After the Blast

by Garth Callender

  I heard the call from one of the other crew commanders – ‘Give ’em a kiss’ – and the second vehicle rolled forward and nudged the bogged car. The bump knocked it up and out of the muddy patch and the convoy was off down the road.

  We had moved through the International Zone and past the old Ba’ath Party headquarters when a message was passed from one of the embassy staff through to the military police security team to the vehicle crew, who in turn relayed it to me: ‘Can you slow down, because it’s a bit bumpy?’ It took me a minute to take in that one of the embassy staff was complaining about a bumpy ride – did she know where she was? After a minute I replied, ‘We are travelling down one of the most dangerous roads in the world at one of the most dangerous times of night. My primary concern is their safety, not their comfort.’ I don’t think the message was passed on.

  After we returned from Camp Victory, having dropped off the general and the ambassador and his staff, we returned to the Flats without incident. We all sat around at 0100 in the morning, helmets and body armour on, crews in their vehicles waiting to react. The minutes ticked by so slowly. Nothing occurred.

  *

  I was so busy I didn’t have much time to call Crystal. But I thought about her all the time. We were planning on holding an engagement party once I returned.

  Even when she was travelling in the UK and Europe, I could speak to her on her mobile. I usually called in the middle of the night after I’d finished my night-time shift at the command post. For security reasons, I couldn’t talk about much, so she would tell me about what she had been up to. It was a little piece of normality in this strange world.

  5

  US AND THEM

  ALTHOUGH I HAD CREWS FOR THREE PATROLS, I tried to get out on the road myself at least once a day. There were many reasons for this: so I could show the blokes I was not some snot-nosed officer who spent his days in the air-conditioned command post; so I could give one of my crew commanders a short break; so I could keep in touch with the environment my troop worked in all day; so I could keep an eye on my blokes; and, to be honest, because it was exciting and I was a young lieutenant working in Baghdad with the opportunity to get out on the road – so why wouldn’t I?

  I would walk into the Australian headquarters at Camp Victory, face and uniform covered in grime from the road and the exhaust, and see the envy on the faces of the staff officers. Most very rarely ventured out of the headquarters, where they were trapped behind their desks. They got their biggest kicks from being passengers in one of my vehicles – if, that is, they had a legitimate reason to go into the International Zone and if their colonel would permit them. The majority were stuck in Camp Victory for six months. They lived in the building next to the headquarters. Although many had interesting jobs, playing a part in overseeing Australian operations in the Middle East, they were still desk jobs: none was as good as mine – and they knew it.

  Because there were so many headquarters staff, about eighty at any one time, they generated a lot of their own work internally in addition to their actual roles. Jokingly they were referred to as the ‘self-licking ice-cream’.

  Headquarters staff had rules for when to wear body armour and when to wear helmets and what to do during this siren and that alarm. We just wore body armour and vehicle helmets most of the time. They had rules for when to have your weapon unloaded, when to carry a magazine on your rifle and when to fill the fridge with more water. At the Flats we carried our weapons loaded all the time and filled the fridge when it was getting low.

  I was busy. A short trip out on the road as a crew commander was a real luxury. Most of the day I spent in the command post, tracking my vehicles, developing the movement plan for the following day, and receiving requests from the embassy, the Australian headquarters and the Australian military staff working in the International Zone, mostly in the US headquarters.

  Some days the movement plan resembled a jigsaw as I tried to piece it all together. There was so much to coordinate: the ambassador needed to be at the UK embassy the same time the general needed to be at the US embassy. The signallers needed to be at the brigade combat team headquarters as part of a monthly classified equipment check and the special operation liaison officer needed to go to LZ Washington, the helicopter landing zone in the International Zone. And one of the ASLAVs needed a 10,000-kilometre service, which involved an engine lift, so it’d be off the road for the day at least. Honestly, this was not what I had trained for back in Australia. I was a cavalry troop leader trained in armoured manoeuvre, but many days I found myself working in a mix of roles, from liaison officer with the embassy and movement and logistics coordinator to operations officer dealing with random problems as they arose.

  It was confusing and I buggered it up a few times. Once, the ambassador didn’t get to where he needed to be on time, so he called my boss. He yelled at him about what a crap job we were doing, then my boss in turn yelled at me. That was how the chain of command worked. Generally, though, things worked.

  The boys spent a lot of time on the road; there were always ‘fast ball’ tasks that came up throughout the day.

  Common sense tells you that the greater your exposure to dangerous activities, like driving around Baghdad, the greater your chances of bad things happening to you. And we were close. I don’t know how many times.

  Once for sure. Key trouble spots were the checkpoints into the International Zone. The International Zone housed many of the interim government’s administrative buildings and also many of the city’s famous monuments: the Monument to the Unknown Soldier; the El Haria (Liberty) Monument in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, commemorating the 14 July 1958 revolution; and the Victory Arch, commemorating the Iran–Iraq War, which consisted of a pair of hands holding crossed swords.

  To the east and the north, the International Zone was secured by seemingly endless rows of 9-foot cement ‘T walls’, with all roads leading into the zone heavily controlled by the Coalition and the Iraqi army and police. The checkpoints were named on a somewhat clockwise basis, checkpoints 1 and 2 to the north, checkpoint 11 to the south, and 12 to the west. They also took on colloquial names, such as ‘Assassins’ Gate’ for the checkpoint that led to the entrance of Haifa Street or ‘14 July checkpoint’ for the one leading to the 14 July Bridge.

  One day, one of my crew commanders radioed in that he was approaching Checkpoint 12. As a deterrent, this checkpoint had an Abrams tank with its barrel pointing towards approaching vehicles. It didn’t work.

  Approaching the checkpoint, the Australian patrol identified a suspicious vehicle driving strangely, which they thought might contain a suicide bomber. They accelerated into the checkpoint to prevent the vehicle getting close. As they entered the chicanes, the vehicle detonated among the cars queued in the civilian traffic lane.

  I heard the explosion from the Flats, even though it was about

  2 kilometres away. The crew commander had radioed through that they were approaching the checkpoint. Then, again on the radio, we heard: ‘Fuck, that was close.’

  A massive smoke plume billowed up from the carnage. These attacks were not uncommon. But there were also other hazards we never thought to consider. An American soldier dropped dead at Checkpoint 12 only a week or two after this incident. They had decided to do twelve-hour piquets (guard duty shifts) and he had taken only one litre of water with him. The temperatures were over 40°C during the day, and he was alternating between standing in the sun and sitting on a tank under a makeshift shade. They said his muscles just liquefied and the heat killed him before they could get him anywhere near the hospital.

  *

  Of course, not every Iraqi was trying to kill us. Mohammad downstairs, the building caretaker, was a lovely bloke. So was Fil, our interpreter and the go-to man for any local services or contractors we needed. The children that waved on the streets were like children anywhere in the world – cute, happy, smiling … But my specific dealings with locals were generally unpleasant, and this was not ne
cessarily the fault of the Iraqis. Rather, it was because one of my jobs was to receive compensation claims from locals who had had their vehicles damaged by us.

  As noted, we drove hard on the roads and would regularly nudge vehicles out of the way. The trim vanes on the front of the vehicle – designed to extend when the ASLAVs entered the water and keep the vehicles afloat – bore a kaleidoscope of colours from the paint scrapes of the vehicles we had hit.

  When we struck a local vehicle on the road, if it was tactically sound to stop, which wasn’t often, we handed the driver a form that allowed them to apply for compensation for the damage. It was a crazy system. The principle was sound – to help people repair the vehicles we had damaged – but I’m certain that in a lot of cases things didn’t pan out as intended.

  The system had been in place since just after the first SECDET arrived, and by now all the locals knew about it. So we would regularly get people turning up to try their luck. I would listen to their claim and if it matched an incident that one of our crew commanders had reported, I would give them a form to fill out. The flipside was that if we had been unable to stop and hand out our claim form, and if I was unable to match the damage to a specific incident, we couldn’t process a claim. I am sure there were plenty of legitimate claims that didn’t get processed.

  These exchanges tended to be emotional and many of them went against much of what I had been taught. According to our cultural training, all Iraqi women wore burqas and walked with their eyes down two paces behind their men. We were instructed never to look a woman in the eye. If you wanted to address a woman, you should talk to their male companion and put your question through him. We had been told that if you talked to a woman or looked her in the eye you would offend everyone and the only way for her to regain her honour and her family’s honour, and to save your own testicles from being detached by an enraged brother with a sharp knife, was to marry the girl.

  Therefore I was alarmed one afternoon when a call came that there was a local woman at the side gate who wanted to discuss a vehicle damage claim with me. When I opened the steel door at the side of the Flats, I saw two women standing near our infantry soldiers, with no male chaperone in sight. Both were agitated; the closer woman had, I think, been tapping her foot while waiting for me. Both were well dressed in a corporate style, wearing trousers and jackets with bright-coloured headscarves that showed their full faces, and they had no male chaperone. This was not what I had been told to expect from Iraqi women, which, again, confirmed my doubts about some of the ‘experts’ who had briefed us before our deployment.

  I grabbed Mohammad on the way out, assuming I would need a local speaker to help me through the discussion. But when I greeted the women, they both returned the greeting in fluent English with a slight American twang. I thanked Mohammad and let him return to his small stall that sold $5 cartons of cigarettes, cases of Coke and locally made leather pistol holsters.

  I asked these women into the Flats, as I was never comfortable having long conversations out on the street. I took them only to the first floor, where our dining hall and kitchen were situated and where we could sit. They explained that their vehicle had been hit and badly damaged, and gave the date and location of the incident. I left them with a soldier and went to the command post to check the records. Nothing matched, and I had to tell them that we had no record of the incident and therefore were unable to pay compensation. The conversation went nowhere but round in circles, and the women got progressively more distressed. I finally got them to leave, but they weren’t happy.

  And they weren’t the only ones. Some days saw a procession of people claiming compensation: some with legitimate claims, some with obviously bogus ones, some whose claims had been approved but who were waiting for the bureaucratic cogs to turn and provide them with a few hundred dollars to repair the damaged panels and front suspension from having an ASLAV strike them from the side as they entered a roundabout, and some who just didn’t understand the difference between an ASLAV and the US Bradley vehicle that had hit them. Then there were many like these women, with possibly legitimate claims that just could not be substantiated. I was powerless to help them and they hated me for it – probably hated Australia for it.

  I learnt quickly not to use local interpreters like Mohammad or Fil, as conversations would go round and round in circles – apparently this was the Iraqi way of doing business. I tended to use soldiers who had done a three-month Arabic course. They were able to pass on some information but did not allow the locals to repeat themselves. It helped keep the meetings short.

  But sometimes it created other problems. Once a small, bent elderly woman started to berate the young digger who was interpreting for me. Even if it was happening in another language, it was easy to recognise the sound of an older woman scolding a young man. I asked him what she was saying. He said that he was getting the words wrong and using the masculine term of address. He said she was saying, ‘Stop calling me a man!’

  One instance did go well … sort of. A man who had visited several times to check how his claim was progressing arrived at our side gate. The message was passed on and I checked the file and saw that his claim had been approved and that compensation would be paid. He was to be well compensated, as he claimed that his vehicle was a taxi and without it he had no livelihood and his family was going hungry. (I had asked Fil about such cases. His response was, ‘They are all taxis, particularly if it means you get more money.’)

  I went down to the side gate to tell this slim, leathery old man that his claim had been approved. The welcome news was translated just as one of my patrols was returning. When he realised he was going to be paid, the old man’s hand shot out towards me and I reached to shake it. He grabbed hold and pulled me towards him and kissed me on both cheeks. His stubbly face scratched against mine, and over the vehicle noise I could hear the howls of laughter from my vehicle crews as they rolled into the car park under the Flats.

  *

  The troop was a mix of characters, from highly intelligent young soldiers through to ones whose knuckles dragged. Many had joined the army straight out of school, but others were older, having worked, some for many years, before joining up. Some were talented drivers or gunners; others struggled with the complexities of working in a dangerous city. Individuals didn’t miraculously change when they went on operations: the good operators were still good; the shaky guys still struggled.

  But their underlying qualities were twofold. One, they were all professionals. Guns were always clean, vehicles were serviced, ammunition was checked, drills were practised. Even if they did lapse, I had a strong troop sergeant who would fix the problem before I knew about it. Two, they were larrikins – classic larrikins – looking for the humorous side to everything. Spending three minutes with a group of them was likely to leave you in hysterics. Their language was generally foul, their rooms were plastered in porn and their jokes were always irreverent.

  ‘Hey, fucktard, bet you can’t take a taser to the balls.’

  ‘Yeah, righto, do you think I’ll blow blanks afterwards?’

  Their pride in their job and their unit was seemingly endless. For some, this pride stemmed from the belief that they embodied the Anzac tradition and legend. For others, it was the pride you get from being part of a strong team, from working with a group of men that feel like brothers. And for many it was a combination of the two. They had acquired a small bird, a budgie they named ‘Courage’, after the 2nd Cavalry Regiment mascot, a wedge-tailed eagle, which was back in Darwin.

  Before leaving for Baghdad, the boys organised a squadron t-shirt. On the back was the motto ‘Eruptio Cuius Rectum Nil Liberieum’, surrounding a small green foetus wearing boxing gloves. Apparently this was dog Latin that translated as ‘Up the bum, no babies’. It was quickly banned by our squadron commander, who, unsurprisingly, hadn’t approved the design.

  In Baghdad the troop developed a game of stencilling the unit logo, a much more tasteful eagle and lance
, wherever they could throughout the city – the concrete walls outside the Ba’ath Party headquarters, the back of a US HMMWV (high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle), the roof of the Slayer tunnel. Once we had a tour of musicians and comics visit to ‘keep up morale’. When they had finished keeping up our morale, the troop was tasked to carry their luggage and equipment from the second floor back down to the vehicles. By the time the tour left, nearly every case and bag had been stencilled with the unit logo.

  Discipline was never a real issue in the troop – I was always the sort of commander who would let things like harmless stencilling slide. There had to be a bit of larrikinism. I rarely had to speak to anyone about a disciplinary matter, as I was lucky to have a strong troop sergeant who sorted most issues out before they ever got to me. I got on well with my sergeant; there was a mutual respect between us that bordered on friendship. Generally the more weighty discipline issues were beyond my authority anyway – like when one of my soldiers accidently fired off a 9-mm round into the unload bay as he was about to clean his pistol. Charges for unlawful discharges went straight to the major commanding the combat team.

  There was a bit of ‘us and them’ among my cavalry troop, the military police close personal protection team and the infantry platoon – these were the three main groups within the 110-man combat team. The delineation of command was always an issue. The military police argued that they were closest to the embassy staff we were protecting, so therefore they should command every patrol and situation involving the embassy staff. The infantry claimed they provided the local area security to the embassy, so they should command and make all decisions for the Flats, the embassy and the Carthage Hotel, a local hotel where the embassy staff, including the ambassador, lived. My crew commanders always believed they should command all patrols, including when the embassy staff and military police were involved.