Authors: Ryan Flavelle
I doubt that the influence of opium and marijuana can be ruled out in the strange scene that I see as I hug a mud wall on the opposite side of the wadi; those sitting outside the circle of the fire are probably not smoking tobacco. Normally, the people we see on
patrol stop and gawk at us as we walk through their villages in our stormtrooper gear. The fact that the spinning movement of other human beings continues not 10 metres from us, as we quietly skirt a wadi, pretending to be invisible, is completely surreal. It feels as though we are separated by more than a wadi. We are separated by the weight of our different traditions, histories, and purposes. I don’t know if it’s possible to be further away from another human being in any meaningful sense than I am from those swirling around the fire mere metres from me. I try to imagine what it would be like to sit on my heels, stoned, enjoying my weekly—what? dance party?—while an endless line of silently moving Canadians dressed in clothing that blends into its surroundings moves past me. It must have been a pretty surreal experience for them too.
The drumbeats fade as the goat path widens. We find ourselves once again in the village of Zangabad proper, travelling along a wide path framed by mud walls. The patrol regains its familiar flavour of sweat and pain, and we walk very quickly toward the COP. At this point, my whole being is consumed with trying to keep up with the man in front of me. My earlier philosophical thoughts recede from my mind like the beat of that alien drum. Once again, I concentrate on keeping up and begin to breathe harder.
In high school I took a class called Outdoor Education (OE); basically, it taught us how to survive in the Canadian Rockies, and we did quite a few trips into the remotest areas of Kananaskis and Rogers Pass in the fall, winter, and spring. I learned valuable skills, such as how to purify water, read a map, use a compass, pack enough on my back to survive three days, and cook in the wilderness. I remember that near the end of one particularly long trip, the pace increased remarkably. We were walking faster than we had for the entire trip, as the end was only one-and-a-half kilometres away. My OE teacher, who was walking in front of me, explained that it was always like this: “Like a horse to water, Ryan, we always move quicker when the end is in sight.”
Less than a kilometre outside of Zangabad, these 80 Canadian soldiers are 80 horses who scent water. We move faster than we have since the patrol began, as the prospect of rest looms just over the horizon.
All of a sudden, the world flashes, and for milliseconds it is illuminated like daylight. I feel as if someone has taken a flash photograph of us. I am stunned by the light, but it is instantly dark again. Before I can process the flash, I feel the concussion of the blast and hear its boom.
I stand stunned for a second, and then drop to a knee.
What the fuck was that?
Most of the explosions that I’ve heard in the military have been planned, and for a second it feels like the explosion was supposed to happen, as if some captain in Wainwright decided to test how we would respond to coming under fire. But then the logical part of my mind realizes that we are under attack.
Was it an RPG? No, I would have heard the whistle as it flew through the air. Was it a mortar? It could have been, I guess.
I rest my weapon on my thigh and again the world flashes for a moment. Again I feel the concussion and hear it echo through the landscape.
It must be a mortar attack. Why else would there have been two explosions in a row? It couldn’t have been an IED, it had to be a mortar. My mind recoils from the thought of an IED.
It couldn’t have been an IED, it must have been a mortar.
We’ll find the base plate, isolate it, and call in artillery. I’ve heard it done over the radio countless times. It was a mortar.
The night is now exceptionally quiet. I wonder if there is something I should be doing and look at Chris. He has taken a knee and is scanning our moonlit surroundings. I do the same. I move my NVG in front of my eye and scan the green world as I wait for something to happen. Everything looks calm and silent.
“29er, this is 21, IED contact, we have casualties, wait out.” I hear the voice of Lieutenant Chang on the radio. He sounds tense but professional. We all know what this means. Improvised explosive devices are the number-one killer in Afghanistan.
In a few seconds, I hear the doc and the sergeant-major push past us. They are walking quickly, trying not to tread on any terrain that might have another explosive buried underneath it. The engineers are already working farther ahead, clearing a route to the casualty. The doc’s job is to stabilize the casualty prior to helicopter evacuation, and the sergeant-major’s job is to coordinate the extraction process, establish a helicopter landing site (HLS), and get the right people moving to the right places as quickly as possible. My role is to stay put and ensure that radio traffic is passed quickly and accurately. I have done this plenty of times in training. Now it is different. I would like nothing more than to push up with them and help stabilize the casualty, but we are not moving. That is not my job. I look at Chris, to see what he is doing, and he stays put, looking stoically out upon our surroundings. I do the same. My radio squawks with the sound of oddly calm and intense traffic aimed at getting a helo spooled up as quickly as possible. I have absolutely nothing to do, so I go back to scanning the horizon with a greater intensity. My stomach feels heavy and sick.
We wait, kneeling down, looking out into the darkness, trapped in our own thoughts. I can feel my senses heighten and hear my own heart pounding in the cool night. My calves begin to ache; I am unaccustomed to taking a knee for an extended period of time. My pack straps dig into my shoulders, and I feel the weight of my kit once more. I find it hard to focus on our surroundings; I should be looking for movement that indicates there was a person who remotely detonated the IED, or connected some wires to a car battery as they watched our patrol pass. Someone might be there watching us, congratulating himself on successfully detonating
an IED, sitting in the shadows quietly with a smug beeb smirk. Or it could have been a VOIED—”victim operated,” the military’s euphemistic term for a mine that is set off inadvertently, usually by someone stepping on it. If that is the case, then I am staring at nothing. But the image of some beeb sitting happily in his compound, probably stoned on hash or poppy, smiling at the thought that he might have killed one of us fills me with rage. My knee starts to ache so I decide to stand up. By this point, the echoes of the explosions have receded from my consciousness, and some small part of my brain wonders if any of it really happened, if someone really is injured, bleeding and choking no more than 100 metres from our position. It seems unreal, but it is not.
We get the word over the radio that there is no suitable site for an HLS near the blast seat. The sergeant-major says that we should push up to Zangabad, which is only 400 metres away, and that we should get the LAVs to come out and meet us. The OC decides to move up and make the call on the ground. Zangabad, under the command of call sign 24, decides to push out the LAV slowly, as far as the towers can cover it, theoretically immune from IEDs. This is, intellectually, a dangerous decision, as there is a possibility that the Taliban have managed to plant another IED under the nose of the tower, but it is difficult to convince oneself viscerally that there is a threat that cannot be seen or heard or identified, especially when the LAVs are needed as quickly as possible. Chris walks confidently and carefully in front of the OC as we begin to move forward. I follow behind him along with the terp, and realize too late that the entire line has begun to move. I have forgotten to tell the person behind me to stay put. I stop, turn around, and whisper furiously at an artillery observer named Burhoe who is hard of hearing.
“Stay here,” I say and watch him cock his helmet to the side. He walks quickly toward me.
“What?” he says in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Stay fucking here,” I whisper louder, but again his head cocks inquisitively to the side.
I hold up my hand, palm out, pushing it back and forth for emphasis. I embellish this gesture with “
Stay fucking here!
” I turn around again and see Chris, the OC, and the terp about 20 metres ahead of me. I have to hurry to catch up. I walk more quickly than I should.
As we walk through the dark landscape, we pass kneeling soldiers on both sides of the track. They are looking outward for any sign of movement, hoping against hope that the enemy might show himself. We want nothing more than to put a face to our suffering. Unsurprisingly, if there are any Taliban watching us, they keep their heads down inside a compound; there is no noise, no movement, and no hope of engaging the enemy as we push forward.
We continue to walk for about 50 metres before rounding a bend. Here the silence and darkness of the night disappear, and I turn to see the medics working on a soldier, amid buzzing activity and light. Whereas until now my eyes have had to strain to perceive the mud walls around me, and my ears heard only the rustle of my kit, here movement, light, and sound prevail. The medics work quickly, talking to each other in a steady rhythm. Medics usually carry white LED headlamps with red filters, because red is the frequency of light that travels the shortest distance, and thus is hardest for the enemy to see at night. Those working on the casualty are using white light, so that they can differentiate between sweat and blood. Others have neglected to flip off their red filters. A few people carry green and blue flashlights. In front of me is a kaleidoscope of colour.
We have stopped about 20 metres away, and I try to take in what is going on. There is a bright silver space blanket wrapped around a stretcher. At the top there is the outline of a helmet, and below what looks like a very short person. Protruding from underneath
the blanket is a pale white shape covered in glistening dark red. All of a sudden it dawns on me that I’m looking at shards of bone, and that the glistening red is blood.
I stare at the scene, unable to look away, and watch the play of the lights off the space blanket, the ground, and the mangled flesh. No thoughts enter my brain, and I feel completely numb. It is as if my mind has gone into screensaver mode, or has become a camera, taking in the images around me but failing to process them. There is no shock, no emotion, nothing but the sound of the blood rushing in my ears and the beams of light moving chaotically in front me—and the blood, so red.
“We need stretcher bearers!” I hear someone yell. I’m not sure who it is, but I unthinkingly start to walk forward. I need to do something. Chris stops me and looks me in the eye. “Stay put, man, the OC needs you.” I don’t know why he stops me, perhaps because he is afraid that I can’t carry the load, or because the platoon should be allowed to carry its own wounded. Or maybe he thinks the OC may need my radio. Chris points at the fork in the road where we’ve just walked and tells me to remain there, directing others to go around to the left, along a cleared route. As the stretcher bearers pick up the casualty and start to move him toward Zangabad, I give directions. I am talking in a normal voice, but it sounds strange in my ears, gravelly and low. I wonder what everyone else is thinking. The line slowly snakes past until Chris comes and taps me on the shoulder. We move off in our original positions, being sure to keep to the left. I wonder if everyone else will stay on the correct path without me there. I wonder if it even matters. I feel nothing as we walk and listen to the familiar sound of a LAV pulling up, stopping, and dropping the rear ramp. Its quiet engine sounds like a school bus as it drives toward Zangabad, and I hear the familiar whine of its belts. I hear the sound of helicopter rotors in the distance, growing louder by the second. The OC has gone on ahead, and Chris
turns around, glaring at me. I can see anger in his eyes. I’m following too close again.
Soon we hit the tracks that the LAV left, and make sure to stay on them until we reach Zangabad. It is a short walk, and we arrive at the COP just as a Black Hawk helicopter lands, kicks up a cloud of dust, kisses the ground, and takes off again, all impossibly fast. Someone tells us that the casualty has died. Chris is in front of me, and he whispers, “Who was it?” to one of the guys framed by the open back ramp of the LAV, which smells of blood.
“Arnal from 21,” someone responds. As the word spreads, I hear a furious scream, impossibly loud, and the sound echoes in the Afghan night. I watch a soldier throw his helmet as hard as he can at the ground, and see the moondust splash up around it.
We finish moving back into the COP, and I sit down on the sandbags that are arranged in a seemingly perfect circle around the mortar pit. The OC walks directly into Zangabad’s CP, and I am left alone. I watch the rest of 21 filter into Zangabad; they are stopping just after the entrance and it is difficult to make them out in the dark. There is nothing that I can do to help. Around me I can hear the beginnings of sorrowful conversations about Corporal James Arnal. I feel alone. I walk over to the rest of my section, and listen to people talk about how they knew him and good times that they had together. Voices laden with emotion, they try their hardest to laugh. I don’t think that I can picture his face.
I drop my kit on the sand and find an open box of rations. For some reason I am hungry. This is not the normal hunger associated with finishing a leg, but full-on ravenousness. I take a ration back to the mortar pit and rip it open. The food becomes my only focus and I tear at it, throwing cardboard and silver packaging onto the ground. Soon I am thrusting spoonful after spoonful into my mouth. I feel hot tears push into my eyes. My body has no conception of what to feel, or how to feel it, so I eat and hold in tears. I feel
an intense need to hide from those around me the fact that I’m eating; I hope that the darkness and the sorrow are sufficient to cover up my actions. My hands shake, and I finally identify what I am consuming: Chicken Carbonara. I will never eat it again.
I finish, and the tears try again to push their way out of my eyes. I refuse to let them. It wouldn’t be proper for me to break down in front of all these stoics who must feel a much greater depth of sorrow than I do. I throw out my ration and go back to sitting. My hands shake. Numbness returns. The night is dark and cool and I feel nothing.