Dark humour on a grim holiday
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD
Globe and Mail Update
FORWARD OPERATING BASE ZETTELMEYER, AFGHANISTAN — The rain began late on Christmas Eve.
It was our midnight mass — that and the sound of flares and the occasional burp of machine-gun fire and the claps of thunder and the roar of light armoured vehicles and the crunch of machine and boots on gravel, all of it melding into the low ominous rumble that forms the elevator music of this spooky place.
The soldiers of Charles Company Combat Team, 1st Battalion Tthe sic Royal Canadian Regiment, got some extra shut-eye, with reveille at 8 on Christmas morning not the usual 5:45 or 6. And then they were up for the normal standing-around period, or one of them, which make up the grunt's life when all is quiet.
Next thing, a couple of vehicles went the few kilometres up to Ma'sum Ghar, the next little Canadian base south of here and just down the Panjwai Valley, to fetch the Christmas meals.
Sergeant-Major John Barnes gathered the boys around then, in the centre of the gravel that, with a row of HESCO bunkers and a few Sea Can trailers and some tents, is this little base, nothing more.
"Make sure you know where your kit [flak jacket and helmet] is," he said, "in case we start taking incoming rounds."
The 40-year-old Officer Commanding of Charles Company, Major Matthew Sprague, had a few words. He's not one for speeches, but managed to be profound and revealing despite himself, as often he is.
"I fucking hate Christmas," Major Sprague said. "But I can think of no better spot for Charles Company to have Christmas than here, right on the ground where this thing all started about four months ago. This place I think will always have special meaning, for a lot of reasons, not necessarily all good reasons.
"No group of people in the entire fucking Canadian Forces more deserves this than you do.
"When you guys look in the mirror, be proud of what you've done, of what you've become. You're the fucking best, and that's the way it is.
"Padre, grace."
From profane to sacred in an instant is the soldier's way, and without missing a beat, Padre Guy Chapdelaine said a few words, and the grub — turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and all the chips and cookies a soldier could want — was on.
This is ground zero for Charles Company, where their hairy, shoot-'em-up tour of southern Afghanistan began, and where their fallen fell. Virtually every place that is hallowed to them — the notorious so-called White School; the dun-coloured fields that in summer were green and lush with marijuana plants three metres tall and that they crossed as they closed in on the school; the big ditch where one LAV got stuck and the men inside found themselves surrounded by Taliban; the place where the Zettelmeyer, an armoured version of a bulldozer, was attacked and is now buried beneath the ground — are all here, or within a few hundred meters.
The company was barely on the ground in Afghanistan late last August when, leaving Patrol Base Wilson about five kilometres north, a convoy made the sharp left turn onto the highway and into a rocket propelled grenade that signalled the start of an ambush that lasted five full kilometres and 45 minutes.
"It was terrifying," Sgt.-Major Barnes, who was in the back of the OC's LAV, says. "It really was. You had no control. I felt things hitting the vehicle, but even more importantly hitting the road, and you felt the vehicle rock, and you were waiting for that one that went through the LAV."
Sept. 3, about 6 a.m., Charles Company crossed the Arghandab River, toward the White School, and found themselves in a fierce gun battle that lasted a good five hours, taking two casualties — the first, Warrant Officer Rick Nolan, up at the front in a G-Wagon, the second Sergeant Shane Stachnik of the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment at Petawawa, Ont., killed when his LAV was hit by an .82 mm recoilless rifle.
Sgt.-Major Barnes was the one to pull Sgt. Stachnik's body out of the vehicle to safety. "It wasn't real at first," he says. "It didn't really affect me at first. Then a minute or two later, I walked around the vehicle and threw up."
It was the crew of Master-Corporal Sean Neifer's LAV who got WO Nolan into their vehicle, but as they headed for the breach that would buy them a measure of safety, the LAV ended up in a ditch instead, stuck, its wheels spinning. They could hear, see, smell Taliban all around them; the vehicle was hit twice by RPGs already and they knew it was just a matter of time before something would penetrate the hull, and they would all die. The order to abandon boat came then, breaking Corporal Drew Berthiaume's heart because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving WO Nolan behind, whom he would have followed anywhere, even for a minute.
They were trying to lower the rear ramp on the LAV when the third RPG struck it squarely; because of the vehicle's position in the ditch, the ramp would open only 15 centimetres, saving them all.
They left through the small emergency door in the ramp, rolling into the ditch, then running 100 metres on open ground under fire to a makeshift casualty collection point, then finally to another, set up between a mound of earth and the Zettelmeyer that was parked there — or rather, right here, where now the Christmas dinner was being served.
They were all there, breathing hard, starting to shake the way you do after, when another .82 mm. round came in, killing Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, who had come over when he heard his friend WO Nolan had been killed, and Private Will Cushley, a dear gangly boy of 21 from Port Lambton, Ont.
M-Cpl. Neifer, 28, was standing between them, unscathed, when they fell.
The next day, Sept. 4, they were getting ready to head back to the White School for round two, standing around all sleepy, when an American A-10 airplane mistakenly strafed the company, killing Private Mark Graham and wounding 38 others.
By October, Charles was patched up, Sgt.-Major Barnes and the OC, both of whom had been wounded — Major Sprague seriously and healing in Canada for about seven weeks — back at the helm. They were based then at Strong Point Centre, a reinforced position, and heading across the road to Strong Point West for almost daily gun battles.
Sgt.-Major Barnes would no sooner suggest an early lunch when, as if on cue, the fighting would start. The A-10s would be overhead, bullets and RPGs filling the air, and the Sergeant-Major would be on the radio, reading aloud from a pornographic magazine to keep the boys amused.
This is Charles Company's world — death, loss, pain, black humour to get them through it.
So this was Christmas, 2006: They ate their dinner under tarps in a cold rain, lined up to call or e-mail home, played video games and cards, said prayers and swore, watched the mists roll in and hide the mountains.
As Major Sprague says, "I don't think anyone really feels anything about anything to be honest. Walls are up, everywhere, emotional barriers are up." Perhaps in the spring, when Charles Company is home, they will fall.
