Authors: Ryan Flavelle
The patrolling spirit is fundamentally a desire to be there. I remember someone saying that “when it sucks, all you can do is smile.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but that is literally all that you can do if you hope to be successful as a soldier. Those who have the patrolling spirit also have a desire to embrace the challenge, a desire to be hard. It would take a strange person to want to walk an IED-infested riverbed, but real soldiers understand that there are only two choices; to want to be there or not to want to be there. If you choose not to want
to be there, it won’t change the fact that you are there, and it won’t lessen the stress one bit. In fact, once you admit to yourself that you do not want to be there, it only makes the road much longer.
Patrolling spirit is what separates those who succeed from those who fail. I realize now that I possessed that spirit for a long time, but began to lose sight of it on those last long kilometres separating us from Sperwan Ghar. I was afraid, tired, sore, dehydrated, and dirty—but that was the first time I truly did
not
want to be there. It was a sobering experience and gave rise to a long process of self-reflection. This would not be my last patrol, and I would have to find a way to deal with my feelings every other time that I stepped outside the wire. I was not alone in this; I think that everyone had to come to terms with their own private battle of fatigue and exhaustion versus pride and strength. The best of us used their darkest hour to improve as soldiers and develop their spirit. Only time would tell what would become of mine.
As we continue to work our way through the village of Haji, I slowly close further into myself. My breathing is laboured, and I have a hard time concentrating on anything other than my shoulders. I drink all but one of my bottles of water before we exit the village. For the first time, a new emotion creeps into my mind like the slow advance of a dark tide: despair. It is born of the opium field that will never end, soon leading into the kilometre that will never end, and the leg that will never end. This new feeling of despair comes from the stress of the last five days on patrol, and the last five months in-country. The inner strength that I felt when we stepped outside the wire at Haji has all but evaporated. Mostly, it is the tension of the patrol that wears me down, the constant anxiety that refuses to abate.
I don’t know if I can push my exhausted body through the remaining kilometres. My universe has shrunk to the man in front
of me, and the terrain that my feet must tread upon. I look around with only fleeting glimpses, but mostly I concentrate on the gravel and the angle of the short slope in front of me. I calculate the odds of someone having laid an IED where I am about to step, in between the moment I lift my foot up and when I put it back on the ground. I try to trick myself into believing that there is no danger, as I find it easier to walk when I do that. I lie to myself and say that I am sure that someone has already stepped here, or that no one would lay an IED at the bottom of a depression, only at the top. I never step on the crest of any mound of earth, no matter how small, and I never step on the intersection of any two paths. The process reminds me of “step on a crack—break your mother’s back,” the superstition that caused me and my sister to watch where we stepped throughout childhood. Inevitably, I cannot follow my own rules, and I end up stepping somewhere I don’t want to. At these moments I hold my breath and tense up my body. The rational part of my brain reminds me that I doubt I would see it coming if I stepped on an IED. There are simply too many spots to hide them, and too many steps to take. I am glad that I can feel my St. Christopher medal dig into my chest under the weight of my flak jacket.
We take agonizingly slow steps forward, and in the distance I hear a familiar sound. LAVs are moving from Sper to the edge of the riverbed to pick us up, saving us a few kilometres of the patrol. There is an ANA checkpoint named Brown that lies at the end of the road between Sper and the Arghandab. This dusty collection of HESCO Bastions, with an Afghan flag flying above it and a tan-painted Ford Ranger in front of it, is effectively the beginning of the Afghanistan that is friendly to us. The sound of the LAV engines carries extremely far in the cool, quiet night. It is nice to hear the reassuring diesel rumble after so long with only the sound of distant dogs, the rasping of our breath, and our own hearts beating. We can hear the engines rev as they drive over the berm that separates CP
Brown from the Arghandab, where they will wait for us, scanning the dark night with their thermal optics. I imagine the massive bulk of the LAV, which I’ve always thought looked like a green-painted armoured RV with a 25mm cannon sticking out of it. That thought reminds me of the movie
Stripes.
(“We got one heavily armed recreational vehicle here, man.”) I laugh, feeling grateful that their hulk is watching over us.
As we walk up the steep slope of the riverbed, it is obvious that the patrol as a whole is slowing down. I look at my watch, and it is 0300. We have been going for over eight hours. The patrol pauses often, and we finally reach a compound surrounded by wide, dried-out opium fields that seem to stretch over the horizon. As we progress through this field, the sound of the LAV engines grows louder, but I still can’t seem to make them out. I can not believe how far the opium fields stretch, and we seem to take a break and sit down every five minutes. There is a large mud compound between us and the Arghandab, and outside it sits an old tractor and a van. I catch myself thinking that this is a really nice house, when I realize that it is a mud compound on the edge of a war zone. I have been surrounded by the abject poverty of the villages west of Sper for so long that I truly believe that this large, unpainted mud compound with vehicles sitting in front of it is the height of personal accommodation, that it should be featured on “MTV Panjway Cribs.”
Finally, we descend to the bottom of a short ditch, before climbing up the other side and finding ourselves in the midst of the laager. The sound of the LAV engines idling is almost deafening to my ears, which had become accustomed to the silence of the march. I walk in a daze to the centre of the vehicles and stand there, not knowing what to do. Eventually someone comes out and directs me toward an ANA truck that is waiting to take our kit. I am halfway through a smoke, and it does not register that the patrol is over. Instead of the elation that usually comes with the end of a patrol, I
feel utterly exhausted and mostly numb. I drop off my pack in the back of a large transport truck, and it is taken by an Afghan soldier wearing green camouflage pants and a tan T-shirt. He strains under its weight.
Although I don’t realize it yet, the fear and despair that gripped my soul on this last leg of the patrol will remain with me throughout the tour. It will even remain with me in Canada, when I wake up drenched in cold sweat, convinced that the ground underneath me has fallen away, or that I have lost the rest of the patrol and am alone. On this last leg, drenched in my own sweat, covered in dirt, weighed down under far too much kit, walking on blistered feet, and bleeding from a cut on my face, I lower my head and will never raise it fully again. Maybe every soldier has a moment like this—or maybe not.
“Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.” Someone counts us off. “You guys go to the back of that LAV.” I don’t see where he is pointing, but follow the crowd and eventually see an opened rear ramp leading to a dark interior.
By the time I make it to that LAV, the first six have already gone in and it is almost overflowing with soldiers. The benches comfortably seat six, three on either side. I am the seventh, and three more people push into the back as if this were a Tokyo subway car. Chris is in my group, and I see him as we cram into the LAV. I feel the press of other people’s armour, kit, and bodies as we each try to wiggle into a somewhat comfortable position. A few are smoking cigarettes and the air is cool and humid and full of tobacco. Someone comes to the back of the open ramp and asks if we want cold water.
“Fuck, yes,” is the reply, and the box is handed to Chris. He rips it open and starts handing the water out. I take a bottle with my gloved hand, excited at this treat. As I squeeze the bottle I realize
that it is completely frozen. I open it and get a few ice-cold drops from the top, but nothing else. The bottle is too cold in my hands and eventually I replace the lid and drop it behind the blast blanket that I’m leaning against. The box is sitting on Chris’s lap, and he complains that his crotch is freezing. I help him take out individual bottles of water and throw them unceremoniously to the side of the carrier.
“That’s fucking retarded,” is all I can think to say. I finish my cigarette, tap the air sentry on the leg and pass it to him to throw out into the moondust. The ramp closes with a hiss of air and a metallic
thunk
as the heavy latches move into place. It sounds like the closing of the doors on the Death Star. There are yellow stickers on both sides of the door warning people not to put their hands where the latches close. They depict a black silhouetted hand being mangled into unnatural shapes by the gears.
I feel safe once again, and lean back against the blast blanket, take off my helmet, and close my eyes. Around me, most have given up on the frozen water and are doing the same. We sit with our legs pressed together and hear the diesel roar of the engine, labouring under the weight of 13 fully kitted soldiers. We are moving back toward Sperwan Ghar, which is only a kilometre away. The turret swings softly from side to side, and we jostle and bounce over the bumps as the carrier moves down the gravel road back home. Over the speaker, I hear 29er informing 2 that we are passing the front gate. I feel my body tilt back as we drive up the hill into Sperwan Ghar, and smile at the thought that the patrol is over.
The LAV door opens to reveal the rocky gravel that covers the top of Sper. Behind the guns and above the HESCO Bastions, the black-blue sky is fading fast, with hints of orange intermingling with it. It is 0430 when we reach our final destination, and already it is dawn. The sound of the LAV door falling open is familiar and I hear it clank on the ground. I am home.
We stand up and awkwardly shuffle out of the carrier as we often have, half stooped so as not to bang our heads against the roof. M72 rocket launchers are suspended from Bungee cords attached to the metal pole that runs the length of the carrier’s ceiling; we have to bow our heads to avoid them. We call LAVs “cars,” and it sounds like we’re talking about our personal vehicle every time someone points one out.
There is a long line of people waiting for their packs at the back of the ANA truck. I walk the 100 metres back to our room, drop my chest rig in the sand, and hang up my flak vest and helmet. The clothes hooks are drilled into a piece of plywood under an awning outside of our Russian compound. The bulldog that we’ve never named looks out at me as I hang my kit. Inside, scratched into the wall, there is Taliban graffiti that we leave alone. I hang my helmet on the same hook as my flak vest and wonder what it will be like to have a coat rack in Canada. I walk into the room, turn on the light, take off my shirt, grab a Squiggle Coke from the fridge, and sit on the picnic table to have a cigarette. I smoke slowly, and the cold Coke doesn’t taste as good as I’d imagined. I have a dull headache, and realize that I’m probably dehydrated. My weapon rests to my left, lying across the picnic table. It is covered in dust and mud. I grab it and make my way back to the ANA truck. The line for kit is much shorter now. My pack sits in a heap some ways back from the truck. A clean-shaven Asiatic ANA soldier smiles at me and stares as I pick it up. I make my way past the mess and the showers back to our room and drop it heavily beside my bunk. A few people in the room have already grabbed breakfast, and the smell of fresh food entices me, so I sling my weapon over my shoulder and go stand in line for breakfast.
It is 0445 and the sun has just broken over the horizon. The cooks have been up since 0330; they knew we were coming back, so they started their morning in the middle of the night to prepare
a much-appreciated breakfast for us. I’ve learned from experience to avoid the pancakes, as they’re always heavy and unsatisfying. Instead, the cooks heap scrambled and hard-boiled eggs, beans, thick slices of ham and bacon, and hash browns onto my plate. I go into the mess tent, grab a handful of grapes that we purchased from the village of Sper, a blueberry Otis Spunkmeyer muffin (basically a miniature cake with 20 grams of fat), and a Nescafé 3in1. I then stuff a pear and an apple into my pocket. It’s a balancing act trying to make it back to my room, and the pear and apple bang against my leg every step of the way. I make it without dropping anything, and put my food on the table that we usually play poker at. I’m done the meal in about 10 minutes; I hardly breathe as I take in the glorious food. I go outside to smoke, find my Squiggle Coke on the picnic table and finish it. I then go and take off my soiled clothes, unzip my boots, and walk to the shower in my underwear.
As I pass the first mirror I see a stranger out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn to look at him I discover that it’s my reflection. I’m covered in dust, my long hair is matted and clumped with dirt, and my stubble has grown out. My face and hands are tanned dark brown against the pure white of the rest of my body. I wash my hands for two minutes straight before jumping into the shower. The water turns brown as it runs off my body.
As the water washes over me, something unexpected happens. I close my eyes and feel a wave overcome me. Tears I didn’t know were there come to my eyes. They are tears of exhaustion as much as emotion. The shower is the only private place any of us has in Afghanistan, and maybe that is why it happens here. I convince myself that it is stupid to break down like this, and I turn off the water. When I get out, I realize that I’ve forgotten my towel, so I put my dirty underwear back on and walk to our room. Then, as I walk, I realize that in Sper we are not allowed to go out in our underwear. It is an army rule that the more comfort one has, the less acceptable
it is to act like an animal. In Zangabad, people went days wearing nothing but underwear and sandals. In Sper, we have to wear pants and a T-shirt. In KAF, they have to wear their shirts with the sleeves down and red flags. The sleeves must be unrolled because the powers that be have deemed that to be more tactical.