I chuckled to myself. Lisa would want to kill me. But then again the Taliban were trying to do that already so what did it matter? RPG joined my improvised dog pound.
The satellite phone took two attempts to connect; I listened to the long drawn-out tones as electronic circuits beyond my comprehension coupled with a grey cordless phone that sat on our kitchen work surface in Cornwall.
I was dying to hear Lisa’s voice. I didn’t have to wait long.
‘Hello,’ said a tired voice far too many miles away.
‘Hi honey, how you doing?’ my voice hopefully conveying the excitement I felt about speaking to her again. It had been over a week.
The conversation swayed between my days of doing nothing and Lisa’s busy days in the gym with the Royal Navy’s new recruits.
I waited until there was a pause in conversation and then went for broke. I told her about the skinny dog I had named RPG.
‘Lisa, if we are going to try rescuing one dog then why not two?’ I asked – or maybe it sounded more like pleading.
She didn’t sound that chuffed. I tried to reason with her.
‘If I find a rescue, what are you going to do then. Who in their right mind is going to take an ex-fighting dog?’ She voiced what I had been thinking all along. ‘Look Pen …’
I cut her off. ‘Somebody will,’ I pleaded. ‘I can’t leave him here to be abused any more Lisa,’ I replied, suddenly fully aware both of her lack of progress in finding a rescue centre and of the absurdity of the situation. It was like trying to rescue a dog from the middle of the Somme during the First World War. ‘C’mon Lisa, you have access to the Internet, I don’t. Can you please just have a look; there must be something out there?’
‘I am looking but there isn’t anything. I’ll search again tonight when I get home, all right?’ She sounded annoyed. I suppose I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t like she had nothing to do.
‘Thanks honey, it is just annoying as I can’t do anything myself. I need you to look for me,’ I replied, trying to sound chilled.
With nothing more to discuss the phone call came to a natural end. Lisa reassured me that she would do her best to find a centre, if one existed that was.
There must be somewhere in Afghanistan that would take them?
The lack of patrolling was severely depressing everyone. It wasn’t that we craved action, we just wanted to do something, anything.
Even though all the living quarters and mini-compounds of the DC were fairly close together, there were some days when I didn’t actually see some of the lads. If they weren’t needed on duty or they didn’t have any admin to crack on with, they just disappeared into their own little world.
My little world was now the dogs. It gave me a few minutes of respite from an otherwise fairly grim existence.
The constant threat of incoming mortars and the very real chance of getting shot was with us even when we were sleeping, but the two Afghan strays didn’t seem to have a care in the world. It was just a shame the rest of the world couldn’t get along as well as these two did.
I was amazed that they had become buddies so quickly, especially since the first time I had seen them play together I had thought RPG was a goner.
RPG had initiated the playtime by jumping towards Nowzad from a good foot or so away, using his teeth to grab the almost healed stumps that had been Nowzad’s ears. Nowzad, though, reacted completely differently to how I assumed he would in a fight situation. Instead of defending himself and ripping RPG to pieces, the big dog allowed himself to be forced to the ground, rolling on to his back while RPG straddled him as he continued to mouth Nowzad’s stumpy ears.
This was the way they played all the time now. They would stay in that position tussling away for a good ten to fifteen minutes, before RPG would back off and allow Nowzad to stand up, usually before resuming the act all over again.
Nowzad never seemed to tire of RPG’s constant attention.
I enjoyed my brief moments when I looked after them; it took me away from the realities of life in the compound. It reminded me of home.
Today, as I walked across the compound in the early-morning sun to feed the two of them I noticed two silver-coloured dishes similar to the one that had been Nowzad’s first water basin. They were lying half hidden under an old canvas amid a load of other rubbish stuck in a small unused corner of the ANP mini-compound.
‘Just what I need,’ I thought to myself.
The dishes would make ideal dog food bowls. Although RPG had been with us for two days I had only the one bowl from which to feed them both, Nowzad’s original water bowl. It had made feeding time a long drawn-out affair.
Both dishes, just like the drinking bowl, were charred black from being used for cooking, but after applying a little elbow grease they looked decent enough to use.
Today’s feast was going to be the same as yesterday’s and the previous day’s, but I didn’t think they would complain. For two dogs that had, until recently, eaten only what they could scavenge, a packet of pork stew and dumplings with a few cardboard biscuits thrown in was a top treat.
As I mixed up the sickly yellow blob of so-called pork chunks and round plump suet dumplings I had no reservations about giving the food to the dogs. The lads had long ago given up eating this particular dish unless they really had to. It would only end up in the burns pit anyway.
Both dogs sat bolt upright, waiting excitedly as I mixed the goo together outside the run. As I finished preparing their meal I balanced the bowls in one hand like a posh waiter and let myself in. I knew that Nowzad wouldn’t try to escape when I brought food. He definitely loved his food more than going walkabout in the compound.
‘You wouldn’t run away from food, would you, lofty?’ I said to him as I placed both bowls down slightly apart.
Both were gobbling at the food before my hands had left the rim of the bowls.
I was slightly rushed and needed to be in a briefing with the OC in a few minutes so I decided to leave them to enjoy their pork stew. I would collect the empty bowls later.
‘If you slow down guys you might actually taste that crap,’ I said as I let myself out of the run and headed off towards the ops room.
I had covered no more than ten feet when I heard the frenzied barking from behind me. I turned around expecting the worse.
‘Nowzad!’ I screamed as I charged back towards the run.
I should have known that feeding them both together was a bad idea; I should’ve remembered back to when Beamer had arrived with us out of the rescue centre. At meal times he would automatically guard his food and then hunt for more from Fizz’s bowl when he’d finished. He’d soon realised that Fizz was not going to give it up without a fight. Beamer had learnt the hard way.
Nowzad, however, didn’t have that problem. He was the bigger dog and he was still hungry. Unfortunately RPG had been eating a lot slower than him.
As I ran the short distance back I could only watch as Nowzad lunged at RPG. The loud growl he made sounded evil. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
RPG was trying to mount a pathetic defence of his half-eaten bowl of stew–biscuit mix. But obviously he was no match for the more powerfully built frame of Nowzad.
I yanked the gate open. Nowzad was jumping up; his head was a frothing blur of gnashing teeth as he attempted again to grab RPG around the neck. As he did so, the smaller dog was forced into the corner of the run with no way out.
Without a second’s thought my boot connected with Nowzad’s midriff. With a yelp he spun in the air and landed on all fours facing me.
‘Don’t you fucking dare do that again,’ I yelled at him. Nowzad stood defiantly staring me down.
I turned and looked at RPG, who was curled in the corner, clearly shaking. I was breathing in large gulps of air. My heart seemed to be trying to burst out of my chest.
I picked up RPG’s bowl with what remained of the food and placed it down in front of him. ‘Go on buddy. I am watching this time.’
I turned back to Nowzad and walked towards him, trying to remain as dominant as I could. I knew that I had to show Nowzad that I was boss. He had to learn to obey me otherwise his future wasn’t going to be a safe one.
As soon as RPG started to eat the food Nowzad made to move towards him. I held my hand up in what I hoped was a menacing signal; I didn’t have time to mess around.
‘Don’t even think it,’ I said to him. ‘I am about to be late for my meeting and don’t have time for this crap.’
Nowzad stopped and cowered back as I made a pretend move to hit him. I didn’t like doing it but I had no choice. Back home I could spend hours training him slowly, one step at a time, but time was not on my side out in Afghanistan.
As RPG finished licking the bowl clean I collected up both empty dishes. Nowzad immediately moved over to sniff the floor where the bowl had sat seconds earlier, looking for leftovers. RPG shuffled to the other side of the run, his long tail between his legs as soon as Nowzad approached.
The situation was depressing. I had really thought the two of them were going to get on fine. Had I been too optimistic? Was I hoping against hope about getting these two rescued? I looked at the two of them, wanting to knock some sense into Nowzad but knowing it would do no good.
‘Great, now I have to watch you two eat as well. Thanks fellas,’ I said as I kicked the solid mud wall hard with my boot. As if it was going to change anything. All it did was hurt my toes.
I arrived at the briefing out of breath and with two empty silver bowls. As I entered the small operations room the boss looked up at me.
‘Just doing some training with the Afghans, sorry Boss,’ I answered his questioning glance.
It was only a little lie; the dogs were Afghans after all.
Everybody else was seated. I squeezed to my chair at the front as sarcastic comments floated over from the other side of the room. I ignored them all as I struggled to get my notebook and pen from my pocket. The boss stood to start the brief.
‘This isn’t the galley, you need to leave your washing-up outside,’ one of the signallers whispered from behind me.
I turned and gave him the finger, timing it perfectly to coincide with the Boss turning to point to the map of Now Zad.
The joking stopped as we received a warning order for a patrol to the north of Now Zad in two days’ time. Our aim was going to be to make our presence felt and to reassure the locals that we were on their side.
After the meeting I walked around each of the sangars to inform my corporals that we were getting some exercise. The lads were well chuffed as I gave them timings for receiving orders for a brief later that day. It would be a welcome relief from the monotonous routine in the sangars.
I was sitting in the passenger seat of the roofless WMIC Land Rover, refreshed by the blasts of cool, desert air that washed over me. As we drove to our stand-off position in the desert west of Now Zad in a formation of three vehicles, I could also feel every bump and dip in the hard ground travel up my spine.
Steve, the young lad who was driving today, was following the countless old tyre tracks that meandered in every direction across the desert as best he could. Every now and again he would swerve to avoid the white painted rock circles that marked the spot where the locals had detected old Soviet landmines. As we bumped and bounced our way along, I tried to not to think about whether they had missed any.
When we stopped at the appointed spot on the map, a patch of dried desert that looked no different from any other patch of Afghan desert around us, I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder.
I turned to look at Dan, or Dan the Man as we called him, a six-foot monster of a marine who was holding two small yellow pieces of foam out towards me.
‘You might need these, Sergeant,’ he said, dropping the two small foam earplugs into my outstretched hand.
Dan had a valid point.
I looked up at the muzzle of the .5 HMG, or heavy machine gun, that was about 12 inches from my right ear. The noise they made was deafening even when we were in the sangars, more than a kilometre from their normal position on the hill. I dreaded to imagine what the noise would be like if I had to give Dan the order to engage the enemy. I stuck one of the soft plugs in my right ear and hoped the Taliban would decide to have a day off.
There was no breeze and the heat was stifling. Within minutes of us coming to a halt I could feel the sweat as it began to trickle down my back. I held my hand up over my eyes to block out the blinding sun as the three of us scanned the outer edges of the town to our east. We munched on a packet of Jelly Tots while we waited and watched.
Along with the other two vehicles accompanying us, our focus was on the remainder of Kilo Company as they patrolled on foot up the slowly rising western edge of the town of Now Zad. If it kicked off today then we were their cavalry.
The lads were making slow progress. I squinted into the sun as they worked their way up the northern side of a faint depression in the ground. As the depression widened and headed westwards into the heart of the desert it formed into a deep-sided wadi that seemed to be impassable for most of the local vehicles.
The patrol’s desert camouflage from this distance was working well, blending the lads in against the yellow cracked and dried mud walls of the compounds. The walls were at least 20 feet high and two to three feet thick and looked as if they had been standing for years. We’d been told they were so compact they could resist all types of small-arms fire, which meant they were ideal for us – or the Taliban – to hide behind. In fact, given the size of these walls the whole of the Helmand Taliban could have been on the other side and we wouldn’t have known about it.
There was no hiding, however, from the hordes of Now Zad children who had come out to greet the patrol. It made the lads’ progress painfully slow.
As marines across the Helmand province were finding out as they patrolled their local towns or villages, poorly dressed kids would continually move from one marine to the next, attempting to scavenge what they could.
Through the telescopic sights on my rifle I could make out bearded men in long flowing shalwars watching quietly from the roof tops a good kilometre further north. Some wore black turbans, some white. Far to the north we could see a white flag flying high by a cluster of three bare trees, the tribal symbol of the Helmand Taliban. I couldn’t see any of the distant figures brandishing weapons and, anyway, I would have had to be the world’s best shot to hit anybody from where I sat.
The dwellings towards the north were still the same simple, dried yellow mud compounds that we had seen everywhere. The large rusting metal gates that stood nearly ten foot high were the only entrance to whatever lay within.
I was surprised to see that several women, dressed from head to toe in black burkhas, had appeared at the gates of a few of the compounds.
I guessed curiosity had drawn them out to witness the strange foreigners patrolling their town. It struck me that they were the first women I had seen in nearly four weeks. Watching them emerge from their sheltered existence on the other side of the closed compound walls I couldn’t help but think it wasn’t much of a life for them, but I guessed they didn’t know any other way. The complexities of religion and culture were far too convoluted for me to grasp or to really want to try and understand anyway.
I suddenly caught movement to the left of the women. A small scruffy black-haired child with an enormous smile was playing with an old bicycle tyre and a stick, beating the tyre as it rolled over the bumpy desert floor to keep it moving. The only other time I had seen anybody do that was in a Hovis ad on TV when I was a child. I watched the young child in his light brown long trousers and loose faded shirt play for a few more seconds, totally captivated by the joy he was getting from keeping the tyre upright. I wondered what he would make of an X-box or an iPod, the ‘can’t do without’ gadgets of our generation of Western youngsters.
Every now and again my headset would burst to life with a progress report. I followed the chatter on the map
strapped to my leg by mentally ticking off the various report points that we had pre-planned.
‘20C A5 out.’
‘21A B6 out.’
‘0A this is 0, Hill confirms clear, over.’
‘0A, roger, out.’
‘20C pax on roof in vicinity of K7, over,’ I informed all the call signs listening on the radio net.
‘Roger 20C keep eyes on, out.’
‘22B approaching Exeter now, over.’
‘That’s us,’ I shouted to Steve as I heard our release point being signalled, repeating the order to move to the other two vehicles on the radio.
Steve gunned the engine and we shot forward. The other two vehicles fell into line behind us as we sped across the desert to our next point. As the vehicle juddered across the uneven desert floor, Dan had to ride the bumps like he was a chariot driver at a Roman gladiator fight at the Coliseum. He was straddled across the gun platform in the back of the wagon, constantly turning the big machine gun on its swivel mount so that he could cover the direction of the most likely threat, in this case the part of town that we hadn’t explored.
In reality the Taliban could fire at us from any of a dozen nooks and crannies that formed the line of outer walls that jutted out from the main compounds of the northern outskirts of the town.
I looked across to the lads plodding it out as they moved along the patrol line. I was secretly glad that I was the cavalry today; it looked hard work in the morning heat with all the gear they carried.
The plan was for the patrol to cover a large square chunk of the northern town before heading back to the relative safety of the compound. To get to the eastern side of the town we had to enter the steep claustrophobic walls of the town proper as we cut through the narrowest part of the inhabited areas.
‘Keep focused,’ I yelled above the noise of the engine, although I didn’t have to remind the lads; they knew what they were doing.
Steve gave the thumbs-up signal, never for one second taking his eyes from the road.
This was the danger time. Ambushes in the escape-proof alleys were a real possibility. An AK-47 magazine unloaded on automatic through a crack in a compound wall would seriously ruin our day.
One Dog at a Time Page 9
