello
, as I'd been taught by the Canadian Forces' Afghanistan cultural advisor (a scholar, I later learned, who hadn't been back to his home country of Afghanistan in the last twenty-odd years).

“
Wa ah'laikum salaam
,” he said back, touching his right hand to his heart as well. He called over a young, long-haired interpreter named Ali and began talking in rapid-fire Dari, the language of the ANA. Ali wore some old American pattern camo pants, a green American-issued helmet, and a maroon PPCLI T-shirt. He also wore a
shemag
around his neck, a type of Afghan scarf that he would use to hide his identity if he thought the Taliban were trying to sniff him out. Working for the coalition forces as an interpreter was a crime the Taliban considered punishable by death through torture.

“The captain says he is sorry for the late . . .” Ali searched for the proper word, “arrival. They thought the patrol was not starting until six-thirty.”

“Please tell him that's fine. Are they ready to go now?” Stephens asked.

“Yes, he says they are ready now,” Ali told us.

“Okay, Rob, stay with me; Warrant Longview, join Warrant Joe at the front. Mike and Chris, you guys take your opposite numbers. Okay boys, let's get this flying gong show on the road.” He pressed his radio pressel and reported to the CP that our patrol was now leaving Sperwhan Ghar, as we slowly started walking to the west and then down the small slope to the lower level. I realized that once we were on the hill going down to the main gate, we were almost on even ground with the village, and anyone to the west of Sperwhan could see us leaving and then report our patrol's size and composition to Timothy. I asked Stephens about it.