Brass & Unity, page 10
“Welcome to Alpha Company,” Sergeant Major says as he leads me aside. “You’ll be working with our platoon. Stay low and move fast, listen to the NCOs (noncommissioned officers) and platoon sergeants, and all should be fine. Charles!” He motions to a short, stocky guy.
I strain to understand what’s being said to me in a thick Scottish accent. I’ve never worked with a unit from a country besides Canada and the U.S., and I could clearly understand most of them, but wow. The British are a whole new ball game.
“Aye. What ye taking me away from Scoff for?”
“Burns, your female searcher.” Sergeant Major steps back and sizes me up. “Don’t know what you know, but we are the aviation assault group. Fly in, fuck shit up, fly out. Do not slow us down and don’t hesitate to fire. This is Sergeant Charles. You’ll be working with him.”
Charles looks at me with the kindest eyes. “And always have a battle buddy.” He points to the far end of the room. “That tall Fijian is Rav, and the red-haired bloke is Vince. They’re the only non-Scottish in the group. Mick next to him is as new as you are. Been with us less than a month. That skinny guy on the other side of him is Max.”
“And Johnny!” He calls out to a tall, muscular man across the room and motions him over.
“This is Section Commander Johnny. They’re not all built like him. Johnny could bench press a car.”
Johnny shifts his weight and pulls his shoulders back proudly. When he opens his mouth, it’s also to speak in a Scottish accent. “We’ll have a kit check before the next op, so make sure your kit is squared. Make sure you have ten liters of water in your daysack and some warm kit, as the Afghani nights are freezing.”
I love listening to these guys talk, but I really have to work to figure out what they’re saying.
Johnny stands stiffly till Sergeant Major ribs him. “These guys have been here for a few months, so please do realize they are probably mega horny.”
“Oh, you’re a right scunner,” Johnnys deep-set eyes twinkle.
Sergeant Major laughs and points to a guy with a cigar hanging out the side of his mouth. “That’s Watson. He has no game, so you’re safe, but stay away from these other guys.” He winks.
“Ya plum.” Johnny shakes his head.
Sergeant Major slaps Johnny on the shoulder. “They’re all good blokes. They’ve got your back.”
Johnny sucks on his cigarette, and his wide chest fires out smoke in deliberate bursts. “They don’t have many women and children sticking around where we’re headed, so you won’t be needed much.”
I’m not sure how to feel about that, but we are told to meet outside the tents at 0100 to load on a bus that will deliver us to the landing zone with the Chinook. From there, we will fly to the Panjwai district, one of the most dangerous parts of southern Afghanistan.
Before we board that Chinook, we stand at attention for a ramp ceremony. The sound of bagpipes gives me chills as a casket draped with a Canadian flag is pushed onto the tarmac. Another soldier is being sent home in a box as I prepare to fly deeper into the conflict that claimed his life.
Buckle Up
Things are about to get interesting for you, Burns.
You may want to take a moment.
Your life will never be as good as it is right now.
But, of course, you can’t know that.
Not yet.
So, good luck!
PS: You really should call your parents one last time.
Don’t forget, even if you make it home in one piece, that doesn’t mean you’ll be okay.
ELEVEN
The Op
We’re locked and loaded in a packed Chinook. Sitting on the floor is my only option, and my body vibrates the entire time. We’ve been flying in the pitch black, and I have no idea where we are, but we’ve been in the air for hours, so we have to be close. We’re given the two-minute warning by Sergeant Charles, his Scottish accent slowly becoming easier for me to understand. “Make ready, two mins.”
My heart starts racing at the thought of action on the landing zone. This is something I haven’t experienced yet on my tour. Watson sits across from me and pulls his helmet over his tumble of dark hair, giving me a thumbs up. I force a nervous smile.
It’s a rough landing, and everyone rushes out of the chopper except me. I can’t feel my legs. I feel someone grab the back of my vest and lift me up and kick me forward.
Johnny strong-arm pushes me. “Stay near the bomb dog bloke.” I follow them.
I look all around for Benji, a black Lab bomb dog in the pitch black darkness. Perfect.
We run into the open field, our breathing and boots crunching in unison. My foot catches in a deep hole, tripping me. Shit! I catch my balance and keep running on the uneven terrain. How much mortar has this area seen? There’s so much adrenaline running through me, I haven’t even thought about the fact that the ground below my feet is likely littered with IEDs.
We’ve been told to watch where we step and never to kick anything around on the ground, but in the dark, we can’t see much. Even with NVGs, this landscape is hard to navigate. We push forward as the Chinook lifts off, its engines fading to a whisper.
Just like that, the plane is gone and the reality that I am “outside the wire”—outside the safe zone where the enemy is—kicks in. The enemy could be anywhere.
I check my watch: 0200. “What’s the plan then, Sergeant?” I recognize the voice coming from Vince, our sharpshooter.
Sergeant Charles answers quietly, “We’ll wait here for the first morning call to prayer before we move positions.”
It’s oddly cold here at night, a relief from the heat of the day. “It’s black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat!” Max whispers to Mick.
“Dinnae be daft.” Watson spits his tobacco into the air.
In the dark, there’s continued hushed conversation for hours as I try to match names with faces. Vince is the easy one, since he has a South African accent, and Rav speaks with an intonation that sounds like music. Everyone else is Scottish, as far as I can tell.
I try to pet Benji, because he reminds me so much of Houch, but the handler stops me. “Gony, no! He works for reward, so I’m afraid you can’t be pettin’ him.”
“Sorry.” I frown and sit next to the dog, imagining I’m cuddling Houch in the comfort of my parents’ house.
The murmurs settle down once the cows start to moo and animals begin stirring. I know our time to go is around the corner, and I tense up. Everything I’ve trained for is waiting for me now, and Sergeant Major’s words stick in my mind: Do not slow us down.
“Prepare to move when the prayer is over,” Charles says, and just then, huge speakers in the middle of nowhere blast the call to prayer for everyone in the village to hear. The very devout people in Afghanistan get up at what I consider a ridiculous hour in the morning to pray.
Once the prayer is over, that’s our chance to surprise the enemy as we set out on Op Herrick, the name assigned to this mission.
For the past two months, I’ve heard the call to prayer multiple times a day over the loudspeaker, but this time it sounds much clearer. We must be closer to its origin.
I know we are searching for someone, but I have not been told who. I am here for a few reasons, but that reason is very much above my pay grade.
While we crouch in the grass until we can move positions, Max fills me in on previous ops. “Most of the families who have zero involvement with the Taliban leave the village when they hear fighting.” He raises his lean arms into the air. “But we’re bringing you along because on one of our last ops, the women stayed. The enemy began hiding phones, money, and essential materials under their burkas. Due to religious laws, the male soldiers couldn’t do anything about it.”
I know he’s trying to make me comfortable, but it actually makes me more nervous because I have a major role to play. When he moves away to grab a cigarette, I just look at the adobe structures against the dark horizon, but then Patty starts talking.
“The structures are pure dead brilliant.” He raises his thin eyebrows. “A mix of mud and straw and sticks, but so strong that a bullet from an Apache helicopter, which can go through steel, concrete, or any metal, won’t penetrate it.”
All around, the guys are chain-smoking and whispering, and I’m glad to release my tension when 0500 arrives and we begin pushing toward a small village not far from where we landed.
We all get into position and kick open the first door. This compound is basically sand shaped into walls. There is no furniture. There are no windows. There isn’t much inside but some carpets and mats for sleeping.
I swallow hard, stand back with my weapon loaded, and observe. When Johnny kicks open the next door, screams, waving arms, and dark clothes flash before us as people flee the main room. Johnny and Rav stand square, guns drawn. Nobody’s getting past them.
Unflinching, I block the path of the women and wave them into a separate room with my gun. Charles detains a few of the children, who scamper off, and forces them to my area. One mother glances behind herself at the children, and I see the panic in her eyes. I yell to the terp, “Tell the women and kids not to move and that I’ll be in there soon.”
The terp bawls at me and grabs me by the vest. I push him hard to the floor. “Get your hands off of me!” My face is hard, but my heart is beating fast. I’ve heard some terps were actually enemy combatants leading our guys into minefields, and, still shaken over the Afghan worker incident, I’m not taking any chances. It’s so hard to tell the enemy from harmless civilians. Any one of these people could be armed.
As I turn toward the dusty room with the women and children, a man shouts at me in Farsi. My breathing is deep, my mind sharply focused, my gun solid and locked on him. I understand it is horrific having the military burst into your home in the early morning, so I call out to the terp, “Please tell the father I’m not going to hurt them. I just need to look around.”
Suddenly an ear-splitting scream comes from the terp, waving his hands, motioning me away. In an instant, Charles is there, gun in hand, bellowing at him. I keep my eyes on everyone in the room while the muffled conversation goes on. Then Charles calls out, “Burns, take off your helmet, they think you’re a man.”
My hair is tucked under my helmet, and I’m wearing a scarf. I look like a small man. No wonder he’s losing his mind over me going into a room with all of the women and children. The terp tells the father that I’m a woman, but he shakes his head in disbelief.
I rip off my helmet, showing off my bright blonde hair, and the man’s eyes open wide. He’s calmed down. The rest of my unit goes into the other rooms and searches the walls and the floors while I bring Johnny and Rav with me. “Wait outside the door while I go in with the women and kids.”
It’s my first time searching anyone, and I turn around, eyes taking in every detail, noticing things I’ve never had to pay attention to before. I’m nervous, and I’m also outnumbered by ten. I grab the oldest women first and try my best to communicate what I need them to do, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
I get all of them to spread their legs wide open, extend their arms, and face the wall.
Lives depend on me doing this right. One by one, I search the older women. I pat down their hair, and touching only the outside of their clothing, I frisk their sides, around their bras, around their feet, and inside their legs. The spots for hidden money and jewelry are endless: under their boobs, in their braids, and strapped to their legs. Having radios, excessive money was never a good sign. This almost always meant they were informing or being paid by Taliban to let them know when soldiers are in the area.
After the older women, I move on to the teenagers, some not much younger than me, who are less compliant. While I hold them against the wall, they just flop over. I don’t understand what is going on. I yell out the door for a translator. “What the hell is their problem?”
He laughs.
“Hey! What are they eating?”
“A plant,” he says in broken English. “They chew it and get high.”
These girls are out of their trees. They have no idea what’s going on, but they are still dangerous to me. They’re unpredictable, and that is hazardous.
I do my best to finish searching the girls safely, but then one of them grabs at the barrel of my gun. I turn around and point it at her. “Get down!”
She plops quickly down on the dirty floor, but she’s so high, she doesn’t even realize what she just did.
When I’m finished with the women and girls, I turn my attention to the two children. I’m very aware of the impression I’m leaving on them. They’re so little, and I don’t want to scare them. They just saw me pointing a gun at their sister or cousin. Or mother? I don’t know.
I smile when I approach them. I still have a job to do, but I don’t have to be cruel to innocent children. With my hands off of my weapon, I put my fingers in my ears and form a funny face. This makes them smile. “I’m just going to check that you don’t have anything hidden on you.” I speak in a quiet, calming tone, knowing they can’t understand me anyway.
Taking my fingers out of my ears but keeping the smile on my face, I start to search them, but first, I tickle them, pretending it’s a game.
I hold my breath as I gently pat them down, hoping that I don’t find anything on them. Thankfully, I don’t. When I finish, I reach into my pocket, pull out some candy that I’ve been saving for an occasion like this, and press it into their warm little palms.
I take a deep breath and leave the room with the items I confiscated. “Done!” I call out to Charles while Johnny stands guard. Rav dumps the items in bags and tags them, and when we’re done, Charles lowers his gun. “Braw. Let’s move on.”
We gather in the courtyard, and Johnny points out a cannabis plant. “They never sell these, just for personal use.”
“Those girls in there were young.”
“I saw a five-year-old smoking up once.”
Charles lights a cigarette as he walks over to us. “We just got a call over the radio. One of the other units needs a female searcher.”
Vince runs his fingers through his blaze of red hair. “We haven’t seen this many women and children in the villages before.”
“I know.” Charles sifts through some papers. “Burns, we’ll be moving you a lot more than anticipated, but the troops aren’t too far apart.”
All I can do is smile. I am proving to be useful to a unit, and that is all that I have ever wanted.
“We’ll escort you over to the next village now.” Charles tightens up his helmet. “They’ll be taking over a family’s compound to stay in once it gets dark so we can eat there and get some rest.”
“A new area tomorrow, Sarge?” Johnny fills his gun with ammo. Charles nods.
“Pukar.” Johnny points his long nose to the sky then turns to me. “The enemy likes being just close enough to watch our every movement, Burns, but not quite close enough to see us clearly.”
When we reach the compound, we help to clear it. I kick in a door with my boot and come face-to-face with the barrel of a machine gun.
“Fuckin’ hell!” the guy yells in a Scottish brogue. “It’s the Canadian.”
“Were you trying to kill me?” I scream back.
“Christ, I was guarding the door from the same enemy you’re looking for!”
“You’re Watson, right?”
“Aye, and you’re Burns.”
His sleeve is rolled up, with a bunch of tattooed letters peeking out. “What’s that?”
He shows me the tattoo of his ID. “Just in case they need to identify my body.”
I laugh. “What if you lose that arm?”
His blue eyes light up. “Ya rocket.” And with that, he turns toward the terp. “Tell the family they have to leave so we can use their place. They’ll get it back in the morning.”
The family hastily gather their belongings. It’s incredible how people are so willing to do what you say when you’re holding a fully loaded C7 machine gun. It wouldn’t have been advantageous for them to say no to us, and I believe they understood that.
One of the little girls looks up at me with terror in her dark brown eyes. She’s roughly the same age as Emma, the girl from outside FOB Ramrod. I smile at her and give her a piece of candy. I never wanted to be that scary person or the soldier that scars a young child’s mind. I’ve heard stories from immigrants, including my own grandfather, who had soldiers storm their homes during war, and they never forgot what people did to them. While I don’t want to impact an innocent person’s life, war is messy, and it sounds cheesy, but that’s the truth. No one wants to be the bad guy in a situation, but sometimes it’s necessary. This is not a peace mission; it’s a war. We can’t be the nice guy.
We escort the family out, and then I wander the compound, taking it all in, especially from its high vantage point. It’s my first time to inspect without any chaos. A compound has high walls with a massive square in the middle. My fingers trail the cracks on a wall that has been crumbling for years.
“Doing some cooking?” Watson’s bent over a small hole two feet in the ground, his big, mischievous eyes squinting up at me. “Ya see, this is the cooking pit. The hole above it where the flames come out would be two fists either side, so a pot fits on top of it.”
“How does the heat escape?”
Vince stacks wooden logs on the ground. “This little hole where the pot is. So you would leave a small other hole so the oxygen can get out and the flame doesn’t go out. It’s an effective way of cooking.”
“Make me a cinnamon latte.”
“Ya ticket!” Watson tosses a log at me, and I miss catching it, I’m laughing so hard.
“What’s that?” I point to another tattoo on his arm.
