Caesar the War Dog

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  Whoomp! Dust and smoke billowed up in a cloud. An IED had exploded beneath the front right side of the leading Humvee. The vehicle, its front right wheel blown off, was thrown up onto its side. Its ANA occupants, some wounded, tumbled out and scrambled to hide behind the upturned wreck.

  The convoy had been following a dry creek bed back toward FOB Python – just as the Taliban had expected it to. At a bend in the creek, the insurgents were waiting for them, and had planted the bomb in the riverbed. The creek bank directly ahead and a low ridge to the right of the line of Humvees sparkled with flashes from the muzzles of AK-47s and machineguns fired by Taliban insurgents lying in wait.

  ‘Contact! Contact! Two o’clock!’ yelled the American gunner in Ben and Caesar’s Humvee, the third vehicle in line. Taliban bullets splattered against the Humvee’s lightly armoured sides. Moments later, the gunner was letting rip with his 50-calibre machinegun, and its tat-tat-tat joined the harsh concert of battle sounds that now filled the previously still night. Ben and Caesar’s Humvee slithered to a halt.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’ Charlie called.

  ‘The way’s blocked!’ their driver yelled back. Ahead, the second Humvee was trying to reverse away from the overturned lead vehicle.

  ‘We’re sitting ducks!’ Lucky Mertz shouted. ‘Back up!’

  ‘I’m trying! I’m trying!’ the driver cried, his voice high-pitched with alarm. In his panic, the driver reversed their vehicle into the Humvee behind – Sergeant Hazard’s vehicle. With a metallic crunch, the two Humvees collided and briefly became locked together.

  ‘This is like dodgem cars at the Royal Melbourne Show!’ Bendigo Baz exclaimed. ‘And I don’t like dodgem cars!’

  ‘Most of the fire’s coming in from the right,’ said Charlie, calmly assessing the situation. ‘Everyone dismount, take up firing positions and engage. Go left! Go left! Now!’

  Throwing open the left side doors, they sprang from the Humvee. Ben went out the rear door with Caesar just as, with a roar of its engine, the Humvee directly behind them managed to free itself and reverse away. Then it too stopped, as its occupants tumbled out and landed on rounded but hard river stones. As they hit the riverbed, an RPG hit the front of the Humvee that Ben and Caesar had just left.

  Aimed at the American machine-gunner, who had remained behind and was continuing to direct fire at the enemy with his big weapon, the RPG blast took away part of the right side of the vehicle. The machine-gunner, instantly wounded, sagged back down into the blackened wreckage. The Humvee’s driver reached back into the cabin and dragged his injured countryman from the vehicle, then started to apply first aid.

  Meanwhile, Ben was crouching, with Caesar on his belly at his master’s side. Caesar’s tail and ears were drooping – both signs that he was clearly unsettled by the incoming fire.

  Charlie was close by. ‘Too much fire’s coming our way,’ he yelled to Ben, as bullets whizzed by, just overhead. He pointed to Sergeant Hazard’s stationary Humvee behind them. ‘Use that as cover, and keep your heads down.’

  ‘How many hostiles are we up against?’ Ben called.

  ‘A lot!’ Charlie returned. ‘Now get into cover, and stay low! That’s an order.’ He tapped Bendigo Baz on the shoulder. ‘Baz, give Ben and Caesar cover.’

  ‘Your wish is my command, oh master,’ Baz replied, and up he popped with his machinegun, to let off a long, fanned burst at the enemy.

  Ben, hunching low, led Caesar back to the next Humvee. Enemy bullets chopped up gravel nearby as they ran. Sergeant Hazard and a mixture of Australian and American soldiers were using the fourth Humvee as cover – bobbing up to fire to the right, then bobbing back down again. Ben could see that the Humvee at the tail end of the convoy was blocking their way back out of the creek bed. It too was stopped. And it was on fire, with orange flames licking the metal and rising up into the night sky. It had been hit by two RPGs.

  Ben recognised the tactics used by their attackers as those of a classic convoy ambush – destroy the first vehicle and the last, trapping the remaining vehicles in between. It occurred to Ben that the Taliban commander responsible for their predicament knew exactly what he was doing, and had probably done this many times before.

  Over at Humvee number three, Charlie found Kareem the interpreter huddled beside the vehicle. ‘Kareem, are you okay?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant Charlie, I am okay,’ Kareem replied. But terror was painted across his face. ‘I am thinking of my wife and dear children. The last thing I heard the Taliban commander say on the radio was “Kill them all! Kill them all!”. Please tell me, Sergeant Charlie, are we all going to die here?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, mate,’ Charlie replied, slipping a grenade into the grenade-launcher attached to his carbine. Rising up, Charlie took in the line of enemy muzzle flashes, some as close as 100 metres away. Aiming at a machinegun position, he fired, then dropped back down onto one knee behind the Humvee. That the grenade detonated right on target was evident by a fresh, black hole in the glittering necklace of muzzle flashes.

  Ben, sitting with his back to the side of Sergeant Hazard’s Humvee, pulled Caesar in close and aimed his rifle at the far bank of the stream, ready to fire on any Taliban fighters who might appear there, coming at them from behind. Beside him, Sergeant Hazard was still chewing furiously on gum as he fired a carbine into the night.

  Before long, Charlie came in a running crouch to join them. ‘We can’t stay here, Hazard,’ he said, speaking loudly to be heard above the din of gunfire and explosions all around them. ‘Hostiles are ahead of us and on our right flank. And they’ve got mortars. Won’t take them long to completely surround us.’

  ‘How many do you figure we’re up against?’ Hazard asked.

  ‘A hundred, maybe more,’ Charlie replied. ‘The longer we stay here, the more hostiles are likely to arrive – and the sooner they’ll surround us. I say we break out via the open side of the stream while we still can.’

  ‘And leave a couple of Humvees behind?’ said Hazard, unhappily.

  ‘You can come back for the wrecked Humvees in daylight,’ Charlie insisted.

  ‘Hell no, I’m not running from a fight!’ replied Hazard. ‘I’m calling in an air strike. We’ll bomb the crap out of those freaking hostiles!’ Grabbing the radio, Hazard called headquarters in Tarin Kowt. When he finished the call, he threw down the handset in disgust and looked at Charlie. ‘There’s not a single F-16 on standby in all of Afghanistan tonight! Can you believe it? They have to call in an air strike from Kuwait!’

  Charlie was shaking his head. ‘We can’t wait that long. We’ll all be history by the time that arrives.’ As he spoke, an enemy mortar bomb exploded nearby.

  ‘What a screw-up!’ Hazard snarled.

  Then, suddenly, bullets kicked up river stones just five metres behind them. Those bullets had been fired from the rear of the convoy. This made Caesar jump up. Facing the direction of the unseen Taliban gunman, the brown labrador began barking defiantly into the night. Caesar rarely barked, but when he did, he meant it.

  ‘You tell ’em, Caesar,’ said Ben with a proud grin, gripping him firmly by the collar and pulling him closer.

  ‘They’re behind us now,’ said Charlie. ‘We have to move!’ He glared at the American sergeant, ready to order his own men to get the hell out of this death trap if Hazard didn’t act soon.

  ‘Yeah, yeah!’ Hazard conceded. ‘Is your vehicle operational?’

  ‘We’ll give it a go,’ said Charlie, before he dashed back to the third Humvee.

  Like Australian-made Bushmasters, American Humvees were built to be tough and to withstand punishment, so when the driver of the third Humvee climbed back behind the wheel, its engine started on his first attempt. Charlie ordered the wounded to be loaded into the damaged cabin and onto the small flat tray on the back, then instructed all able men to walk and run alongside the Humvee as it struggled up the creek bank, using it as mobile cover, and firing as they went.

>   Following Charlie’s lead, the men at the second and fourth Humvees did the same, and those sheltering behind the first and last wrecked vehicles scrambled to join them. Ben and Caesar ran alongside Sergeant Hazard’s vehicle as it turned left and went up the side of the creek’s bank, its furiously spinning wheels spewing out stones behind it. With roaring engines, and with Taliban fire pouring their way, all three Humvees climbed up the stony side of the creek, flopped over the bank and reached flat ground. More men were wounded in the process, and they were bundled into the vehicles as the Humvees continued to roll at walking pace.

  Ben and Caesar kept near the crouching Sergeant Hazard, alongside his Humvee. So far, in the first twenty minutes of battle, none of them had been hurt. But the battle was far from over. As the three Humvees rolled along, with their machineguns blazing away and with the able men who kept pace beside them also firing, the Taliban followed them in pursuit. Keeping behind natural cover, the Taliban fighters would run to new positions ahead, then resume firing. It was a moving battle and every few metres brought more wounds to the Special Forces group.

  Half an hour into the battle, a US Air Force F-16 arrived from Kuwait. Without warning, the jet roared in low overhead, mistakenly dropping a bomb on a distant kal, not on the Taliban. And what seemed like a hundred Taliban weapons pointed skyward, spitting fire at it as the jet soared away. Coming back for another run, the F-16 dropped a second bomb. This time the target was a ridge from which heavy Taliban fire had been coming. Flame and smoke mushroomed into the air where the second bomb landed. And the jet was swallowed by the blackness of the night as it headed back to Kuwait, leaving the men on the ground on their own again. Taliban fire had not even faltered during the air attack. Tough, brave and determined, the insurgents had no intention of letting these Special Forces infidels escape them.

  Two hours after the first contact with the enemy, the nonstop battle had brought the three Humvees to within a kilometre of FOB Python. So many men had been taken out of the fight by wounds by this time that Ben had disobeyed Charlie’s orders and was using his rifle against their attackers. When he checked his ammunition, he found that he’d fired all his magazines except for one. Then he saw Bendigo Baz, who had been walking and firing beside the Humvee in front, go down with a head wound. The Humvee continued on, leaving Baz lying out in the open.

  ‘Come on, Caesar!’ said Ben, and he dashed forward to help Baz, with Caesar scuttling along beside him. Grabbing Baz beneath each arm, Ben hauled him to the middle vehicle. Caesar, tugged along by the leash attached to Ben’s belt, came too. Charlie appeared at the left rear of the Humvee and helped Ben lift the unconscious Baz up onto the vehicle’s rear tray. Ben saw that Lucky Mertz was among the wounded lying on the tray. Lucky’s camouflage trousers were red with his blood. Yet, despite the wounds to his legs, Lucky had swapped his sniper rifle for someone else’s carbine and was still letting off bursts at the enemy, at the same time abusing them at the top of his voice. Then Ben recognised the face of Kareem the Afghan interpreter also among the wounded on the tray. Kareem’s eyes were glazed, as if he didn’t know where he was or who he was.

  Without a word, Charlie moved off, now armed with a shoulder-fired rocket-launcher. Ben, meanwhile, was just taking up a new firing position at the rear of the Humvee when, five metres away, an RPG detonated. Shrapnel, or ‘frag’, flew through the air, hitting the lower rear parts of the Humvee. One piece of frag hit Ben in the back of his left leg. Another neatly sliced through Caesar’s leash, severing it from Ben’s belt. All of a sudden Caesar was running free, finding himself in the open between the middle and last vehicles.

  ‘Come, Caesar!’ Ben yelled, grasping his left leg with one hand and beckoning Caesar with the other. ‘Caesar, back here to me, boy!’

  Caesar looked around at his master as Ben continued to move further away, forced to keep pace with the moving Humvee.

  ‘Caesar, come!’ Ben called, urgently.

  Caesar had just started to move back to Ben when a mortar bomb lobbed down in the open between the middle and last Humvees. Frag from the explosion scythed through the air and hit the dog’s front left leg, bringing a pained yelp from Caesar. With a cloud of dust and smoke rising in front of him and blocking his view of Ben, Caesar turned and limped away, seeking shelter he could see at the last Humvee. When the dust cleared, Ben was relieved to spot Caesar limping along beside the rearmost vehicle. His furry mate was keeping close to the Australian SAS men there, knowing from their familiar scent that they were friends.

  Fifty moonlit metres now separated each of the Humvees. Taliban bullets and mortar bombs were kicking up the earth between each, and Ben knew that if he tried to cross those exposed fifty metres to reach Caesar, he wouldn’t make it. He thought of Josh and Maddie. For their sakes, he could not risk his life trying to go across that killing zone. He could see Caesar, and Caesar could see Ben, both locked in each other’s sight. Ben could only hope that Caesar would stay with the last Humvee and, with it, reach safety. Ben resumed firing. He had just forty-two rounds remaining, so he selected his targets carefully. Every now and then he looked back to check that Caesar was okay. ‘Keep coming, Caesar!’ he yelled. ‘Keep coming!’

  With the terrain becoming less difficult to cross, and with FOB Python getting closer, the leading Humvee began to speed up. The second Humvee did the same, forcing Ben, Charlie and the others beside it to break into a trot to keep up. Ben, ignoring the wound to his left leg and regularly looking back to check where Caesar was, struggled to stay with the vehicle. The third Humvee also sped up, but not as much as the first two. The gap between middle and last vehicle was increasing. Ben could still see Caesar, who was coming as fast as his injured leg would allow, managing to stick with the last Humvee and the men alongside it. ‘Good boy, Caesar!’ Ben yelled. ‘Keep coming, mate! Come on!’

  With the gap increasing between them, and with Caesar obviously struggling to keep up, Ben was considering making a dash to the rear vehicle to get him after all when an RPG rocketed in and hit the ground right under the Humvee beside him. The explosion rocked the already battered vehicle up on to its left wheels, tipping three of the wounded men who were lying on the tray off onto the ground. When the vehicle’s right wheels hit the ground again, the driver kept going, and the damaged Humvee pulled away, leaving the men lying in the open. Ben hadn’t been hurt by the blast, but he was now fearful for the trio left behind. One of them was the Humvee’s American gunner. Another was Kareem. And the third was Bendigo Baz.

  Ben bashed on the Humvee’s left rear window. ‘Stop! Stop!’ he bellowed to the driver. ‘You’re leaving people behind!’ But the driver, unable to hear him above the din of the battle, drove on.

  ‘Ben, I’ll give cover while you grab Baz,’ said Charlie, appearing beside his best friend. Exposing himself to enemy fire, Charlie then ran out into the open and launched anti-tank rockets from his shoulder-launcher. Ben, meanwhile, dashed out, and for the second time during the battle, took hold of an unconscious Baz. Looking around, Ben saw that the middle Humvee had come to a stop after all and was waiting for them. Grateful for that, he dragged Baz to it and, with Lucky’s help, got him back onto the tray. An American had meanwhile followed his example and retrieved the American gunner. Only Kareem remained in the open.

  As Charlie continued to fire rockets, and attract Taliban fire from all directions, Ben started back for Kareem. He had only gone half the distance when a mortar bomb landed in front of him, blowing him off his feet. He landed on his back and lay there, stunned, as a sea of red washed over his eyes. And then he blacked out.

  With a splitting headache, Ben regained consciousness. His brain swimming, he tried to work out what was happening. He was on the back of a Humvee, lying with Kareem beside him and partly on top of Baz, who was still unconscious. Lucky and other injured soldiers lay all around him. The Humvee was speeding toward the gate of FOB Python as machineguns on the post’s wall joined the battle, covering their retreat.
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  ‘Lucky, how’d I get here?’ Ben asked, shaking his groggy head.

  ‘Charlie got hold of you and loaded you on here with the rest of us,’ said Lucky. ‘He went back for Kareem, too, and brought him in. Then the silly bastard went out and started laying down more covering fire for us. It was then they got him.’

  Ben froze. ‘They got Charlie?’

  Lucky paused, then said, ‘An RPG cut his legs from under him.’

  ‘Is Charlie still out there?’ Ben tried to sit up and look back the way they had come.

  ‘I think the last Humvee picked him up … I hope it did, anyway.’

  ‘And what about Caesar?’ Ben asked. ‘Did anyone see what happened to Caesar?’

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ Lucky replied. ‘I lost sight of him a while back.’

  They were soon inside the comparative safety of the FOB. All three Humvees made it back, loaded with casualties. As Lucky had hoped, Charlie had been collected by the last Humvee, Sergeant Hazard’s vehicle. But Charlie was unable to walk. He couldn’t even feel his legs.

  Charlie, Ben, Lucky and Baz were among the nine Australians who had been wounded. Only three of the SAS men came out of the three-hour battle unhurt. Most of the Americans had also been wounded. Mannie Madrid, Butch’s handler, had been seriously injured, although Butch himself had returned to Python without any injuries. But Caesar had not been brought in, and there was no sign of him.

  ‘Please, has anyone seen Caesar?’ Ben pleaded with the American medic who swabbed Ben’s bloodied face and bandaged his head. Only Ben’s eyes remained uncovered – protected by his goggles during the battle, they had been unaffected by the mortar bomb’s blast.

  ‘Who’s Caesar?’ the busy young medic asked as he worked on Ben.

  ‘My EDD – my dog.’