Sergeant D and Sarbi spent the first three months of 2007 training for deployment, rehearsing every move the EDD and engineers in the EOD teams would make on route searches and compound clearances in Uruzgan. It was mission-specific training, geared towards real operational threats, with staged scenarios as close as possible to those that had previously occurred in the lawless province. The exercises focused on lessons learned and real-time reports from the areas of operation. Weekly reviews of the latest information and intelligence ensured technical accuracy and relevance for those about to deploy. No two firefights or battles are ever the same and if enemy tactics changed, so did the training.
Soldiers prepare. Battles hinge on split second decisions. So does staying alive. Luck is only partially involved, so the Aussies believed in making their own through practice and preparation: finessing TTPs as if lives depended on it because, truth be told, they did. Train hard; fight easy.
The mission rehearsal exercises were conducted in Queensland with the platoons they would deploy with, in terrain and environment similar to that of Uruzgan. D quickly got acquainted with the Magnificent Bastards of the Second Combat Engineer Regiment, as the blokes are proudly known, and sharpened up some more on the tactics, techniques and procedures. To create a realistic and stressful threat environment they used functioning replica IEDs, landmines, explosive charges, explosive hazards and simulators. They practised search patterns and close-quarter combat drills. Every mission was evaluated and every response by the troops monitored and adjusted where necessary.
They drilled on their area of operation, the enemy threat and the enemy’s known TTPs. As Sun Tzu wrote in the seminal Art of War, ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles’.
It was practical, hard-going, hot and sweaty work, carried out in the middle of an Australian summer, useful because they were going into the Afghanistan fighting season when temperatures reached 50 degrees Celsius. Sarbi didn’t complain. She was having a blast being with D every paw of the way and her devotion to him was getting deeper by the day, if possible. More protective. A loyal guardian.
D was scheduled to stand piquet—guard duty—midway through a sweltering night. Sarbi slept snuggled beside him, standard operating procedure when on patrol. One of the guys coming off piquet tried to wake the handler but Sarbi jumped up and went into a defensive stance—four legs locked at the elbow, neck craned, ears back as she let out a low-level growl that rumbled down her sturdy chest. D’s mate, too frightened to move closer to the menacing hound, pelted the soldier with rocks to wake him. ‘Yeah, Sarbs was pretty protective. The guys would have to throw rocks at me because she’d jump up and bail them up,’ he says. The handler was proud of her protectiveness but could have done without the rocks. ‘A few hit me in the lower extremities. Deliberately, I think.’
The Diggers were disciplined, thorough, determined. They weren’t mucking around; they couldn’t afford to. Their unofficial credo was ‘don’t let your mates down’. One soldier had his chest tattooed with the words ‘I will not fail my brothers’.
Australia had been blessed to date. Only one soldier had been killed in Afghanistan and that was in 2002, but nearly twenty had been injured, some seriously. Seventy per cent of injuries were caused by IEDs. The US Army had lost 103 soldiers to IEDs. The Aussies heading in wanted to maintain the status quo. Nobody wanted a mate’s name added to the statistics.
The Australian Army has what it calls a layered approach to protecting its troops. The year-old Counter IED Task Force worked closely with the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization and other allies to gather the latest intelligence on the enemy’s IED techniques and tactics, to reduce or neutralise the threat. Incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan were reviewed and analysed CSI-style. Where possible engineers recovered disarmed IEDs and roadside mines and sent them to the Combined Explosives Exploitation Centre in Kandahar, where every feature of the weapon was examined for common traits to identify and track down the bomb-maker, and develop effective countermeasures. In-field intelligence pinpointed bomb-making facilities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) buzzed over villages on surveillance flights picking up signatures the human eye had missed.
The army’s commanders and IED specialists considered the IED fight ‘a mini arms race against a fairly agile and fairly smart enemy’. Lieutenant Colonel Russell Maddalena, the operations officer—OpsO in army slang—of the task force admitted ‘there is no one silver bullet’ to defeat the scourge of homemade explosives, but the ADF and its coalition partners had harnessed what he described as some of the best military and scientific brains in the business to protect the troops. Stay ahead of the threat.
D was a professional. He listened up, trained hard, and put in the hours. He got the inside running on the lay of the land in and around Camp Holland. He studied the Australians’ rules of engagement (ROE) for the RTF2, a strict document that outlines when and under what circumstances the soldiers can return fire and engage the enemy. ‘That’s set out in stone,’ he says now. ‘When you get there if there are any changes to the ROE they let you know.’ The key focus was minimising the loss of civilian lives, protecting coalition forces and completing the mission. He treated with similar respect the first Standard Operating Procedure of the task force—the rules of soldiers’ conduct that prescribed how soldiers should deal with Afghan villagers and their cultural and tribal practices. All deploying troops are given a quick immersion course on local customs— Pashtunwali 101. It was essential.
Uruzgan is a complicated place and ‘in the conservative south, it was the most isolated and backward province’ of Afghanistan. Ethnically, the population is 91 per cent Pashtun, 8 per cent Hazara and 1 per cent ‘other’. The Pashtun is a tapestry of tribes of whom the Durrani in the south and Ghilzai from the east are the two largest, not to mention historical arch rivals. ‘A Pashtun is never at peace, except when he is at war,’ goes a national proverb.
The Pashtun live by a code of conduct known as pash-tunwali—translated literally ‘the way of the Pashtuns’. It is based on honour, hospitality and a primitive eye-for-an-eye revenge otherwise known as badal. ‘The need to secure revenge for any slight, any insult, has been part of the Afghan’s life through his history. Blood feuds between individuals, between families, and between clans or tribes, are endemic,’ writes Mohammad Yousaf in Afghanistan, The Bear Trap. ‘The Afghan will never turn the other cheek, a killing must be avenged by a killing, and so it goes on from generation to generation. A family will never forget a debt of honour.’
Another element of the code is hamsaya—‘one who shares the same shadow’. As the Military Review noted, hamsaya is a form of servitude in return for protection from stronger tribes or the provision of goods, which explains, in part, the rise of the Taliban. Afghans historically follow the strongest tribes, or those who have prevailed in battle. ‘Pashtun history is filled with heroes who played both sides for the benefit of tribe, family and honour,’ notes The Christian Science Monitor.
The anonymous author of the 2005 book Hunting al-Qaeda was more blunt. Pashtun warlords have spent decades ‘betraying each other on a daily basis’.
Sergeant D also received the standard Operational Deployment Guide issued to all troops, outlining the potential stressors he might encounter in Uruzgan. The soldiers are encouraged to share it with family members, who also feel the stress of their absence, possibly more. Worry is a crippling curse.
After pre-deployment training, D flew home to Sydney to spend a week with his girlfriend. Seven days for seven months.
A week out from deployment for the RTF2, the dog mafia moved to the Gallipoli Barracks at Enoggera in Brisbane, from where they would deploy.
D, of course, wasn’t travelling alone. He had responsibility for an expensive piece of military hardware that ran on four paws and a lot of love, EDD Sarbi. His workload was effectively doubled. There was a lot to do and a lot of paperwork to fill in.
Sarbi had a complete medical check-up at the veterinary clinic and requisite inoculations to prevent her contracting local diseases. D took the warning about the dangers of rabid Afghan dogs in his stride. Sarbi didn’t seem too worried either. Unlike a lot of dogs she wasn’t vet-shy. To her it was just another social outing and another two-legged to charm for pats. Sarbi was a canine prima donna; she knew how to work a room. The handler filled in the official forms and permits and filed them with the Australian quarantine and customs services, to guarantee Sarbi’s exit and re-entry with minimal fuss. He prepped the EDD gear, ensured the transport kennel was sound and made an inventory of equipment needed to keep his hound safe. Sarbi might be a dog but she didn’t travel light and she had a combat wardrobe that would make the most pampered poodle green with envy.
The terrain and climate was as ruthless an enemy as the Taliban. The cold in Afghanistan could freeze the diesel in the Australian Light Armoured Vehicles (ASLAVs) and Long Range Patrol Vehicles (LRPVs) and the summer sun turned the ground into a bed of hot rocks.
Sarbi wore custom-made dust and fragmentation protection glasses, aptly named Doggles—think Jackie O-sized sunglasses for dogs. She also had four canvas booties to protect her paws from sharp rocks and prickles that could crack and wear down the dogs’ pads. The course bulldust would get between her claws and wear away skin. The booties were a fetching red with circulation holes punched in the fabric. They had canvas soles reinforced by tough rubber grips for added protection. Sarbi had custom-designed earphones to block the sonic boom and over-blast shock waves of explosives and the pop pop pop of rifle fire. The earphones were similar to the reactive hearing protection Peltors that the soldiers wore. Constant exposure to weapons fire could have a deleterious effect on the dogs’ ears and in some cases, their psychological state. For the colder months at the start of spring and winter—when D and Sarbi would be ripping in and ripping out of Uruzgan—Sarbi wore a fitted oilskin jacket known as a Doggie Drizabone. Very Dogue. D also carried a heating pad for her outdoor kennel on base and a thin canvas-covered mattress for sleep-outs on patrol. ‘The dogs appreciate it,’ D says.
D and Sarbi were part of a three man and three explosive detection dog team joining RTF2. The unit was tight, a brotherhood within the brotherhood. He and his fellow Doggies, Sappers Zeke Smith and Pete Lawlis, looked out for each other. Zeke had a black kelpie named FloJo and Pete took a three-year-old blue heeler called Merlin. The dogs, like their handlers, got on well.
Sarbi was a dominant bitch and didn’t put up with any dog’s nonsense. She’d tolerate it for so long before putting an annoying mutt in its place. Sarbi, D says with a chuckle, had sent a few of the other dogs to the veterinary clinic for emergency stitches back at the SME, but she got on fine with Merlin and FloJo. Who knows, they had probably worked out who was going to be top dog already. D suspected it would be Sarbi.
The Second Reconstruction Task Force staged out of Brisbane on 12 March 2007.
D was keyed up. This is what he had been training for but, at that moment, Sarbi was his priority. Dogs know when their masters are about to leave them and turn on a serious case of the sulks, complete with downcast looks and droopy tails. How could you leave me? Sarbi was a canine frequent flyer and had a Zen-like temperament when not chasing the ball, but D didn’t want the big mass of fur stressed about their impending separation, even if she didn’t know she’d be locked in her first class custom-built crate for the long-haul flight. He gave the hefty hound a well-earned rub behind the ears and offered a few reassuring words, just in case. Attagirl, Sarbs. Focusing on Sarbi had another benefit, too. ‘That took your mind off any nerves or thinking about what’s to come,’ he says now.
Sarbi was loaded into the chartered 747 aircraft for the flight to the Forward Logistics Area (FLA) in Kuwait. Given the length of the flight and her requisite confinement, D didn’t feed her. There was no point. The dogs didn’t have the luxury of using a bathroom in the cargo hold. Besides, Sarbi would curl into a tight ball and sleep most of the way, her only movements in response to doggie dreams that made her snout quiver and paws twitch as if in chase.
The plane touched down on 13 March and the handler collected his hound, who was happy to be free of her crate. They had ten days to cool their heels in Kuwait and went through a series of mission briefings and more drills. The dogs were trained daily to maintain situational awareness.
D was issued with essential war-going equipment and collected new front and back Kevlar ballistic plates for his body armour vest and soft-moulded shrapnel fragment protection inserts that hug the curves of the body and the small of his back—and a cache of weaponry. ‘Things to keep me alive,’ he says with signature cool.
Sarbi was already sorted. Everything she needed was stowed in her handler’s bag.
The troop left Kuwait for Afghanistan on 23 March. Hitching a ride on the C-130J Hercules were two official war artists from Melbourne, Lyndell Brown and her husband, Charles Green. The history of war art began in the First World War and the fine tradition is now enshrined for perpetuity in our national culture by an act of Parliament.
Brown and Green had spent the latter part of February in Baghdad photographing the action they saw, capturing the pathos of Australian soldiers at war and riding in armoured personnel carriers down Route Irish, said to be the one of most dangerous roads in the world. Back home in the southern state of Victoria they would use the photographs as the basis for a striking collection of artwork that eventually toured the country, before being added to the official collection at the Australian War Memorial. Now, though, the artistic collaborators were en route to visit an Australian contingent in Kandahar, via Tarin Kot.
The flight line was a mass of restless waiting. ‘The army maxim—hurry up and wait,’ Green recalls wryly. He spied a huddle of SAS troopers, identifiable by their Ned Kelly-esque beards and strong, lean physiques. They kept to themselves, shooting the breeze like they were knocking back a beer or two at the pub on a Friday night, not about to go into one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan.
Nearby, Green watched the Doggies—three men and three hounds. The handlers actively engaged with the dogs, issuing commands and tossing them tennis balls as treats. The dogs never strayed more than a few metres from their handlers and seemed happiest when leaning on their two-legged mates. ‘Strong, quiet Aussie blokes,’ Green says now. With an artist’s searching eye, he looks beyond the physical and finds emotion in the action. To him, a soldier’s calloused hand draped casually around his dog’s neck conveyed nuance and mood, quiet authority and easy command. The dogs were content, calm and controlled. The partnerships were almost poetic.
‘The handlers were all very close to their dogs, it was quite cute, really,’ Green says. ‘They were continually playing and petting the dogs, and the dogs were continually huddling up to their handler, lying across them. These men are highly trained and yet there is this intense bond. At the same time they are very proud to be in Afghanistan, to be deployed with these dogs.’
The sight of fully armed, muscle-bound soldiers looking after their hounds with profound tenderness seemed incongruous—yet so perfectly natural. It gave the artists an idea. ‘In the back of our minds, always, was the idea of a dog portrait. How cute can you go, but not in a mocking way,’ he says. ‘The ADF is made up of men and women who are like firemen. They are putting their lives on the line and they are highly trained and taught to reflect on what they are doing. The effect of being in the presence of those people was like being sent to the moon and watching history unfold. It strips out any desire or ability to editorialise— you are in documentary mode.’
Once at Camp Holland, Green and Brown photographed Sarbi and D, FloJo and Zeke and a yellow Labrador retriever, Aussie, who was on his way home after completing the First Reconstruction Task Force (RTF1).
Looking at the photographs now, one is reminded of the Stoics. The handlers stare directly ahead as the dogs stare directly at them, heads tilted up in expectation of a command and reward to come. The bond is as natural as breathing. In one image, Sarbi sits obediently at D’s left leg, her brown leather leash doubled over and held in his right hand. D, ramrod straight, squared-off shoulders atop a broad chest, looks like a man who means business, with his Browning 9mm handgun strapped to the outside of his right thigh. He never left home without it, at least when in theatre.
Sarbi, her white blaze not yet smudged by the dust and grime of Uruzgan, looks positively serene. She has followed D’s gaze and looks exactly where he does. Like her master, she is poised, ready for action.
‘When the story broke of what happened to Sarbi and what she’d been through we thought, “we know that dog”,’ says Green now. ‘And so we decided to paint the portrait we always wanted to paint of the army dogs.’
The dogs were all heroes but there really was no better canine candidate to sit for an official war portrait than Sarbi. The artists used lush oils on linen and painted Sarbi sitting next to Sergeant D, who is crouching down on the rocky gravel. The striking portrait measures a mere 31 by 31 centimetres but Sarbi’s strength and beauty are rendered to perfection.
Said Brown: ‘It’s an incredible story of hope from the field of tragedy that is modern warfare and it is something that ordinary people can relate to.’