John and I peered eagerly into the box to discover four large frozen turkeys along with an assortment of fresh vegetables, strips of bacon and sausages and Christmas crackers.
‘Better get your pinny on,’ John sniggered as we loaded the bags of potatoes and carrots on to the pickup.
The real surprise was at the bottom of the box: three crates of lager. There was then much back-slapping as we discovered another box containing even more crates on the pallet. A quick calculation and we worked out that, in all, there was enough for one can for each man in the compound on Christmas Day.
We’d been feeling a bit sorry for ourselves since discovering that for once the rumour mill was correct and Gordon Ramsay was to cook Christmas dinner in Bastion. It was a nice gesture but not one that was going to benefit any of us fighting in the out stations. This delivery was obviously to make up for it. Bastion really did care about us.
As we made the short drive back to the compound, my main concern was how on earth we were going to cook four enormous turkeys with just a gas-operated hob.
Over the next couple of days I administered the cream to the small dog’s neck. She had taken well to the tablets the doc had given me, as I’d cunningly stuffed them in a slice of corned beef.
Towards the end of the second day I found her sitting upright in the box, her head just poking over the top. I noticed her small tail wagging as I got closer.
We had named her after the Russian AK-47 automatic weapon as she was just a smaller version of RPG. We thought we might as well stay with the weapons theme.
‘I see you are feeling better then, AK?’
The swelling in her neck had gone down too. I could now stroke her head without fear of any reprisal. I lifted her up and placed her on the floor at my feet. Nowzad, RPG and Jena were glued to the fence to see what would happen next.
Little AK sniffed the ground, slightly wobbly on her feet, before promptly sitting down again.
The dogs in the run all let out a slight whine.
‘Not ready for the big world yet, eh bud?’
I picked her up again and placed her back in the box along with another slice of corned beef.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Santa’s Sleigh
CHRISTMAS EVE STARTED the same as every other day over the past week or two: wet.
By now the Christmas decorations that hung from most of the doors and windows were really looking the worse for wear. The constant drizzling rain saw to that.
I stepped out into the mud of the compound and wished for the thousandth time that I had brought back my wellingtons with me. I could feel the water seeping through my now constantly sodden leather boots within minutes of putting them on. Clean dry thick wool socks were the commodity of the moment on the compound black market.
I walked over to the new dog run that we had altered to accommodate the latest arrival.
AK’s bite marks were healing nicely, and although it had taken a few days for the small dog’s appetite to return, she now shovelled the food away just like the others.
Once she had seemed strong enough to walk around the vicinity of the courtyard area we decided to move her in with the rest of our pack. Immediately there was a mass sniffing frenzy, smelling at each other excitedly until Jena got bored and strolled away.
RPG and AK then continued to play with each other until AK tired herself out and collapsed, panting heavily, curled up in a corner. It didn’t take her long to recover though and they were soon resuming their play-fighting again.
I think RPG was just happy to have somebody to play with that he could beat for a change. Nowzad just seemed content to watch from his cushion.
Dave hadn’t believed me when I told him that I hadn’t brought her in from outside, but he had taken a shine to her anyway. Little AK would race to the bars whenever Dave came over to feed her.
‘Come here and let me check out your neck, AK,’ Dave would call and she would happily trot over and curl up by his feet as he carefully felt around the wound on her neck. We didn’t need to discuss it. AK had just joined our growing dog family.
Within a day or so, it was obvious that we would have to move and redesign the run to house three separate fenced areas, each of which would have unique access to a small storeroom.
Nowzad needed his own run as he didn’t take too well to RPG and AK constantly tussling away together. ‘Words’ had been exchanged between Nowzad and RPG already, so we had decided it was best to keep them separated. Despite the fact that he and RPG used to be big buddies he seemed quite happy to be on the other side of the HESCO fencing, able to prowl his own little space.
It also meant I didn’t have to stand guard when I fed him. Now I just opened the small hinged gate and shoved the bowl of food through.
I had toyed with the idea of trying to make them all sit before I gave the food out, but that meant taking out the time to train them all and time was the one thing I didn’t have.
Jena was definitely the mum of the group and sat in her own little space watching over the proceedings. I had looked up puppy breeding on the web during R & R and now knew that she needed her own space to have her puppies in. She didn’t seem to mind being on the other side of the gridded fence.
All the occupants looked up at me expectantly as I rooted through the stack of old rations for today’s delights.
I was quite chuffed with the segregated runs. I was not sure why I hadn’t used this old building before. Nowzad now had his own favourite spot lying against the fence on top of two old sandbags where he could keep an eye on the single entrance to the run enclosure and the antics of his next-door neighbours. He would lie there barking occasionally when RPG and AK got carried away chasing each other, as if telling them to keep the noise down.
I had just finished cleaning out all three runs when I heard the familiar sound of a mortar round arcing across the sky.
‘Here we go again, guys,’ I said to the dogs as I ran out the gate. But they had already disappeared into the dark shadows of their respective bolt-holes. I doubted they would make an appearance again in a hurry.
I spent the next two hours in the northern sangar while we took on the Taliban, who seemed hell-bent on dropping a mortar into the DC. A small cheer went up as an American attack helicopter joined the fray, letting loose with two hellfire missiles on to the enemy position. The joy didn’t last long as the Taliban managed to put a few rounds through the weapon pylon of the helicopter with some form of antiaircraft gun. That decided things there and then and the call was made to bring in the big boys, in this case a B1 bomber that was tasked with dropping a 7,000-pounder on to the Taliban firing point.
I knew what was coming as we all listened to the 30-second countdown over the radio. I also knew the dogs hiding in the dark of the small disused storerooms had no idea of the impending impact. But there was nothing I could do about that.
Even though I was expecting it, the blast wave from the impact zone just over 1,000 metres distant still took me by surprise. I hated to think how panicked the dogs must have been in that second as the explosion echoed across the valley floor and into the mountains.
As the mushroom cloud rose slowly into the damp afternoon air, I didn’t spare a thought for the Taliban fighters who had probably been caught in the blast. As far as I was concerned they had sealed their fates when they had ambushed Marine Watson.
These constant exchanges with the Taliban had left us running seriously low on ammunition; a large-scale resupply was the only option.
It would have needed around ten helo lifts to carry all the supplies we needed, but that just wasn’t going to happen with the limited air resources available. So a C130 Hercules transport plane had been tasked with dropping the pallets over the desert outside Now Zad. The boss had given me the job of heading out into the desert, arranging the drop zone and then signalling the pilot that it was secured and open.
I didn’t get to see the dogs again until around 8 p.m. and even then it was only for a few
minutes. I desperately needed to close my eyes. After I had fed them all I climbed in Nowzad’s run with him and sat down with my back against the cold, clay wall. Nowzad trotted over and sat next to me. As I rubbed his stumpy ears, he leant into my hand, encouraging me to rub harder. I obliged for a few minutes more. I had set my watch alarm to go off in 20 minutes’ time and before I knew it I had nodded off. When I woke up shivering it felt like I’d been out for ten seconds, not 20 minutes. Nowzad was still by my side. Reluctantly I stood up, my sleepiness still trying to pull me back into its grip. I knew it was going to be a long night.
It was one minute after midnight on Christmas morning and the pilot had timed his approach to perfection. The second I hit the button to fire up the infra-red strobe lights I had used to mark out the run, the low hum of the incoming Hercules transport plane filled the sky over the drop zone. The hum quickly became a roar as the dark form of the mighty transport plane passed overhead – surprisingly low overhead, in fact.
As the loadmaster released the heavily laden pallets out into the void of the night sky, I realised the C130 was much closer to the ground than I’d thought.
It might have been a comical moment anywhere else, but suddenly it clicked that we were in the middle of the drop zone – a really bad place to be when 14 wooden pallets laden with ammunition were rapidly descending to earth, supported only by a piece of flimsy parachute silk.
‘Oh shit, run,’ I shouted to John.
In the dim glow of the early-morning moon it was too difficult to judge how high the chutes were above the ground. But I figured we had only a few seconds before the first pallet-laden parachute crashed to earth. Each one would probably weigh around two tonnes and I had no plan to be under one when it touched down.
My boots were struggling to find a grip on the slippery wet mud wall of a wadi as the first impact resounded behind us.
John stood sucking it in next to me, both of us bent over with our hands on our knees. Between us we sounded like we had just rowed in the Olympics.
‘Bloody hell, I didn’t realise they were going to be that close,’ I said.
As I sucked in deep gulps of cold air I saw that the closest pallet had landed only 100 feet away.
As we let our heart rates drop back down to something resembling normal, I pressed the transmit button on my radio.
‘0 this is 20C. Santa’s sleigh has touched down, over.’
‘0, roger go collecting. Out.’
Silence had once more fallen around the darkened mountains. It was actually fairly peaceful. It definitely didn’t feel like the early hours of a Christmas morning.
‘Let’s go and see what Santa has bought us then, John,’ I said as I dropped back down the side of the wadi.
The next hour or two passed slowly as along with the lads not on sentry we located the various pallets across a vast section of the desert. We then began the process of removing the straps and cables that secured the enormous parachute, before destacking the ammunition tins ready to be loaded on to the engineers’ wagon.
Nobody in the DC was sleeping while this operation was under way. Anybody who wasn’t on guard duty was either out here helping with the task in the desert or waiting back in the compound to unload the truck as quickly as possible so that it could turn around and head back out for the next load.
Those in the compound were left with the job of breaking the ammunition down, counting it and then storing it away in the various locations around the compound.
The guys on the hill were our eyes and ears, constantly scanning for the slightest hint that the Taliban were interested in our early-Christmas morning antics.
‘Happy Christmas, Sergeant,’ a tired gentle Welsh twang called out as I approached the darkened stack of ammunition currently being stripped down.
Taff, who was second in command of one of my sections, was attempting to cut through one of the thick straps. One of his lads was caught up underneath the hulking parachute as he tried desperately to fold it away on his own. The parachutes weighed 20 stone or more. Three people would normally struggle to lift one on to the back of the flat-bed truck; one person was a non-starter.
‘Merry Christmas to you, too,’ I replied. ‘I bet there are some disappointed young ladies back in Merthyr tonight, seeing as you aren’t out partying in the valleys, eh?’
‘You best believe it, Sarge,’ he replied as he finally cut through the strap, jumping to the side as the ammo tins were released.
‘How many pallets is that so far then?’ he asked.
‘Eleven; still got to find another three,’ I answered, as I continued scanning the flat expanse of the Now Zad desert with my night sight. ‘I think the last three must have landed away in a wadi over there,’ I said, pointing vaguely in the dark. ‘I’ll be buggered if I can see them though.’
‘Oh great,’ Taff said as he stepped over to the parachute-clad figure, who was now pretending to be a ghost.
‘Stop fucking around, Mike, and get out of here,’ Taff said with a quick clip around the silk-clad head to reinforce the message.
‘Ow, Taff, that hurts,’ the voice from under the parachute replied, waving two arms from under the silk to prevent any more blows that might be directed his way.
‘Mike, just do as you are told, idiot boy.’
‘Give us a call on the radio in about ten minutes. Hopefully I will have found those other pallets by then,’ I said to Taff.
I couldn’t see his face but I knew there was a sarcastic expression staring back at me in the gloom.
‘Can’t wait,’ he said.
The early-morning sun was just starting to break over the eastern mountain ridges. They were awash with shades of reds and orange as the daylight slowly greeted an Afghanistan Christmas Day.
I needed to get the lads moving again; we had been out here now nearly seven hours collecting ammunition; I couldn’t believe the Taliban had left us alone this long.
The last pallet had drifted nearly 200 metres out into the barren desert. Taff’s team were on their way over to my location. I was hidden from view down the side of a steep dirt bank. It wouldn’t be a lot of fun dragging the ammunition up and over the side of that, I thought to myself.
I started cutting the heavy-duty buckles and straps that had held the ammunition boxes in place then jumped sideways as half the stack of ammunition boxes fell towards me as the last strap was released.
Some foam padding that had been hidden from view in the middle of the pallet stack suddenly caught my eye. I stepped over the tumbled ammo boxes and reached into the padding. It came away easily to reveal a large cardboard box. I carefully lifted the box up from its precarious position among the stacked mortar bombs and opened the cardboard lid.
As the early-morning light infiltrated the box I smiled to myself as I realised it was a traditional, square, white-iced Christmas cake with the words ‘Merry Xmas’ in blue icing across the top of it. A small white envelope had been carefully laid on top.
Inside the card there was a picture of a rather rotund Santa stuck in a chimney pot, his Christmas sack bulging with brightly wrapped presents. Inside it read:
To the lads in Now Zad DC,
Have a safe Christmas
From the lads of the Royal Air Force
‘Nice one, Brylcreem boys,’ I grinned.
It was just what our early-morning exertions required. The cake would go down nicely over a cup of tea, whenever we finally made it back to the compound.
The morning sky that had looked so promising was now clouding over, which made the damp air feel quite warm. By the time I was dragging the last of the bloody parachutes through the sticky mud of the desert I was sweating.
It wasn’t far off eight o’clock as we entered the compound with the final tins of ammunition. The Christmas cake box had sat securely in my lap for the brief journey.
Wearily we manhandled the last of the hastily folded parachutes into the metal ISO container that we used for storage.
Eve
ntually the ’chutes would be loaded back to Bastion for another day.
‘Meet up round by the vehicles, lads – it’s cake time,’ I called out as I wiped the dirt and sweat from my eyes.
The cake went in a flash as mud-stained hands snatched it up. The steaming hot mug of sweet tea washed the cake down a treat as we worked out the sentry roster for the remainder of the day. With no operations planned, unless the Taliban had a Christmas surprise of their own, it should be a quiet day.
I quickly heated up some water using the old ammo box that served as our hot water tank and filled the shower bag. Five minutes later I had shaved and dressed in fresh underpants and clean socks. I still wore the same pair of trousers that I had worn for the last week; I had no choice there as my other pair was still trying to dry from the wash two days ago. I had brought back from R & R a bright red barbecue shirt that came out only on special occasions. Lisa hated it, which, of course, encouraged me to wear it more.
Watching it being packed into my day sack for the return to Afghanistan Lisa had suggested I leave it behind for the Taliban when I came home for good.
My mother had sent me some Christmas reindeer antlers and a flashing red bow tie. They finished off my Christmas Day outfit quite nicely. I pulled out the variety box of chocolate biscuits from under my bunk that had also come back from R & R and, in body armour, wandered off to check on the lads manning the sentry positions. Everybody looked tired as I did the rounds, but we had no choice except to keep plugging away at it. We couldn’t very well stand the sangars down just because it was Christmas.
By the time I finished my rounds the biscuit box was empty and I felt quite stuffed. I had managed to munch a sickly chocolate biscuit in every sangar. I couldn’t let the lads eat on their own, could I?
As I walked back to the galley, Dutchy was already clad in his apron, peeling potatoes into the cooking pot. I walked through the doorway and then stopped and reversed back out into the muddy yard.
One Dog at a Time Page 18
