Saving Private Sarbi
Page 11
Sarbi was a dominant bitch and didn’t put up with any dog’s nonsense. She’d tolerate it for so long before putting an annoying mutt in its place. Sarbi, D says with a chuckle, had sent a few of the other dogs to the veterinary clinic for emergency stitches back at the SME, but she got on fine with Merlin and FloJo. Who knows, they had probably worked out who was going to be top dog already. D suspected it would be Sarbi.
The Second Reconstruction Task Force staged out of Brisbane on 12 March 2007.
D was keyed up. This is what he had been training for but, at that moment, Sarbi was his priority. Dogs know when their masters are about to leave them and turn on a serious case of the sulks, complete with downcast looks and droopy tails. How could you leave me? Sarbi was a canine frequent flyer and had a Zen-like temperament when not chasing the ball, but D didn’t want the big mass of fur stressed about their impending separation, even if she didn’t know she’d be locked in her first class custom-built crate for the long-haul flight. He gave the hefty hound a well-earned rub behind the ears and offered a few reassuring words, just in case. Attagirl, Sarbs. Focusing on Sarbi had another benefit, too. ‘That took your mind off any nerves or thinking about what’s to come,’ he says now.
Sarbi was loaded into the chartered 747 aircraft for the flight to the Forward Logistics Area (FLA) in Kuwait. Given the length of the flight and her requisite confinement, D didn’t feed her. There was no point. The dogs didn’t have the luxury of using a bathroom in the cargo hold. Besides, Sarbi would curl into a tight ball and sleep most of the way, her only movements in response to doggie dreams that made her snout quiver and paws twitch as if in chase.
The plane touched down on 13 March and the handler collected his hound, who was happy to be free of her crate. They had ten days to cool their heels in Kuwait and went through a series of mission briefings and more drills. The dogs were trained daily to maintain situational awareness.
D was issued with essential war-going equipment and collected new front and back Kevlar ballistic plates for his body armour vest and soft-moulded shrapnel fragment protection inserts that hug the curves of the body and the small of his back—and a cache of weaponry. ‘Things to keep me alive,’ he says with signature cool.
Sarbi was already sorted. Everything she needed was stowed in her handler’s bag.
The troop left Kuwait for Afghanistan on 23 March. Hitching a ride on the C-130J Hercules were two official war artists from Melbourne, Lyndell Brown and her husband, Charles Green. The history of war art began in the First World War and the fine tradition is now enshrined for perpetuity in our national culture by an act of Parliament.
Brown and Green had spent the latter part of February in Baghdad photographing the action they saw, capturing the pathos of Australian soldiers at war and riding in armoured personnel carriers down Route Irish, said to be the one of most dangerous roads in the world. Back home in the southern state of Victoria they would use the photographs as the basis for a striking collection of artwork that eventually toured the country, before being added to the official collection at the Australian War Memorial. Now, though, the artistic collaborators were en route to visit an Australian contingent in Kandahar, via Tarin Kot.
The flight line was a mass of restless waiting. ‘The army maxim—hurry up and wait,’ Green recalls wryly. He spied a huddle of SAS troopers, identifiable by their Ned Kelly-esque beards and strong, lean physiques. They kept to themselves, shooting the breeze like they were knocking back a beer or two at the pub on a Friday night, not about to go into one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.
Nearby, Green watched the Doggies—three men and three hounds. The handlers actively engaged with the dogs, issuing commands and tossing them tennis balls as treats. The dogs never strayed more than a few metres from their handlers and seemed happiest when leaning on their two-legged mates. ‘Strong, quiet Aussie blokes,’ Green says now. With an artist’s searching eye, he looks beyond the physical and finds emotion in the action. To him, a soldier’s calloused hand draped casually around his dog’s neck conveyed nuance and mood, quiet authority and easy command. The dogs were content, calm and controlled. The partnerships were almost poetic.
‘The handlers were all very close to their dogs, it was quite cute, really,’ Green says. ‘They were continually playing and petting the dogs, and the dogs were continually huddling up to their handler, lying across them. These men are highly trained and yet there is this intense bond. At the same time they are very proud to be in Afghanistan, to be deployed with these dogs.’
The sight of fully armed, muscle-bound soldiers looking after their hounds with profound tenderness seemed incongruous—yet so perfectly natural. It gave the artists an idea. ‘In the back of our minds, always, was the idea of a dog portrait. How cute can you go, but not in a mocking way,’ he says. ‘The ADF is made up of men and women who are like firemen. They are putting their lives on the line and they are highly trained and taught to reflect on what they are doing. The effect of being in the presence of those people was like being sent to the moon and watching history unfold. It strips out any desire or ability to editorialise— you are in documentary mode.’
Once at Camp Holland, Green and Brown photographed Sarbi and D, FloJo and Zeke and a yellow Labrador retriever, Aussie, who was on his way home after completing the First Reconstruction Task Force (RTF1).
Looking at the photographs now, one is reminded of the Stoics. The handlers stare directly ahead as the dogs stare directly at them, heads tilted up in expectation of a command and reward to come. The bond is as natural as breathing. In one image, Sarbi sits obediently at D’s left leg, her brown leather leash doubled over and held in his right hand. D, ramrod straight, squared-off shoulders atop a broad chest, looks like a man who means business, with his Browning 9mm handgun strapped to the outside of his right thigh. He never left home without it, at least when in theatre.
Sarbi, her white blaze not yet smudged by the dust and grime of Uruzgan, looks positively serene. She has followed D’s gaze and looks exactly where he does. Like her master, she is poised, ready for action.
‘When the story broke of what happened to Sarbi and what she’d been through we thought, “we know that dog”,’ says Green now. ‘And so we decided to paint the portrait we always wanted to paint of the army dogs.’
The dogs were all heroes but there really was no better canine candidate to sit for an official war portrait than Sarbi. The artists used lush oils on linen and painted Sarbi sitting next to Sergeant D, who is crouching down on the rocky gravel. The striking portrait measures a mere 31 by 31 centimetres but Sarbi’s strength and beauty are rendered to perfection.
Said Brown: ‘It’s an incredible story of hope from the field of tragedy that is modern warfare and it is something that ordinary people can relate to.’
Chapter 12
CAMP HOLLAND
An early spring had eased into southern Afghanistan when D and Sarbi joined Task Force Uruzgan at Camp Holland at the end of March 2007. An Australian officer once described the base as ‘a dusty shit-hole’ and it was. The sprawling rectangular compound sat on the valley floor, ringed by towering snow-capped peaks. The rock-strewn ground changed from red to brown to grey depending on the season, the arc of the sun and whether there were clouds or rain. Gravel and dust got into everything, including the woolly beards that soon sprouted on the Diggers’ faces. The base was surrounded by tumble–weeds of barbed wire and rock-filled HESCO bastion containers, in place to keep the enemy out and protect against rocket attacks.
The town of Tarin Kot was visible in the near distance, encircled by a rich, deep-green belt. It was home to 10,000 people and located about 120 kilometres north of the dangerous city of Kandahar, long known as the spiritual home of the Taliban. Kandahar was the birthplace of one-eyed (literally) Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, the self-proclaimed ‘commander of the faithful’ who led the repressive regime for much of the Dark Ages decade it controlled Afghanistan.
A row of flagpoles at the base entrance paid homage to the various nationalities that formed the International Security Assistance Force in Uruzgan. Dutch soldiers followed the wartime tradition and erected bright yellow signposts pointing to towns back home—5248 kilometres to Brabant, 5235 to Ede and 5291 to Slootdorp.
They obligingly tipped the hat to the Aussies and the small contingent from Greece, adding a sign pointing to Darwin, 6914 kilometres in one direction, and another to Chania, 3819 kilometres the opposite way. No one knew if the distances were correct, but no one cared either. The arrow at the top of the post pointed to the only place that did matter—the badlands beyond the barbed wire. On it was stamped the word ‘Taliban’. The enemy was within RPG range. Force protection was a priority. ‘Stay with your weapon, always,’ the soldiers were told.
Camp Holland featured a state of the art combat emergency hospital, a 1.8-kilometre runway, more than a dozen helicopter landing pads, arming and refueling points, and accommodations and recreation areas for several thousand soldiers.
The Australian Reconstruction Task Force headquarters announced its presence with a massive sign hung on a HESCO wall. The sign was unmistakably Australian, with a leaping red kangaroo over a V-shaped black boomerang. The commanding officer (CO) of RTF2 was Lieutenant Colonel Harry Jarvie, a stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair and an open, optimistic face that maintained its boyishness despite his age. Jarvie removed the number 1 from the RTF HQ sign and replaced it with 2 to signify the handover from the first task force to the second.
RTF2 had strengthened troop numbers and comprised a full company of infantry from the Royal Australian Regiment for greater force protection, and cavalry support via the ASLAVs and Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles.
As was the custom, Jarvie welcomed the task force in a ceremony during which he reiterated the troops’ task in rebuilding the province and assisting the local Afghan people. He also outlined the dangers. ‘We must outsmart those who want to disrupt Afghanistan’s development and our mission,’ he told the assembled troops. ‘We must make them irrelevant.’
Sergeant D bunked down in the Feldlager living quarters, a series of interconnected shipping containers, equipped with the luxury of air conditioning, that were undergoing an upgrade by the resourceful engineers. He shared the sleeping quarters with two other Doggies, Pete Lawlis and Zeke Smith. He dropped his gear in his designated accommodations and claimed a bunk.
Sarbi was housed in kennels built by the RTF1 carpenters on the south-west edge of the base, not far from the red dirt runway. Not too bad, Sergeant D thought to himself, even though there was no strip of grass on which the hounds could exercise.
At the mandatory RSOI (reception, staging, onward movement and integration) briefing the task force was familiarised with the base, personnel, equipment and materials required for tactical operations during their deployment. The integration was a highly synchronised handover of incoming units into an operational commander’s force prior to executing missions. Knowing the minutiae meant a better chance of survival. Heard. Understood. Acknowledged. The soldiers also received an update on the reconnaissance, surveillance, operations and intelligence. ‘They take us around and show us the area and emergency bunker in case there’s a rocket attack,’ D says nonchalantly.
The overarching goal of RTF2 was the reconstruction and stabilisation of Uruzgan, to rebuild the basic infrastructure so its impoverished people might have a viable future. The mission was focused on community-based projects, and Dutch and Australian soldiers met with local elders in weekly shuras—council meetings—where they drank gallons of sweetened tea before deciding what the Afghans wanted and how the coalition could provide it.
D was no innocent abroad, he’d travelled well and far, but Tarin Kot looked like an alien landscape trapped in a time warp, hundreds of years old. Uruzgan was recognised as the least developed of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. To the trained and even untrained eye, it lacked the basics: villages had no electricity or running water and in 2006 there was no mobile telephone coverage—which, to the digital natives who made up the Western military machinery, seemed positively anathema. Only 10 per cent of males in the province were literate. For women, the rate was zero.
The thrust of the mission was an extreme backyard blitz, Afghan style. The Taliban had done its best to destroy whatever flimsy infrastructure there was and RFT1 was midway through building local schools and redeveloping the Tarin Kot hospital. RTF2 would continue the good works by adding roads, bridges and dams to the To Do list. They also helped train the Afghan National Army.
The insurgents were resolute. They wanted to reimpose the repressive rule of the Taliban in the rural regions and prevent the rebuilding program by the ‘Christian invaders’.
That’s where Sarbi and D and their fellow Doggies came in. The EDD section provided force protection for the men and women moving beyond the wire for the rebuilding work. The two biggest risks were IEDs and roadside bombs.
‘I was a little bit nervous. There had only been one reconstruction task force before us and they spent most of their time developing the base at TK,’ D says. ‘Once we were there we were straight into work outside the wire. It was quite intimidating because the IEDs were starting to be a problem.’
IEDs are made of five main components: a container to hold the lethal bomb together, a power source such as a battery, a switch or circuit to initiate the device, a detonator, and the explosive charge. Most IEDs until then had been victim-operated pressure plate devices but the enemy tactics were changing. It used whatever it could get its hands on. Old-fashioned mousetraps, washing machine timers, cell phones, batteries, and wireless remote controls from modified doorbell equipment and model cars had all been used to detonate IEDs.
The Chief of Defence Angus Houston confirmed the rising use of radio-controlled devices and command-initiated devices. Insurgents even used infrared sensors to detect passing vehicles and detonate bombs. IEDs had been found buried in roadside rubbish piles, moulded into concrete blocks, even stuffed in animal carcasses and the fetid entrails of dead dogs.
By 2007, the insurgents turned to a version of IEDs known as an EFP, or explosively formed penetrator (or projectile). The explosive shockwaves of the blast splinters the metal liner and turns it into hundreds of individual metal pellets of death. The intensity of the blast shoots the projectiles with enough speed and force to penetrate trucks and reinforced personnel carriers. They also used DFCs—directional fragmentation charges—that operated a similar way.
Whatever the enemy employed, D and his fellow Doggies and engineers were prepared.
‘We changed the TTPs mainly for safety; we wanted to keep everyone safe. We had to develop new techniques for how and where we stood and where and how we sent the dogs in and how we worked with the engineers behind us,’ says D. ‘It was still just as dangerous for the dogs because they are the first ones out there.’
After EDDs Jasmine and Sam were deployed to Afghanistan in 2005, section supervisor John Cannon adjusted the course at the SME to better deal with the changed environment and tactics of the anti-coalition militia. Taliban insurgents and al-Qaeda terrorists buried the roadside bombs in the cooler winter months, before the height of the so-called fighting season in the spring and summer. The explosives became more difficult to detect because they had been covered for so long. In response, Corporal Cannon developed ‘buried hide training’.
As D says, all Doggies are highly motivated, self-starting, innovative soldiers. The handler buried weapons and expl
osives in rural showgrounds at the end of regional annual shows, when the earth was ripe with animal odours, excrement and urine. The additional odours proved infinitely alluring for the dogs but they were trained to work through the new distractions and challenges to detect the appropriate explosives.
Another of those involved in the new training was Sapper Darren Smith from the 2CER in Brisbane, who was killed alongside his explosive detection dog Herbie in the Mirabad Valley in Uruzgan in 2010. Twenty-six-year-old Smith, dubbed Smitty, helped rehabilitate Herbie from an injury that would have ended his EDD career without his handler’s attentiveness and care. Smitty had drawn sketches and diagrams for the buried hide program when posted to the 1CER in Darwin. The revised training improved force protection and made route clearances safer for both hounds and handlers.
As a result, one week in every three is now dedicated to the buried hide training at Tarin Kot, often around the waste treatment area, colloquially known by the soldiers as the shit pits.
‘There were a lot of areas, routes and roads that we could train around. Unfortunately, if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction you’d get a good whiff of it,’ says D. Pity the handler whose dog decided to roll in the seepage and ooze. ‘Yeah, that happened.’ Shrug.
The Doggies ripping in got a comprehensive handover briefing from the handlers ripping out: what to expect at villages, vulnerable points (VPs) and compounds. The departing handlers’ message was ‘expect the unexpected and don’t get complacent’. The transfer was seamless. Training was continuous.
‘You never stop learning,’ says D. ‘You learn from your mistakes; you never repeat them. You don’t want to be responsible for letting your mates down. Or worse.’