Authors: Pen Farthing
Finally the young lad pointed to himself and told us his own name. ‘Abdul la Tip?’ Dave said, double checking we had heard correctly.
‘Yes, Abdul la Tip,’ the boy nodded happily.
‘I am Penny and this is Dave,’ I said.
‘Penny and Dave,’ they repeated as one.
Laughter peeled out around the group as we spent the next few minutes pointing to each other and shouting out each other’s names. As the laughter died, the clapping started up again, this time with me and Dave actively joining in.
Tin Tin and Jemel stood up and resumed the dance routine, their scuffed leather slip-on shoes defying gravity and staying firmly on the ends of the feet as they flicked their heels madly to the beat of clapping.
I settled into my chair to enjoy the show while Abdul la Tip poured more tea.
We both had no other pressing engagements and it sure beat Steve moaning at us about lack of a decent kitchen. So we stayed and clapped and drank more tea.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Tight Squeeze
THE FOOT PATROL
had been the longest we’d yet undertaken and had been slow, hard work. We had covered a lot of ground but in a very stop-start way. The constant crouching into a fire position and then standing back up again had taken its toll on my back, which was giving me grief.
For the moment, however, the pain was forgotten as I stood looking at a scene as disturbing as anything I had yet seen in Afghanistan.
We had decided to check out the former school compound next to the main Now Zad mosque on our way back through the western part of the town. The school was an enormous open compound with buildings along the north and east walls and housed five or six decent-sized classrooms.
Sadly the Taliban had decided to pay the school a visit long before us.
It wasn’t the sandbagged gun emplacements on top of the buildings that had given it away but the level of vandalism within the whitewashed school classrooms.
Anything that could be tipped over and smashed had been. Even the doors and door frames had been ripped out.
What shocked me most, however, was the fact that books of all shapes, sizes and colours were emptied all over the floor in two of the classrooms. The piles of discarded books stood at least a foot high. You couldn’t walk across the
room
without standing on books. I bent down to have a closer look. The top layer of books was sodden from winter rains that had unobstructed access through the open windows. Underneath those most of the soft front covers were curled at the edges; many of the books were now useless as the pages were completely stuck together from the damp.
I picked one up that said ‘English’ in big bold letters and what I assumed was ‘English’ written in Pashtu underneath. At the bottom was a text box that stated it had been donated by the people of Canada.
I flicked through a couple of pages; it was mainly pictures of everyday objects such as fruit or household utensils with the English word for them in large capital letters underneath.
I placed it back down and pulled another soft cover from the mess. Its rain-soaked pages were stuck together too. It was a maths textbook donated by an American charity. I threw it back on the pile; it was useless now.
Sifting through the mess we also found some hand-held blackboards and a sodden cardboard box of coloured chalk sticks. The Taliban had even snapped each of the chalk sticks into pieces so they were now too small to hold properly.
Totally at a loss as to why anybody would do this, I backed out of the room. The wanton destruction was mind-boggling.
The other lads checking on the remaining rooms reported the same situation. I walked over to the boss and informed him of what we had found. He too, like me, was at a loss as to why anybody would trash a school like this. Without any form of education, the Taliban were doomed to failure. Even they must have understood that.
Quietly we left the school and started on our route back to the DC.
The streets and alleys were as deserted as ever. The torn and ripped canvas coverings of the empty stalls flapped and
fluttered
in the winter breeze, along with the permanently closed shops, the only remnants of a once thriving town.
As we patrolled through a wide crossroads of the main thoroughfares of the western part of town, we came across an old Russian T54 tank that had been abandoned smack bang in the middle of the crossroads. It was an extraordinary sight, as if it was some bizarre roundabout ornament.
The rusting metal hull was seemingly undamaged, the long barrel protruding from the turret was pointing away down a side street. The top hatch had long ago rusted open, a permanent reminder to the local people of their hard-fought victory against a force that had outnumbered and outgunned them but had ended up withdrawing painfully.
Like all of the lads on the patrol, I had never seen a Russian tank in real life. After all the many hours we’d once spent poring over foreign tank recognition pictures back in the UK in preparation for a cold war that thankfully had never got warm, it was actually quite satisfying to see one in the flesh.
After what seemed like an eternity of plodding the alleys we arrived back at the compound. I was determined to immediately get out of my body armour and heavily loaded webbing. The pain in my lower back had been getting steadily worse over the last few days of patrols. Guess I wasn’t as young as I liked to think I was.
I was standing outside the galley and had just lifted the body armour up and over my head, when Grant, my mortar man, appeared.
‘Sergeant, you have got to come and look at this,’ he said in his thick Scottish accent, motioning for me to follow him.
‘Whoa, what’s up?’ I asked as I reluctantly struggled to let my body armour slip back down over my head. ‘Where we going?’
The wind was a crisp northerly as normal and my
sweat-soaked
shirt immediately felt cold as the body armour pressed back down against me.
Grant led me round towards the rear gate where a small crowd of lads had gathered, quietly watching something.
I popped my head round the corner. I had no idea what I was meant to be looking at. It was just the same old gate, closed securely.
‘What the hell am I looking at, Grant?’ I asked, slightly annoyed.
As we came in from patrols Steve would have fresh brewed flasks of tea waiting on the table outside the galley, a small gesture that was hugely appreciated by the lads. I could have been in the galley having a mug of tea by now.
‘Ssh, Sergeant, just wait and see.’
I was about to remind the young lad that he didn’t tell me to ‘Ssh’ when I saw it. All thoughts of giving him a rollicking disappeared instantly.
‘What the hell is that?’
A grubby grey brownish blob of fur was being forced through a tiny depression in the mud under the bottom of the metal gate. It looked from this distance like a small cuddly toy.
‘I’ll be damned!’ I said to myself as the realisation of what it was clicked into place.
I was watching a tiny puppy, probably no more than a few days old, being forced awkwardly through the gap.
Along with the other marines, I watched transfixed, as the force pushing the puppy came into view. A dirty snout with a bright pink nose appeared first, followed by a thin mud-streaked head. Soon the lean and haggard-looking form of the scatty white-haired dog I had seen running hell for leather through the compound only a few days ago came into view. Safely through the gap, the dog gave the puppy a quick sniff and a prod, before picking it up tenderly between its teeth. We all watched as it padded over to a small mud cave that had been exposed when the Gurkhas had blown
away
the back wall of the compound to make room for the gate.
‘That’s the third time she’s been in,’ Grant said.
‘I’ve already met her,’ I said. ‘She was obviously on a scouting mission.’
I looked in the direction of the cave. At least it looked dry and sheltered from the winter winds. I watched as the scruffy white dog carefully placed the newborn puppy down alongside two other small, curled-up bodies. She gave all three the once over by sniffing and licking them before turning back for the gate.
‘Looks like the word is out on the street, Sergeant,’ Grant smiled. ‘All strays welcome.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ I replied.
I stood in mild shock as the desperate mother scurried back under the impossibly small gap, heading off to wherever she had left the remainder of her litter. Within minutes we saw the tell-tale signs of another pup emerging through the hole. This one was completely white, just like the mother. It was soon through the gap and in place alongside its siblings.
I had never seen anything like it. All sorts of questions flooded through my head. How the hell did that dog know to bring its puppies in here? Did it really know that I wouldn’t be able to say no?
‘I don’t think I quite believe this,’ was all I could say.
I was all too aware that within days we would have Jena’s pups arriving on the scene as well. I wasn’t sure I knew what to do.
‘Can you go and get Dave for me if he is not on duty?’ I asked Grant. ‘Cheers, mate.’
While I waited for Dave I watched as the mum collected another two puppies. This seemed to be the last of them and she was soon prodding and pulling her complete litter into a living pile before snuggling up around them.
‘You have got to be bloody joking,’ Dave said as he arrived
from
the galley where he had been having a cup of tea and a sneaky cigarette. ‘The mum just carried them all under the gate?’
‘Yup,’ I replied. ‘What do we do with them? We can’t leave them there.’
Dave gave me a look that said he knew what I meant.
It may have been a good shelter, but the artificial cave was too close to the gate. As the puppies grew stronger I imagined they would take to wandering around their newfound home. That really wouldn’t be a good idea when one of our wagons stormed out in a hurry. A puppy that would fit nicely into my open palm would hardly register to one of the drivers, especially if the Taliban were shooting at the time.
‘Shit, we’ve got to move them,’ Dave said, looking at me, slowly shaking his head.
‘This is getting bloody ridiculous. If I didn’t know better I’d say the dogs are talking to each other out there,’ I sighed.
Dave didn’t answer.
‘Best get some food. That dog looks like it could do with it anyway,’ I said as we backed away.
‘And a box big enough for half a dozen puppies,’ Dave added.
Two minutes later, armed with food and an empty cardboard ration box, we approached the cramped cave. The white-haired dog raised her head towards us but stayed put. She must have been beat after finding what she thought was a safe new home.
The puppies were lying on top of one another suckling from her as best they could.
The mother looked like she had seen better days but then so did most dogs in Afghanistan. Her long coat was a dirty dull white from her time spent lying in the open mud-covered ground. She desperately needed to eat; her skinny
body
was being worn out by the constant demands of feeding her six puppies.
The smell of the open pork and dumplings packet soon got her attention. I gingerly pushed the open packet in towards her.
‘Don’t worry, we’re the good guys,’ I said, trying to reassure her as she sniffed the food-scented air as the packet slid towards her. As soon as the exposed foodstuff was within reach the white dog wasted no time in getting stuck in to the gooey mixture. It wasn’t long before she had devoured the lot and was contentedly licking clean the insides of the silver packet, the hair around her mouth stained a reddish brown from the contents of the sachet.
The box Dave had borrowed was large enough to carry all of the puppies, but not the mother.
‘She’ll follow us, don’t worry,’ Dave reassured me as I expressed concerns about the mum running off and leaving us with six puppies to contend with.
I gently reached into the cave and prised one of the puppies from its cherished position by its mother’s belly.The little thing was as cute as you like, its tiny face still screwed up firmly, its eyes closed tight. It easily fitted into my hand as I placed it down in the box, the mum not moving. She just looked at me. As I reached for the next one she struggled to get up. I pulled my hand back thinking I was about to get bitten, but she just crawled around to the box to lick the first puppy I had placed there.
I made the most of the opportunity. While she was distracted I gathered together her remaining pups and arranged them in the box as the mother dog watched wide-eyed, not knowing whether to protect the last puppy or to try and snatch the others back out of the box.
Before she had a chance to attempt the latter, Dave lifted the box high into the air.
‘Time to go, mum,’ I said as Dave moved in the direction of our dog run.
The white dog darted around between our legs, obviously slightly panicked by the removal of her pups, as I am sure any dog would have been.
‘It’s all right, we aren’t going to hurt them, okay?’ I tried to reassure her.
We had already quickly arranged a small piece of HESCO fencing next to the dog compound. It was tall enough to stop the puppies from venturing out, but allowed the mother dog to come and go as she pleased. We had nowhere else to put her. We had destroyed Nowzad’s original run, which would have been ideal.
John had already placed another open packet of pork and dumplings in the enclosed space as a tempting distraction. This worked a treat, occupying the mum as we carefully set the box of puppies down on its side. The puppies hadn’t really moved. They were too busy cuddling together for warmth.
With the sun now slowly dipping down under the rim of the mountains to the west it wouldn’t be long before the night freeze was upon us again. Nowzad, RPG, AK and Jena were all squashed up against their respective fences, vying for positions, so they could get a glimpse of the new arrival. Jena was making little whining noises, as she wasn’t the centre of attention in our dog world at the moment.
When the new mum had licked clean the open packet she scurried over to the box and somehow managed to squeeze herself into a curled position towards the back behind them. Immediately the puppies scampered around to get a decent position in the feeding queue.
‘What are we going do now?’ John asked as we backed away to give the mum and her pups some space.
It was a fair question. Including this new dog and her six puppies, we now had 11 dogs in the compound. When Jena finally gave birth, that number was going to rise even higher.
I looked at Dave and then at John.
‘I have no fucking idea,’ I said. And I really didn’t.
*
The scatty white dog had been easy to name. It was a foregone conclusion really: Taliban, or Tali for short. She’d crawled in under the gate and left us to deal with six little booby traps.
Tali didn’t answer to her name. Even if she had, she was too busy running off around the compound. But she would always climb back into the small fenced area and lie down so the puppies could feed. They were getting bigger by the day. And she had to be more resourceful in keeping herself strong enough to feed them.