Gurkha

by Kailash Limbu

  When I finally got to lay down on my camp bed at the end of that first day, I was exhausted, but at the same time I was still keyed up. I knew I wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep but I was content just to lie there. It was really quiet, I remember. There was just the sound of a few dogs barking. One would start up and be answered by another. Occasionally too, I could hear the sound of a donkey braying in the distance. But apart from that, nothing. No vehicles, no people. It was a bit like being back in my village in Nepal.

  And with this thought, I started thinking about my family back home, especially my wife and baby son. I prayed to God, asking him to look after them. Then I checked to make sure I hadn’t lost Mum’s lucky coin. Somehow I had a feeling I was going to need its good luck before we got out of this place.

  5

  Establishing the Routine

  I was dreaming about tigers when I woke with a start.

  ‘Guruji! … Guruji!’

  It was Rifleman Lal come to tell me it was my turn on duty. I got up straight away and grabbed my rifle and helmet.

  ‘Anything happening?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing, guruji. All quiet.’

  I’d arranged to be called at 2.30 a.m., so it was still dark as I made my way over to the sangar. A dog barked in the distance and I paused in my stride. Dogs are a useful warning signal and I waited to see if it was joined by others, but no, it wasn’t. I walked on.

  It felt like I hadn’t slept at all. Straight away, my head filled with thoughts about what we needed to do. The fact is, you are at your most vulnerable during the first twenty-four hours of occupying a position, a bit like a batsman during his first over. You need to be able to respond with massive force and not be caught off guard. If I wasn’t on duty at the time, I’d need to be up and about to support the bhais and gurujis who were. I’d need to be able to get ammunition up to them, water, food. I’d need to be able to talk to them on the PRR, to encourage them and keep up with what was going on so I could report to the OC. And I’d need to be able to help if the worst came to the worst and we had a man down.

  Now as I walked over to the sangar, just as in the helicopter on the way in, I kept going over in my mind all the IAs and SOPs. You need to have them so firmly fixed in your mind you know exactly what you have to do in any given situation without having to think about it. At the same time, you have to be ready to adapt. When the shooting starts, nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. But drills and immediate actions stay the same whatever is going on.

  I thought too of the flight in, the dust clearing, the sound of the helicopter flying off, then the TAK TAK TAK, TUM TUM TUM of gunfire aimed right at us.

  How was it they hadn’t hit anyone? Maybe we were just out of range. I suppose the enemy were just as constrained by the lack of cover as we were. If they were in the open, they would have had to stay in their trench. If they were using a building for cover, they would have had to be careful not to be seen moving in and out. But where were they now? That’s what I wanted to know. And what about these people in here, the Afghans? Could we trust them? Whose side were they really on? It wasn’t a good feeling to think they might not even be on the same side as us.

  Climbing the ladder to get up to the sangar, I felt very exposed. Luckily there was some cloud cover, so unless the enemy were keeping the position covered with nightsights it wasn’t too dangerous, but I made a mental note to get some camouflage netting up at the first opportunity.

  ‘Gaaz, Nagen – you OK?’

  ‘OK, guruji.’

  ‘Yes, guruji.’

  ‘Seen anything?’

  ‘Nothing, guruji. Just a few dogs down that alleyway. Nothing suspicious.’

  ‘Well keep looking. We know they’re out there. It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Yes, guruji.’

  ‘Let’s hope so, guruji. I want my own back!’ said Gaaz.

  In a way it was good we’d been contacted. If we’d come in and there’d been no trouble, after two or three days it would have seemed like a normal exercise. Inevitably we would have relaxed a bit. As it was, everyone was properly keyed up and morale was high.

  For the first hour I was with Nagen and Gaaz, for the second with Gaaz and Nani guruji. I organised the rota so that Gaaz was on duty at the same time as me. You want your best man on at the same time as you in case you get bumped.

  Inside the sangar, there wasn’t a lot of room for the three of us. It was no more than 3 metres by 2 metres and a metre and a half high, and with all our equipment there was hardly any room to move around. It was also stiflingly hot and only going to get hotter.

  Because it was still dark, the world was displayed to us in the eerie green and white of our night devices. As section leader I had the use of a CWS – common weapon sight – which could either be attached to the SA80 or LSW – light support weapon – or, dismounted, like a pair of binoculars. This was in addition to the HMNVS – head-mounted night-vision sight – that we were all equipped with.

  As there was nothing to see except the buildings surrounding us, our other senses became very finely tuned. You could clearly smell the desert up here, carried in on a slight sigh of wind every so often. And any sound carried for miles. As a result, when we heard the call of the muezzin for the first prayers of the day blare out of a loudspeaker, I almost jumped out of my skin.

  ‘Allaaahu akbar … Allah is most great …’

  I looked at my watch. It was 3.30 a.m.

  A few moments later, this call was answered by another a bit further away.

  ‘Allaaahu akbar.’ Seconds later, this too was answered by the same words recited a short distance behind us.

  ‘Allaaahu akbar … Allah is most great … I testify that there is no God but Allah … I testify that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah … Come to prayer. Come to salvation … Allaaahu akbar … There is no God but Allah.’

  ‘So there must be three separate mosques in the town. Hunza, guruji?’ said Gaaz in a low voice.

  ‘Hunza,’ I replied in agreement. It was as if they were calling to each other.

  It was still dark and there was no one around. I wondered whether the muezzin’s call could be being used as cover for an attack. It could easily happen that way. The hour before dawn is an optimum moment to launch an offensive.

  ‘Do you think they could be moving into position?’ Gaaz wanted to know.

  ‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ I replied, pressing the Transmit button on my PRR to talk to the bhais in the other sangar.

  ‘Guruji bhai haru, did you hear that?’

  Of course I knew they must have done, but I wanted to be sure they were fully alert.

  ‘Guruji? You mean the mosque?’

  ‘Just making sure. Have you got your ammo properly sorted? Your nightsights are working OK?’

  ‘Yes, guruji. Nightsight works OK. Ammo is sorted. Have you seen anything?’

  ‘No, nothing. But keep alert. Sunrise will be soon now and this is just the time they’re going to hit us.’

  ‘Hasur, guruji. But do you think they will?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘OK, guruji. We’re ready.’

  ‘Well I hope you’re right, guruji,’ said Gaaz when I finished talking on the PRR. ‘It would be good to know what they look like.’

  The more I saw of Gaaz, the better I liked him. He was young and inexperienced, but he was full of energy and keen to do the best job possible. Just a week or so back, he’d got a commendation from the OC for the briefing he gave a general who visited our position back at Bastion. Usually, these senior officers just walk round while the local commander gives them a brief, but on this occasion the VIP decided he wanted to see inside a sangar, so when he came in with the OC, I gave him an overview. I pointed out things like the main entrance to the camp and which weapons covered it. I told him how long our period of duty was and what was the procedure at changeover, all the basic stuff. The general then went forward and started looking through his bin
oculars while Gaaz stood behind. Because the sandbags came up to just below chest height, the general had to crouch down as Gaaz gave him the briefing to end all briefings.

  ‘From this position, the arcs of fire are: left-hand arc, reference rock outcrop at approx two hundred metres, ten o’clock, post. Right of arc, reference burned-out vehicle at three hundred metres, two o’clock …’ He went on like this for about five minutes, very precisely.

  Afterwards, the general told the OC that in his entire Army career, he had never heard a briefing from a rifleman like the one Gaaz gave. It was, he said, the sort of briefing he could expect from a corporal with fifteen years’ service.

  What the general did not realise was that when we took the position over, me and Gaaz had sat down and worked all these things out together. We then wrote them up in note form on small bits of paper that we stuck on the wooden frame above the letter box (the opening you look through). We then practised giving a briefing several times, just in case one of the sahibs asked for one. So when the general came, Gaaz just had to remember what we had practised and read out our notes! But even so, it was an excellent performance. Gaaz went to a private school back in Nepal and was very good in English. He had a particularly clear accent.

  After reassuring myself that the bhais in the other sangar were fully alert, we were silent for a while. I myself was tense and expectant, but the sound of the muezzin reminded me that I too should pray to God. You could say I am quite religious. In fact most Gurkhas are quite religious, whether we are Hindu or Buddhist, or whether we follow the Kirat religion as my family does.

  I prayed for my wife and children back in Nepal. And I prayed that God would make us fierce warriors. Although it was true that our mission was to protect the local population and build up relations with them, I knew enough to realise that the Taliban didn’t see things this way.

  If they were praying to their God, I’d better pray to mine and let’s see who was listening.

  I was just thinking these thoughts when Gaaz reached over and pulled my sleeve. ‘Guruji!’ he whispered, grabbing me by the shoulder. ‘Look!’

  There was a lone figure walking along the street towards us. My heart thumping, I trained my sights on the apparition. This could be the start of something.

  ‘Nagen, you keep scanning the buildings while I take a closer look,’ I said quietly. You don’t want everyone focusing on just one person and missing the main event happening elsewhere. ‘It could be a decoy.’

  ‘Looks like a woman, guruji. What do you think?’ said Gaaz after a few moments.

  ‘Looks like, yes. But let’s see.’

  From the clothes, it did look like a woman – but that didn’t mean anything. The trouble with what people wear in this part of the world is that, at a distance, they don’t look too different.

  I watched as the figure came towards us. About 10 metres away, it stopped. Now what? There was a fumbling and a flapping of cloth, and then it sank down against the perimeter wall.

  ‘Aare jatha! It is a woman. And she’s squatting outside our house!’ said Gaaz, incredulous.

  There was no denying that was exactly what she was doing. And when she’d remained there for a full minute, we both realised at the same time exactly the extent of what she was doing.

  ‘No ramro keti!’ exclaimed Gaaz. The dirty woman.

  ‘Guruji?’ It was Lance Corporal Shree on the PRR. ‘Can you see there’s someone squatting down about ten metres beyond your position?’

  ‘It’s OK, seen thanks. She’s just having a disha.’

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘The dirty jatha!’ said Gaaz again as the woman stood up and adjusted her clothes. ‘You come all the way from Nepal to Afghanistan to help these people and this is how they reward you!’

  Unfortunately, he was right. A slight stirring of wind carried the smell up to us and we all looked at one another and pulled faces.

  This was something I never got used to in Afghanistan. The Afghans just did their business where they felt like. I’d even noticed they did it right next to where they carried out their cooking. To us Gurkhas, this was disgusting. We like to keep the place we live as clean as possible. Sorting out a latrine was one of the first things we’d done on arrival.

  ‘We’ll use the end room in that block over there,’ Corporal Ramesh had said. ‘See if you can find a tin or something and you and the other section commanders can draw up a rota. Once a day, we’ll take it out and burn it, OK?’

  The room in question was a small cubicle in a block of rooms that we weren’t using. Once a day, or whenever it started to get full, someone took the tin outside and poured fuel on the contents and burned it. Everybody hated doing this job, of course. But it had to be done and we all took our turn. I even tried to get the Afghans to copy us, but they weren’t interested.

  By now, the sky was just beginning to brighten, and to our dismay, several other people appeared, women to start with, and then some men, to do the same thing.

  This disha patrol turned out to be a part of our daily routine in Now Zad. I often wondered whether it was part of the local people’s way of telling us we weren’t welcome. I also wondered whether they realised we were staring through our sights at them as they did their business. But I told the bhais they must watch closely. One of my big fears was that the enemy would use a suicide bomber to blow the entrance gate away as the start of a big attack. Even though we had the two WMIKs parked in the way, they wouldn’t be much of an obstacle. And this was one way they might try to get close enough.

  ‘Keep them in your sights,’ I said to the bhais. ‘You never know which one has got the explosives strapped to them.’

  At around 4.15 a.m., just before dawn, we stood-to. Without any signal, everyone in the compound turned out to man their designated stand-to position. Three men in each of the four main sangars, two in the other two temporary sangar positions, HQ personnel on the roof of the CT, the remainder – the QRF – mustered outside the accommodation block.

  Everyone in the compound, that is, except for our Afghan counterparts. There was no sign of them.

  During training we were told that the drill of standing-to just before dawn was something the British Army started to do during the First World War. Apparently, most attacks on the Western Front began at this time. These days it’s just a basic SOP. It’s how you start the day on operations.

  After stand-to, which lasts no more than twenty minutes, it was straight into normal routine. Until further notice, that meant two hours on sangar duty, four hours off. In theory, that is. Actually, as section commander, you always end up doing a lot more than your riflemen. For me and Corporal Santos it was probably more like four hours on, two hours off – three at the most. And none at all when we were in contact.

  The thing is, as section commander, when not on sangar duty you would be taking time to go up to the other sangar to make sure everything was OK up there. It might sound repetitive, but you keep having to make sure everyone’s weapons are properly clean and prepared, that the ammunition is out of its boxes and ready, that everyone knows what’s expected of them. You have to let the bhais and gurujis know that you are around and thinking about them all the time. Like I said before, it’s partly to satisfy yourself that they’re on top of everything and partly to reassure them that you are on top of everything. What’s more, as a junior commander you have to show you are a little bit better than the bhais at everything – from filling sandbags to cleaning your weapons and keeping your kit tidy. In my own case, I realised right away that I had a bit of a problem on my hands.

  Rifleman Gaaz was a really nice guy. Really intelligent, really keen, with plenty of humour. But I had realised straight off he was always going to be trying to get one up on me. He was the one to watch – not because he had any kind of grudge: there wasn’t anything bad about him, not at all. Quite the opposite in fact. It was because he wanted to impress me and the other gurujis. I’m not saying the other bhais were any different. They all
wanted to shine.

  But Gaaz – he was determined to be the best.

  I came off duty about an hour after stand-to. Next on was Baren.

  ‘Come up as quick as you can,’ I said, covering him as he climbed up on the roof. My top priority this morning was to get some more hessian up so as to screen entry and exit to the sangar. Otherwise we were going to be vulnerable every time people went on and off duty. Hessian is also a useful defence against hand grenades. It meant the enemy would have to throw them up a lot higher in order to get them into the compound. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to reach.

  ‘Did you manage to get some sleep OK?’

  ‘A bit, thanks, guruji.’

  ‘That’s good. So have you got everything? Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, guruji.’

  ‘OK, good. Now do you remember your arcs of fire? Show me.’

  Baren did as he was told.

  ‘Well done. So just remember you’re looking out for anything suspicious. If you see anyone going in to the building opposite, let me know, OK? We don’t want anyone using it as an assembly point or fire position.’

  ‘Hasur, guruji.’

  Satisfied everyone knew their responsibilities, I climbed out of the position, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. As soon as I was down, I went to Sangar 1. Of the two main positions, this was probably the most vulnerable, because it was overlooked by the two-storey building we had been told was the old school house. We would be an easy target for any sniper in there.

  I scanned the building carefully through my binos. It had already taken a beating – there were holes everywhere – but these holes made perfect fire positions for the enemy. The other really good thing from their point of view was the fact that it could easily be occupied without us knowing. Because of the surrounding buildings, it was almost impossible to see anyone going in. Besides, even if we did see people going in, how could we be sure they really were the enemy? We couldn’t just open up without provocation.

  ‘Right, guruji bhai haru, if you see any suspicious movement, you’re to let me know. Understood?’