Thoughts from war are the first published excerpts of a potential upcoming memoirs. They will focus on ideas that presented themselves to me while active in service.
These ideas are my own and relate to thoughts, concepts, and a general awakening of my consciousness that took place during the most recent Afghan War between the years of ad 2001- ad 2006.
They reflect a rough version of the final edit, and I hope those of you on these social networks I share in enjoy or take away something. Many of you have asked me about my military experiences, and I have been deliberately vague. Unfortunately, I will have to continue to do so about some very critical details, but this small series may open some windows – if not doors – and shed some light on those experiences and what they made of me, your friend and narrator.
Dates, names, places will be deliberately altered in accordance with the secrecy act, and some of the more gruesome details edited for this excerpt– but the sentiments and ideas will be raw and pure.
Please keep in mind the larger work has been assigned ISBN and is under a copyright.
If anyone wishes to reproduce this work in detail, please contact me.
Part 1
Eye for an Eye, or to turn the other cheek...
It was in that second summer that so many new ideas seemed to form. I was a robot no longer. Once I had accepted that I (my mind and soul) would survive and began to actually deal with my new tasks, the MEANING of what was happening started to surface....
......
A very cynical and smart-assed comment made to me in the theatre of War sticks with me to this day.
It should shock me I suppose, but when I reflect on it there is often an accompanying smile; or more correctly a smirk.
A young and enthusiastic sergeant after being given a rather dangerous detail to deliver to his men and ordered to pursue those orders with utmost vigour proclaimed: “F--- going medieval on their ass, I am gonna go OLD TESTAMENT on their (chain of expletives and slurs) asses.”
The reference to going medieval (in case the reader has been living in a cave for 30 years) is from a Tarantino film 'Pulp fiction', and is an exclamation of the intent to do serious violence. The 'old testament', I suspect was intended to amplify or even exceed the medieval levels of violence from Iron age to bronze and even neolithic stuff.
The young sergeant was not a religious guy, he was just well educated and making a joke with a captain he knew was somehow vaguely Christian. He later explained to a mutual friend and comrade, “I had never seen the old man get preachy or anything – it was just known that he was a man of faith. We knew it, the enemy knew it too.”
Old, eh? Young to average for a captain in these forces in those days, at almost 34, but that made me 10 years his senior....Old.
I'll admit, he made me laugh – and with that the tension of the room broke, and this relieved the staff.
So much so that I recall one of the lads broke wind (farted).
I recall that I approved of his 'Old Testament' approach and replied with a laugh in my voice: “Just don't break ALL the tablets, Sergeant'.
It was a reference to Moses breaking the commandments (literally) in the OT, and I think he got it after a minute or two – as there was a delayed chuckle and the response 'just the good ones, Sir'.
Impious, irreverent, irreligious and utterly human.
The sergeant did his job well, and there was no need for any smiting or bronze age brutality – and that is, I suppose, why I can afford to smile or chuckle about it.
But this little exchange has had a profound effect on me.
Not a totally religious one, as the reader may suspect, but a long introspection – a look inside.
You don't have to be a Christian to understand the ideas behind the two concepts or takes on reciprocity (give and take / golden rule) in the Old part of the Bible and the new.
One take, an eye for an eye, exhorts the central concept of giving back what you take, and the other the concept that we WILL get back what we put out, by 'turning the other cheek' to nastiness and violence. There are several sayings even the most secular and non religious person educated in the western world will be familiar with (at least until they strip away ALL culture) that go like 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth' , or adversely 'do unto others, as you would have done unto you', or the even more enigmatic but some how sensible command to 'turn the other cheek' if struck! There are similar coexisting sentiments in some of the more advanced (ancient!) Eastern religions, mysteries, and philosophies also.
How can BOTH these principals work so well as to be encoded in moral codes for thousands of years? How can they coexist without contradiction?
Does an 'eye for an eye' not counter 'turn the other cheek'?
Well, as I have come to understand since those days: No.
They do NOT contradict, but rather reinforce one another. Rather than inhibiting the effectiveness of the 'opposite', they actually seem to lend further balance to the equation. A kind of psychic (or reduced/simplified to psychological for materialists) equilibrium.
I will explain how I came to this conclusion while still at war.
On one hot summer night in that strange orange and pink of the evening that can only be experienced at such altitudes, a group of young men serving with a reservist regiment came across a hideous find.
They had uncovered, while searching what appeared to be a weapons cache / store, a group of hideously mutilated bodies. One of the men on the scene believe one the bodies to belong to an interpreter from an nearby outpost. They seemed to be local men, judging by their clothing and ethnicity.
Horribly, this kind of thing was not too unusual, and so I found myself, with my commanding officer and the regional commander, in a tent erected as a makeshift morgue bearing witness once again to men who had been killed by people the knew in horrible ways over some petty conflict, or as in this case, the victim's willingness to work with the forces of change and progress.
The stench of the men eviscerated before us was almost unbearable, even for someone who was used to combat. I can still smell it now when I think on those scenes.
The horrified and utterly sad expressions on their faces forever frozen images of their last moments on this earth. I must admit, a rage began to grow in me as I looked at these rather modern dressed and well groomed (for locals) reduced to fouled and polluted cuts of meat.
A sane man would not do this to an animal, let alone his neighbours of many years.
It turned out, with some investigation, that these men hailed from a local settlement where people under my direct command were responsible. So we took a drive the next morning, dark and early – before prayers, before even the relatives of the dead had been notified – to meet with 'our guy', an intelligence contractor with one of the major NATO countries. This inside man, an expert at his trade for over 20 years, had already figured out where those responsible where gathered spent from their previous nights carnage. My report was called in, and was given a free hand. I was, however, advised to exert 'prejudice' and 'set examples' for the region. I knew what this meant.
The sergeant's joke jumped to mind. I was to go 'Old Testament' on their ass.
This was not simple meanness or revenge, it was seen as a way to deter, or prevent through fear of reprisal, any further vigilante killings and the kangaroo courts that are empowered by them.
Three teams were organized rapidly and efficiently in the predawn ink, and two engaged the target, a crude square building designated as a Mosque. The third, and largest, teams task was to rapidly evacuate as many civilians from the area as possible, as a firefight was expected. This was not done politely.
The LAV, stationed near a makeshift paddock, blared loud music in Urdu from an announcement system, and doors were battered in. Children screamed, women begged, old men gave us the look of death. It was a little hell before a great one. A fighter raid, in simulation.
The people were not moved far, just out of range – just out of immediate danger. In all there was perhaps 30 of them all together. Once they saw the maple leafs on the vehicles the seemed to calm down , and begin to beg an explanation from the interpreter.
I could see them clearly from my position, as I could see groups one and two neatly in position near the entrance way to the mud brick 'Mosque.' Inside there was arguing and eventually, as we knew they would the 'fighters' came pouring from the main doorways. We knew they would. Despite the ideology these brigands preach, we knew the real reason they had done such murder was to take possession of the dead means puny wealth. They wanted their women, animals, and what little money they had.
Greed made them suspect betrayal and raiders. As they rushed fourth, calling on the name of God, they were met with the horrible realization: These were not fellow wild men, these were soldiers! Again I saw that look of defeat and horror, profoundly sad flood across their faces – and again it was frozen.
The instant the first fighter lifted his battered rifle above his wast the buzz of suppressed fire filled the air. Like a hundred balloons bursting, and a dozen cameras flashing in the dawn light. The death of the fighters was captured by my eyes as if in a strobe lit disco – frame by frame. Group One had performed perfectly. They fighters stood no chance.
What did this make you feel, some may ask.
I am shamed to say, nothing. Perhaps some pride in the effectiveness of my men, but I was numb to the death.
I had wanted to feel justice, or even revenge had been done.
We had delivered an eye for an eye, and we had been fast and clean – unlike the fighters laying dead in the dust. But something was not complete.
Completion came in the form of an unexpected attack, and my only knife wound of the campaign.
As the smoke settled, and the stink of gunfire, blood, and human waste spread – I walked with the radio man and two rifles to the 'Mosque', and Team two. The Mosque was clear, I was assured by a young man with a French-Canadian accent. We walked inside and saw the bedrolls still laid out. The place stank of urine, and we surmised the fighters had simply pissed in the corners that night. Such piety!
As I approached the rear rooms and what appeared to an area to prepare food, I was suddenly thrown off my balance.
A boy of perhaps 10 or 12 had jumped from behind a stack of large boxes, and plunged a 3 inch blade into my shoulder between my armour and by sling. Only his boyish strength held him back from burying it's full length and only luck (grace?) prevented a major blood vessel from being slashed.
What precision! If he had been six inches taller, I might not be writing this.
Pain mixed with pure rage. I lifted the boy up to the bare light bulb with by good arm, suspended by his wrist that had held the bloody knife. He writhed, kicked and screamed 'Die you Crusader DOG!' in native Pashto.
I was not fluent, but I knew enough of the common slanders to know these words. One kick hit me near the still embedded pocket knife and I released my grip. Instinctively, I grabbed my own blade, with my now free hand and kneed or tripped the boy as he attempted to flee past me, and towards the fire groups.
He was a child, this was a place of worship – even if it was defiled – and yet I felt a very deep desire to avenge myself and the men in the tent on him. But then I heard whimpering, weeping.
Not the boy – he looked at me defiantly, full of the same kind of outrage I was. It was an old man. Hiding behind the same boxes. My hand was stayed. The boy backed into the corner, as a medic and and several men from Group Two rushed in. I grabbed the boy by the scruff and hurled him at the old man, who caught him and embraced him, as if to protect him.
I slouched back on the boxes as the medic berated me for being forward and demanded I return immediately to station for attention. I had not lost much blood or any sensation or movement, and so was not that concerned. Much yelling and apologizing, not the least from the young NCO who had assured me the building was clear, was going on. But my attention was entirely on the boy and the old man. I ordered the interpreter to ask why the boy 'had been so brave'? The old man responded that the boy had been taken by the raiders and 'trained' to be one of them.
I now began to see a boy not much younger than my own son before me. Not an enemy, but a child.
The old man explained in a terrified voice: They had killed his father, and forced themselves on him mentally and physically. He was now fanatically devoted to them. 'Like their dog'. He begged for the boy to be let go. He claimed the raiders has killed his son and grandson years before, and wept when he said he simply could take no more 'boys dying'.
The old man had been in the 'Mosque' begging for the release of the boy the night before, and had been beaten for it. He had returned, he claimed, at almost the same time to 'free him before prayers'. He knew they would kill him for it, and said he did not mind if we did either – so long as we allowed the boy his liberty. He calmed at that thought, and simply looked at the floor in submission; while holding the boy.
I was stunned.
This poor old creature.
What had he seen? I waved away the medic at the first moment it was sane to.
I steadied myself before the old man, and had the translator relate that I would not only free him, but I would have them both brought to hospital with me – to be released to the Afghan authorities. Now the translator came undone too. Our translator thanked me and laid the blessings of Allah on me, as he was inclined to do when being approving – even of a good coffee. But it was more this time, his eyes were wet. He was touched. I had never seen this in him before. It was the moment we became friends, as we still are today.
The translator's, whom we shall call 'Droon' (his call-sign in those days), friendship was one obvious benefit, but there were so many I could not possibly hope to relate them all here.
Sufficed to say: The echos of those deeds that day resounded through out my action in Afghanistan.
My men came to understand me better, my enemies (rather paradoxically)to both fear and respect me, and the locals to understand my intent.
I found was welcomed into many settlements and homes after that night. That following Christmas eve, I was sent a message of thanks in the form of a truce and food from a local warlord (now an alliance tribe and NATO ally). Such a religious truce is extremely RARE in Afghanistan, our holy days usually a preferred time of attack.
For a long time I just did not GET it.
I had been merciful – a concept seen as weakness in the eyes of my enemy – so why should I be respected?
The answer, when it presented itself, was simple: For I had shown strength also.
I had returned violent force with violent force, and only tempered it with mercy when mercy had begged me to do so.
Justice had not given away to blind revenge. Fear was thus tempered with respect.
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Coyote Recon LAV
(basically a redesigned Piranha LAV) |
That was it, it was complete now.
Justice had been done. The hollowness gave away to purpose.
The boys face was not frozen, he had struck me and I had 'turned the other cheek'.
Mercy, and a secession of violence was the catalyst and the transformation from 'meaningless violence' or even 'revenge' to 'war' was made.
The boy was taken to hospital and cared for a by a fantastic husband and wife doctor team from Australia. They grew so attached to the boy, they took him into foster-ship and eventually adopted him.
It has been almost 8 years since that summer.
Many things have been revealed, much of it by the boy himself. He now goes by the name of Aman (Pashto for 'hope') and lives with his adopted family in another part of the world all together. |
Aman speaks fluent English now, and we are still in touch.
He is studying to become a history teacher, as I was before the war, and plans to visit me and my family at our homes. I look forward to the day the boy who almost killed me can tell that tale to my son(s) and most importantly:
why we are BOTH still here.
The true horror of his days as a captive of the Taliban is incredible, and another tale entirely – his own to tell. But, the horror all ended, he has said many times, that day I 'turned the other cheek'.
That act of mercy and transformation of rage and violence into love allowed him to truly be free. Not just him.
We thank each other for this, as that act of mercy changed us both and forever.
As for the old man, his story is not as happy.
He was strung up by fighters four years later, for refusing to disclose the location where the local women had hidden (a nearby cave they discovered anyway).
Nobody will remember him in a generation or two. There will be no medals or monuments for what he did, no parade. Only myself, Droon, Aman and a few of the lads present in that dusty settlement will remember, and we will all pass too... in fact two of the lads are gone already.
But, this old man was a real hero in my eyes, and all I ever saw him do was 'turn the other cheek'. I suspect his reward is elsewhere...
