The radio was going bananas with different people shouting reports and detailing various groups to engage the Taliban.
I threw myself into a small depression that turned out to be nothing of the sort. It didn’t provide any level of cover whatsoever. I stuck out on top of the ground like a sore thumb. I turned back to check that the newbies had got into the limited cover available. Some were completely out of sight, probably burrowing away like little rabbits.
Scanning our surrounding area I was relieved to notice that my force protection had also dismounted and were spread out from their vehicles. They had the advantage of their radios and had heard the warning as I did.
I yelled at the figures lying behind me. ‘The Taliban are engaging the hill,’ I said. ‘Three mortar rounds are in the air and on their way over here.’
There was nothing else we could do but wait.
The hill was a strange place. It was just a bare mound of Afghan mud that rose some 200 feet from the desert floor. It was open to the elements and was devoid of any buildings or compounds. It provided a perfect 360-degree panorama. The ‘heads’ (naval speak for a toilet) was an open-air seated affair which probably had the best view of any toilet in the world, an uninterrupted view across miles of the southern Helmand desert. To the south and west all you could see was open desert. To the north there was a ramshackle cemetery, which the terps told us was the final resting place of both Afghan and Russian dead.
The lads enjoyed being stationed on the hill. It wasn’t as claustrophobic as the DC and they didn’t have to man as many sangars as we did. I didn’t envy the ones who were up there now though. With its raised elevation, the hill was a prime target for the Taliban.
I strained my neck to look upwards and saw the first mortar round explode on the north side of the hill, close enough to scare the crap out of the guys on the guns, but too far away to make any difference for those of us lying in the dirt on the LS. The hill was definitely the target, not us.
Two more hastily fired mortars landed way off to the east of the hill. The lads were clearly not impressed and the thump thump of the .5s returning fire to the Taliban was deafening, even from where I lay.
The radio chatter was indicating that a full-on battle was getting under way. I had had enough of sitting in the open desert; any small-arms fire hurled at the hill had a good chance of coming over the top and hitting us. It was time to move.
‘Up and at ’em, we’re moving now,’ I yelled to make sure all could hear me.
The look of shock on the lads’ faces was clear. With a newfound sense of urgency they gathered their kit together and threw it on top of the pile in the back of the 4x4 that had reappeared and screeched to a halt as soon as I had stood up.
John was grinning like a Cheshire cat at the obvious disbelief on the faces of our new arrivals. I knew what he was thinking. For us it had become routine to be shot at or mortared. We knew there was no point getting too worried about it otherwise you wouldn’t achieve anything. It would be like not leaving your house back home in case you got run over. Most of the lads thought that when your number is up then it’s up, nought you can do about that. These kids hadn’t reached that point yet, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be too long before our new arrivals began thinking that way, too.
As we drove back to the DC, the horrible thought that we might drive right into an incoming mortar kept flashing up in my mind so I urged my driver to go faster. Not that he needed telling. He was thinking the same as me.
By the time we pulled up in the DC the fast jets were on their way to finish the job. I handed the lads over to the company sergeant major, or CSM, who made them wait in the briefing room until the battle had finished before delivering the welcome brief on the dos and don’ts of living in the DC.
I jogged over to the sangars to make sure my lads were okay before I went to check on Nowzad and RPG.
Both dogs were hiding in the mortar run and were extremely happy to see me when I squeezed through the gate of the run. I was relieved that this time Nowzad had found some reassurance in having RPG with him and hadn’t tried to jump the gate again. Both of them devoured the handful of biscuits I pulled out of my pocket. I left them munching away on the last few crumbs as I left to find out which of the new lads were joining my troop and what equipment they had brought along with them.
‘You’re bloody joking,’ Dutchy said, kicking the floor.
‘Nope, no chef,’ the CSM replied smiling to himself.
‘What is Bastion playing at?’ I said. ‘How difficult is it to put a chef on the helo?’
Marines moan about everything and anything and assume it is their right to do so. Food is a constant source of that moaning. We whinge about a lack of food, uncooked food, cold food or too expensive food. (Funnily enough we never moan about too much food.)
We had secretly celebrated the fact that the young chef who could only cook curry was going on R & R before being sent off to deaden the tastebuds at some other location.
But the fact that he had not been replaced was going to cause a riot.
The CSM was slightly older than me and Dutchy and was part of the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre of the Royal Marines. He loved to take the mickey out of anybody who wasn’t part of the cadre, which Dutchy and I weren’t.
He just looked at us with an impassive grin.
‘Troop sergeants, I’m sure you two are both experienced enough to cope,’ he said.
‘Ahhh no, no way,’ we both protested in unison. We knew what that meant. In my case I had been promoted from shit burner to chef. We both just stood for a few seconds in case he was winding us up. But the punchline didn’t come.
‘Come on then, Jamie Oliver, let’s go and see what delights we have to mix up in the next two hours before dinner,’ Dutchy said, signalling that we might as well leave the ops room and head for the galley.
‘All right then, Ainsley Harriott,’ I replied.
‘Don’t know if you noticed but I am not black.’
‘Yeah, and I don’t have curly hair and run around like a hyper child all day,’ I replied quickly.
The kitchen was part of a small row of buildings. It had a small door and one tiny window. Inside there was just enough room for one folding table for preparing food. Under the one window sat the blackened old military gas hob. It was attached to a long rubber hose that snaked its way through a hole in the wall that the Gurkhas had drilled to the gas bottle hidden outside around the corner.
Piled high on the floor were four big cooking pots. Several large stirring bowls were hung on nails struck into the grey-painted mud wall at the back of the hut. There were no lights.
The food store was in the building next door. We were both slightly surprised when we discovered that the floor was covered in tins of food.
‘And all he could cook was bloody curry?’ I said, picking up a tin of chicken in white wine sauce and a packet of dried pasta.
‘Fruit cocktail over here,’ Dutchy yelled as he suddenly lunged for a white packet on the floor as if it was tied to a piece of string and would be pulled from his reach at any minute, never to be seen again. ‘And custard powder, he had bloody custard powder,’ he added, holding up the packet for me to see.
We had just under two hours to cook something for around 60 hungry lads. The ‘one choice café’ was about to go into business.
It didn’t take long for the rumour mill to starting working flat out. One of the young lads, Simon, coming off sentry stopped by the open door. The surprised expression on his face told us he was slightly confused by what he saw.
Dutchy was stirring the 15 tins of chicken in white wine sauce that he had emptied into two big pots that were now bubbling away on the hob.
I stood at the chopping board with a badly stained apron around my waist covering my desert combats.
‘Is it right, Sergeant, that you are cooking scran for us tonight?’ the young marine asked. I looked at him with a raw onion in one hand and a large knife in
the other. Tears were running down my cheeks from the smelly onions.
‘Your observations skills are hoofing,’ I said. ‘And you reckon you’ll notice the Taliban sneaking up on you then, Si?’
He looked at me for a moment longer before realising the absurdity of his question. ‘Sorry, Sergeant.’
I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. ‘Tell the lads that scran may be a little later tonight while we wait for the Yorkshires to cook; we didn’t put them in on time.’
‘Wow, we’ve got Yorkshires? That’s great, Sergeant,’ he said as he walked off looking happy.
It was a well-known fact that our makeshift kitchen was lacking an oven, let alone the eggs, flour and milk needed to actually make Yorkshire puddings. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to stop the rumour mill.
‘How long before that goes round the compound?’ Dutchy asked.
‘I bet you it will be back here by the time the next nugget walks by.’
I continued chopping away and threw a handful of onion segments into the bubbling pot of chicken and white wine sauce.
‘Hey, Sergeant, is it true we’ve got Yorkshires tonight?’ a voice enquired through the open doorway.
Dutchy and I burst into laughter.
*
‘Nice work, fellas,’ the OC mumbled, between mouthfuls of peach slices as he stood outside the galley.
‘No problem, sir. There isn’t much an SNCO can’t turn his hand to,’ Dutchy replied, smiling from inside the doorway.
Armies march on their stomachs. That is a fact. Food is a vital part of the day, not just for survival but to beat the boredom as well. Even though we had individual ration packs for the lads to use for daily rations, the idea of having a chef was to allow the lads at least one decent meal per day that they didn’t have to try and cook in between sangar duties and patrols. So Dutchy and myself felt quite chuffed that the ‘one choice café’ had received rave reviews.
In our two available hours we had managed to cook just enough for the horde of starving marines. We had even surprised them with the chef’s special, a dessert, something they rarely saw out here.
It had taken us a few minutes to convince anybody to come and get some of it. No one trusted us. ‘Yeah. I come back for dessert and get pinged for the washing-up, eh Sergeant?’ was the common response. But when the tinned fruit and custard was laid out on the serving table, word soon got around.
It wasn’t long before Dutchy and myself were supervising the queue to make sure everybody got a share.
The OC had been one of the first to tuck in. He was standing in the doorway of the galley, clearing out the last of his peaches as the queue came to an end.
‘Good. Looking forward to something even better tomorrow then, gents. I would hate for the lads to be disappointed,’ he said, as he put his bowl on the serving table and headed off.
We both looked at each other. We hadn’t even discussed the prospect of cooking tomorrow. Tonight had been pressure enough.
We washed up the big cooking pots and cleaned away the utensils in silence as it slowly dawned on us what we had let ourselves in for. Running a kitchen was fun once, but every night would just be a nightmare.
‘What are we going to cook tomorrow?’ I asked as I dried the last pot.
‘God knows,’ Dutchy replied.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jena
IT WAS THE barking that roused me from my sleep. It was 1 a.m. and I wasn’t on duty for another three hours. The noise was coming from the direction of Nowzad and RPG’s run. I dressed quickly and grabbed my gear. I bumped into Dave as I stumbled out of my cell.
‘What’s all the noise?’
‘Don’t know,’ he replied.
We rounded the corner towards the run at a jog as I had a horrible feeling it was another dogfight.
‘Oh shit,’ I said as I saw the rear gate was wide open and the area directly surrounding it was swarming with dogs of all sizes and shapes, running around and snapping at each other among the small clouds of dust they were kicking up as they leapt all over the place.
Nowzad and RPG were going berserk locked in their run. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a dogfight and that they were safe.
Dave grabbed my arm and pointed to the middle of the mass of dogs.
‘Oh no, what the hell are they trying to do?’ The sight in front of me was just a picture of despair.
There, tied to a lone post by a wire around her neck, was a small terrified dog. She was obviously a bitch as behind her the large male dogs were snapping and baring their teeth at each other for the opportunity to mate with her. It was a scene from doggie hell.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ was all Dave could say.
The moment I had stepped down from the plane on to Afghan soil I knew I had entered a different world, but this was lunacy. Now that I had bought Nowzad’s safety, for the time being at least, the Afghans had obviously decided to have a go at breeding their own supply of fighting dogs. This poor dog was going to produce them.
‘As if there aren’t enough strays already,’ Dave shouted above the barking and growling as we both waded into the fray, waving our arms and generally shouting at the dogs. We hadn’t thought about being bitten, we were both too consumed by anger and total disbelief to worry about that.
We chased away the male dogs, trying to push them through the open gate and back out of our compound. When the biggest dogs decided they weren’t going to leave that easily, Dave picked up a large piece of discarded wood and started to wave it at them. Even that wasn’t enough. He had to smash the wood into the ground to scare them in the general direction of the open entrance.
With all the commotion I was surprised that nobody else had come out to see what was happening. I later found out that the lads in the nearest sangar were about to radio the ops room but had heard my voice shouting in the still night air and assumed I had things under control!
Between us, Dave and I managed to close the rear gate and lock the dead bolt bar into place. As silence returned to the compound we just looked at each other.
‘Unbelievable,’ was all I could say as I tried to catch my breath.
I walked back over to the small dog tied to the stake. She was shivering in the cool night air.
‘Are you all right, little one?’ I asked her as I reached out towards her small round head.
She sniffed my hand and then immediately started to lick it as I played with her long oval-shaped ears. She looked much darker in colour than Nowzad and at least half his size. I had no idea what breed she resembled.
‘What do we do with you, eh?’ I asked, knowing the answer was clearly reflected in her sad eyes.
I reached down to untie her from the wooden stake, holding on to the section of the wire that was bound tightly around her neck. I didn’t want her running off around the compound.
I needn’t have worried. She happily trotted alongside me as I walked her over to where Nowzad and RPG were waiting desperately to get out. Both of them were jumping up at the gate in anticipation.
I held the young female in one hand while I untied the latch. Both Nowzad and RPG raced out of the run, only briefly stopping to sniff the new arrival before wandering off to continue sniffing and smelling the spots where minutes earlier the pack had been running wild. I guessed they were looking for old friends.
The little female dog’s long tail was wagging around, making small whooshing noises. I let her enter the run and slipped off the wire noose from around her neck.
‘Guess that’s another one then?’ Dave said a few minutes later, as he dragged an excited RPG back towards the run by his front legs, the dog’s long-haired tail beating madly against the ground as he went.
‘What else do we do?’ I said. ‘We can’t just throw her outside; what happens to any puppies?’
I looked back at the main gate. The dusty floor immediately in front of it was a mass of dog paw prints, fanning out in all directions. The wooden stake stood alone in
the now empty area, except for Nowzad who cocked his rear left leg against it – admittedly there was a distinct lack of trees in our neighbourhood for him to use.
‘What the hell are these people on?’ I said out loud as we tried to comprehend what we had just witnessed. ‘Apart from anything else, who in their right mind would leave our rear gate open at night with the Taliban on the prowl?’
The fact that the ANP would tie a dog up like that shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what we had seen so far.
‘I’m going to make the ANP wish they were living with the Taliban tomorrow,’ I said, but I knew it would be useless confronting them. What could I do to them anyway?
I chased Nowzad around for a few minutes and then led him back into the run. He didn’t seem to mind the young female that was now being stroked by Dave.
‘We can’t just throw her out the gate, can we?’ I said, although I already knew what Dave would say. We could hear the pack still chasing each other around just on the other side of the firmly closed gate.
I had planned to get up early anyway to ring Lisa back home; there didn’t seem much point in going to sleep now. So I made use of the fact that the sat phone was sitting in its cradle with nobody booked to use it. I needed to phone her and somehow describe what I had just witnessed.
Before I could say anything Lisa’s excited voice bounced across the satellite connection.
‘You took your time ringing; I’ve been waiting ages!’ she said.
‘I was …’
She cut me off before I could finish. ‘I’ve found a rescue centre.’
I held the handset to my ear, as if I’d misheard her.
‘Pen, did you get what I said? I’ve found a rescue!’
I closed my eyes and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Lisa was on a roll, however, and carried on talking. ‘This animal rescue in London, the Mayhew, helps to run an animal welfare organisation in Northern Afghanistan. They gave me a contact who will take the dogs in.’
One Dog at a Time Page 11
