Authors: Pen Farthing
I folded the e-bluey closed again and stared down at my worn combat boots and the dark desert floor. The feel-good factor that had come with receiving mail had been short-lived. Reality was sinking in fast. My shoulders ached.
To get to this animal rescue shelter I was looking at a journey of at least 700 miles. I would have to get the dogs from Now Zad, a town in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but inhospitable desert that was crawling with
fanatical
nutcases and dotted with millions of landmines for good measure.
‘How the hell am I going to do that?’ I thought out loud.
Without support from the military I felt it would be a non-starter.
Timing was now becoming a big issue. It was going to be a close-run thing. My R & R slot was 6 December. I had to get Nowzad, RPG and Jena out of here by then. I doubted anybody else would want to take the responsibility of looking after them or fending off any flak that might come their way while I was gone for ten days.
I sighed and looked up towards the night sky and the waning moon. I really needed some divine inspiration.
After a minute or two of silent contemplation I realised that the moon was not going to provide any answers. ‘No wishing upon a shooting star tonight, then,’ I whispered.
The reality of it all hit me again. Had I really thought I could get them to safety? This was going to be mission impossible. Even Nathan Hunt would have given up after listening to the message on the self-destructing tape recorder. I just didn’t have long enough, did I?
It dawned on me that maybe deep down I was just missing life back home and looking after these dogs was my way of pretending I was somewhere else. Maybe, even though I was nearly 40 years old, I had been using the dogs as some type of comfort blanket, although I hoped I didn’t need one at my stage of life.
Did the dogs ever really have a chance at getting to safety? I had given them false hope, not that they knew it, but that fact wasn’t much consolation. Kicking them out of the compound to go back to a world of scavenging for survival would be heart-wrenching for me and them. I felt the niggling pangs of despair. I had no cunning plan. Kicking them out was probably going to be my only option. That thought hurt.
The problem was that I was always playing catch-up, either waiting for letters or a slot on the phone. The real world was moving quicker than my little world right now.
Maybe, just maybe, Lisa has worked out a plan already? I thought to myself.
Maybe sleep would help and then maybe I could figure something out.
I headed towards the dogs; they needed feeding even if it was late and I still had to crack on with my night-time duties. Sleep would be a long time coming.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Crazy Afghan
‘THAT IS SOME
view mate,’ I said as I took in a deep breath of fresh air and let the cool breeze penetrate my open shirt.
‘Yeah, not bad,’ smiled Jim, one of the Fire Support Group marines who occupied the hill. ‘Looks even better with tracer winging over your head!’
The cloudless sky was a deep blue that contrasted starkly with the baked yellow earth of the desert plain to the south and the dull mustardy mountain ridges that rose sharply to the east, west and north.
In the far distance to the south through the dancing heat haze I could make out tiny figures working vast fields of farmland. Back home I knew it would take all day in a tractor to turn fields that size. I couldn’t begin to imagine how long it would take toiling away with the wooden ploughs they still used out here.
I spent a moment absorbing the view; it reminded me of standing on a Swiss Alpine peak after a gruelling climb to the summit and being rewarded with an awe-inspiring panorama of 360 degrees.
I turned and looked back at the two cages that were sitting nearby on the barren hilltop. Inside them RPG, Jena and Nowzad were waiting patiently, seemingly enjoying the refreshing breeze and the glorious view as much as me.
While RPG and Jena were sitting upright on their rear legs in the bigger of the two crates, Nowzad was resting contentedly in his own space in the smaller container. All three were waiting for the next part of their adventure, but even I didn’t know how it would pan out.
Things had been moving fast during the past few days. A plan, of sorts, had finally taken shape.
I was due to go on R & R back to England on 6 December. As we drew towards the last few days of November I had actually begun dreading it.
Slowly panic had been bubbling to the surface. I kept running through the ‘what if’ scenarios. What if I couldn’t get the dogs to safety? What if nobody was able to look after them while I was gone?
It wasn’t as if I could order one of the lads to keep an eye on them for me. Apart from anything else, looking after all three was now becoming hard work.
Jena had become a right little madam, bossing both Nowzad and RPG around the run. She would yap away incessantly, seeking attention from anybody that walked by. It was becoming noticeable that she was beginning to fill out. Dave and I agreed that she had probably already been pregnant when we rescued her from the wooden stake.
At least Jena would let strangers approach her. If one of the lads came up to the run she would sit patiently at the front with RPG, waiting for the odd stroke to come her way. Nowzad, on the other hand, would still bark at everyone he didn’t know, always from the safety of the rear of the run. I was still the only one he really trusted.
Time was at a premium at the moment but I tried to give each dog at least a few minutes of fuss when I was in with them. The bond was getting stronger and I had no idea how I was going to break it.
I’d spoken to Lisa a couple of time since reading her e-bluey. Over the satellite airwaves, we’d agonised over
how
to get the dogs to the rendezvous with the rescue truck. I was sure a local ‘jingly’ truck driver from Now Zad would have welcomed the business. Now and again I’d seem them in the distance, heading south to Lashkar Gar. But as we hadn’t patrolled that far into the inhabited areas of the town I hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to a driver and broker a deal.
With a local driver ruled out, the only alternative was for Pam or someone at the rescue shelter to send an empty truck southwards to collect the dogs. It would cost a fortune, hundreds of dollars, but right now if we were to get the dogs to safety then it was worth it. Talking on the phone, Lisa and I agreed the alternative was not an option. Lisa would have to wire the money to Afghanistan once the pick-up had been made.
I felt bad. I’d had to leave it to Lisa to try to make the arrangements long distance from England. I knew it must have been a nightmare for her, with the time difference and lack of decent phonelines in Afghanistan. So during the days that followed the arrival of her letter, I had tried to call her as often as possible on the sat phone. When I managed to get through, it was invariably to find out that she had no news. In a vain attempt to save my allocated welfare minutes I would quickly tell her I loved her and then end the call. But they still always expired all too soon.
Luckily I had a collaborator in Dave who stepped in and offered me the use of his phone card. From the way he chain-smoked as we stood waiting for the phone to connect I figured he was as anxious as I was. We both had every reason to be. The more I phoned Lisa, the more I thought our vague rescue plan really wasn’t up to much. I would shake my head towards Dave as Lisa told me that she had nothing to report.
As if the situation wasn’t tense enough, my improvised dog rescue centre had attracted the attention of the Powers That Be at Camp Bastion.
With people heading in and out of Bastion on their R & R, the rumour mill had gone into overdrive with talk about how the so-called dog warden of Nowzad was planning to move his strays to an animal rescue shelter. Of course everyone immediately assumed that it was going to be via a military helicopter and it hadn’t taken long for the top brass to catch on.
The boss had soon been on the receiving end of what must have been a rather one-way radio conversation with Bastion reminding him of the strict policy on animals. He had no choice but to pass the message down to me. He’d pulled me over to one side at the end of an intelligence brief one evening.
‘Sergeant Farthing, I have been asked to remind you of the brigade’s policy on the adoption of feral animals as unit mascots,’ he said. ‘There will be no dogs adopted by anybody in this unit. End of subject. And I shouldn’t have to tell you that there will not be any use of military assets to transport the animals back to the UK or anywhere else for that matter, due to the health risk they impose.’
He’d said it so matter-of-factly, without any hint of emotion on his tanned face, I couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not.
‘Fine, sir,’ I said after taking a deep breath. I really wasn’t sure if he was about to tell me to get rid of the dogs. But I figured I should say something. ‘Just to set the record straight, I had never intended to adopt them as unit mascots and they are not being sent to the UK anyway,’ I explained.
This was the truth. I hadn’t even thought about putting them up as the unit’s mascots, let alone arranging for them to travel to the UK. Hell, getting them to the Afghan rescue was hard enough in itself. I already had two dogs at home. Why would I want four?
The boss remained impassive so I pressed on.
‘I am just trying to do a little bit of animal welfare work to pass away the quiet hours, Boss.’
The smile that broke out on his face gave away a lot. He wasn’t going to say what he was thinking out loud, though. ‘That’s what I thought you would say,’ he said, relaxing now that the official bit was out of the way. ‘So how’s it going? I hear there are three dogs now.’
‘Really well, Boss. Yup, we now have three. The new one is probably pregnant, just to complicate matters a little. So I need to get them out of here ASAP really,’ I said, a big grin spreading across my face.
The OC just shook his head in mock amusement.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just don’t drop me in it.’
‘Boss, would I do that to you?’ I said, feigning mock hurt then turning to leave.
As I’d headed out into the compound I’d known that everything now came down to Lisa finding a way to get the dogs to the rescue in the north. Deep down I had thought about using the helicopter option on the quiet as a last resort. Now if I did so, it would be in the face of a direct order. It was so frustrating to know that I could put the dogs on a resupply helicopter and fly them to Kandahar in about 45 minutes and the problem would be solved. ‘But that is never going to happen now, is it?’ I told myself.
To be fair there wasn’t anything malicious about the orders. I knew that. Of course we hadn’t come to Afghanistan to rescue dogs. Our top brass couldn’t condone something that would set a precedent for dogs being rescued during military operations.
But it didn’t make it any easier. At least I could cheer myself with the knowledge that the boss had – unofficially – let me carry on for now. I didn’t want to think about what I’d be doing if he had told me to set the dogs free here in Now Zad immediately.
It was 27 November, just four days before I was on notice to move for my R & R, when Lisa’s hard work finally paid off. She had spent countless minutes on the phone to Afghanistan talking with Koshan, the supervisor at the
animal
shelter, who also thankfully spoke English. Lisa had been pestering him to arrange a truck that would make the long three-day journey south to Now Zad.
At first he had said no driver would risk the trip; it was too dangerous. But once Lisa gets her teeth into something she doesn’t give up easily. After endless encouraging phone calls at his end Koshan had apparently found a driver prepared to make the journey.
As soon as I finished the call in which she told me the news I ran over to find Dave, who I knew was cleaning his rifle. We high-fived each other as I filled him in on developments. The truck was coming from Kandahar and would drive into our valley on 30 November, three days’ time. Because our satellite phone was not secure I had not been able to give Lisa our exact location. The Taliban knew exactly where we were; they didn’t need to listen to my phone call to find that out. But so as not to compromise anybody I asked Lisa to let the driver know that once he came over a pass we called Crazy Afghan, he was to head for the only high feature that stuck out like a sore thumb from the flat valley floor. Which was, of course, our fire base on the hill.
My plan would be to watch for a truck coming towards the hill. He shouldn’t be too difficult to spot as it would be the first vehicle to drive directly towards our position on the hill since we had taken up residency.
‘This has to work,’ was all I could keep saying to myself.
It was the following day, while the self-elected dog rescue committee of me, John and Dave were having our morning cup of tea that it had hit us that we would need something in which to transport the dogs. We couldn’t expect them to just get in the back of a truck and happily drive all the way to the rescue.
The next day John and I made an even earlier start than normal so we could search among the engineers’ scrap
pile.
We managed to scavenge enough discarded old HESCO panels to make two decent-sized transportation cages. I reckoned that the dogs would probably be confined in the cages for at least three days, maybe more, so they needed to be comfortable. I didn’t expect the driver to attempt to let them out at any time during the duration of the trip.
It took three hours to build the first cage. It was roughly a two-foot-square cube of HESCO with a small hinged gate built into one side. It seemed fairly sturdy and would withstand being lifted in and out of a truck.
We both took a step back to admire our handiwork. This DIY thing was getting easier.
‘Good effort John; that isn’t half bad. Guess we got a career in Civvy Street after all this.’ I slapped him on the back.
‘You might need these.’ We turned to look at Pat, one of the company’s older marines who, as an extra duty, had been tasked with maintaining the company’s reserve supplies such as batteries and ammunition. He was holding out some plastic cuff ties.
‘You need to build something to line the bottom a few inches along the walls of the crate,’ he said. ‘It will stop the dogs’ paws from sliding out and becoming trapped.’
‘Good point.’ We hadn’t thought of that.
‘Why don’t you use some ration pack cardboard to line the lower sides and floor of the crate?’ he suggested.
Pat’s idea worked well and we secured the cardboard to the cage bars with the plastic cuff ties. I had no idea whether the back of the truck would be covered or not, so to provide some shelter from the elements we enclosed half of the crate with some torn canvas that had been part of an AID Agency tent.
Not for one moment did I think that the journey was going to be a pleasant experience, but with T-shirts donated from a few of the lads, the dogs now also had a
semi-cushioned
floor which would hopefully absorb some of the bumps and jolts as the truck made the long journey north. It wasn’t RSPCA-approved but it would do the job.
Up on the hill I bent down and let Nowzad lick my fingers through the cage. ‘Not long now, buddy,’ I reassured him. ‘You, my friend, are going on a bit of a journey,’ I added, which was probably the understatement of the century.
I fished out three biscuits and fed each of the dogs in turn. Jena seemed more interested in being stroked along the top of her head.
I stood up and looked back east towards the pass in the mountains that I knew the driver would have to come through. We had named it ‘Crazy Afghan’ because it had been the scene of several encounters with the mobile patrols of Danish troops who roamed this part of Helmand. No matter how hard the Danish seemed to hit the position, the Taliban holed up in the pass would always come back for more.
We’d seen it firsthand. One night we had watched mesmerised as tracer rounds had lit up the night sky. We had even watched as an Apache helicopter had used hellfire missiles to destroy the contents of an immobilised Dutch vehicle so as to deny it to the Taliban. Luckily, the crew had all escaped uninjured.
With the view from my vantage point today I could clearly see the road snaking over the pass and into our valley. It was going to be a quiet day so the boss had cleared it for me to sit on the hill until the driver showed. We had no idea what the truck looked like or even what the driver was called.
I sat down on the barren dirt of the hill and leant back against Nowzad’s cage, getting comfortable for the wait. There was still an hour until midday, the agreed pick-up time.
The hour passed slowly and so did the one after that. Throughout I kept scanning the distance, using the high-powered sights that the hill used to spot the Taliban.