2006
Six weeks later, I was in a car with my mum, my sister and my girlfriend at the time, driving along the F5 freeway from Wollongong to Sydney airport.
Things had happened fast. One minute, I’d been out of work, with a mounting tide of debts, including two lots of child maintenance payments, and little hope of finding a well-paid job; the next, I was going to war.
Driving past the Royal National Park, I wondered how different things would be for me in Afghanistan. On television, it looked like it was all dirt and desert. It had been five years since the al-Qaeda terrorists had flown their hijacked jets into the Twin Towers and, while I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the news, it seemed that things were hotting up again in Afghanistan, after some initial successes of the coalition forces.
I knew about as much about Afghanistan as would the average Australian – fuck all. After September 11, Australia had sent to Afghanistan a task force based around an SAS squadron and, by all accounts, they – and the Americans – had done a good job of routing the Taliban and helping the Afghanis elect a new government, under Hamid Karzai. A year later, Australia pulled its troops out of their base at Bagram, near Kabul, and the boys were home for Christmas. The SAS, however, wasn’t out of the fray for long, as they were back in action in March 2003, spearheading the advance into Baghdad. After the initial invasion of Iraq, the SAS came back to Australia and the government held welcome-home parades in Sydney and Perth. It was John Howard’s equivalent of George Bush landing on the aircraft carrier and declaring ‘Mission accomplished’.
But now, as we drove to the airport, there was a story on the radio of yet another car bomb going off somewhere in Iraq and killing dozens of people – most of them innocent Muslim civilians.
‘At least you’re not going there,’ my mum said.
It was the same with my dad, who I’d moved in with after splitting up with Kim. He wasn’t happy about me taking a job in Afghanistan but, like Mum, he seemed to think it was safer than Baghdad. I couldn’t care less. All I knew was that I was going to war, and the reality of this was finally starting to hit home.
The money the new job paid was important to me, as I needed to get on top of my debts, and would have a financial commitment to my five kids for years to come. During the car ride, I didn’t think about the morality of going to war for money, or whether some people would class me as a mercenary, or maybe see something wrong in the fact that the coalition was using paid civilian contractors in a war zone.
I’d been over the moon when I’d got the email from CAI confirming my contract. I’d been directionless after leaving the army and police, and had way more than the two years’ experience the CAI required of its handlers. I’d been well trained by the army and the police as a dog handler, but there were few opportunities for me to work as one in Australia, outside of those that government agencies offered. But now, everything appeared to be coming together. It seemed like something, or someone, was telling me that my future was in working with dogs, and that it was what I was meant to do. In Afghanistan, I’d have the chance to put into practice, in a truly operational environment, everything I’d learned from my training and experience while in uniform in Australia.
I was booked to fly with Emirates and thought to myself that if you had to go to war, this wasn’t a bad way to travel. I was looking forward to getting through the awkward farewells, boarding the plane, and ordering my first bourbon and Coke. Was I nervous? Maybe. I was excited at the prospect of a new challenge, and also, like any soldier, at finally putting into practice everything I’d learned and trained for over the years.
In one sense, an explosive detection dog handler in the police or the army, when they’re working in support of the civil authorities, is in an operational situation when searching for bombs or weapons. If some nutjob sets off a bomb in Sydney and you get caught in the blast, you’re just as dead as if the same thing happens elsewhere, but the risk of it happening is obviously far greater in somewhere like Afghanistan.
As I didn’t want everyone hanging around for too long when saying their goodbyes, I tried to get them over with before I checked in. However, Mum, my sister and my girlfriend all insisted on staying until the flight was called. It was just as well they did.
I’d arranged to meet another dog handler, who was also going to Afghanistan to work for the same mob as I was, at the airport. His name was Guy, and he was an Australian of Filipino descent, who had been working for the Australian Protective Service. Australian Protective Service provides security for Parliament House, various federal government and defence department properties, and our embassies abroad. It’s also responsible for the initial response to terrorist incidents at Australia’s major airports and for providing ‘sky marshals’ on civilian flights. Guy had flown from Brisbane to Sydney and was booked on the same flight that I was. Once we found each other, we hit it off immediately. We queued together to check in. After I was called forward, I dragged my kitbag and backpack up to the scales.
I gave the Emirates check-in woman my name and produced my passport, and she started tapping away on her keyboard. Then she frowned. ‘Um, I can’t seem to find a booking here for you, Mr Bryant.’
I resisted the urge to swear. ‘What do you mean? It’s been booked by the company I’m going to work for – Canine Associates International. Sydney to Heathrow, and from there on to Manus, in Kyrgyzstan.’
‘Just let me try something else.’ She tapped away some more, then shook her head. ‘I’m very sorry, but I don’t have you booked on any flights.’
‘What the . . . Guy?’ I called to my new colleague.
He came up to the counter, gave his full name and produced his passport. The woman shook her head, apologised and told us that Guy didn’t have a booking either. We knew it wasn’t her fault, but Guy and I were seriously pissed off. We left the queue and started making calls. As it turned out, the company hadn’t ever confirmed our bookings and paid for our tickets. Everyone we talked to was very apologetic, but that didn’t stop this whole thing being a fucking joke. Guy called some friends in Sydney and arranged to stay with them until things were sorted out, while I went back to the people who’d come to see me off and told them the news.
My mood fluctuated on the drive back home. At first, I was angry that I’d said my goodbyes and psyched myself up as best as I could to fly off to Afghanistan and the war. Man, CAI was worse than the army, which usually sets the benchmark when it comes to fucking people around.
As we drove in the fast-flowing freeway traffic through the darkened bush back towards Wollongong, I started to mellow. I would have been happier being on the plane, but at the same time I felt a bit like a condemned man who’d been granted a couple of days’ stay of execution. I realised I’d have a little longer to enjoy life in Australia, and resolved to make good use of the time. I’d still be getting stuck into the bourbon, but not at 30,000 feet over some desert.
When I returned to the airport a few days later, it was a relief to find the ticket had now been booked and paid for. I said my goodbyes, and waved as I went through into the departure lounge.
This was it; I was really going overseas. When a smiling flight attendant served me my first bourbon, I settled back into my seat and switched on the in-flight entertainment. This, I thought, this is the way to go to war.
The flight, however, seemed to go on forever. We stopped somewhere in the middle of the night – I was so disorientated that I can’t remember where – before landing again at Heathrow. I had to wait for a connection and by the time I touched down at Manus airport, in Kyrgyzstan, I was tired, dirty, and probably a little hung-over. Guy had travelled on a different flight from Sydney, so I arrived in this strange former outpost of the Soviet Union alone.
Kyrgyzstan had aligned itself with the United States early in the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Manus had become an important support base for the war in Afghanistan. Australian Air Force refuelling aircraft had been kept here in the early days of the fighting, and the air base near the civilian airport was still a major hub for a number of different forces flying their people into and out of Afghanistan.
The uniformed bureaucrats at Immigration looked like extras from some old Cold War spy movie and the whole terminal – a drab, ’60s Russian-inspired building – was looking pretty tired. When I finally cleared Customs, I was mobbed in the arrivals hall by a swarm of taxi drivers, but no-one from the company was there to meet me and I had to work out how to get to the Manus air force base.
‘Mister, mister, mister . . . you come with me,’ they were all yelling in my face. I was tired and jet-lagged, and had no idea how far the base was from the terminal. I picked a guy at random and asked him if he could take me there. ‘Yes, yes, mister. Twenty dollars, mister.’
This sounded like a lot, but I didn’t have much alternative but to agree. The air outside was chilly, but at least I wasn’t inside an aeroplane. I loaded my bags into the back of the driver’s crappy old sedan and got in. ‘I take you, Mister. No problem.’
My 20 US dollars bought me a 600-metre drive from the terminal to the front gate of the military base. I was pissed off with the driver, but too knackered to argue with the dodgy bastard. I showed the orders I had with me to an American soldier at the gate, who called the US Air Force police. A guy came and checked my paperwork and let me in.
He directed me to a line of tents, which was the transit accommodation for people coming and going. I found a stretcher and passed out. I was too tired to reflect on what lay ahead, or to care much about the journey of false starts and endless plane trips I’d had.
When I later woke up and started looking around, I asked an American airman where I could get a coffee, and he directed me to a café on base with internet access. I went there, bought a coffee and sat down at a computer. I still didn’t know who I was supposed to meet or report to, or where, but while sitting there, I saw a familiar face.
‘Hey, Mick!’ I couldn’t believe it. Here, just wandering past me in this formerly communist country, was Mick McAuliffe, a bloke I’d been in the army dogs with.
‘Shane! What the fuck are you doing here?’
Mick had been working in the US and, as it turned out, had arrived in Afghanistan only a couple of days earlier. He was now with the same company I was, CAI. Mick and I caught up on what each of us had been up to, and we went back to the tent, collected my gear and took it to where he was staying.
No thanks to them, I started to get my shit together. The resourceful Aussie had scammed a four-bed room in a proper hard-standing building. There was no sign yet, however, of Guy. He showed up a few hours later and catching up with him felt like old times, even though we barely knew each other.
Guy had been screwed around worse than I had. ‘I reported at the gate and they wouldn’t even let me in,’ he said. ‘I had to get a cab into town and find somewhere to make some phone calls.’
From then on, it was a classic hurry-up-and-wait situation. We were stuck on the base at Manus for twelve days. Like all US bases I’ve been on, Manus was massive, and set up like a self-contained chunk of small-town America. As well as the café and the chow hall, there was a Pizza Hut, a tailor, a barber and a PX – the post exchange shop.
As we couldn’t go sightseeing off-base, we had to occupy ourselves as best as we could and, to kill time, I’d walk the aisles of the PX. It was set up like a small, cramped variety store, with different departments. There were television sets, DVD players and ghetto blasters in the electrical section, along with iPods, computers, new-release movies, and CDs, and there was a whole aisle devoted to war-related merchandising. It was bizarre. There were coffee cups, T-shirts, Zippo lighters, ashtrays, and souvenir maps of Afghanistan, all emblazoned with the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ logo – an American eagle clutching a bomb in his talons. One of the classier souvenirs was the beer stein, with a giant ceramic eagle built into the handle, with his head on the pop-open lid. There was a separate range of ‘Afghanistan Now’ goods – mousepads, embroidered patches and more coffee mugs, featuring an Apache gunship flying across the mountains, with the font and colour the same as in the posters for Apocalypse Now. It seemed you couldn’t go to war without buying the T-shirt, or the mousepad.
The US Air Force allowed its personnel and civilian contractors staying at Manus two beers every 24 hours and while the system was policed electronically – you were issued with an ID card that was swiped when you bought a drink – I got friendly with a couple of the air force bar staff, who’d palm me the odd extra drink without swiping my card.
As well as military people, there were plenty of civilian contractors passing through Kyrgyzstan en route to Afghanistan. They were a mixed bunch of nationalities – Americans, Canadians, Brits, South Africans, a Tanzanian and Aussies – all ex-military or ex-police. By and large, they were a good bunch, but a couple were fucking idiots – try-hards and wannabes.
Contracting attracts very different people. Some are ex-military, who are there for the money and, maybe, because they want to see some action, and so put themselves and their training to the ultimate test. Some have been on operations and some haven’t. There’s also the lunatic fringe – would-be Rambos and gun nuts, who have seen too many Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies and want to shoot someone. Of course, I’d rather work alongside someone who’s there because they can do the job and need the money than alongside a psycho who wants to find out what it’s like to shoot someone, but, unfortunately, the job attracts both types.
Buck Dikes was one American I warmed to immediately. He was a former US Marine and had worked as dog handler with the American police. He was larger than life in every way; a big guy with a good sense of humour, who liked a beer and was an excellent communicator. You couldn’t help but like him. He was a bit older than the rest of us – in his late forties – and, naturally, Guy and I immediately christened him Uncle Buck, after John Candy’s character in the movie of the same name.
In the background was the constant hum and roar of C-130s and C-17s coming and going to Afghanistan. The other dog handlers and I were travelling on what the Americans called Space-A – space available transport. I was starting to learn a whole new language and Space-A, translated, meant low-priority. Uniformed American personnel got top billing, arranged by rank, and coalition soldiers and airmen were next. At the bottom of the heap were the civilian contractors like me. We’d show up at the Pax terminal at a predetermined ‘show time’, to see if our names would be called for a flight. When they weren’t, we’d filter back to the coffee shop or the PX, or watch DVDs in our rooms. I was used to waiting, thanks to my days in the Australian Army, but it never got any easier.
‘Bryant, Shane,’ the US Air Force sergeant said, looking around the terminal. I looked up and replied.
Next, he called Buck’s name, then Guy’s and then Mick’s.
‘You’re on,’ said the sergeant.
We dropped our big bags on a pallet, and airmen started covering them with a cargo net and lashing them down. I picked up my daypack, and we filed out of the building and onto the runway. It was May and, while the days were getting warmer, there was still a knife’s edge of chill in the black night as we walked across the tarmac to the squat grey bulk of the C-17 transport aircraft.
The temperature momentarily increased a couple of degrees as we passed through the kerosene-smelling wash of the hot exhaust of the two jet engines, which were already turning and burning. A loadmaster wearing a desert-tan flight suit, with a nine-millimetre in a shoulder holster, directed us towards the rear ramp and up into the aircraft’s cavernous empty belly. There was only another couple of people on the aircraft, which could seat more than 100. After all this waiting, it seemed they’d found a plane just for us lowly civilian dog handlers. An American flag hung from the ceiling, stretching out proudly by the forward bulkhead. The crewman got inside and raised the ramp, and the stars disappeared from the night sky. The engines began to whine as the pilot increased the throttle, and we rumbled down the runway.
With a noisy clunk the C-17 swallowed its wheels. I was in the air at last, on my way to someone else’s war.