On the only free evening we’d had I’d watched the sun go down from the top of the bulletproof HESCO protection blocks that formed the perimeter of the camp. Sitting there with my thoughts I’d seen the final Chinook flight of the night swooping in low from the east, straight across the fading face of the sun. The Chinook flew over the main landing site and headed straight for the emergency landing site by the fully equipped field hospital, which told me somebody was in a bad way. The scene would not have been out of place in an episode of M*A*S*H, which I’d watched as a kid.
Any thoughts we’d had of getting comfortable at Camp Bastion were very quickly knocked on the head. During Kilo Company’s six-month tour we would spend less than four weeks in the tented city. The rest of the time would be in the ‘real’ Afghanistan, a very different place.
After being given only a few days to acclimatise we had been sent to the small market town of Gereshk where any thoughts of being broken in gently were quickly dispelled. Our first patrol had resulted in a firefight with the Taliban.
We’d passed through the old town of Gereshk for a rendezvous with the Afghan National Police, or ANP, who guarded the large, Chinese-built dam that gave the town its strategic importance. During our conversations with the ANP they’d pointed to a group of men standing on a nearby hillside. They told us they were Taliban but we couldn’t get involved, and no shots had been fired. But as we’d made our way back up into the town the men on the hillside started firing mortars and small arms fire at the Afghans and us. So we’d had no choice but to engage them.
For a brief while we’d been caught in the middle of the Taliban engagement, with our rear exposed to a potential attack. It had taken the rockets from a Harrier fighter jet our OC had called in to finish the encounter. It had been a sobering moment for most of us, a realisation that training was well and truly over.
With two weeks of patrolling under our belts we had then been sent back to Bastion to prepare for deployment to the ‘safe’ house in the town of Now Zad, where we’d be based for at least the next two months. The ‘safe’ house was where I was standing now, looking warily out from behind the sandbags of the sentry post for any sign of another incoming mortar.
I had just been about to sit down to a tasteless lunch of military brown biscuits accompanied by something that had come out of a tin labelled ‘meat patty’ when the call came over the radio for me to visit the small operations room that we had set up as the headquarters of the compound. After eating the same thing for lunch for the last few days I was grateful for the excuse to slot the biscuits back into their green packet. I trotted over and stuck my head in the door.
‘You rang Boss?’ I said as I looked around the corner of the room, which was crammed full, even with just four people stood in there.
As it turned out the boss, who was the Officer Commanding Kilo Company, was busy on the radio.
The signaller gave me a wave and I waved back while the boss finished his conversation then replaced the spare headset that was connected to the main sangar and hill radio network.
‘Your department I think, Sergeant. The hill is reporting that the Afghan National Police are outside the gate. Firstly I haven’t given them permission to be there and secondly they are abusing a tied-up dog.’ He knew all about my dogs, having stepped over Fizz on numerous occasions to get into the gym back at our base in Plymouth.
‘Check it out and get them back inside and be diplomatic!’
‘No problems Boss – on my way.’
I ran back over to my grot to get rigged up as even a quick stroll outside required full body armour and equipment. I couldn’t go out single-handed, so along with Hutch I grabbed Dave, another one of our more experienced corporals.
Dave had earned the right to be a section corporal after completing his Junior Command Course prior to us deploying to Afghanistan. It was a job he relished. He loved nothing more than getting on with the job of being a Royal Marine and then partying afterwards with the ladies, or so he liked to boast anyway – most of the lads would testify that Dave’s chatting-up techniques left a lot to be desired. From talking to him in the sangars, I knew Dave had grown up with dogs and, like me, had a soft spot for them.
We geared up as I hurriedly explained the situation and made our way around to the west gate. With my headset now attached to my left ear I could hear the hill watchkeeper talking urgently to the main building watchkeeper.
‘0 this is Hill. The lads say that the ANP are getting quite nasty with that dog. What do you want us to do? Over.’
‘Hill this is 0. Wait out and keep an eye on 20C who is making his way out there. Over.’ As troop sergeant 20C – pronounced ‘Two Zero Charlie’ – was my call sign.
‘0 this is Hill. Roger. Hope he gives them a good kicking. Out.’
I told Hutch and Dave that we had the hill playing over-watch but we still covered each other religiously as we headed out of the compound. Hutch knelt to provide semi-cover behind a mud wall at the corner of the alleyway that led from the gate as Dave and I ran across the small patch of open ground to the front. Dave then went to ground to adopt a good fire position while Hutch caught up and we both moved on to the next piece of cover.
Even though we were two streets away we could hear the sounds of a very angry dog barking.
I didn’t really have a plan.
The ANP had been tasked by the Karzai Government to bring stability back into Afghanistan, but the truth was they were poorly paid and not very well trained. They weren’t very popular with the locals either. For their protection the ANP shared our compound, which infuriated the local people – we had had complaints that at times the ANP had threatened them for money and food, allegedly, but we had no way of proving it.
As we made our way forward, I knew I had to remain professional; after all we were here to save the people of Afghanistan, not the dog population. I had to play it cool. I couldn’t create an incident between us and the ANP, who were supposedly on our side. But there was no way I was going to tolerate animal cruelty. Especially not while I had a big gun.
We moved patrol-like along the edges of the alleys lined with mud walls until we broke out into a clearing. Hutch took up a position covering the scenario in front of us.
As I continued forwards Dave walked by my side. This again was something we’d learned in Afghan training, an all-important part of the politics in this part of the world. Having a leader walking side by side with a bodyguard conveyed confidence; it was a small show of strength.
Twenty feet away, in the middle of the open ground, was a white pickup truck. Sitting on top of it was the ANP commander, dressed in his long flowing olive-green robes. His second in command was standing in the back of the truck bed with an RPG launcher balanced on one shoulder. As I moved into the open ground, their eyes followed me unemotionally.
I soon saw what had been causing the commotion. On the open ground in front of them both, two of the commander’s young sidekicks were pulling on opposite sides of the biggest dog that I had ever seen. The white-and-grey-haired giant was at least four feet high and had a head the size of a grizzly bear, with teeth to match. Its lips were curled up in one of those ‘get near me so I can rip your head off’ snarls.
Straight away I noticed that the dog had been relieved of its ears. I had read about this practice. It was a sign that the dog was used for one of Afghanistan’s most popular sports – dogfighting.
I had Googled Afghanistan and its culture prior to the deployment. Dogfighting had been one of the more distressing aspects that I had found. It was a centuries-old tradition, commonplace among the tribal clans. Owning a victorious dog could bring an owner a great deal of money and respect among his peers.
The images on the Internet had not been pleasant. It wasn’t anything a pet owner would want to be involved with. The large-breed dogs had no choice but to attack each other – resulting in a bloody frenzy. It was fight or, potentially, die. The dogs would have their ears and tail removed with
a knife – without any anaesthetic – so that no superficial wounds would be inflicted as the result of a torn ear or tail and the fights could then last longer. Dogs were in abundant supply in Afghanistan and extremely far down on the welfare list. (Although to be fair, human life wasn’t exactly that far up it.)
The irony of all this was that when the Taliban came to power, not only had women been banned from all forms of education, but they also banned dogfighting as they deemed it un-Islamic. With the Coalition Forces removing the Taliban from power in Kabul in 2001, the void in Government had allowed the back-street spectator sport to flourish once more. One step forward, two steps back.
As I watched the dog, its frustration at being tied up was plain to see. Looking at it with no ears was just too much. I’d been ready to free the dog before, but I was even more determined to do so now.
The young police were having a hard time trying to hold on to the dog, which was bucking like a bronco at a rodeo. They had braided together some narrow-gauge wire to form a long dog leash, which had been wrapped around the dog’s neck and back legs. This meant that the dog couldn’t move either forwards or back, and the more it struggled to break free the tighter the strands of wire twisted around themselves, which only made the dog even angrier.
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do if the dog actually got free. I didn’t think it would understand I was here to help it, so I took a step back as casually as I could.
‘Salaamu alaikum,’ I said, directing my greeting towards the commander. We had been told during our pre-deployment training that it was customary to speak to the Elder first during any conversation.
Appreciating this, he replied in kind then nodded at the youngest lad who was the only one of the police detachment who spoke any English.
‘Why are you out here?’ he asked me, casually thumbing the trigger on his Kalashnikov fully automated rifle, something our lads wouldn’t even consider doing. The rifle looked way too big for him to handle properly in the first place, but life was very different here.
‘Tell the commander he needs to come back into the compound,’ I said. ‘You left the compound without permission and the lads on the hill nearly confused you with the Taliban.’
The last bit was a lie but I thought it might bring a swift solution to the situation.
After a brief exchange in Pashtu the young lad explained that the commander wanted to enter the Regional Dogfighting Championships to be held in Lashkar Gar in a few weeks’ time.
‘He wants this dog to be his champion,’ he said, nodding at the big beast, which was getting even more agitated as we stood there.
OK, no quick solution then.
‘And where does the commander think he is going to keep the dog until then?’ I asked.
As the boy translated my words back to his boss, I was conscious of the fact that we were out in the open. Our movements were clearly visible to anybody looking this way from within Taliban Central. As if to remind me of the potential danger, I could hear the hill relaying our progress to the operations room through my headset. I figured that my boss was also listening in on developments.
‘Get them in the compound, 20C,’ a voice said over the radio.
I looked around at Hutch, who just looked back at me with raised eyebrows. He also motioned towards Taliban Central in the woods to the east. I knew what he meant.
I decided to speed things along.
‘Tell the commander that our commander will not allow a dog like that into our compound,’ I told the boy, ‘but I know where he can keep it.’
It was clear that the dog had had bad experiences around humans and I wasn’t going to take the risk of it mauling one of our lads by taking it into the DC. At the same time, I doubted somehow that the ANP would cage it properly even if they did look after it, so I needed a temporary ‘kennel’ and the wrecked building that stood in the middle of the ruined compound next to ours was ideal for the moment.
‘We need to move now,’ I said, pointing in the direction of safety.
The debate that then ensued between the commander and the young lad seemed rather one-way. But at the end of it the commander jumped off the roof of the vehicle and got into the driver’s seat without looking at me. ‘He will keep the dog outside the compound,’ the young boy explained, shouldering his Kalashnikov and making it seem like the commander had come up with the idea himself.
‘OK, I can live with that,’ I said, signalling to the hill that we were about to move back.
We escorted the ANP back to the compound in an unlikely looking convoy. Dave led the way followed by the truck then the young police boys, dragging behind them the dog which, by now, seemed to have given up resisting. Hutch and I covered the rear of our little circus.
The fact that I had formed a cunning plan to free the dog must have been written all over my face because as we walked Hutch kept looking at me curiously.
I gave him the ‘I’ll tell you in a minute’ look back.
‘You sure the boss is happy with this, Sarge?’ Hutch asked as we geared up in the evening light.
He knew I hated him calling me Sarge. Only the army used that slang and marines are desperately fierce about the fact that we are not part of the army.
‘Kind of,’ I replied.
‘What do you mean, kind of?’ Hutch said, looking at me with mock concern. ‘Kind of means he doesn’t know, doesn’t it?’
‘He said deal with it. So I am dealing with it,’ I nodded, smiling back and handing him the Leatherman. ‘Here, I think you might need that.’
When we’d arrived back in the DC, I’d updated the boss on the situation with the dog. He’d told me to deal with it but not to upset the ANP if I could help it. He hadn’t wanted to know what I had in mind.
The cool air of early evening sent a shiver down my spine. It was getting a lot colder a lot faster at sundown.
I pulled my jacket collar up around my neck and walked over to join Hutch and a lad called Pete, who had volunteered to help us out during the three hours when he was meant to be sleeping. Without saying much we climbed on to the roof of the old cells that formed the back wall of our compound. The roof had been painted white to reflect the heat, which gave it the air of having been built with real materials instead of straw and mud. Not that tonight, with only a slight moon in the sky, you could really tell what colour it was.
We used the darkness as we had been trained to, and ran at a crouch along the parapet on the edge of the roof through the shadows cast by the light from the low moon.
The ANP lived in a small unkempt building towards the rear gate of our compound.
Annoyingly they would always come out to investigate the clanging noise that meant the entry gate was being opened. For us to free the dog we needed them to be unaware of what we were up to. So that meant we couldn’t go through the gate but would have to drop down the rear wall.
As we reached the lowest part of the wall, we could see the small, ruined building that we’d watched the ANP lock the dog in. It was pitch-black but I knew that it contained a very big, tied-up, angry dog, although by now I hoped he had calmed down a bit.
Once down the wall we would have to cover about 40 feet to where the dog was being held. I looked over towards the ANP building. The door was firmly shut. The soft glow from the window through the dirty curtains meant they were preoccupied, probably smoking marijuana as they did most nights. That was fine by me.
We lowered the small aluminium assault ladder down the side of the 15-foot wall. It wasn’t quite long enough to reach the ground, so we had brought some rope to lower and secure the ladder in case it slipped.
We had nothing to tie it to on the mud roof so either Hutch or Pete would have to hold the rope for the first man down, which, of course, would be me. It was my plan, after all.
By lowering my legs over the wall and hanging on to the top of the parapet I could just reach the top rung of the ladder with my feet. But it wasn’t easy. I could not look down to see where my f
eet were in relation to the rungs and to make matters worse my rifle swung around and the muzzle stabbed me in the crook of my knee. I clenched my teeth as the short sharp pain caught me by surprise. As if all this wasn’t enough, the weight of my body armour was doing its best to push me away from the wall.
Somehow, however, I managed to lower myself on to the ladder. Slowly padding down the wall with my hands, I located each rung to descend. As I inched my way down to earth I hoped that the bottom of the ladder wouldn’t slip away from the wall. That would definitely hurt. It wasn’t exactly rock climbing but the ridiculousness of the situation made me smile.
I looked up to see that Hutch was grinning down at me.
‘Are you holding the bloody rope?’ I whispered up to him.
‘Oh shit, sorry.’
Once on the ground I held the bottom of the ladder for Hutch as he climbed down. Pete was going to stay and keep our option of climbing back up the ladder open, should the need arise.
‘Let’s go.’
Before leaving our compound I had spoken to the sentries currently on watch in the sangars so they knew we were out. I had no plans to get shot by my own lads.
With weapons at the ready we ran at a crouch across the open ground. The angry dog heard us before we had covered even half the distance.
‘So much for being commando-like,’ I whispered over to Hutch as we ran in the dark.
The animal sounded like it was going berserk. We reached the front side of the building and quickly scanned the surrounding area. Nothing but bits of rubble lay in all directions.
The dog was shut in what was left of the ruined building. It was battering its body against the very old wooden door like something out of a horror movie.
‘How are we going to get it out?’ Hutch whispered, rather unnecessarily.
By now the whole of Now Zad probably knew something was up. Noise at night always sounds louder and carries further, especially when you are trying to rescue an angry Afghan fighting dog.
One Dog at a Time Page 3
