Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bombs.

War can be a brutal, confronting and harrowing experience. But on the flipside, it can also be patently absurd. Australians at war have always maintained the darkest of humour and a healthy scepticism of authority to match. After all, if you don’t laugh in this job, it might just kill you.

*****

On a particularly ‘sporting’ day in the Tangi Valley my battle buddy Langy and I were trying to maintain connection with an already stretched rear part of the patrol, control an advance element that was aimed directly at an enemy who were intent on wiping us off the face of the map (and who managed to separate Langy, our medic Crippsy and I from the main part of the patrol later in the contact – a tale for another time), and stop ourselves from getting flanked; all while dealing with radio comms that chose that exact moment to have a conniption and stop working

Having given up on the radio for a moment, Langy and I were laying some fire down towards a group of Taliban on our left flank. The Talibs returned in kind with the rounds impacting the wall and snapping over our heads from multiple directions. Langy leaned back into cover as he wrestled a replacement rifle magazine out of the ineptly designed pouches we had been issued. He then became the object of the Taliban’s interest and enemy rounds began peppering around him. “What are they doing back there mate?” I asked him. Langy looked up at me deadpan and replied “Shooting at me.”

When officers ask a stupid question. . . . . . ¹

*****

A few months later and we were well experienced at conflict, combat, mentoring, dealing with the tough situations, the ridiculous and the sublime. Nothing really surprised us anymore. Until of course it did.

On this particular day we were travelling in a two Bushmaster convoy to the Deh Rawud District Centre for a meeting with the local tribal leaders. The tribal leaders mood at this stage could be described as ‘pissed off with a side of righteous white-hot anger’. An ill-conceived and poorly-consulted-with-me US State Department and Special Forces raid into the district markets the week prior had resulted in the seizure and destruction of the opium harvest and cash that the farmers used to buy corn and seed to feed their families over winter. I may not have been a Counter-Insurgency guru, but I was fairly certain that condemning parts of the community to starvation was not going to win any hearts and minds. And it hadn’t.

In the days following the raid there had been a large spike in threat warnings received from our intelligence networks. Some could be counted as mere rhetoric – there was one individual who the Diggers nicknamed ‘The Wind’ for his threats over the radio to ‘drive the Australians from Deh Rawud like the wind does the dust’ – but others we had to take more seriously. This included some serious chatter about IEDS being built for use against us in the District Centre. This was a capability we knew the enemy had for certain – a US Army patrol had narrowly escaped an IED hidden in a wheelbarrow when it malfunctioned on detonation as they walked past it shortly before. Other patrols had found IEDs hidden behind walls and buried among the detritus of the streets.

As we drove towards the meeting place at the front of our minds was a particular threat warning we had received late the night before about a Vehicle Borne IED – a VBIED. According to the Intelligence Report the VBIED was going to be a white sedan or 4-Wheel Drive with a particular number plate (for the purpose of this story we will say the number plate was DRW-456). We did not know if the VBIED was going to be static on the side of the road to be blown up as we drove past, or moving around to be rammed into our vehicles in a suicide attack. The info about the colour and type of vehicle was not really useful as it described about 95% of cars in the whole district. The number plate information was gold though. Or so we thought.

I was standing up in the back left hatch of the Bushmaster on this occasion with Dean on the other side. I used to often do this as it offered better situational awareness when travelling. Tension was palpable in the convoy as we left the safety of Forward Operating Base HADRIAN. Radio messages were curt and clipped, the normal banter was missing. We were in the second vehicle and responsible for rear security. Over the radio a call came in from the front vehicle: “White sedan. 200 meters. Travelling right to left. Moving away from us,” No worries there. We continued along the dusty road. Speed would be our friend out in the open where there were few vehicles or local Afghans moving around but in the narrow, twisted streets of the District Centre we wouldn’t have that option. Vigilance, good drills and good luck would need to be on our side.

“Coming up to the town. 250 meters.” came the next radio call. Vehicles and carts and people were now parked along the side of the road. In both PMVs every set of eyes scanned hard for a number plate reading DRW-456. Weapons followed eyes ready to fire at a moments notice. Heart rates rose with every vehicle that appeared. We looked for other signs that showed the locals knew something was up – a lack of the usual stalls, people suddenly rushing away, the absence of the normal. The usually friendly – or at least neutral looks – we normally saw had been replaced by some hostile stares though; people were pissed. By this stage we had slowed down and were into the District Centre proper. As we threaded our way carefully down the ragged roads a white vehicle suddenly swung onto the road fifty metres back and revved it’s engine. Quickly I raised my weapon into my shoulder and brought my scope to bear on the driver. Not seeing anything directly threatening I scanned down to the front of the vehicle to check the number plate. Oh oh.

“Hey Dean. . . . . we might have a problem mate.” I said over the intercom. Dean had been checking out vehicles down his side of the Bushmaster but quickly snapped back around to the rear. “Fuck is that the car?”

“I have no idea mate. I can’t read Pashto.”

“What?”

“Mate the number plates are in Pashto.”

We looked at each other and cracked up laughing. Somehow in the tension and build-up for the patrol everybody from Battalion Intelligence down – including me – had missed the fact that the Afghan number plates might just not be written in the King’s English. We were scanning for a threat we had no way of identifying. Which, in retrospect, did tie in with the ‘norm’. The situation was oddly ridiculous and maddeningly bizarre.

I raised my scope back to the vehicle which, to the relief of all and sundry, turned off down a side road. We made it to the District Centre and back unharmed, apart from the verbal beasting I copped from the tribal leaders. I never did learn how to read Afghan number plates though.

*****

On another occasion our Battalion’s Delta Company received a threat warning about a suicide bomber in their Area of Operations off to our east. According to the Intelligence Report the suicide bomber was an Afghan male, probably aged between 19 and 40 with a beard and, for some reason, was only wearing one sandal. While the majority of that info was as useful as the colour and make of the car we had been searching for, the sandal detail was different. The threat was considered ‘imminent’ so for the Delta Company boys on patrol that day I imagine that the status of Afghan footwear became of immense interest.

Nothing eventuated however and the exact same threat warning was issued again the next day. . and the day after. . and the day after that, and the day after that and so on. It got to the stage that my fellow Company Commander Marek rang the Battalion Intelligence Officer and verballed him: “DO YOU RECKON HE MIGHT HAVE FOUND ANOTHER SANDAL BY NOW?”. For years after that ‘Intelligence’ Officer would be ribbed by his peers any time a Darwin local was spotted wearing one piece of footwear and asked “Do you reckon that’s the bomber mate?”

Like I said at the start, if you don’t laugh in this job, it might just kill you.

*****

1. You can watch this happen at about 3 mins 25 seconds at the video at the link here.