War Dogs

by Shane Bryant

  I had seen Scott’s body carried out, in a poncho, which had gutted me. I felt nothing for the two dead Taliban lying in the dust.

  So much of Afghanistan seemed to me to belong in another millennium; even the people wage war like they’re involved in a conflict that’s straight out of the Middle Ages.

  I was near a Psyops truck during a TIC, looking over a village, and heard one of the terps hollering into a microphone, blaring out a message to the Taliban fighters down in the compounds who’d been firing at us.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ I asked one of the Psyops soldiers. ‘He’s saying, roughly translated, “Come out and fight, you pussies”, and “Your mothers fuck donkeys”.’

  I laughed. Then I heard an angry-sounding message in Pashto squawking through the intercom radio speaker. ‘What was that all about?’

  The terp looked at me and grinned. ‘That is the Taliban. They are replying to my message. They say, “If you promise not to use your aeroplanes, we will gladly come out and fight you, like men”.’

  Things were not going well at Deh Rawood, so I went to see the team sergeant.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to him, ‘but my dog just isn’t suited to doing foot patrols. Ricky hates Guy’s dog, Apis, and you’ve seen him when we go out into the villages – he wants to kill every Afghani and every motorcycle he sees.’

  I suggested to the team sergeant that I email my company and see if they could get me posted to another FOB.

  ‘You do what you gotta do, man,’ he said to me.

  It was a hard decision to leave, but I didn’t want to risk something going seriously wrong because Ricky just wasn’t cut out for the sort of work the Deh Rawood team was doing. He had, of course, almost drowned on the river crossing and, far from helping me bring down the barriers with the team, was almost proving to be a liability.

  By contrast, Apis, a German shepherd, was so relaxed around Afghanis while on foot patrols that Guy could work him off-lead. There was no way I could do that with Ricky if there were civilians in the area. He wasn’t a bad dog, but there was no point pretending the situation was going to get any better. Guy stayed at Deh Rawood and I left.

  TWELVE

  The time of my life

  April–May 2007

  Disappointed with how things had gone at Deh Rawood, I flew back to Kandahar, where for a month it was back to seemingly endless, boring vehicle searches at the gates, until I could organise another posting. By this time, the company I’d first joined, Canine Associates International, had gone out of business, and its contracts and staff – including me – had been taken over by a new company, American K9. For the handlers and dogs, it was business as usual.

  There were no spots available at any of the US Special Forces FOBs, but Jason, with whom I’d first deployed to Cobra, was due for vacation so I had the opportunity to replace him at Graceland, a Canadian SF base. Graceland was located near the city of Kandahar, but was separate from the main military compound. I gathered my gear and Ricky, and reported to the airstrip, where a US Army Black Hawk flew us to Graceland.

  There was a Mexican dog handler I knew, named Henry, who was working at Graceland, and when we landed he met us and introduced me to the Canadians. The Canadian Special Forces, or CANSOF, were fighting a different type of war in a different way from their US counterparts. The Canadians’ area of operations was the city of Kandahar itself, a totally different environment to the sparsely populated mountains I’d been operating in so far.

  There were still senior Taliban living in hiding in the Kandahar Province, and directing the insurgents’ operations around the country. The Canadians were in the business of finding Taliban suspects, known as PUCs, or ‘persons under consideration’, by the authorities. Working on intelligence from various sources, they’d identify and locate their PUC, then launch a short, sharp raid to grab the suspect.

  They were operating in densely populated areas, amid ancient buildings, narrow lanes, busy roads and ugly Soviet-era blocks of flats. The commander of the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), detachment asked me a lot of questions about Ricky’s personality, to see if he were going to be suitable for the kind of work they were doing and the built-up environment they were operating in. My heart sank but I had to be honest.

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to be the right dog for this kind of work,’ I said to the Canadian. I had visions of Ricky running amok in the streets of Kandahar, attacking every Afghani and motorcycle that caught his eye. He’d be a liability for a bunch of guys trying to sneak up to a house and snatch someone.

  It wasn’t a total loss, though, as there were vehicle checkpoints to do at Graceland as well. Henry’s dog was good around people and we decided that if an explosive detection dog were needed on a mission, Henry would go and I’d stay at Graceland to look after the vehicle checkpoints. It wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t have long to wait until Jason came back from vacation and I could maybe get a gig at a US FOB before I headed back to Australia for my next leave.

  As it happened, there weren’t a lot of missions being launched from Graceland. The Canadians were looking for specific targets at specific times and places and, as a result, they wouldn’t launch a mission unless every ‘i’ were dotted, every ‘t’ crossed, and every possible element of support available. Several missions were cancelled while I was there. The US SF I’d worked with were able to be more proactive and flexible in their approach to operations, which basically involved driving out into the mountains, and looking for information or a fight.

  Graceland deserved its name, as it was far better set up than was the Canadian base at Spin Boldak. The accommodation was spacious and modern, and I had unlimited use of the internet and a connection in my room. The CANSOF were eating first-rate tucker and had some of the best training facilities I’d seen, including a mock village and extensive firing ranges. However, I found the soldiers a bit stand-offish and the vehicle checkpoints, incredibly boring, which just confirmed to me what I knew already.

  I wanted to get back to FOB Cobra, in Uruzgan, where the fast pace of operations out in the mountains and valleys suited me, and suited my dog. If I had to be in this fucked-up country, I wanted to be out with the Green Berets, stirring up shit and looking for a fight in the wilds of Afghanistan.

  I finally got my wish, and got back into the game at Cobra.

  There were two new teams from the 7th Special Forces Group at the FOB when I arrived, as well as another American K9 dog handler, Brad, and a US Army special search dog, a Native American guy called Lee, who ended up becoming a good mate of mine. Funnily, this dusty, remote, barren corner of Afghanistan felt like home.

  Lee, who I usually addressed by the Indian name I’d given him, Chief Chin Nuts, had a Labrador named Spaulding. Lee took good care of me when I arrived and made sure I got myself squared away in no time. I had brought with me on the chopper out to the fire-base a couple of boxes of Tim Horton’s donuts, which also helped break the ice.

  Lee, Brad and I started training together, which kept us and our dogs active and interested in between missions. We changed our training locations often, which was just as well because when a mortar round did land inside the FOB, it hit where we’d been conducting our exercises the day before.

  Cobra was way out in the badlands of Uruzgan, and the only way to keep the FOB supplied was by air. Afghanistan’s dust eats helicopters and rotary wing assets were always stretched, so we would be resupplied regularly by air drops from US Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. We’d all go out to the drop zone when the bird was inbound. The rear ramp of the Hercules would open and out would tumble up to eighteen one-tonne containers, each with a 64-foot diameter green parachute above it. We’d get food, water and fuel this way, and the hard physical work of breaking down the cargo, loading it onto trucks and all-terrain vehicles and rolling up the huge parachutes helped keep us fit. After a drop, I’d also help stack all the used parachutes and air drop equipment into cargo nets, which would later be slu
ng under a Chinook helicopter and flown back to Kandahar for repacking. Ricky would come along and hang out with us while we were waiting for the drops and the pick-ups.

  Working out on the drop zone, I became good mates with a US Air Force combat controller named Mike, who oversaw all the aerial resupply drops and air movements to and from Cobra. He was a lieutenant, but had spent years in the ranks and recently been promoted from sergeant, so he’d been around the traps. Mike was my gym partner and was fit as a mallee bull. He was laid-back and friendly, but also incredibly professional and very well respected by the SF teams at Cobra. He and I would sit in his room and watch TV and talk about our families. He was a smoker on the sly and would occasionally bum one from me when we were having our coffee. When we worked out, he’d leave me totally fucking exhausted and, as a result, I started to bulk up.

  It was great being back in the fold at the FOB and I found the two SF teams there very welcoming. Because Cobra was so remote from the rest of the army, there was less procedural bullshit than at places such as Kandahar or Tarin Khowt. Technically, the no-drinking rule still applied, but if someone managed to bring back from leave a bottle of booze, we’d all share it while watching a DVD. Even though I had to get to know a whole new group of people, I found that by getting stuck into the mundane chores around the base, such as rolling parachutes and refurbishing vehicles, and not mouthing off about where I’d been and what I’d done, acceptance came, with time.

  With the CANSOF at Graceland, even if I’d been allowed on a mission, I would have been transported in a soft-skinned vehicle and not given a machine gun to man. I was a civilian dog handler, and that was what I was treated as, but back at Cobra I was part of the team again, manning a 240 on the back of a gun truck with my dog at my feet.

  I was happier being out in the wilds of the mountains and valleys of Uruzgan, even if it was tough country. Like the jagged mountains and stony deserts, the people here were shaped by the environment they lived in. It’s a harsh, unforgiving country with stinking hot, dry summers and freezing cold winters. In the summer, the temperature would be pushing 50 degrees, and I’d fry, driving around in the back of a gun truck with just a baseball cap to protect my head. At the hottest times of the year, I’d get the medics to help me give Ricky a saline drip before a mission, to keep his fluids up.

  Wind whipped the dust into spinning devils and storms that blotted out the sun. We’d wear goggles and bandannas, but it would still get into your mouth, your nose, your eyes, your hair, your food and inside your clothes. The grit chewed weapons, machines, vehicles and aircraft; a pervasive, destructive enemy in its own right. After days in the sun in the back of the GMV, the back of my neck was chaffed red raw, and sunburned, and my lips were cracked and bleeding.

  In winter I’d wear uniforms, T-shirts, jackets, jumpers and a beanie, and wrap myself in a blanket, but still the wind would slice through the layers while I was in the back of the gun truck. I’ve never been as hot or as cold as I’ve been in Afghanistan. When it rained, as it had when we’d ventured into Helmand Province, I got soaked in the back of the open-top vehicle.

  Ricky had seen it all and done it all in all kinds of weather, but that didn’t mean that I – or the teams I worked with – didn’t care about his welfare when we were out on patrol. When I mentioned to the team sergeant that Ricky was a bit too exposed sitting on a mound of gear in the back of a gun truck, he gave me his blessing to redesign the vehicle’s layout. With the help of some of the other SF guys, we moved the rear M240s from their original fittings at the two back corners of the truck to midway up the load area on each side, and moved some boxes so that Ricky had a tailor-made spot at the rear of the truck. It was easier to load and unload him from here and, unlike me, he now had some protection from the wind as we drove.

  The team at Cobra had an air of quiet professionalism, and a lot of that attitude filtered down from the team captain, Mike. He was a super-fit, super-calm, quiet, friendly natural leader.

  The team’s operations were characterised by aggressive patrolling in the surrounding countryside. We’d sometimes go out at night to nearby high ground called Table Top Mountain, and just watch, looking for enemy activity and people breaking the evening six o’clock curfew. At other times, the team would drive out in convoy looking to provoke a fight with the Taliban. The Americans didn’t seem to be motivated by a need for payback against al-Qaeda, or by a desire to increase their body count or ‘smoke’ people, as Chuck would have put it. Instead, these were professional soldiers looking to do their job in the most effective manner they could and to pursue their country’s enemy aggressively. Other teams I’d served with would roll into an Afghani village with ‘The Boys are Back in Town’, or AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ blaring from the bank of speakers on top of the Psyops truck, to show the locals they were there to kick arse and take names, but this team did things quietly, and with a minimum of fuss or show.

  While they were professional in their attitude, the team members still had a sense of humour and, in between missions, would unwind by taking the piss out of each other. One of the military intelligence guys assigned to the FOB had picked up a stray kitten somewhere and was keeping it in his room; he even made it a kitty litter tray. One day he returned to his hooch and did a double take when he saw a foot-long turd covered in litter. After he recovered from his initial heart attack, he worked out that the calling card had been left by a two-legged cat. The identity of the phantom stayed a secret for a while, though.

  The television room became the venue for pre-mission briefings, and Captain Mike would have the floor. At one of them, a laptop and data projector were flashing up a map on the drop-down screen, showing what had happened the last time the team had visited the village of Pasaw, a short drive east of Cobra, two months earlier.

  I hadn’t been at Cobra then, but could imagine the scene by looking at the first slide. There were a dozen red starbursts showing where close air support had been called in, and aircraft of some description had dropped bombs. Artillery support had also been called in from Cobra and there were more starbursts that indicated where 105-millimetre shells from the guns had landed. It looked to me like the Taliban had been spotted by the team from observation posts in the hills overlooking Pasaw, and then funnelled up the Helmand River valley by the air strikes and artillery barrage, into a killing zone. There might have been only twelve men in an A-Team, but they had a shitload of lethal ordnance to call on when they needed it.

  ‘Slide,’ said Mike, and one of the sergeants clicked the down arrow on the computer. The team was going back to Pasaw and Mike’s next slide showed the make-up of the force that would be undertaking the mission. There would be 39 of us: the A-Team, some ANA with their ETT advisers, Afghani police, a Psyops element, and one Australian – me.

  I would be travelling in one of four GMVs, in my usual position, in the back with Ricky behind a 240 on a swing mount. Our vehicle’s driver was Ryan, a big, bearded bear of a guy who was one of the Psyops people, and a staff sergeant named George would be in the turret behind the Mark 19.

  Mike’s slide showed the armament we’d be carrying in the GMVs, the ETT guys’ up-armoured humvee, and the two Afghani pick-ups. In addition to George’s Mark 19 and my 240, we would be carrying M249 and M60 light machine guns, and a Carl Gustaf 84-millimetre anti-armour weapon in our truck. One of the other GMVs would be lugging the team’s 60-millimetre mortar, so our little convoy was packing quite a bit of its own grunt. I also noted that another civilian contractor, a police mentor and mate of mine named DynCorp Joe, and Bari, the team’s Afghani interpreter, would be riding in the mortar truck. Bari was a good guy. Unlike the other interpreters I’d met, Bari lived with the team in their compound, which was an indication of his loyalty and the esteem in which the Green Berets held him. Unlike some terps, Bari wasn’t afraid of a fight, and had fired his AK-47 in support of the team in several TICs.

  Mike told the sergeant at the computer to move to the next slide,
and he read out the team’s mission, which was to support the local ANA unit and the Afghani police in taking up observation posts over Pasaw and the valley, ‘in order to observe and disrupt enemy activities’. It was the military way of saying we were going out to a place where we knew we’d find the Taliban, in order to pick a fight with them.

  While most of us would travel in the vehicles, Mike was going to lead a six-man element of Green Berets on foot, through the mountains, to the target. The foot patrol would set up an observation post looking east along the Helmand River, while the four GMVs would deploy in pairs to set up two support by fire positions, a few hundred metres to Mike’s west. The support by fire positions faced south and south east, overlooking bends in the river and the cultivated fields in the valleys beyond. The Afghani police, ANA and ETTs would have an observation post of their own, down in the valley, near the village, where the fighting would be.

  ‘The area is populated and moderately built-up around the village, with mostly single-storey dwellings. The overall assessment of the chance of contact – likely.’

  Mike’s final word gave rise to a few nods. There was a very good chance it would be game-on during this mission.

  Mike and the other Green Berets on foot patrol slipped out of the base in the pre-dawn gloom, and the rest of us saddled up and rolled out of the gate as the sky was painting the mountains a pale purple. As we were driving off road most of the way, our progress was slow. The landscape around us lightened to shades of red, then gold. It was going to be a clear, crisp autumn day – perfect for the work at hand.