The Silence of War

by Terry McGowan

  Frank loved the rock game and we started playing it with all the Marines as they came to us a platoon at a time. To make it more interesting I began to give one of them a folding knife. I believed a hidden weapon would help muster some deep-seated feelings of guilt or secret knowledge that might be observed more readily.

  I admit that I also made it easier on the platoons by choosing six of the youngest, newest members of each platoon, Marines who would likely be intimidated standing in front of the group. I believed the new guys were more likely to betray their secret through expression and that they would be afraid to try to pretend they were guilty. We never had a 100 percent success rate, of course, but there were some members of every platoon who correctly identified the Marine with the knife.

  In the interim, we seemed consigned to remaining at KAF indefinitely. The month of April, growing hotter with each passing day, really dragged. The colonel had ordered that all battalion Marines, with one loaded magazine on their person (not in the weapon), were to carry their rifles at all times. The only exception would be in the shower. The colonel, realizing that time weighed heavily on everyone’s mind, didn’t want his Marines to grow complacent. He felt that carrying a weapon and ammunition would keep the fact that they were war fighters foremost in their minds. That applied to Frank and me as well.

  I have always liked to run. The heat never deterred me in the past, and it didn’t deter me at KAF. So every other day, I would put on shorts and sneakers, carry my heavy rifle with fully loaded magazine at sling arms, and run. One Marine who saw me told me that seeing an old man like me running in that heat made him feel like a slug. I grinned hearing that. Truthfully, I reveled in the disbelieving looks I got. The temperature was noteworthy.

  I met a former Navy corpsman, “Doc” Stacy McKinnon, at a veterans’ function in Milwaukee. Since I learned that she had spent considerable time on the north side of the airfield, I asked her if she had seen an “old guy” with a rifle running during the heat of the day. She and her Marine pals had—they nicknamed him “Corporal Klinger,” after the guy on the TV show M*A*S*H because they were sure he was trying to get sent home as a psych case. They joked that if running in the heat didn’t work, the guy would wear a dress next. I told her I was Klinger. She couldn’t wait to email her pals and tell them she had finally identified “Corporal Klinger.”

  Running in the fiery air served two important purposes aside from basic fitness. I got so used to carrying the rifle that it no longer felt heavy. There was no tremor in my arms when the time came to shoot it. Also, I became inured to the inferno we lived in. Although the temperature kept climbing, it didn’t “seem” quite as hot. Running really helped me to adapt.

  One day we had a sandstorm. I decided to run anyway. Howell and Wolfe advised against it in the strongest possible terms. I still went. I wore desert goggles and covered my mouth with a bandanna of sorts. It didn’t work really well. My reddened eyes stung mercilessly and for the next few days I coughed up mud balls. I had to admit they had been right. Wolfe was fairly smug about it and took every opportunity to call to my attention that since he and Howell had deployed to Iraq they knew what they were talking about—and maybe I should listen to them more in the future. His point was well taken.

  On Saturdays local Afghan merchants were allowed on one portion of the base. It was a bazaar in true Near East fashion. With ornate carpets laid out on the ground, or from tables they had set up, they sold anything they could get residents of the base to buy. But caveat emptor—let the buyer beware—they sold a lot of counterfeit merchandise. I nearly bought some supposed old U.S. silver dollars. Once I picked one up I could tell by its lack of weight that it was made out of aluminum. It looked good, though.

  The bazaar broke up our week. It was something to look forward to. We passed row upon row of carpets, dresses, flags, swords, knives, bootlegged movies, metalware—everything, it seemed. Since we had access to a post office at KAF, I bought presents for my brother’s kids and delighted in shipping the stuff home to them. My brother told me that when the boxes came, the kids were on them “like sharks on a chum bucket.”

  Pretty much every Afghan in the bazaar spoke English. It was necessary in order for them to conduct business. That’s where the similarity among them ended, however. The personalities of the sellers were quite different from one another. Some were very forward and fast-talking, like the proverbial “used car” salesmen, while others were very quiet and very polite. I enjoyed spending time talking to the latter. Some of these gentlemen even offered me chai.

  I came to discover that, as was the case in Iraq, the offering of chai was very proper behavior in Afghan society. Taking them up on their offer and engaging in polite conversation was an excellent way to increase my knowledge about Afghanistan and the baseline behavior of typical Afghans. I sat on the ground on carpets with them—chairs are not the Afghan way—under the shade of a makeshift tent.

  Nevertheless, even the Boardwalk and bazaar got old after a while. Boredom became depressive. We were living in an outdoor oven, doing nothing of importance, it seemed, and just marked time, day after endless day. To make things worse, I was beginning to experience some discomforting mood swings. I’d be emotionally up one minute and very down the next. I’ve always had a good imagination, and my nighttime dreams have always been vivid. But during this period they were getting downright bizarre. I began to wonder if I could hack the deployment psychologically.

  Then one day I was sitting in the mess tent talking to a Marine who told me that he had gotten up moments before I arrived and launched himself at his sergeant. He had beaten the hell out of the man. It seems the sergeant had been hitting on the Marine’s sister back in the States. He said the guys around him had to pull him off the hapless NCO.

  Incredibly, he also relayed to me that none of it really happened. His imagination “took over” while he was sitting at chow. He had just sat through a complete hallucination. He told me he had heard that the medication they gave us to prevent malaria caused weird stuff like that to happen. I considered that the meds might be the cause of my emotional discomfort.

  When I dreamed I was in bed with talking turtles, I became convinced that he was right. Since a mosquito at KAF would have needed to fly around in a mini temperature-controlled space suit, I decided to quit taking the medicine. It worked. My mood swings—along with my oddball dreams—left me. Later, when we departed KAF, I began taking it again—I really didn’t want malaria. But the strange mood swings and dreams did not return.

  I took up space in the Dutch recreation center. I was there so often they knew me by sight and would wave a cheerful “hello” when I walked in. I began to call it my “office.” I told Frank and other Marines if I wasn’t around and they wanted me, they should check for me there.

  The Dutch sold Internet time at a reasonable price. Getting signed up required assistance from one of the bilingual folks who worked there—the account was based out of the Netherlands, and all the instructions were in Dutch. But once signed on, hallelujah—there was the world of the Internet, with no lines, no rushing, and no waiting. Fortunately, the check signers had issued me a laptop.

  The television was almost always on. Located in the middle of the center, surrounded by a couch and easy chairs, it was a large-screen color TV. Unfortunately, it broadcast Dutch television, and there were no subtitles. Still, it could be amusing to watch. Best of all, the Dutch made real milk shakes with real ice cream. They also had cool—not cold—Diet Cokes. I couldn’t be certain that it was air-conditioned—as I would still sweat—but it was definitely cooler than any of the other places available for us to hang around in. Most importantly, the Internet helped me to beat the cruel boredom.

  One night the entire base got a real treat. Toby Keith was doing a USO show and would appear at the Boardwalk. Since the Boardwalk surrounded a huge hollow square—except for the hockey rink—there was plenty of room for specta
tors. Although most servicepeople tried to get as close to the stage as possible, I reasoned that if a suicide bomber somehow made it past security that would be the best place to detonate, so I hung back out of range. Twenty years of street law enforcement work has left me a tad suspicious. On my job we used to say, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” My pictures were long-distance, but peace of mind made up for the loss of clarity.

  I have to admit I was overjoyed. I had been hearing about USO shows all my life. Bob Hope and a long line of famous people had been entertaining troops overseas since World War II, and here I was—actually present at one. I will also unabashedly confess that I will be a Toby Keith fan for the rest of my life, out of gratitude.

  I guess the Taliban were miffed that they weren’t invited, because right in the middle of the show, the IDF sirens sounded. Civilians ran like hell for the concrete-and-steel shelters; rear-echelon troops followed at a brisk pace. Only Marines and a smattering of combat-savvy soldiers remained. We had already figured out that the sirens gave NO advance warning. They only sounded AFTER the incoming rounds had hit. The greatest danger from IDF at KAF was getting run over by military police racing by on dirt roads at about a hundred miles per hour. They had their lights and sirens on and were in an awful hurry to get God knows where. As an ex-cop I always suspected that they just wanted to drive hell-for-leather and that the incoming IDF sirens was an excuse.

  Toby Keith and company were quickly surrounded and ushered off the stage. The rest of us stayed where we were and talked while we waited. We had a feeling he’d be back. This was a disturbing breach of discipline to the military police (MPs). They kept telling all of us that we had to go to a shelter. By then the sirens had been silent for about ten minutes and whatever IDF there had been was so far off that we never even heard the rounds hit the ground, but that made no difference. We were supposed to take shelter. The MPs were quietly ignored. They weren’t Marine MPs.

  Small pockets were finally persuaded to wander off, probably figuring the concert was over; most remained. Finally an Army major told us we had to move, and we obeyed. We crossed a dirt road to the nearest shelters only to discover that they were so full we had to stand outside anyway. Almost immediately thereafter, Toby Keith came back onstage. We raced back and enthusiastically applauded as he picked up right where he left off in the middle of a song. He finished the concert. I still really appreciate his efforts.

  April turned into May. I had left the States on March 25. My morale was low. I spent more and more time at my “Dutch office,” surfing the Web. It was the only bright spot in my day.

  Finally we got word that we were going to move forward. I was not reluctant to leave KAF.

  7

  On to Bastion

  Our next stop was to be the massive British base called Bastion. To minimize the possibility of ambush, each of 2/7’s companies moved to Bastion separately, at staggered times and in the dead of night. From Bastion each company would move forward again to its respective area of operations.

  I departed KAF with Golf Company. I wouldn’t see Frank again until the very end of the deployment. We left in the modern replacement for the venerable Jeep Willy known as a Humvee or Hummer. I rode in an up-armored Hummer driven by Corporal Cory Becker. “Up-armored” meant it had extra armor as protection against bullets and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Hummers remained vulnerable to IEDs, however. “Doc” Kody Watkins, our Navy corpsman, rode in the front passenger seat. Lance Corporal Mike Michalak manned the M240 machine gun in the turret.

  I was designated by Sergeant Joe France, the squad leader, as Michalak’s replacement on the gun, should Michalak become a casualty. It had been decades since I had fired a machine gun, and then it was a different model, the M60. I remembered the tactics of using the weapon, but I needed to be brought up to speed on the M240 model. Sergeant France grinned as he taught me. I’m sure he got a kick out of instructing a gray-haired fifty-eight-year-old former Jarhead on the gun.

  I smiled inwardly as he did so.

  I was the only passenger in the backseat. The only other rear seat had gear and water piled high. Water and MREs were carried everywhere, even tied on the outside of the vehicle. I’m only five feet, eight inches tall, and my knees were crammed against the metal support of the front seat. I had to sit semi-sideways to keep from banging them every time we hit a bump. I can’t imagine anyone taller even fitting into the backseat, let alone remaining there for hours. Throughout the deployment I spent countless hours in a Humvee and I was never comfortable in the backseat.

  We pulled out in the middle of the night. It was good to finally be moving forward. It was a tad scary as well. KAF was safe. The IDF they threw at us was akin to a lightning storm with only a couple of bolts striking the ground every once in a great while. The odds were definitely in our favor. Sure, people do get hit by lightning, but not too often.

  —

  Anybody who remained constantly behind the wire at KAF and brags about their combat duty is a BS artist. You can recognize them by the gaudy “self-proclaimed hero” T-shirts they bought at the Boardwalk. They’ll read “I’m a Taliban Hill Fighter” and other such crap. I bought a couple of T-shirts because I thought they were funny. One read, “Operation Enduring Freedom, been there, done that, got the T-shirt.” They fit my sense of humor but I almost never wear them.

  At long last, we were leaving the wire. We drove through the city of Kandahar in the wee hours of the morning. Kandahar city is the birthplace of the Taliban movement. It spread from there to other parts of Afghanistan, but Kandahar is its heart and soul. Driving through its darkened streets was spooky. Now and again a pedestrian would be seen. They would stop and stare. Our convoy was a long one. We drove single file, one vehicle behind the other. I don’t know how many vehicles were in it, but it was a long convoy. It must have taken the entire company, driving slowly, quite a while to clear the city.

  Finally we were out of the city and on the open road. The pace quickened, but only slightly. A convoy that long can’t travel very fast. The “accordion effect” kicks in. Think of rush hour in a city. The sheer volume of traffic causes drivers to slow down, speed up, then slow down again.

  We traveled on what is known as the “Ring Road.” It is the only paved road outside a major city in the entire country. It was built by the Soviets during their occupation. It rings around all of Afghanistan; hence the name, I guess. While conferring with international police at KAF I’d heard it referred to as “the real border of Afghanistan.” The international forces bolstering the Kabul government have been trying to pacify all the districts around the Ring Road for some time. Too bad they didn’t read the history of the Soviet invasion. The Ring Road was the only area the Soviets actually controlled.

  They still didn’t win the war.

  I liked traveling on the Ring Road because it wasn’t as bumpy as was driving off-road and was therefore easier on my knees. I also liked it because there was less danger from IEDs. It’s difficult to dig through a paved surface, and unlike Iraq there wasn’t garbage and junk alongside the roads—where IEDs could be hidden. There was very little that was thrown away in Afghanistan. It is a very poor country, and people would find some use for other people’s garbage.

  Also unlike Iraq, the IEDs were universally victim-detonated—meaning somebody or something had to put weight on the detonator. In Iraq there were mostly remote-detonated IEDs. Someone watching would decide when to blow it and send an electronic signal to the charge. Victim-detonated IEDs couldn’t be placed on a paved road.

  We drove on all night, hour after endless hour, out in the country, unable to see much besides the taillights of the vehicle in front, and the headlights of the vehicle behind. As dawn broke, so did one of the vehicles up front. The whole column came to a halt while repairs were made. Our vehicle was stopped very near a mud-walled settlement that came clear down to the
road on our left. Off to the right side of the road there was nothing but a marsh. Replete with tall reeds, it was unusual to see standing or flowing water in the Afghanistan desert. A small stream that ran under the road and fed into the marsh was observable to our left rear.

  Soon we attracted attention. Children and a very elderly adult male appeared. The very youngest were toddlers who paid us no mind. They played in the dirt like youngsters everywhere. I took some comfort from their presence. As long as they were there, we wouldn’t be attacked. I studied the older kids and the older adult intently. I had yet to confidently establish baseline behavior for Afghans. In what ways were body movements universal? As yet I didn’t know. I had to know in order to “read” their intentions with my eyes. The older kids were begging for candy or food. At first Michalak threw some to them; later, as time dragged on, their nonstop entreaties became annoying.

  Another man appeared. He was younger than the first adult, but not a young man. I guessed he was in early middle age. I didn’t like the look of him. He smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes. I had seen that look many times before throughout my career. It was usually not a good sign.

  I got out of the vehicle and checked the nearest structure. Everything was made of adobe. It was empty but led to a corridor from which anyone could have approached us unseen. That did not make me happy. I felt vulnerable being stuck where we were. We had no room to move. There was a vehicle directly in front of us, and another directly behind. That building was the logical place for an enemy to engage us. It was much too close for my comfort. Later the company gunny gave Corporal Becker hell for letting me out of the vehicle.