Brass & Unity, page 11
“My motto. ‘That others may live.’” He stands up, wiping the dirt from his pants. “I live by it every day.”
As the evening wears on, I can feel myself breathing in the dust. “Johnny, how can you work out in this? I feel the sand in my teeth.”
The guys roar in laughter, and Watson finally catches his breath. “He’s always working out. He’ll drop a push-up during firefights.”
Johnny ignores us and keeps doing squats while I turn back to my meal.
“How long have you been with Black Watch?” I open my ration pack.
“A couple years.” Watson takes a puff from his cigar and blows smoke out of his nostril.
“How’d you get in?”
“Family ties.” He leans back on his pack. “My grandfather was a captain.”
“And Sean Connery visited his granny.” Vince flicks his cigarette ashes in the air.
“No way!”
“He was Grandmother’s milkman.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “You?”
“Nothing like that. I’m not with Canada’s Black Watch regiment or anything.”
Watson waves it off. “They’re just styled like us.” He leans back and closes his eyes. “I only joined out of rage the day after the 7/7 bombings. I’ll only be doing this for four years, and then I’m going to university for journalism.”
Johnny lights his cigarette and joins us. “We’re Scotland’s most famous military name. All the way back to the 1700s.”
“Spoken like a Highland Jock.” Watson tosses his shirt at him.
“Shut yer yak!” Johnny turns to me. “You’re lucky to be with us, Burns.”
“For the time being, so you better do more lunges. ‘Cause you’re getting blown up in two weeks,” Watson ribs. “You’re ahead of me. I’m August 10th at 1500.”
“Right you are.” Vince tosses his cigarette on the ground to burn itself out. “I bet ten American dollars on it.”
“What?”
“Whenever there’s tension, we place bets on who will get blown up and when.”
“That’s dark, boys!”
“Aye, but it’s our best way to cope.”
***
Gunfire breaks the stillness of the night. I jump out of my sleeping bag and race ahead with my gun. Residual smoke hangs in the air as the guys on fire watch reload.
“Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.” Max turns to Mick.
Mick’s grin is warm, with a hint of shyness. “He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Mick turns to me, and I shrug.
“Patton, 1970.” Max lights up a cigarette to add to the smoky cloud. “Hang with us long enough, Kelsi, and you’ll be able to quote every war movie ever made.”
Mick flashes a toothy grin. “You can go back to sleep. The enemy retreated.”
As the only female searcher they have, I’m not allowed to do any watch at night, so I don’t have a fire watch shift like I did in the FOB. Fortunately for me, that means more sleep than most of the guys I’m with. It’s the same deal for medics, bomb dog handlers, and the forward observers for the artillery guns.
Three hours isn’t much sleep, but I’ve gotten by with less. I’m soaking wet with sweat and take off my kit to dry out my shirt. I grab baby wipes from my pack and have a quick “bath.”
The guys are in the “pool.” Some family compounds have a small river running through them or near them where we can clean up and wash laundry, but I’m more comfortable with the baby wipe method.
The rest of the unit is up early too, so we push off onto the “road” before morning prayer. I use the “road” loosely, because it is more like goat trails and tiny walkways between villages. On our way to the next village, we clear more compounds, looking for things people shouldn’t have, and we find a ton of weapons, drugs, and radios.
I move carefully, in sync with my unit. Benji is ahead, and we are trusting him to guide us safely. Benji stops, we stop. Even though my legs are shorter than the guys’, our pace is the same. We are one.
Scanning ahead, I watch for anything that seems out of place in this rocky and uneven terrain. Never before have I feared the ground like I do now. My throat is parched in this heat, and the thought of IEDs underfoot is more terrifying than seeing the enemy up close. At least with a human, you have a bit of an idea of what you’re going up against; but with an IED, the outcome is unknown. I follow Mick and Max and am comforted by the presence of the guys behind me.
We’ve pushed farther and faster than we planned, and we take a break in a compound while we wait for our next orders to move.
“Your rations are weird.” I chew on some pasty potato-y thing.
Mick wrinkles his freckled nose and laughs. “Not a fan of bangers and mash?”
“Does the real stuff taste like this?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” Max exhales smoke into the dusty afternoon. “Except less sandy.”
Spending so much time with these guys in the course of a few days has made them grow on me. When I woke to the sound of guns, I feared for them and realized how quickly someone’s whole life could be taken in the blink of an eye. I hope for the best for all of us in this mud-covered compound.
A while later, Watson shakes my shoulder. “You must have been chin-strapped.”
“How long did I sleep?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“The bonus of being a smaller soldier. My kit is a pillow!” I jump to my feet. “My vest pushes up, I lean my head to the side, and have a nap.”
Max yells ahead. “Ready?”
We push forward along a dusty narrow road with grape fields on one side and a ditch and more fields on the other. There is a mud wall about four feet to my left and trees ahead. We set up in a compound to our right with our sniper in position, waiting for us to move forward while he provides cover.
“Tree’s in the way,” he radios.
Charles walks around the tree that’s in the sniper’s line of sight and motions over the combat engineer. “Blow it up.”
He straps some explosives to the trunk, and in a few minutes, the branches fly into the air. Explosives are fun when they aren’t hidden in the ground. I enjoy them when it doesn’t result in any of our guys getting hurt.
It’s midday at this point, and the heat is suffocating. If we move quickly, we can get to the next position and hopefully sit for a few minutes, perhaps in the shade of a tree that has not been blown up.
Just before these thoughts cross my mind, shots break through the air.
“Contact! Contact!” comes over the radio.
We are about 500 feet ahead of the position we just left, and we’re getting hit from the front and flanked on the left. Mick and Max ahead of me sprint to the next wall and take cover quick.
“Push back to the position we just left,” Johnny hollers above the noise. “We’ll call artillery for backup.”
My legs are shaking, and I feel my heart pounding. As more bullets whiz by, my whole body vibrates. Each whistle and pop, so close to my ears, scares me because I’ve never felt rounds this close to me.
Johnny gets in position. “Burns, you move first and I’ll cover.”
The enemy is close enough that I am not sticking around. “Johnny, I’m going.”
“Okay, I’ll count down from three—three, two, one!”
I have never run so fast in my life, and the adrenaline rush is completely exhilarating.
I have my full kit on, and I’m carrying ammo and at least six liters of water. My plates and small pack are loaded, but I am a gazelle! There is a massive hole in the ground just up ahead. It looks like an IED has gone off there at some point. There is no way around, and bullets are flying past my head, so I jump. I’ve grown wings and clear the hole and feel like my heart might explode. On the other side of the hole, I slide down into the ditch and wait for my next orders, my pulse loud in my ears. With one of our machine gunners providing cover, Johnny and I climb up out of the ditch and push back to the compound area. But something’s wrong. The gun stops shooting. Malfunction.
I race over, crouching beneath the four-foot mud wall more easily than the other guys can. The gunner ducks down and retreats back to the compound to fix his weapon while I provide cover fire, snatching a ragged breath when I can.
We’re all firing our weapons until we finally make it back to the compound. It feels like the artillery guns will never get here, but then the sound of thunder cracks through the sky, followed by a huge bang.
The big guns have got our back. Round after round flies over our heads, neutralizing the enemy. I’ve never experienced the role of the artillery unit from this position before, because I’ve always been the one shooting. The ground shakes, and I instinctively bring my hands to my ears to shield against the sound of the blast ahead. My breath catches in my throat, and I hope to God that they have the coordinates right.
“Am pure done in.” Watson lights his cigar and then reaches his lighter out to Vince and Rav.
Rav curves his upper lip and starts laughing. “Wait till August 10!”
“Ya rocket.” Watson turns to Charles. “Hey, Sarge, who’s the
sandbag tomorrow?”
“Mick.”
“Give us a new movie quote, sandbag.”
Pride crosses Mick face. The pride of being lead on an operation, even though it means he is the most likely to get blown up and sent home with a sandbag. “When I go home, people will ask me, ‘Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What, you some kinda war junkie?’ You know what I’ll say? I won’t say a goddamn word. Why? They won’t understand. They won’t understand why we do it.” Mick slowly turns and looks at each one of us. “They won’t understand that it’s about the men next to you, and that’s it. That’s all it is.”
Smoke billows from Watson’s nostril. “Black Hawk Down, 2001.”
I look at each of these men, handsome Johnny, innocent Mick, kind Charles, pale Vince, and silly Watson. We all protected each other today. This is what it means to trust strangers, and I am very lucky to be working with such solid, reliable soldiers.
Finally, the firefight quiets down, and we all take a breather. In the stillness, Rav bursts into laughter. He’s always laughing. Wish I knew what was going on in his mind.
At one point, Charles gets up, furrowing his high forehead. “We’re cleared to move ahead to the next objective. Keep your eyes open for possible IEDs and signs of the enemy moving back in.”
We plod along, stepping carefully, when a call comes over the radio, asking me to join another unit because they have to clear a compound filled with women. Two guys come to get me, and while I’m excited to join another unit, I’m sad to leave the guys I’ve bonded so strongly with.
When we enter the compound, a family greets me and begins to prepare tea. We sit down, watching the father pour water from a rusty jug into a pot.
In the meantime, we chat through the terp. Gathering intel from the people inside these small villages is vital for us to understand what the Taliban are doing and how they’re controlling the areas. The better we understand the Taliban, the better we can anticipate their moves and the strategies they’re using to target soldiers.
The man hands me tea in a glass cup, and I nod my thanks. But after seeing the jug that the water came out of, all I can think about is my gastro bug.
I turn to the terp. “Ask the man where his wife and children are.”
“Inside,” he says.
“Open the door so I can do my search.” I’m wondering why he has found it necessary to lock his wife and children inside the compound.
Just then, a young girl runs out and sits with us, fixated on my blonde hair. I’m holding my camera and ask the terp, “Can this girl and I get a photo together?”
The girl beams, and we pose as I snap the camera. Afterward, I show her the image on the screen and she snatches the camera right out of my hands and runs with it into the compound, where the other women are.
“Hey!” I yell. But within a few minutes, the girl comes out holding her mother’s hand, both of them smiling. As she hands the camera back to me, the terp explains, “She has never seen a photograph of herself before.” I give the girl a big handful of candy.
For the first time since being here, I’m not in search mode, and I feel an actual human connection with some of these people. The sun beats down on all of us, soldier and Afghan women and children, and I can’t help but smile back. This is what we’re here for, to help these people lead peaceful lives.
There are the odd glimmers of hope like this, where it feels good to be seen not as a scary person here to hurt them, but rather as someone here to help.
The girl’s mother points down at her ankle. She lifts her burka just a little bit to show me that she has shaved her legs. I chuckle inside. But I also realize that the Taliban could come in at any moment, and this family could switch sides, so I keep my guard up. This woman could be the very one that holds ammo under her dress, or a gun strapped to her shaved legs, who will absolutely not hesitate to kill me.
Evil
Ohhh, you better watch yourself, Burns.
In a very short time, you’ll be having nightmares about that woman and women like her.
In fact, I’ll make a note to pop her into your memory now for safekeeping.
One day you’ll wonder what happened to her as
you think of all the “targets” you hit while you were here.
Back with the other unit, we’ve been moving from village to village, making good time because most of the compounds are already empty. The lack of people to search allows us to move quickly, but there must be a reason it’s so quiet.
Suddenly, hot rounds zoom past us. We duck for cover and start moving to the closest compound we can find.
I run in and jump onto the roof with Vince and a few of the other guys. Lying down on our stomachs, we point our weapons to where we think the attack is coming from and shoot back.
“I’m fair puckled!” Vince runs out of ammo and lays his rifle alongside me. While he jumps down to grab another magazine, we keep firing.
With a bang, three rounds hit the weapon beside my hip, busting the buttstock wide open. Shit, that was close!
Now we’re getting flanked from the left, so we reposition and return fire.
Watson cocks his head to the side, his eyes looking at the rifle then back at me. “I change my bet. You’re too lucky. Ten dollars on you. September 10, a month after me!”
While Vince swears at the sight of his busted gun, the rest of us laugh as we joke around and keep firing. Deep inside, though, I know I am one extremely fortunate soldier. The weapon just saved my hip from taking around.
I’m not even supposed to be up here, but once Noble, one of the British sergeants, told me to get up there, I knew I needed to help. As dust swirls in a trail of sun, I think back to the girl who had to shine her boots and march kilometers in the snow.
I fire another round. I’m now a soldier, and I have their backs.
June 10, 2009
“Bowfing,” Mick calls out from the room, coughing and gagging.
Max laughs when he hears him moan, but upon entering the dusty room, he yelps, “Howlin!’”
Curious, I follow their voices and then cover my face with a scarf, trying not to throw up from the stench of burnt goat. Our mortar rounds hit this compound by accident last night. While mostly accurate, sometimes mortars don’t land where they’re supposed to. This time, a herd of goats paid the price.
“Vince,” Max calls out, his trademark dimpled grin spreading across his face. “Come in out of the sun, ya fair-skinned bloke! I reckon you don’t want to miss this.”
Vince steps into a pile of entrails and starts swearing in a strong south African accent, “You fucking bastards,” but the angrier he gets, the more difficult it is to understand him.
“You sound like an Afghan local.” Mick doubles over in laughter.
Charles steps in. “We’re all going to be Crabbit. We’re sleeping here tonight.”
“Boke!” Watson steps out of the room. “I’m away for a dauner.”
I kick at the clumps of fur to see if we can clear an area, but it’s everywhere. The clay floor is covered in blood and shrapnel. Mick steps over a dead goat that is mostly intact, searching a wall for contraband items. “Burns, let’s have a blether, it will go faster.”
I step in to join him, picking through piles of rubble that were once smooth sandstone walls. We bag and tag what we find, but it’s slow going with the stench. Dear God, the smell.
“So what’s your favorite war quote?”
The question takes me back home. “Band of Brothers.”
“Pure dead brilliant.”
“It was.”
He looks up at me as I hold open the bag. “Oh, right.” I think back to my favorite part, the line that I often kept telling myself. I’m good at it. “And oceans, they go up and down ’cause they have to,” I start to recite, and then Mick joins me and our voices continue in unison: “I don’t think we’re that different. If you want to get through this, you have to start seeing it for what it is. It’s something we do all the time because we’re good at it.’”
Goats
Remind Kelsi to think about what those mortar rounds do when they make contact with human beings.
Goats can be an interesting and surprising trigger.
June 11, 2009
The brim of my helmet is doing nothing to block out the heat of the sun. I’m grateful for Gould’s Oakleys. I’m pretty sure I got the better deal there.
It’s another day of Op Herrick, and we’re moving from village to village. There’s a lot of open space here, and I’m constantly scanning ahead for garbage, rock piles, anything out of place that could potentially explode.
