Spoken from the Front (18 page)

Anyway, we came across another group of men, sitting
next to a small, mud-walled building, which they said was
their flour mill for making their bread. And again they told us
there were no security problems in the camp, no Taliban here.
This time the elder sent a tiny child off to bring us some chai
and a little dish of colourful sweets, and we stood in that
desolate place with the wind howling around us, and we
drank chai with them, and I thought even though they have
nothing, they give us what little they have ... I felt quite
guilty taking it, but it would've been incredibly rude not to,
that's their culture. Then one of the men asked us to help his
son, who was knocked over by a car and is paralysed in a
wheelchair. The crowd wheeled him out to us, and they all
stood round expectantly, like we'd have some magic
medicine to cure him with. We called over our medic to take
a look, and apparently the young man had a huge bedsore on
his hip, so he gave him some aspirin and put a dressing on it.
The interpreter told the crowd the dressing cost $16, so they
were all very pleased and were beaming at us and thanked
us. It was as if we'd made him walk again. Eventually, we
thanked them for the chai and we moved on.

The next group of men we came across were sitting on a
wall by a little shop, which was selling a few apples, and
some bread, and that was about it. One of the men was quite
old, he was a Spingiri, and he told us he was from the Kuchi
tribe. He said before the Taliban he lived in the deserts in the
north, near Kabul, but when the Taliban took power, his
people were attacked by the Uzbeks and Tajiks, who hated
them because they were Pashtuns, like the Taliban. So they
moved south, and their livestock was looted by the Taliban.
They headed for Helmand, which is traditionally the Pashtun
heartland, and they came to Mukhtar and built themselves
mud houses and compounds and settled there. But now the
government is telling them they'll have to move on, and this
old man was saying: 'Where can we move to? We have no
land, we have nowhere to go and we're happy here.'
Apparently the government stopped the UN providing aid to
this camp a year ago, because it wants the people to move on.
It hopes they'll leave if they become desperate enough. It's
heartbreaking, and you can understand why they end up
harbouring and supporting the Taliban. What choice do they
have?

And then I come back to the office, and Sky News is on, and
I see the world is in anguish about what Jade Goody's said on
Big Brother
...

Robert Mead, Ministry of Defence press officer

Salaam aleikum, my children.

Peace be upon you all from Muhammad's mountain retreat
and all his Pashtun brothers and sisters.

Morning, all.

You join me as the tour-clock ticks into the second third.
Irritatingly my colleague to my right has just pointed out that
he has 8.72 days to go according to his personal 'chuff chart',
whatever the hell one of those is.

This may sound like I am counting down the days but it's
all been so far so good: I have not been shot, I have not
developed dysentery, I have been out to meet the good
people of Lashkar Gah for the first time, I have clean sheets
on my bed. All is perfectly average with the world. Apart
from having to look at Jade Goody seemingly every minute of
every day for the past week.

Yes, my children, the past 7 to 10 days have been exceedingly
interesting. No doubt you will have read and seen
much about the heroic deeds taking place in this fair and
slightly-chilly-at-night country, but more of my antics with
the locals later.

In the meantime, I hope you all read the Sunday papers for
my exclusive interviews with those daring chaps what risked
life and limb to agree to be grilled by me on what was a bit of
a hairy situation when they rescued their fallen comrade on
the wings of an Apache. I was privileged, and I don't use that
word lightly, to speak to five of the eight who took part in the
rescue.

As my 'bootneck' colleagues would say, it was 'hoofing'.
Yes, as if one incomprehensible and slightly irritating
language were not enough, the Marines have two. So in
addition to TLAs (all together now ...) I am subjected to such
sentences as: 'I'm off to the heads before scran then it's back
to the grot to get my head down in the scratcher – hoofing.'
Remarkably, this isn't a quote from my 'Five Fucking (sorry,
Auntie) German Students' porn video sent by the boys
which, incidentally, does exactly what it says on the tin. It
roughly translates as: 'One is going to visit the lavatory
before the evening meal, then it's back to the abode to sleep
peacefully in my bed – marvellous.'

I also have to listen to people talk about 'granularity',
telling me to 'crack on', 'talk off line', get things 'squared
away', and generally be 'threaders' if things don't go to plan.

In something of a backlash against this brain-washing and
in a bid to integrate and enjoy the moment more in this
ancient land I have decided to attempt to be at one with the
locals. To that end, rather than now, like my heathen infidel
room-mates, who bemoan the 'wailing' of the local Imam as
he calls the faithful to prayer at 5 a.m. each morning, I now
awaken at 4.30, wash with sand, as the Prophet Muhammad
would have done, and dress in a simple garment of muslin, a
free T-shirt from the
Sun
saying 'Page 3 stunner', and leftover
Christmas wrapping paper. I then scale the wall before
venturing out into the streets to take my morning prayer.

I have discovered the one thing that is less enticing in the
morning than my regular 100-metre dash with only a small
towel to protect one's dignity is doing it in the rain.

One thing the good men of Afghanistan have in common
with those in Blighty is how to loaf. Particularly good
practitioners are the construction industry, clearly the same
the world over. Currently we have many Afghans apparently
digging random holes and ditches all round camp. One
assumes this isn't a less than cunning plot to join up with
Taliban trenches and allow the insurgents to infiltrate the
camp under cover of darkness. For every two men digging
the hole, there is always at least four times that many stood
or sat around enjoying the sun, having a fag or gently discussing
last night's nan bread. It's just like being back home.

So what of my tales in Lashkar Gah? Up until last week,
apart from a quick 5 mins through the streets of Kabul or
looking out the window of a Chinook helicopter, which
incidentally is an awesome ride, especially when it whizzes
along at low height, I had yet to see what Afghanistan
actually looked like up close. I have now not only seen it up
close, I have also smelt it, and at times it hums. I went out on
what turned out to be a 6-and-a-half-hour patrol with a team
of Royal Engineers who were accompanied by someone from
PsyOps, i.e., Psychological Operations, i.e., touchy-feely
propaganda, and CIMIC, Civil Military Co-operation, who
try to identify local projects to spend money on.

Then there was me and our cameraman. The deal is you go
out with a convoy of three Snatch vehicles (stop sniggering,
children, this is serious). A Snatch is basically a Land Rover
with a bit of armour plating. Only a bit, mind, as most of the
troops killed in roadside bombings in Iraq were travelling
in Snatches – so they provide some protection but not total.

Not to worry, in you pop in the back, which is a bit of a
squeeze with four of you, plus a driver and commander in
the front. You don't get much of a view, unless you're one of
the top cover troops. But for that privilege you pay the price
of having to wear a bloody great bit of body armour, which
not only covers the torso but also your neck and your arms
down to the elbow. Still, nice view, I hear. Especially when the
kids start throwing stones at you.

All I can see is what can be made out through a dirty
window about 10 inches square with bars across it. But what
this Pope-mobile lacks in view it makes up for in scratch-and-sniffability.
Then we trot off through the streets of Lashkar
Gah, though streets is an ambitious term, being as they are
more like dry tracks across a potato field in the height of
summer with the only signs of moisture being the human
excrement dribbling down the middle. No lumps, mind.

You drive along these 'roads', rocking and rolling all over
the shop, and every now and again you can't avoid piling
through this mucky stuff, which throws up a truly incredible
smell, a viciously potent sulphur-type pong that tastes as
good as it whiffs and sticks to your teeth.

Yet local children can be seen running alongside the paths,
in a desperate bid to keep up with us and wave, more often
than not in bare feet. One particularly unfortunate tyke was
caught right next to one of these pungent puddles as we
drove by and, like the comedy movie when a car piles
through a puddle as you are walking to work in your best
togger, this lad got covered up to his bare ankles in black
shoot. Nice.

Our intention was to go to a play area so the troops could
have a hearts-and-minds-winning game of football with the
local kids. The play area was something of a dusty wasteland,
the kids weren't expecting us and, upon being handed some
balls, clearly had not been taught the rudiments of
Association Football by a qualified FA coach. The three balls
were hoofed up in the air with packs of kids racing after
them. I tried in vain to get some pics but the ball never stayed
in one place long enough. Within 5 minutes the first of three
balls had gone walkabout and within another 20 the remaining
two had been had.

There must have been 50–100 kids running around, many
of them bare-footed, most of them looking like they hadn't
washed for several weeks. But among the children, not a girl,
or for that matter a female of any kind, could be seen.

The CIMIC bloke had got chatting with some elders and we
wandered off down an alleyway to what turned out to be a
religious boarding school, a Madrassa. Eton it wasn't. I've
seen slightly smarter pigsties. The CIMIC man got chatting
with the head, and we listened as he told us about his 120
pupils who were basically taught the Koran. But the conditions
were wretched. It didn't look much from the outside
but there was apparently a basement-type design as grubby
boys stuck their heads out from somewhere down below as
we spoke to the head. Some of these boys didn't look much
older than about 3. Others were in their late teens. We then
went inside and down into three classroom/bedrooms. I
would have found it hard to believe that 120 boys could stand
in the rooms available but apparently they all slept on the
floor. Very cosy.

It was not until afterwards that the cameraman, Aidy, a
Marine by trade, said we should never have gone into there
without first having checked it out and that several rule
books were discarded for us just to wander in. Luckily I was
oblivious to how death-defying and heroic I was being –
'twas ever thus.

We cleared off and stopped at another spot to generally
amble about and engage with the locals. In true Afghan
fashion, there was another old chap digging a random hole
with a crowd of people stood around. Once again there were
masses of kids about, this time with one or two girls. But only
girls of at most 5 or 6 because by all accounts any older than
that is trussed up and not let out except on official occasions.

Our final stop was a bit of an interesting one: we stopped
at Lashkar Gah prison, which is supposedly the current home
of the odd Taliban inmate. Though you wouldn't have known
as the term 'open prison' could well have been made for this
establishment. There was a railed gate. Some turrets and a big
wall. Other than that there was a lot of vicious, fairly
unhappy-looking chaps being passed several table-sized bits
of nan bread through the railings and some equally
ramshackle chaps wandering about on this side of the gate
who were allegedly the guards.

Bearing in mind that arguably the Taliban are my current
worst enemy, I would have had second thoughts before I
wished it upon them.

Then it was back home in time for tea. Steak en croûte with
onion chutney and veg followed by chocolate pud and
custard. De-lish.

And I'd like to leave you with a message from one of the
random bits of junk mail that regularly appear in my Yahoo
junk box. The subject of the message from Antonio Kelly is:
'with silver, and at the east to their flesh'.

Well, quite.

Now get writing.

Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal Engineers

In Kajaki, every night you got mortared. You could set your
watch by it: it was quite comical. When you were out building
the new FOB, you were constantly being shot at too. It
was harassment fire: you have Land Rovers with GPMGs
[general-purpose machine-guns] or 50-cal machine-guns to
look after you. Because you have got them covering you,
there is no use shooting back with your pea-shooter [SA80
assault rifle]. So you wait until they've cleared the area [of
Taliban], then you get back out again. It was like: they're
shooting at us; we'd better stop. The shooting has stopped;
right, get back out there. In Kajaki, we built an area there for
the police to do road checks and we constantly got harassment
fire. It took us two days to build it because they [the
Taliban] were just constantly firing at us – on and off – all the
time. They would fire and then try and move off. Or some
would have the guts to fire and stay there. The lads on the
hilltop in the OPs [observation posts] would spot where they
were and hammer them. If things got really bad, Apaches
would be called in or fast air [support] too.

But, for me, it couldn't have been a better tour. One, you
were getting all the incidents – you were getting shot at and
all that kind of thing. But, second, everything [the kit] was
completely knackered [when we arrived] so I was actually
plying my trade. If I had gone there and everything was
working perfectly, it wouldn't have been as good. Of the
twenty-eight pieces of kit that we inherited when we arrived,
twenty-six pieces got fixed. I loved it. Yet as soon as you come
home, it's back to normal. It is as if you have never been out
there. All you have is the memories.