Warrior Brothers (16 page)

It was 08:30 and our patrol had been up since 04:00, perched at an altitude of 10,000 feet while overlooking the village of Ali Kehl. We had been in Afghanistan for several months now, and this would prove to be our last reconnaissance/foot patrol. Thank God for that! I swear my butt was as calloused as a baboon's. An uncomfortable reminder of the hours, days and weeks spent sitting in various OPs.

As a group we were proud of the fact that we had not been compromised during our last two patrols, a combined period of 23 days in the field. At times, shepherds had walked within 30 metres of our position, but a combination of good fortune and well-selected OP sites allowed our patrol to remain undetected.

We had been in our current OP for nearly 10 days and were running low on supplies. I had already devoured my fudge brownie so there was very little to look forward to for the rest of the day. Usually a lack of water was a problem on foot patrols but for this task we had carried in several additional jerry cans. Food, or the lack thereof, was now the issue. The incessant rumbling in our stomachs had been replaced by a feeling of nausea from lack of sustenance.

We were to be extracted the following morning. We collapsed the OP after last light and headed towards the extraction landing zone. There were a couple of trees that had
to be felled before we could snuggle into the cold earth and attempt to steal some sleep. It was a cool night, but waking was not difficult the next morning: the glow of the rising sun looks all the more pleasant on the morning of a patrol extraction. We were looking forward to a warm shower and a meal, hot or cold – it didn't matter, as long as it filled the ache in our shrunken stomachs.

Within two hours an Apache gunship appeared out of nowhere. It completed a quick search of the area before the extraction Blackhawk came into view. We identified our position with a smoke grenade and within seconds the bird swooped in and gathered our band of weary bodies. Our leg muscles had deteriorated during the last 11 days of the task and quivered under the weight of our packs. We clambered rather than climbed aboard, and were grateful to the pilot for giving it plenty of stick on the way back.

We unpacked our equipment and were debriefed before dinner. Three of us were joined in the mess tent by Lieutenant General Peter Cosgrove. The lieutenant general was a charismatic man whom I had met previously – I had provided close protection and translation assistance for him during the initial stages of the East Timor campaign several years prior. A man of his standing and rank is generally followed around by a high-ranking entourage, and we were interrupted by many willing candidates who really just wanted to kiss the big man's arse.

This type of thing always annoyed the hell out of me. Some people, either because of their education or their positions of power, took great joy in setting themselves above others. These individuals used to turn into top-shelf grovellers when in the company of someone of higher rank or standing.

To our amusement, Cossie was obviously no fan of sycophants, and in a subtle way basically told one senior officer to piss off and let him enjoy his dinner with a few guys who had just got back from patrol. Cossie was a soldier's soldier,
always keen to hear what it was like from the men on the ground. He was a good man who had been there and done it himself. We all liked him. We spoke with the lieutenant general for 45 minutes before excusing ourselves and letting the kiss-arse entourage resume their humiliating antics.

The next day I pulled myself out of bed and went for an eight-kilometre run with a former operator who was now a support staff member (he became a computer guru after injuring his back in a parachuting accident). The first 25 minutes of this first run back from patrol were fine, but then the lack of endurance in my legs became frustratingly obvious. It was always good to get that initial run out of the way. In the afternoon a couple of us had a gym workout and our efforts were also far from peak performance.

This was fairly standard for patrol members. Operators would return from patrol with heavily fatigued bodies and face a race against time to build up their strength and endurance before the next patrol. Some guys didn't bother doing any training but over the months they deteriorated physically at a much faster rate. In essence, what this meant was that the physical capabilities of some men could really hamper a patrol's overall efficiency. One such man was an American forward air controller (FAC) who was attached to our patrol. He looked robust enough but was rendered inoperable on the very first ascent. On several occasions he just sat down and refused to continue until he was rested. This was frustrating. How do you coax a man with no sense of self-respect or fortitude to keep going?

Added to this, he was probably the most poorly disciplined field soldier I had worked with. He was incapable of remaining silent while in OP, so the rest of us decided that we would let him sleep in each morning for as long as possible. At least if he remained concealed within the depths of his heavy
green sleeping bag there was less chance of him making noise or creating excessive movement.

He would wake, sometimes hours after the rest of us, and while wiping the sleep out of his eyes would noisily comment, ‘It must be nearly midday. Why didn't you guys wake me?'

‘You looked tired and could do with the extra rest,' we'd whisper in reply.

This man was unable to fathom the concept that a small team's chances of survival were directly related to stealth and concealment. Being forced to work with him made me realise afresh how fortunate I'd been to work with such high-quality operators. The difference it made to an operation having a patrol member you couldn't rely on was profound. And there was little that the more valuable members of the team could do to make up for the liability. We couldn't just leave him or kick the hell out of him, for his skills might come in handy later. We just had to lighten his load and make certain that he was never again permitted to deploy on a foot patrol.

Back at Bagram Airbase, finished with reconnaissance missions for the time being, our lives settled into a rhythm of sorts: training to get our fitness levels up, interspersed with bouts of impatience to be put to good use again. They weren't the worst conditions to live under for a while, but if there was one thing that would add to the frustration of operations, it was the occasional bout of food poisoning.

Many guys in the squadron had fallen ill with what appeared to be a 48-hour virus. I was not immune and one evening after a meal, my stomach began to feel unsettled. I was actually watching the film
Blackhawk Down
with at least a dozen other soldiers when my stomach cramps intensified. I grabbed the bin just as, onscreen, a US ranger was writhing in pain from a femoral arterial bleed. I began vomiting rather violently and the boys laughed, no doubt thinking that I had lost my nerve and was no longer capable of watching a gory battle scene.

But the vomiting wouldn't stop. By the time the film was finished I was completely incapacitated. I would have loved to crawl back to my stretcher but the most I could manage was to rest my forehead on the rim of the bin. Before long, my undignified appearance included a thick red crease just below my hairline.

One of my closest mates, Mick, finally noticed that all was not well and fetched a medic. A quick assessment led to three litres of Hartman's fluid being pumped into my system via the cubital fossa vein in the crook of my right arm. The medic then threw a blanket over my semi-comatose body. And there I lay for the evening ahead, curled around my new best buddy, the bin.

But after a few hours things got interesting. Lying in a semi-alert yet vegetative state, my eyes suddenly snapped open. The cramps were worse, and this time they were situated much lower down. The feeling was unmistakable. I realised that it didn't matter how hard I tried to clench my body, there was a strong possibility that I was going to shit myself. As if all the vomiting wasn't bad enough!

I struggled to my feet and scrambled outside, managing to turn on my head torch as I stumbled into the cold darkness. Even the 40-metre walk to the portaloos was too much of a challenge. Midway through my very restricted, bum-cheek-clutching journey, my stomach gave way. Even in my weakened state I was thoroughly disgusted with myself.

Once I made the toilet it was on for young and old, from both ends. I felt like I had been turned inside out and just sat there trying to recover some semblance of control. When I could safely bring my head up for air I looked around to grab a roll of toilet paper. I was going to need every single sheet. There was none. ‘Great,' I spluttered.

I took off my pants and began to walk to the next toilet, but not before the cycle began all over again. I now felt too miserable to care how I looked and only just managed to get the
door open before falling inside. This toilet was another bad choice – there was only enough toilet paper to do half the job. I spent five minutes recovering before moving to a third toilet. What a freaking epic this was turning into. Ignoring the icy cold wind, I grabbed my pants and walked, semi-naked, to the wash point, the light from my head torch shining down on my filth-smeared, dishevelled form.

I was beyond caring how pathetic I looked to the gate sentry. I had far more pressing issues to worry about. After lathering up my lower limbs and washing myself clean, I threw my underwear into the bin before trudging back to the stretcher in the regimental aid post. I didn't bother putting my pants back on. There was no point – they were probably splashed with faeces and it would only delay me if I urgently required the loo again. I pulled a blanket over my shivering body and rested my throbbing head on the stretcher.
Tomorrow is a new day
, I consoled myself, before drifting off to sleep.

The next several days were composed of general admin and rest, with the exception of an unfortunate trip to the range (10 kilometres from Bagram Airbase). Not my finest hour. I was driving the lead car when I felt that familiar bloated feeling in my lower stomach. I immediately pulled over to the right side of the road while remaining on the sealed surface, before darting around to the front of the car. The sides of the road were lined with red and white rocks, indicating that we were surrounded by landmines. Bagram was one of the most heavily mined areas in Afghanistan and it was not a danger to be taken lightly. I was not going to risk blowing off my foot just so I could suffer from the squirts in privacy.

I held on to the bullbar with one hand while my body let go once again. I kept things as quick and as tidy as humanly possible. The man who reappeared from in front of the car must have looked different from the man who had disappeared there two minutes before. I was several shades paler
and I fastened the buckle to secure my pants rather gingerly. To my surprise and gratitude, no-one said a word.

The convoy continued and had travelled several kilometres when a brief message burst over the radio: ‘Did anyone see the cat shit on the road back there? That is the most pathetic attempt at a shit I have ever seen.'

I laughed but secretly prayed for rain to wash away the evidence before our return journey.

The next morning, with a largely recovered constitution on my part, the Boss and I went for an 11-kilometre run around the dusty track that circumnavigated the airfield. We were all too aware of the threat of mines, so there would be no shortcuts. Enormous sections of the airfield had not been cleared. (Four years later, when I returned as a civilian contractor, not much appeared to have changed.) As we were running we noticed a significant puff of what could have been either smoke or dust rising from the mountainous ridges to the south.

We stopped and watched it for a couple of moments, idly trading speculation as to what it could have been. Within 30 or 40 seconds a rocket slammed into the ground just 100 metres from our position. Two US soldiers on a quad motorbike came tearing towards us like startled rabbits. They had no idea what the explosion was so we pointed out to them where we suspected it had been fired from, and they went to report the incident. There wasn't much else we could do about it, so we decided to continue with our run.