I was not a member of the battalion. I was not even a soldier. I was a journalist, a correspondent for the Age in Melbourne. The soldiers of the 103rd were mostly very interested in what I was writing about them, although they claimed to hate my articles. They would always give me a good-natured rev about them, calling me a sooky romantic and a b------y useless illiterate, and always saying that one of the Afghanis could do a better job. 'Or even the cook,' one of them remarked once, after checking that he would not overhear. Being in the bad books of the guy giving you your food in these mountains was a very bad idea.
The soldiers were pretty good about having me, really. No one had kicked up a stink about feeding a body who wouldn't carry a gun, apart from the good-natured digs that are a part of the military. Traditionally, soldiers considered the media as something lower than vermin, and tolerated them with maximum politeness and minimum friendliness, but I'd always got on pretty well. The fact that my brother was in a different battalion had helped, and that I had done some basic weapons training, against orders from home office, with them. It's all right for the editors, safe and secure in Melbourne, to tell me to keep under cover and not get involved, but I'd been in enough battles to know that sometimes the only cover available was behind a rifle, and I'd be stuffed if I was going to let some Afghani shoot me in five different places while I tried to figure out which way to hold the gun. I'd even shown up one or two of the soldiers with my marksmanship, but that was unimportant. I could hold a gun, which was what mattered.
I was pretty tired, too. I didn't have to carry 30 kilos of field pack, but I did have to carry my laptop, satellite uplink, and my own supplies. The CO, nice guy that he is, offered to get one of the soldiers to help with my stuff, and in reply I asked him they would let me carry some of their stuff. He said I had Buckley's of finding a soldier who'd let me, and I said he had about as much chance of parting me from mine. I wasn't going to get some poor soldier killed because he had to carry my gear as well as his own.
It was a mildly warm day by local standards - about 42°C. I was walking over to the CO's tent to ask him about his plans for the day, out of personal interest rather than any journalistic motivation, when there was a familiar rumble in the distance. As the camp erupted like a disturbed wasp's nest, the mortar barrage landed. Instantly the air was full of dust and smoke, and faint screams made it clear that some of the rounds had found targets. I had leapt behind a truck for cover, then looked at the fuel tank six inches from my face, and thought better of it. I scrambled over to a tent, which offered absolutely zero protection against mortar rounds, but at least it was not likely to blow up on me. No sooner had I left the truck, in fact, that a red-hot fragment sliced into the fuel tank, right where I had been crouched. As the truck exploded, I thought ruefully that if I had still been there, I would have caught the shell fragment instead. Despite the fact that I had travelled here in it, I didn't love the truck so much that I was willing to die for it.
I looked around, and saw that Afghani troops were descending from the mountains on three sides. I knew we were in trouble by the way the Afghanis descended those hills. They had the speed and agility of trained troops, and were undoubtedly far more at home in these hills than we were. The attack was well co-ordinated, and timed to catch us when we were at our most fatigued, after a day of hard marching, whereas they had probably been waiting for us all day. Given where we were, I knew it was likely that we were facing a commander known as the Demon of Khandahar, the Afghani's most skilled leader. He was a hero to them; he had led a strike against the Americans just after their invasion that had almost forced them back into Pakistan, then after the withdrawal and fragmentation of the Afghan forces, had used his company to devastating effect in numerous raids against Coalition forces in the mountains. It was rumoured that the attacks he had led had resulted in 2000 Coalition casualties.
The battle was not going well. I could see many bodies scattered throughout the camp, all fatalities to the mortar barrage, and I could see the gunfire moving slowly back toward the tents. We could not retreat: the Afghanis were attacking us from three sides, and the fourth was an almost sheer ridge 20 metres high. As I watched, some Afghanis crawled up to the ridgeline and began throwing grenades. I grabbed a rifle and a couple of grenades from the tent, thinking that I was as good as dead. As I looked around, I saw the helicopter crews feverishly attempting to get their machines in the air, and one of the pilots running toward the cockpit of his machine. Before he got there, though, he suddenly pitched forward and fell on his face. I looked in the direction that the shot had come, and saw disaster approaching. A group of four Afghanis had somehow breached the perimeter, and were racing for the helicopter compound. As they were running, I saw one of them reach to his belt and pull out a grenade. Horrified, I realised that they were going to blow up the fuel bladder - and the helicopters with them. They were about sixty meters away, and any moment would be within throwing distance. Without thinking, I pulled out one of my own grenades, pulled the pin, counted for three interminable seconds, and hurled it like a cricket ball from about thirty metres away.
In cricket terminology, the throw was right over the bails - about waist high and almost touching the nearest one to me when it exploded. That man was destroyed. There is no other word for it. The smoking mass of blood, bone and flesh that remained was not a man. The next two were just as dead, having three limbs between them and generally cut to pieces. I grabbed my gun and ran over. As I ran, I could see that the fourth man was still alive, but only just. He made a feeble attempt to reach for a grenade, but his hand fell limp at his side. I stood before him, and our eyes met. I cannot describe what passed between us in that moment, killer and victim. There was no anger in his eyes, only sadness coming through the agony. There was a profound confusion in his eyes. Those eyes, dulled with pain and shock, seemed to be asking, 'Why?' I could not answer. I stood there looking at the body for some time, while the battle raged on around us. This man was not a terrorist, or a religious fanatic. He was a soldier, fighting to defend his homeland. I thought about what I had done. It was no consolation to me to think that instead of my family losing me, four Afghani families would mourn their equally beloved sons. The Afghani's unspoken question came back. Why?
I still cannot answer.
