War Dogs Read online

  ‘Troops in contact, troops in contact,’ Jimmy reported over the radio.

  The commander of the sweep decided the compound was too well fortified to take with just his men, and the Afghani troops pulled back a bit. It was, I learned, the way the war was being fought. The ANA were expected to step up and do the dirty work of clearing the village, while the Americans, in their heavily armed vehicles, watched over them and provided fire support. When anyone – Afghani or American – encountered stiff resistance from the Taliban, it was time to call on the air support that was always orbiting somewhere above us. Why risk anyone’s life in a bloody ground attack when there’s an air force strike aircraft that can be dialled up to do the work for you?

  It was fascinating watching all this unfold in front of me, like I was some fucking general watching a firepower demonstration on the range back in Singleton in Australia. The JTAC (joint terminal attack controller), responsible for coordinating air strikes and air support, called for support over the radio and soon an A-10 was orbiting our position, waiting for a target and the word to let loose.

  The A-10 Thunderbolt is a beautiful little aircraft. It was developed as a tank-buster, and first entered service more than 20 years ago during the Cold War, when NATO and the Soviet Bloc were facing each other down on either side of the Iron Curtain. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet military empire, there didn’t seem to be much need for a jet that could fly slowly and low over a battlefield, picking off tanks and other armoured vehicles. The first Gulf War, however, showed that the A-10 was exactly the type of aircraft the Americans needed. The Warthogs, as they were also known, wreaked havoc in the convoys of cars and tanks and trucks that fled Kuwait when the coalition forces kicked out Saddam Hussein.

  They were back in action big time in Afghanistan, and were often flown by Air National Guard pilots – reservists. The Warthog has two turbofan engines mounted above the fuselage at the rear and short, stubby squared-off wings that carry loads of bombs and rockets. Under its nose is a 30-millimetre Gatling gun, which is also deadly against troops and vehicles. Some say it’s an ugly aeroplane, but the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan loved it. Because its engines are up the back and out of the way, it’s very quiet on approach, so that the bad guys don’t usually know it’s overhead until it’s too late. Also, it’s not a fast mover like, say, an F-18 or an F-16, so the pilot of one can often get a better visual on a ground target than can some other jet jockeys. Earlier on in the war, the Canadian Army suffered terrible losses when an F-16 lit up one of their light armoured vehicles by mistake and killed everyone on board.

  Ricky looked up into the clear blue sky and I had to search hard to see the jet coming. True to form, we didn’t hear it until it was about to drop its 500-pound bomb. A guy on my truck had his video camera out and rolling in preparation for the strike. The first sign the air strike had gone in was a plume of white smoke rising from the compound. Next, came the delayed boom as the noise of the explosion reached us, and then the shock wave.

  ‘Fuck me.’ I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of that, or how anyone in the compound could have survived.

  The explosion had been too far away to bother Ricky, and I guess that, anyway, he must have seen this sort of thing a thousand times before. It was all new to me, though. The bomb had been dead on target and the shooting had stopped. The ETTs and Afghani soldiers moved in after the bombing run to assess its effects. The compound was totalled, with a huge crater left in the centre of its walled square. Inside, the soldiers found the remains of four Taliban and their weapons. Having made a stand, they’d probably decided they were ready to go to their God, and the US Air Force had helped them on their way. If there were any Taliban left alive down there, the Americans didn’t give them time to re-group. The convoy saddled up again, and we raced through the village, as we still had objectives in the mountains to check out.

  We passed through hills dotted with fir trees and valleys cut by streams fed by melting snow flows, and came to an open flat area that had clearly been cultivated and recently harvested. I didn’t get out of the truck, but the ANA dismounted again and began searching some mudbrick farm buildings while we kept watch over the hills. I could see them loading some sacks, but it wasn’t until we got back to Cobra that I found out they were bags of compressed opium, which must have been worth thousands – maybe millions – of dollars. We weren’t on a drug-busting mission – rather, we were going out to show our faces and, hopefully, stir up a fight – but the Americans confiscated drugs when they came across them. That haul might have represented a farmer’s entire crop, but I didn’t spare a thought then for what that might have meant to him and his family. There was too much going on around me; too much to try to soak up.

  There were no more TICs on the patrol but on the way back, everyone was hyped as we approached the village where the bomb had been dropped. Our truck was in the middle of the convoy and as the lead vehicles entered the village, they passed between compounds, the walls of which came right to the edge of the road. Up ahead, I could hear the deep bass thump of a .50 cal firing, followed by a couple of explosions. I tightened my hand around the 240’s pistol grip.

  ‘What was that?’ I yelled to the driver. ‘Prob’ly nothing. They’re just making sure that if there’s any of them fuckers in the compounds, they keep their heads down.’

  The Americans were employing a tactic, called reconnaissance by fire, used since the Vietnam War. I think the Aussies used to call it ‘pray and spray’, as they considered it a waste of ammunition by the US forces. The logic was that if you fired first into an area where the enemy might be – and this was an empty village where we’d had a contact on the way in – you would either make them keep their heads down or provoke a response. Either was OK by the SF guys, as they were always looking for a fight and to keep their own numbers of casualties down.

  I looked ahead, out over the barrel of the 240, and saw a bearded SF man standing in his hummer lob a fragmentation grenade over the high wall of a compound. A few seconds later, as we drew close, the grenade went off with a muffled thump and smoke billowed into the sky. Other soldiers were firing into windows and raking the tops of the compound walls.

  ‘Hey,’ I yelled to the driver below me again, ‘should I start shooting?’

  ‘If you want to, man’

  If I wanted to? Shit. It was my first mission and I didn’t want them to think I was some wannabe war hero, so I held my fire. I also figured that it would be better to conserve my ammo in case someone did pop his head up over the parapet of one of those compounds and started firing back. Ricky was huddled by my feet in his kennel and I didn’t want to worry him needlessly with a rain of hot empty brass cartridges from the machine gun. I tried to scrunch low in the turret behind the 240 and scanned the tops of the walls as we raced through, enveloped in a cloud of dust from the vehicles ahead.

  We arrived back at Cobra just after lunch. My hair and uniform were stiff with dust, and I was sweaty and stinking and tired, but I was on a high.

  The work didn’t finish now the mission was ended. I helped clean out our vehicles, blowing the dust out of the interior with a high-pressure air hose. Weapons had to be cleaned and oiled, and we replaced the ammo that had been fired off. As a dog handler, I was part of a team of my own, so I had to make sure Ricky was fed and brushed and looked after as well. I had a hot meal in the chow hall, and went back to my room to chill out and think about the last couple of days.

  I checked my watch and worked out that it was too late to call my kids in Australia on Skype. There was, though, an internet cable in the hooch, which I connected to my laptop. I sent an instant message to my girlfriend at the time, Nikki, to let her know I was back from my first mission.

  SEVEN

  A dog’s life on the FOB

  2006

  There wasn’t much to do on a firebase in between missions, other than training with the dogs and w
orking out. The US SF soldiers are generally big dudes, and about the only form of exercise available in the confines of a FOB was weight training. I put on about twelve kilograms of muscle while working out with the Americans during my time with the SF teams. At first I did my routines by myself, while the SF guys would generally be in pairs, helping each other out.

  For me, the weight training was more than just something to do to pass the time. The small, but well-equipped, gym in a room about fifteen by five metres, was a place that I could get to know the other guys I was living with and, slowly, be accepted. The alternative would have been sitting in my hooch with my dog, watching DVDs on my laptop and surfing the internet, or hanging out in the communal TV room. I like to keep busy, so this wasn’t an option for me for too long; Jason, however, would fly simulated helicopters and aircraft in internet role-player games for hours.

  Ricky and Nero were confined to their kennels in our room when they weren’t training or exercising, so Jason and I made sure we trained with them every day, to keep them – and ourselves – active. There were plenty of suitable training areas around the FOB, with a good mix of terrain. We’d have the dogs search inside hooches, behind the kitchen, out on the rifle range, and on some broken ground inside the perimeter, planting explosives and letting Ricky and Nero find them so that they could have some play time.

  It was still early days for Ricky and me as a team, so I used this time to get to know him better. The Afghani interpreters (called ‘terps’) lived separately from the Americans, but they had a shady area with some benches near the main SF building, where they could hang out during the day in case they were needed to translate something. I learned early on that Ricky wasn’t real keen on the local people. He’d snarl and show his teeth when we walked by the terps, so I’d have to keep him on a short lead around them. I didn’t take him for walks through the Afghani compound, but I did keep taking him back to where the terps gathered so that he could gradually get used to them and not be so aggressive. I knew that eventually we’d be working on foot in villages and compounds, so I needed him at least to be controllable and, ideally, a little more relaxed around Afghanis.

  While I didn’t want my dog to bite the locals, I also didn’t want him to become too friendly with strangers. I was happy to let some of the soldiers pat him and say hi, but I didn’t want him craving the attention of strangers, and seeking out pats on the head or food. No dog handler likes strangers feeding their animal, as it turns dogs into scavengers. They become easily distracted during searches, either by scraps and rubbish lying around, or because they’ll go and bail people up looking for affection and food. I didn’t want Ricky eating something or nuzzling someone while he was supposed to be working.

  ‘Hey, man, what’s your dog’s name?’ one of the Green Berets walking across the baked dirt square asked one day. ‘OK if I pet him?’ As was working out in the gym, taking Ricky for a walk was a good way to start breaking the ice between me, a civvy, and the professional SF soldiers. So, at times like this, I was happy to bend the rules and allow someone else to give Ricky attention. It was all about getting the balance right.

  You wouldn’t think a working sniffer dog would be picky about his food, but Ricky was. We fed the dogs Science Diet, which is a top-quality dog food that came in 20-kilogram bags, shipped in by chopper. I’d feed Ricky once a day, but sometimes it would take him the whole 24 hours to finish a bowl of food. If I needed him to eat quickly, I’d have to go to the chow hall and get a cup of gravy to mix in with it, then he’d wolf the food down. Occasionally I wouldn’t feed him for a day, to let his body clean itself out.

  There was an artillery battery of 105-millimetre howitzers at Cobra, and the gunners would go about their business dressed in physical training gear – shorts, T-shirts and runners. The guns were used to soften up targets before we went in on a mission, or as fire support that we could call on if we got into trouble. There was a minimum of regimental bullshit at the SF FOBs. The artillerymen weren’t ever going to leave the base, as the range of their howitzers covered our area of operations, so there was no real reason for them to wear full uniform in the scorching heat of an Afghanistan summer.

  Ricky hated the guns. I made the mistake early on at Cobra of taking him for a walk near the battery when they were firing and it scared him witless; I don’t think he ever got over it. Whenever they started firing, even if he was in his kennel in our hooch, he’d start barking and whining, and curl himself into a ball.

  Some people might think that it’s cruel to use dogs in war, especially in the explosive detection role. Our dogs have a good life, though.

  First up, they’re extremely well looked after. They have a balanced diet, and all their shots and medicines when they need them, and their living areas are kept spotless. The dogs are kept in top condition – the handler checks his dog every day for ticks and parasites, and if something goes wrong with an animal, there are military vets in-country to look after them.

  Secondly, they’re active and engaged. Unlike backyard dogs that lie around all day or run in circles, like crazy things, waiting for their owners to come home and pay them some attention, our working dogs are kept busy all day and rewarded for their hard work. Work is play to them, and they love it.

  It’s in the company’s interest to look after its dogs, as each of them costs between 8000 and 10,000 dollars to train and care for. When the dogs reach the age of eight years, or if they are injured in the line of duty, they’re retired and sent back to the US, where good homes are found for them, often with former handlers or company personnel.

  If I were a dog, I’d want to be a working dog: either an explosive detection dog, a cattle dog or a sheep dog. I’d want to be active, useful and loved.

  Still, while they are well looked after, sometimes dogs, like people, can’t take the rigours of life in a war zone. I’ve seen a couple of dogs get to a point where they couldn’t handle gunfire or explosions. Ricky didn’t like the noise the artillery guns made but he could still do his job. The company I’m with now, however, had a labrador that would stop working, sometimes for an hour, if it heard a big bang. We can’t afford to have a dog that only wants to work part-time, so we had to move it to a quieter location, which isn’t a euphemism for killing. Some of the American handlers have taken dogs back to the US with them, and given them a home themselves.

  Another dog that suffered from shell shock was called Daisy. She had always been a nice, placid dog, but cracked up after hearing the mortars one too many times. She lived at FOB Wilson, a Canadian base, with her Tanzanian handler. The handler had transferred over to us from Ronco, a US contracting firm that specialises in mine clearance. One day, as the mortars on base were firing on a Taliban position, poor Daisy flipped out and managed to escape her outdoor makeshift kennel. She bolted out the front gates of the FOB, and disappeared into the wild heart of south-central Afghanistan before the handler even knew she was gone.

  The Psyops people at the base tried to help the handler find his missing dog. They printed up and distributed flyers, put the word out in the villages around the FOB and even offered a reward for Daisy’s return. The Afghanis weren’t known for caring for their own dogs, so there was a good chance that if they saw a stray German shepherd, someone would shoot poor Daisy on sight.

  Three months later I was at the FOB at Deh Rawood, and I told the chief of the team the story of Daisy’s escape. Coincidentally, two days later I received an email from one of the other handlers, telling me that Daisy had shown up at the front gates of FOB Wilson, barking away, asking to be let in again. She was lean and hungry, but had managed to survive for three months in the harsh Afghanistan winter. What she lived on, and how she stayed alive, is anyone’s guess. It would make a hell of a Disney movie.

  The company kept an eye on Daisy for a while and got her back into shape, and slowly reintroduced her to some explosive detection dog training. She seemed fine, and taking to her old life without any sign of stress or fear, even a
round gunfire. Eventually, Daisy was re-teamed with another handler, and today she is back out in the field, doing fine and doing her job. Man, Daisy must have some awesome war stories to tell the other dogs she meets out at the FOBs.

  ‘What’s it like when your dog bites you on the arm when you’ve got one of those sleeves on?’ one of the artillerymen at Cobra asked me one day while I was working out in the gym.

  ‘Dunno. Never tried it,’ I said.

  The dogs I’d worked with in the Australian Army and the police, I explained to the gunner, were not trained as attack dogs, so I’d never done any bite training. The bite sleeve the guy was talking about resembled a sturdy glove made of leather and canvas that you put on your arm for the dog to latch onto. The artillery-man asked if I’d be interested in trying out some bite training with Ricky, volunteering to be the crash test dummy.

  Jason was up for it and, as it turned out, he’d done some bite work with dogs in the US Air Force. Nero, psycho dog that he was, had apparently also done some attack training, which suited his personality perfectly. He had a history of biting people, including his handler, for real. Jason showed me scars all up his arm where Nero had savaged him soon after they’d been teamed.

  ‘I was in a turtleback hummer one time,’ Jason told me, ‘and the dude in the turret behind the 240 asked if he could feed Nero. I said, “No”, of course.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Dude fucking fed Nero a cracker out of his Meal Ready to Eat, and Nero nearly ripped his goddamn hand off.’

  This answer hadn’t surprised me. Nero had multiple personalities. When Jason was around, he was well behaved and even friendly. He’d nuzzle my crotch – nerve-racking, when a dog has the teeth and manners of a hyena – and try to get me to pat him. When Nero was on his own, though, he was a different animal; in fact, he was a fucking animal.