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Confessions from the combat zone
TheStar.com - News - Confessions from the combat zone
Embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan, Star columnist Rosie DiManno reflects on the sights, sounds and bad smells encountered in cramped armoured vehicles and along Panjwaii district's swoon-inducing trails
May 13, 2007
Rosie DiManno
KANDAHAR
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reporter is up to her waist in water and up to her knees in mud.
This embarrassing predicament has halted the progress of the entire Charlie Company platoon.
It wasn't even a river, more like a creek, that should have been easy to traverse with a good running-start leap.
But this is what happens on a 10-kilometre hike in Panjwaii district when a person is suffering from dehydration and it's 55C and the Kevlar vest suddenly feels like a piano strapped around one's shoulders:
Legs cramp, the stomach lurches and every breath is an admonition against that two-packs-a-day smoking habit.
So, the reporter launches off one bank with hope in her heart but plops halfway across with silt seeping into her butt. Repeated attempts to scale the opposite bank, grabbing handfuls of thorn grass – ouch, ouch, ouch – result only in repeated slides back into the creek. Finally, with two infantrymen pushing from the rear and two hauling from the front, the reporter is lugged, rolled and heaved onto dry ground.
She is now some six inches taller, tottering on shoes encased in mud, rather like the Gary Glitter platform heels of the 1970s.
"Just 800 metres to go," the medic, Cpl. Lorne Smith, says encouragingly.
Warrant Officer Marco Favasoli offers a more stimulating comment: "You don't keep walking, Rosie, I'm going to tie a rope around your ankles and drag you back."
Unlike the Afghan National Army platoon that had started out this mission on a joint patrol with Canadians – gagging at the midway point and requiring rescue by pickup truck – the rubbery-legged reporter does finish the hump.
Then collapses beneath a LAV armoured transport vehicle, the only handkerchief of shade in the desert.
From under an ANA truck parked close by, one recovering Afghan soldier whistles: "You want sleep with me?"
Delirious, the aging reporter thinks: I've still got it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a donkey in the middle of the road.
It's not moving. In fact, it's lying down, untroubled by honking traffic. The reporter, standing up in the gunner's hatch of a LAV III, doesn't remember ever seeing a donkey lying down before, much less in the middle of the road.
The other gunner, the real gunner, Warrant Officer Sam Budd, is trying to come up with a punch line for "Why did the donkey cross the road?"
Mostly, he wants the reporter to watch the right while he scans the left. "Roger that?"
Budd points to the spot where an IED killed a couple of Afghan children the previous week, the mud wall pockmarked with shrapnel. And the reporter seriously wonders about the usefulness of a media-embedding program where journalists often take the same risks as troops but do it without ever being issued a weapon. That suddenly seems rather dumb.
The reporter, who also happens to be reading a very funny book called War Reporting for Cowards, an account by Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres of his time embedded with a U.S. Marine battery during the 2003 Iraq invasion, recalls how those soldiers took great delight in reading aloud to him the military guidelines entitled "How to deal with a dead media representative."
Budd is not so malicious and simply wants to give a shout-out to his dad and brother in St. Catharines.
His message: "I'm looking forward to coming back for lobster broils and pig roasts."
From inside the LAV, where journalists are usually jammed, the reporter can see gunners only from the waist down, their feet nervously jiggling as they stand on seats or, if up front manning the turret, on swivel pads.
This puts the reporter face-to-crotch with gunners, or face-to-bum. If the latter, the reporter will notice that gunners always have their flies undone. This is not carelessness; they routinely leave their zippers unzipped because the jiggering of the vehicle tends to make them, um, or so the reporter has been told. An unzipped fly allows the gunner freedom of perpendicular movement.
Other way round, though, and for sure the reporter will get frequent blasts of flatulence. Soldiers are all the time farting. They fart percussively. They fart in stereo. They fart with a flourish.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the back of a Bison now, headed for a forward operating base in the middle of the night, and the only two passengers are journalists.
The crew commander hops down to rattle off the same standing instructions he'd give if there were other soldiers inside. "If I'm wounded, you will pull me down and perform first aid. If I'm killed ...."
He points to grenades stored in one seat – we're sitting on grenades? – and extra ammo in another. See guns. Grasp guns. Shoot guns.
Oh, and if we have to blow up the Bison – never let a combat vehicle fall into enemy hands – there will be a 60-second warning, then the release of toxic fumes.
The reporter thinks: I could be covering the playoffs.
Fortunately, at the first stop outside the wire, a sergeant hops on board. He's a gregarious Newfoundlander and immediately embarks on a story about the dope-smoking Afghan National Police.
Now, the ANP are notoriously fond of their hashish, particularly when they're stuck at rural checkpoints, where either nothing happens or they're suddenly Taliban fodder. So, yes, drugs are commonly consumed and those in the vicinity will find their nostrils frequently assaulted by the scent of wafting hash smoke.
"Other night, the ANP invite me into their tent, eh?" recalls the sergeant. "And they've got this Afghan whisky, must have been 90 per cent proof, tasted like diesel. But I have a couple of snorts because I don't want to be rude, eh?
"Then, the guy brings out a brick of hash. And I'm like, uh, no thanks, really. A little booze is one thing, but hash – I'm pretty sure that's a major Canadian military no-no."
Hashish fumes, sometimes so thick a passing reporter can almost get a contact-high, are at least preferable to some other smells in this part of the world.
The desert is clean. The village compounds – not so much.
Yet no village smells as bad as Kandahar Airfield, especially when the wind changes direction and comes across the base sanitation plant known as Emerald Lake.
The reporter madly spritzes Chanel No. 19 around her hooch, to no avail. Nothing cuts through the miasma of Eau de KAF.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reporter is in the back seat of a civilian sedan. Of course, she's in the back seat. She's a female and this is Kandahar.
Jojo – the best "fixer" in all of Afghanistan – is rhapsodizing over his appointed fiancée, professing his boundless love for a 16-year-old girl he has never actually met, having only seen the photograph of a potential life-mate selected by his mother.
A 20-year-old who may very well some day be president of Afghanistan – such is his cleverness and ingenuity – Jojo draws the line at anything approaching emancipation for females.
He believes Prime Minister Steven Harper should amend the laws so Canadian men can beat their wives as necessary.
The reporter, from the back seat, smacks Jojo across the head.
In Kandahar City, where the reporter – clad in full-body abaya cloak and headscarf – is shopping for a beaded skullcap, a bilious man stops to waggle his finger and shout angrily.
"He's telling you to cover your face," says Jojo.
The reporter likes Afghans, finds them overwhelmingly kind and hospitable. But she doesn't like this fellow.
"Tell him to kiss my ass," says the reporter.
Alas, Jojo won't translate that.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/213326
TheStar.com - News - Confessions from the combat zone
Embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan, Star columnist Rosie DiManno reflects on the sights, sounds and bad smells encountered in cramped armoured vehicles and along Panjwaii district's swoon-inducing trails
May 13, 2007
Rosie DiManno
KANDAHAR
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reporter is up to her waist in water and up to her knees in mud.
This embarrassing predicament has halted the progress of the entire Charlie Company platoon.
It wasn't even a river, more like a creek, that should have been easy to traverse with a good running-start leap.
But this is what happens on a 10-kilometre hike in Panjwaii district when a person is suffering from dehydration and it's 55C and the Kevlar vest suddenly feels like a piano strapped around one's shoulders:
Legs cramp, the stomach lurches and every breath is an admonition against that two-packs-a-day smoking habit.
So, the reporter launches off one bank with hope in her heart but plops halfway across with silt seeping into her butt. Repeated attempts to scale the opposite bank, grabbing handfuls of thorn grass – ouch, ouch, ouch – result only in repeated slides back into the creek. Finally, with two infantrymen pushing from the rear and two hauling from the front, the reporter is lugged, rolled and heaved onto dry ground.
She is now some six inches taller, tottering on shoes encased in mud, rather like the Gary Glitter platform heels of the 1970s.
"Just 800 metres to go," the medic, Cpl. Lorne Smith, says encouragingly.
Warrant Officer Marco Favasoli offers a more stimulating comment: "You don't keep walking, Rosie, I'm going to tie a rope around your ankles and drag you back."
Unlike the Afghan National Army platoon that had started out this mission on a joint patrol with Canadians – gagging at the midway point and requiring rescue by pickup truck – the rubbery-legged reporter does finish the hump.
Then collapses beneath a LAV armoured transport vehicle, the only handkerchief of shade in the desert.
From under an ANA truck parked close by, one recovering Afghan soldier whistles: "You want sleep with me?"
Delirious, the aging reporter thinks: I've still got it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a donkey in the middle of the road.
It's not moving. In fact, it's lying down, untroubled by honking traffic. The reporter, standing up in the gunner's hatch of a LAV III, doesn't remember ever seeing a donkey lying down before, much less in the middle of the road.
The other gunner, the real gunner, Warrant Officer Sam Budd, is trying to come up with a punch line for "Why did the donkey cross the road?"
Mostly, he wants the reporter to watch the right while he scans the left. "Roger that?"
Budd points to the spot where an IED killed a couple of Afghan children the previous week, the mud wall pockmarked with shrapnel. And the reporter seriously wonders about the usefulness of a media-embedding program where journalists often take the same risks as troops but do it without ever being issued a weapon. That suddenly seems rather dumb.
The reporter, who also happens to be reading a very funny book called War Reporting for Cowards, an account by Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres of his time embedded with a U.S. Marine battery during the 2003 Iraq invasion, recalls how those soldiers took great delight in reading aloud to him the military guidelines entitled "How to deal with a dead media representative."
Budd is not so malicious and simply wants to give a shout-out to his dad and brother in St. Catharines.
His message: "I'm looking forward to coming back for lobster broils and pig roasts."
From inside the LAV, where journalists are usually jammed, the reporter can see gunners only from the waist down, their feet nervously jiggling as they stand on seats or, if up front manning the turret, on swivel pads.
This puts the reporter face-to-crotch with gunners, or face-to-bum. If the latter, the reporter will notice that gunners always have their flies undone. This is not carelessness; they routinely leave their zippers unzipped because the jiggering of the vehicle tends to make them, um, or so the reporter has been told. An unzipped fly allows the gunner freedom of perpendicular movement.
Other way round, though, and for sure the reporter will get frequent blasts of flatulence. Soldiers are all the time farting. They fart percussively. They fart in stereo. They fart with a flourish.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the back of a Bison now, headed for a forward operating base in the middle of the night, and the only two passengers are journalists.
The crew commander hops down to rattle off the same standing instructions he'd give if there were other soldiers inside. "If I'm wounded, you will pull me down and perform first aid. If I'm killed ...."
He points to grenades stored in one seat – we're sitting on grenades? – and extra ammo in another. See guns. Grasp guns. Shoot guns.
Oh, and if we have to blow up the Bison – never let a combat vehicle fall into enemy hands – there will be a 60-second warning, then the release of toxic fumes.
The reporter thinks: I could be covering the playoffs.
Fortunately, at the first stop outside the wire, a sergeant hops on board. He's a gregarious Newfoundlander and immediately embarks on a story about the dope-smoking Afghan National Police.
Now, the ANP are notoriously fond of their hashish, particularly when they're stuck at rural checkpoints, where either nothing happens or they're suddenly Taliban fodder. So, yes, drugs are commonly consumed and those in the vicinity will find their nostrils frequently assaulted by the scent of wafting hash smoke.
"Other night, the ANP invite me into their tent, eh?" recalls the sergeant. "And they've got this Afghan whisky, must have been 90 per cent proof, tasted like diesel. But I have a couple of snorts because I don't want to be rude, eh?
"Then, the guy brings out a brick of hash. And I'm like, uh, no thanks, really. A little booze is one thing, but hash – I'm pretty sure that's a major Canadian military no-no."
Hashish fumes, sometimes so thick a passing reporter can almost get a contact-high, are at least preferable to some other smells in this part of the world.
The desert is clean. The village compounds – not so much.
Yet no village smells as bad as Kandahar Airfield, especially when the wind changes direction and comes across the base sanitation plant known as Emerald Lake.
The reporter madly spritzes Chanel No. 19 around her hooch, to no avail. Nothing cuts through the miasma of Eau de KAF.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reporter is in the back seat of a civilian sedan. Of course, she's in the back seat. She's a female and this is Kandahar.
Jojo – the best "fixer" in all of Afghanistan – is rhapsodizing over his appointed fiancée, professing his boundless love for a 16-year-old girl he has never actually met, having only seen the photograph of a potential life-mate selected by his mother.
A 20-year-old who may very well some day be president of Afghanistan – such is his cleverness and ingenuity – Jojo draws the line at anything approaching emancipation for females.
He believes Prime Minister Steven Harper should amend the laws so Canadian men can beat their wives as necessary.
The reporter, from the back seat, smacks Jojo across the head.
In Kandahar City, where the reporter – clad in full-body abaya cloak and headscarf – is shopping for a beaded skullcap, a bilious man stops to waggle his finger and shout angrily.
"He's telling you to cover your face," says Jojo.
The reporter likes Afghans, finds them overwhelmingly kind and hospitable. But she doesn't like this fellow.
"Tell him to kiss my ass," says the reporter.
Alas, Jojo won't translate that.
http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/213326
