One Dog at a Time

by Farthing, Pen

  I had been in Afghanistan a little over seven weeks and we were entering the Rest and Recuperation period, the time when the lads were allowed to go back home to the UK for ten days. With a few lads already back home, sentry duties were coming around quicker than ever for those of us who were left behind. Even the chef and our mechanic were coming along to make up the numbers on patrol, although they didn’t mind getting out and about.

  We would patrol through the deserted labyrinth of open alleyways that were littered with rubbish and rubble, always staying within the immediate vicinity of the compound. We were still waiting patiently for the elders to attempt a peaceful settlement with the local Taliban commander.

  We normally arrived back in the DC having failed to meet a single local, which was disappointing for me. I wanted to try and interact with the people of Afghanistan. I had to admit my attempts to forge a relationship with the ANP had failed miserably, although I laid the blame completely at their feet. I couldn’t pretend I felt anything but animosity towards them after witnessing their treatment of Nowzad and the other fighting dog.

  But there were other, ordinary Afghans out there. From the northern sangars we would watch the still populated part of northern Now Zad during the daytime. There, far enough away from the compound to remain safe from any fallout from our battles with the Taliban, locals, looking like small ants in the distance, would go about their daily business. Lone figures would appear from one alley and then disappear down another. Fathers and sons would stroll together, their white turbans standing out against the dull yellow of everything around them, as I struggled to imagine what their daily lives entailed. I really did want to help these people but being part of ISAF would always prevent me from finding out what it was really like to be a part of their society. I had read somewhere that the United Nations put the average life expectancy of an Afghanistan national at only 43 years old and that over a third of Afghan women died during pregnancy. All this could be prevented through education, one of the things the Taliban detested.

  But I wasn’t sure that one person alone was going to make much difference. By joining the Royal Marines, making a difference was what I had come to Afghanistan to do and at the moment I felt fairly useless. I guess I had to think that we were just a small piece of the new tapestry that depicted Afghanistan’s rebirth.

  I had picked up the 0200 watch again and by 0140 was dressed and walking across the quiet deserted compound. The alarm was set 20 minutes earlier these days to allow me time to let Nowzad out.

  With nobody about at this early hour, I could let him have the run of the compound. He would spend the first few minutes chasing me around, always trying to prod me with his right front paw. I enjoyed running around with him in the mini-dust cloud that formed around us. For those rare minutes he would be like any other socialised dog the world over and for me all thoughts of being in the most dangerous place on earth vanished. We were just a man and his dog, enjoying each other’s company and having fun.

  I had been informed during the late-night scheduled radio report with the main Unit HQ back in Camp Bastion that two of my lads, who had been sent to bolster the troops temporarily in the nearby town of Kajacki, had been seriously injured when their Land Rover crashed. The Taliban had not been involved. It was just an accident.

  None of us wanted to be injured but, if the fates decided otherwise, then I knew that we would all prefer to suffer our injuries as a result of a fierce battle, preferably as the hero of the moment, than as the result of a stupid vehicle accident.

  The news had set me thinking back to early September. I remembered standing in a rugby club back in Plymouth with my troop on our last night out on the town before we deployed. I had gathered the lads around in a huddle, all of us holding full pints of beer.

  ‘Here’s to kicking the Taliban arse and all of us coming home war heroes,’ I’d shouted as we toasted each other with a clash of pint glasses, spilling beer down our arms in the process. It sounded a cliché but these were my young lads and it seemed the right thing to do at the time. But now I wished I hadn’t said it. Maybe I had tempted fate.

  The limited information we had received over the radio about the two lads didn’t sound good and it would be a while before a full report made its way to us. For now, everything was just speculation.

  I wondered if I had been there whether I could have prevented it. But I hadn’t been in Kajacki, I was in Now Zad, and common sense told me it was too late for that now, what was done was done.

  There was nothing I could do until more information came in. I needed a few minutes to decide how to break the news to the rest of the troop. Seeing Nowzad would give me space to think.

  The night was bitterly cold. As I walked over to Nowzad’s run I pulled up the collar on my jacket.

  A movement in the shadows to my left stopped me in my tracks.

  The figure in the darkness, whatever it was, stopped too.

  I took a step forward but the crescent moon was only a small slither of light in the night sky and I couldn’t make out any details in the shadows. Until, that is, I suddenly saw it running at me.

  ‘What are you doing out?’ I said, assuming that the dark shape was Nowzad. It was probably only a matter of time again before he escaped.

  But as it moved in closer I saw that it wasn’t Nowzad. It was another dog, too thin and leggy to be him.

  The dog didn’t seem able to run in a straight line, it darted from one side to the other, as it crossed the 30 yards between us in a series of zigzags. He threw himself down on the dusty ground in front of me, his legs splayed out, two glistening beady eyes eagerly watching me. He wasn’t a fighting dog. For a start he wasn’t big enough, and he was still in possession of a pair of long, floppy ears.

  The memory of the time I’d watched the skinny young dog play through the viewfinder of the night sight suddenly came back to me. The way the dog had moved that night was identical to the movements of the dog that now sat in front of me. ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?’

  I reached my right hand out. The dog immediately spun twice on the spot, kicking up a dust cloud. When I took a step towards him, the dog charged full pace towards me, before at the last moment twisting 90 degrees to the left and charging off around the snatch wagon that was parked by the rear gate.

  ‘Playful little bugger aren’t you?’

  I walked around to the front of the sand-coloured snatch wagon. The windows of the vehicle wore protective metal grilles, a relic of the Northern Ireland days of Orange marches and protests.

  The dog’s long thin snout appeared from under the wagon. As quick as a flash he shot out and ran around me before diving back under the wagon again. A moment later he was out again, charging at me then stopping short and then quickly heading off to the side. He reminded me of Beamer, back home.

  ‘Mad as a bag of rabbits,’ I said to myself. ‘So how have you got in?’ I asked the mad little dog.

  I looked towards the gate. I shook my head and smiled. Little bugger. The dog had dug his way between two of the big rocks I had buried in the trench, leaving just enough of a gap to slip underneath.

  I chased the erratic dog around the parked wagon for a minute. He played me a dummy move and sent me to the right as he turned and went left, always keeping just in front of me.

  The young dog was clearly enjoying the interaction, his legs never quite seeming to work in unison but always managing to get him where he wanted to go. As the dog played, all around the wagon slowly dispersing dust clouds hung in the air. I looked at my watch. I’d been playing with the dog for nearly ten minutes. I was using up Nowzad’s free time.

  ‘Sorry buddy – got to go and see one of your pals.’

  As I walked over to Nowzad’s run, the small dog followed.

  Without really thinking, I let Nowzad out. He charged out and headed straight for the small dog, who had suddenly stopped in his tracks, frozen to the spot.

  ‘Oh shit, carnage,’ I thought out loud.


  For a moment I told myself I had made a huge mistake letting Nowzad loose within sight of another male dog. He was a veteran fighting dog, after all. But, to my relief, another of his basic, canine instincts kicked in.

  When Nowzad came to a halt next to the other dog he simply started sniffing the new arrival in the compound. Rather than running away, the smaller dog simply sniffed back. Amazingly they were playing together within moments.

  I let them play for a minute or two then waited for Nowzad to go for his evening wee, hovering with the plastic bag I had ready to scoop the small pile he usually deposited by the rear gate.

  As usual, Nowzad didn’t want to go back into his run when playtime ended – I couldn’t blame him really as he didn’t get that much time outside – and the small dog just sat watching me chase Nowzad round and round in circles. After a good struggle I managed to coax and push him back through the gate to the run.

  With the gate locked and a very unhappy Nowzad on the other side, I turned round to the young dog that was still waiting patiently.

  ‘You get a reprieve,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got time to get you out the gate now.’

  I was already late. Dutchy was cool about me sorting Nowzad out but I couldn’t push my luck.

  I walked away from the young dog but as I looked over my shoulder I saw it was following me. I stopped and suddenly jumped towards it. Just as I thought, it still wanted to play. It spun around twice on the spot, shot off in a random direction, did a mini-lap of the area and then flopped back down in front of me with its legs splayed open again.

  When I got to the ops room door I turned around again to see the dog was still merrily following me. ‘Sorry buddy you can’t come in here,’ I said, opening and closing the door quickly behind me.

  I put the headset on to be greeted by the normal chat on the radios as the lads checked in from the sangars and the hill. Dutchy was keen to get some ‘rack’ time so we hardly spoke as he headed off to bed.

  I radio checked everybody to help pass the time. It also made sure the lads were awake.

  The ops room was housed in an old storeroom with no windows. In the background all you could hear was the permanent, dull growling of the compound’s small diesel generator, powering the three small lamps that illuminated the room. The only furniture was a couple of folding tables, one of which was stacked precariously with the radio equipment that kept us in touch with the outside world.

  The simple whitewashed walls were adorned with different-scale maps of Now Zad and the surrounding area. There was also a lone tatty picture of a stunning blonde who seemed to be smiling directly at you no matter which angle you looked at her from. She was, however, the one token distraction in an otherwise focused military operations centre.

  I read the log. It corresponded with Dutchy’s briefing. It was a dull read. Things had been quiet since the air attack on the Taliban position. Maybe it really had been too close for their comfort. Since then we’d been just waiting for them to attack again, but they hadn’t. Instead we’d spent the past week ticking off the days on our home-made calendars, enduring our stagnant schedule of duties and sleeping and eating. But even eating was becoming routine; the one choice hotpot curry that the chef made every night was becoming much too predictable. Our sessions in the time accelerators were becoming ever more appealing.

  Tonight my mind was already working on how quickly I could get back across the compound and snatch an hour of sleep when my duty was over. I sat with Jimmy the radio operator but we hardly spoke. Both of us kept our heads down in our books. I was currently reading envious tales of mountaineering daring in Mick Fowler’s On Thin Ice. Jimmy and I had discussed everything that we could over the last three weeks, but with no regular supply of newspapers we didn’t have anything new to say.

  I was still quietly dreading breaking the news about the two injured lads to the troop at first light. I didn’t read many pages of my book.

  The ‘Doc’ was my relief. He was a naval doctor who was still coming to terms with the fact that the sea was nowhere near our current location. I had to wake him twice to get him out of his sleeping bag when my shift was almost up. At least I didn’t have to walk far. The Doc slept outside the makeshift medical room that was situated in the same building as the ops centre. I don’t think ‘going on watch’ had been part of the sales pitch when he signed up for medical service.

  ‘Anything to report, Sergeant?’ he asked while still trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

  ‘Nope – all is quiet. The air plan for the day is coming in at 0600. The boss wants a shake at the same time.’

  We would know then whether or not we had air cover for the patrol that was planned to the south of the compound. I pushed myself up from the small folding chair I was sat in. My back hurt. Sitting for hours in a folding chair was not good. I had put some boiling water on for a tea to take with me. Jimmy the signaller still had another hour.

  ‘Later Jimmy,’ I said as I flicked him a mock salute as I finished stirring my tea.

  ‘Yeah, enjoy your bed, Sergeant,’ he replied without looking up from his book.

  I patted the Doc on the back as I handed him the battered headset as he took my place in the chair.

  I opened the outer door from the ops room building as the beautiful tint of the new morning sun was breaking over the easterly wall of the compound. The skies were a fantastic swirl of red clouds forming around the perfect mountains that surrounded us to the north. A beautiful part of the day; shame I rarely saw it back home, normally the double duvet would hold me fast until the last possible moment.

  The unexpected lump at my feet almost tripped me over. I looked down just in time to see the small playful dog curled up in a ball right in front of the door. I could barely believe he was there.

  As soon as I bent down to stroke him he jumped up and adopted his playful, legs-splayed stance. Instantly he was wide awake.

  ‘Am I your new friend then?’ I teased him. ‘Have you waited all this time for me to come out?’

  The dog just looked at me with its head cocked to the left. With the early-morning sun rising steadily I could see him much better now. He was a skinnier version of Nowzad, with long legs, a light brown tan coat and a darker muzzle. And of course he still had his ears.

  I fished a biscuit out of my pocket. ‘I’ll have to stock up again at this rate,’ I thought as I gingerly fed him one of the few remaining that I had.

  I knew he couldn’t stay. ‘Sorry buddy but you will have to leave the compound – I can’t let the boss see you running around,’ I told him.

  It took me the best part of an hour to finally coax him out of the compound. The young dog just assumed it was a brilliant game we were playing. By the time he was safely out of the gate I was covered in a thin layer of dust. It was almost breakfast time as well. The time accelerator would have to wait. I had to go and find my troop, who would be getting sorted for breakfast.

  It was time to give them the facts about what had happened in Kajacki – or as much of them as we knew – before the rumour mill went into overdrive. I managed to locate my section corporals, who were just waking up or coming off guard. I explained the situation, fending off the exacting questions that they hit me with.

  ‘Fellas, we don’t know why they drove off the cliff all right? Look, until we know more, we have to just be grateful that Tom and Matt are still alive. As soon as I know more I will let you guys know. Spread the word to our lads so they don’t start listening to rumours.’

  During my stint in the breakfast queue I learnt from the signaller that the planned patrol had been canned. The air cover was being diverted to more pressing ops in the south again.

  I used the time to check the lads were on top of their admin. It was two days to go to the next resupply flight. I was looking forward to receiving mail from Lisa. The rest of the day dragged. We made small talk among ourselves and I managed to handwash most of my clothes. The day ended quietly and without fanfar
e.

  The early-morning watch came all too soon as I found myself walking across the compound through the ANP garden.

  I noticed the small skinny mischievous dog again. It was sat waiting for me. I had overslept and had only 15 minutes to let Nowzad run around. I waved at the dog and reached in my pocket for some of the cardboard biscuits. I knelt down and held one out. The dog looked at me and slowly crept forward to sniff the treat. It gently took the biscuit out of my hand then immediately darted off in a zigzag run for fifteen feet before throwing itself to the ground and munching on the biscuit as if its life depended on it.

  I thought back to the first time I had seen a rocketpropelled grenade (RPG) fired in anger at us back in Gereshk. The missile has no guidance system and flies in a random line in the general direction it was pointed. The way this little dog ran reminded me of it.

  ‘RPG. That’s a good name,’ I said to myself.

  I opened the gate for Nowzad and he charged out to see his friend. They played between the dust clouds that were kicked up as they leapt at each other. The younger-looking dog was always faster than Nowzad as they chased each other round and round in circles.

  I walked over to the rear gate. The filled-in gap was dug away again. The little bugger really did want to get in.

  I looked at the two of them playing together, a fighting dog and a skinny youngster. Neither was aggressive; if anything Nowzad was the submissive one.

  I knelt down and extended a biscuit in each hand. I called Nowzad. Both dogs stopped their play fighting and ran towards me, Nowzad trotting over in a straight line, little RPG in a random zigzagging motion.

  As the pair of them munched on their biscuits I made my mind up immediately. Little RPG was going to be given the same chance as Nowzad. If I was trying to rescue one I might as well make it two. It would save me having to fill the trench under the gate each morning.