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Keep Your Head Down
By Nathan Mullins Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2011 Nathan Mullins
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74269-460-3
CHAPTER 1
DODGING THE CLICHÉ
ON THURSDAY5 November 2009, I left for a military operational tour of Afghanistan. I'd be spending the next four months based in Uruzgan, southern Afghanistan, seeking and then killing or capturing Taliban insurgents in that province. Essentially, that's the mission of every coalition soldier in Uruzgan but, as I said, I wasn't really a coalition soldier. I'm a civilian, taking on the job that the full-time army usually does. I was leaving behind my gorgeous wife and three beautiful daughters, one barely five months old. That really twisted my stomach, and even now it pains me to accept the fact that I did that to them.
I didn't have to go. I'm not a regular soldier, but a reservist, a full volunteer, like the majority of the guys who served with me. In my day job I'm the International Program Manager for Australian Aid International, a humanitarian NGO, and would have reasonably expected to deploy to a disaster or two in the time I was going to be in Afghanistan. (While I was in Afghanistan the Philippines experienced a massive typhoon and Haiti a terrible earthquake, both of which I would have responded to.) I had recently published a book, and was planning on writing another. I was really enjoying the writing process and industry. Professionally and personally, I was very fulfilled. I had an extremely happy home life, a great group of friends and relatives, and many interests that were going to be impossible to indulge in in Afghanistan: the Afghanis don't really go for surfing or mountain bike riding, though they do seem to do a lot of backcountry hiking and rock stacking (I'll get to that later).
Afghanistan had been demonised for me. Not just the insurgents, but all my lead-up training made me feel that the actual country, the land I would walk on, would conspire to kill me with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), extreme weather, disease, wild dogs and attack from high vantage points. Think of all the nightmare clichés about South Central Los Angeles, Somalia and outback Australian murders rolled into one, and you're getting close. So why did I go? There were plenty of reasons that I thought were good at the time, and plenty that I still think are good. I will get a chance to explain them. You know what I left behind to go to Afghanistan, but I also need to describe exactly what I was taking on by joining this contingent.
Over my lifetime, the word Afghanistan has become synonymous with strife, war, famine, destruction, poverty, corruption and intrigue. Honestly, I didn't see much that should change your mind about that. While in Afghanistan I used the (old) joke, 'The American B-52 bombers came through at the start of the war, dropped 20 000 bombs and did 100 million dollars of improvement.' It's a joke, but there is some truth in it. Afghanistan is staggeringly underdeveloped. A child in Afghanistan is 40 times more likely to die before the age of five than a child in Australia. The average life expectancy is around 44 years. In Australia it's 81. Public expenditure on education and health is pathetic. In the humanitarian field I've been to a broad range of places in crisis, but on statistics alone this was the worst. Don't get me wrong, I did see some amazing sights and had incredible experiences. But I'm not about to buy a holiday house in Uruzgan (though it would be cheap, you could get away from the holiday season hustle and bustle and enjoy the quaint feeling of using an outside toilet ... err, make that using anywhere outside as a toilet).
Technically, or to put it formally, I was going to deploy during the Afghan winter as a member of 2 CCG (the Second Commando Company Group), as the SOTG (Special Operations Task Group). There are other Australian military units working in the region, but the SOTG is the special-forces component. The SASR (Special Air Service Regiment) and 2 Commando Regiment (the full-time commando unit) usually share the special-forces responsibilities in this region. At the time I was going to Afghanistan, winter 2009–10, neither of these units would be present, and we reservists would be the only show in town. It was a huge and onerous responsibility. Not to worry, we were supremely prepared. To me, I was about to represent Australia on the world stage, and reinforce our commitment to foreign policy to our friends and enemies. It felt important, critical.
In preparation for the deployment we had a number of hurdles to jump. I had to complete a Special Forces Close Quarters Battle course, which was four weeks of learning the fine art of shooting as you move through buildings, complete with lounge settings and hostages (without the hostages getting holes in them — we weren't too worried about the lounge). Then a Close Quarters Fighting course, learning military unarmed combat, arrest and fighting techniques. When I think about that course, it was more about enduring the techniques than learning them. You tend to survive them (or not) rather than pass or fail. After that I had to do a Commando Urban Operations course, which trained us in movement in and around buildings and transition from a rural to an urban combat environment. That particular course, not my favourite, was run by a barely restrained, unhinged psychopath hell-bent on purging the terms 'adult learning environment' and 'positive reinforcement' from both the army manual of teaching techniques and the world at large. Further, I had to complete a Demolitions User course so I could safely handle explosives and be useful to the nominated explosive specialists, should the need arise to demolish an objective in the style of The Guns of Navarone or to jump on the bandwagon and destroy any historic statues of Buddha that the Taliban had left standing. All of these courses are physically gruelling and professionally draining. They demand high standards and exact terrible punishments if the skills are performed incorrectly. The completion of these courses got me about halfway through my preparation.
Of course, my earlier military qualifications would also be very 'useful' and involved such skills as Amphibious Operations courses (extremely handy in landlocked Afghanistan) and parachuting (hopefully that wouldn't be necessary, as it is pretty much voted the worst possible way to go to war, by any random poll of soldiers). I also became a trainer on a missile system specifically designed to destroy the best armour on modern battle tanks (though the closest thing the Taliban have to that is a Toyota Hilux with one flat tyre).
Next came a number of periods of training at venues all over Australia, referred to as lead-up training. This covered practice in vehicle operations, desert warfare, extreme cold weather operations, helicopter training, reinforcing of infantry skills, Afghan cultural training and language, and briefs on our enemy. Topping it all off was a separate culmination exercise, run over a month, showcasing all the skills acquired above and proving we could do them to a rigorous standard. To say it was an intense and difficult year would be a momentous understatement, and, remember, all of this had to be endured, navigated and otherwise overcome or defeated before I could even get to Afghanistan, where I was reasonably certain I would be killed.
Of course, at the end of the day, I didn't think I would be killed, and obviously wasn't (I've heard of ghost writing but I'm sure that's different). But this brings me to a good point. There are obvious dangers in being a coalition soldier in Afghanistan, or anyone living or working in Afghanistan for that matter. We already heard about the mean age of death, and that's for a farmer, not a guy playing with explosives, missiles, helicopters and guns. So, truly, a soldier has more opportunities for danger, and a special-forces soldier, like me, even more. I looked at the statistics of death and injury, the way we operated in the army, and the group of guys I was going with and was sure — in what I can only describe as the same way that Christians believe in heaven, Satanists in hell and Scientologists in a strange machine that tells them how awesome they are — that I would not be killed or even injured while in Afghanistan. This wasn't some cheap form of bravado, nothing like it. I was just sure that I wouldn't be that guy. I never am. I have done plenty of 'dangerous' things in my life, in the pursuit of duty, money, crooks, fun, surf, my mates or the humanitarian imperative, and always known how far I can push the boundaries. So far anyway (cross your fingers, mine are permanently crossed).
Of course, the army can throw you a few googlies, and has a way of putting you in a position you have very little individual control over, but I had one other important ace up my sleeve — I believed in my commanders. This isn't as common as you think in the army. The officer commanding (OC) the unit was the best I have ever known, and my own platoon commander was a mate of 15 years, in whose competence and humanity I have utter and unfaltering faith. That helps. I didn't need bravado, I had confidence. Far better in the long run.
So, taking on a 12-month soldiering contract and deploying to Afghanistan for four months was quite an undertaking. I took it, but my wife and kids took it with me, that's for sure.
I'm a civilian, and I will explain why I say that. In the wider army, my reservist status gets me called a 'choco'. This name originated in World War II and is derived from the thought that reservists are actually chocolate soldiers and would melt in the sun. So the army doesn't really consider me a soldier. Perhaps not the army, but the regular soldiers, at least, think that. I have a normal job, and a thorough and compelling life outside the army. I don't live on a base or have an army-supplied house. I don't get free medical or dental cover. I wear my uniform once a week, for a couple of hours, if that, and then I'm a civilian again. The other difference between full-time soldiers and most chocos (the army uses it as a derogatory term so only us chocos can call each other that, you know how it goes) is attitude. This is a gross generalisation (of which I will make many in this book), but soldiers are often quite different from other members of society. They live and work in a large, insulating organisation that provides guidance on the smallest minutiae of life. Think about the image of soldiers you have, and how they look, act, talk and otherwise conduct their lives, and you will understand that in many cases they occupy a section of society that the rest of us don't. Don't worry, I'm not a soldier-hater, far from it, and Australian military personnel are possessed of many fine attributes: honour, bravery, integrity, determination and a rigid adherence to a code. These are good things. However, sometimes those attributes come attached to a few 'qualities' that are not as desirable — xenophobia, homophobia, sexism and racism — that seem to be tolerated, at times, on a corporate level within the army and couldn't exist within other professional organisations.
The book is called Keep Your Head Down for a good reason. A few years ago I started to use this term as a parting statement, a form of goodbye, for friends leaving for war zones, disasters and general mischief around the world. It always seemed appropriate no matter where they were going and what they would face. Then I started to use it as a goodbye for any time and any circumstance (maybe my friends just generally take their lives in their hands too often). To those in danger it meant 'be careful'. To those not in danger it seems to say 'work hard' without having to be so patronising. Anyway, soon enough it was just my way of saying goodbye. I'd nearly always sign off emails with that statement. In Afghanistan, every time I said it I meant it. I could have said, 'For God's sake, mate, when the shooting starts, get your head down and keep it down.' But that would be ridiculous, and not really what anyone wanted. My mates, like me, desperately wanted to face our enemy. 'Keep your head down' said everything I wanted to say.
The book, for the most part, will follow chronologically the operations I was on in Afghanistan. Actually, that sounds pretty boring; but it won't be, I promise. Within the stories I will drag out 15 years worth of army folklore, truisms, falsisms (that's a new word, you won't have heard of it) and manuals of training. I'm going to try to give you an insight into how Afghanistan got into this state, and how Australia got involved, but the book isn't a definitive guide to the situation. Any real book about Afghanistan should be written by a historian/political scientist/anthropologist, not a soldier/humanitarian or whatever I am. That book would be about the Roman Empire, Mongols, Visigoths and the British, Soviet and American forces at the height of the Cold War. It would involve warlords and gods, mysticism, the Silk Road, religion and the Mujahedin. There'd be treachery, bravery, Charlie Wilson's War, 9/11, Al Qaeda and a fair bit of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. Actually, that sounds pretty good; if any researchers are planning to write a book like this, well, I'll buy a copy. I swear.
I've come from a pretty unusual place, perspective-wise, to become a special-forces soldier working in Afghanistan. I have been a trade unionist, a policeman, a private security consultant and now happily call myself a humanitarian aid worker, by profession. I have worked on aid projects all around the world, in places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Thailand and Burma. That's not typical of soldiers, believe me. You can probably guess that I don't consider myself a Rambo, or John Wayne, or any of those gung-ho types. Really, I work pretty hard to dodge all the clichés associated with those characters, but plenty of people start to view you that way when they don't know you. Actually, that's a good point: Rambo et al are just characters — it's the real people with families and mortgages, pets, hobbies and foibles that fight wars, not those fictional guys.
I wanted to dodge another cliché. I wanted to go to Afghanistan with an open mind, with no predetermination about who the enemy was, and what he thought about me. I had taught myself to avoid that sort of presumption in Iraq, Timor-Leste and Pakistan, and it was a good lesson.
So, as a real person, not a character, at war in 2010, I wanted to write about my experiences. If I'd gone to Afghanistan and it appeared and felt the same way it looked on the six o'clock news, and in the books I'd read, then I wouldn't have bothered. It didn't. It was a very different experience than I was expecting, and very different to what most people thought, as far as I can tell. You can decide.
CHAPTER 2
THE LONG DRIVE HOME
SO WHY did I want to go to Afghanistan and fight the Taliban? I know this is going to be a difficult thing to explain, because it's a difficult thing for me to even understand. I don't have a reason why I went to Afghanistan. I have a lot of reasons for joining the deployment.
By the way, for the sake of concision, and to get you in the feel, I will henceforth refer to Afghanistan in the clipped military fashion: AFG. We still say Afghanistan, we just have three little letters that represent it in writing. Also, while I'm at it, we don't write or say Taliban very much. We say insurgents and write it as INS. I'm just trying to break you in to an important part of the army culture, the vernacular.
By now, sitting safely back home, with the benefit of hindsight and reflection, I know why I went to AFG, but I didn't know back then, when I decided to go. Actually, it's not that I didn't know, it's probably just that I couldn't express it properly. Below I've listed the factors that affected my decision, as I understood them then. I don't know whether you'll consider them 'good' reasons. I have tried to separate them, even though some flow into the next, or have aligned influences, like celestial bodies all conspiring to set me on a life path, if you believe in that sort of thing. (Just so you know, I don't believe in that sort of thing, so don't count it as a reason.)
Anyway, as I said previously, you would need a very good reason to unseat me from my fulfilling life back home, and my beautiful, incredible wife. But I did it. My wife is amazing, and I don't seem to do enough to offer her the reasons why I do things. It seems she either knows them innately or trusts me to the point that she knows it's 'right'. If she has her doubts she keeps them to herself.
I was visiting a cousin about five months before I actually left for AFG. Judy had been an elite athlete, but was very ill with cancer and was in palliative care. She was always a really good conversationalist. Some people listen to you speak and nod their head and offer a comment to make sure you know they're listening. Not so with Judy. She would listen to what you had to say and invest in your commentary, taking what you said as absolute 'gospel' and adopting it like her own story. It's a very honest and earnest way of communicating and always made me trust her and lay the details bare. Despite any triumph she had achieved at the time, or even the terrible disease she was fighting when I last saw her, she was always more interested in your story. It is the enduring memory I will have of her. When I visited her I had two of my daughters with me, in my arms or squirming around all over me on her couch. She asked what I had been up to and I told her about some of the intense training I had been going through with the military. She was sharp, and immediately she had a look of fright on her face.
'You're not going to Afghanistan, are you? Don't do that, Nathan. Other people can go.'
I was taken aback. Despite her situation, or perhaps because of it, she was gravely concerned. Looking at her, her life cut short and dying of cancer, and me, with beautiful, boisterous kids jumping all over me and the promise of continued, wonderful life, I couldn't answer her question truthfully. I didn't want to lie, but if I said 'yes' I would have to justify the reason. How could I do that? How could I give this dying woman the great reason I had to risk my life in AFG when I had so many reasons to stay at home? The reasons that came immediately to mind were weak, and I wouldn't insult her with them. I told her it was just a new training regime and not to worry. Judy died too soon and I didn't want her worrying about me, as I knew she would, with the time that remained.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Keep Your Head Down by Nathan Mullins. Copyright © 2011 Nathan Mullins. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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