One Dog at a Time (6 page)

I stood in the bright glow of the Afghan moonlight for a few more moments, sharing the cool night air with the dog as he enjoyed being made a fuss of for the first time in his very lonely and unloved life.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Dog Warden

THE NEXT FEW
days passed slowly; nothing was happening on the Taliban front and our patrolling had been restricted due to a lack of air support. Other operations in Helmand province were taking priority.

The downtime had provided us with an opportunity to make some improvements to our very basic facilities. Today we were building the shower area.

With no running water in Now Zad, or indeed most places in Helmand, we had come equipped with solar showers, large black plastic water bottles that, once filled, were laid out in the sun to absorb the heat for a few hours. They were then hung up on something strong enough to support them, allowing two men to grab a quick shower while the bag emptied via a small tap with a sprinkler head.

They actually worked quite well. The few, brief seconds of warm water they provided even allowed time for a shave with the disposable razors that we had to bring with us. They were supposed to be ‘single use’ blades but we all used them for several days in a row as we didn’t have an unlimited supply. Walking to the shop to buy a new razor wasn’t a luxury available to us. Maintaining the unit’s strict ‘no beards’ policy could literally be a pain.

We started off by digging an irrigation ditch to channel the water away from the shower so that it didn’t pool outside
our
accommodation. Instead the water would flow into the small garden that the ANP tended regularly. I’d asked once what type of plants they wanted to grow there. The happy smiles and imaginary puffs of a pretend cigarette they answered with told me all I needed to know.

With the ditch dug, the lads found some old canvas material on the scrap pile. Tied to the supports for the solar showers, it made quite an effective screen.

Showering with your comrades is no big deal, but the ANP were much more private in that respect. They found it highly amusing that we were prepared to stand together naked under a small bag of water. The screen would mean that they would not have to watch and we would no longer risk causing offence to their sensibilities.

The shower was looking good and almost finished so I delegated the rest of the job to one of the lance corporals. I wanted to go and check on the fighting dog.

He was still hiding away in the dilapidated building during the day, emerging at night to prowl by the back gate, where he would root around the pile of bin bags looking for food. I wasn’t sure whether the ANP knew he was there or not, but I guessed they must have been the ones to let him into the compound.

The few times I’d tried to prevent him from ripping open the bags and spreading the used wrappers on the ground of the compound he’d given me a menacing growl. To save the remainder of my bags – and my arms – I’d thrown him an open ration pouch instead.

Away from the bin bags, however, his attitude was very different. If he hadn’t seen me before that night, when I headed over to man the radio he would bound over to me at an alarming rate. I guessed he weighed about 30 kilograms, more than enough to put me on my backside again if he wanted to.

I had been a little apprehensive at first. It was confusing to see him like this when he was so unapproachable over at the bin bags. But after about the third time it happened, I
realised
he was actually happy to see me. And to tell the truth I was happy to see him.

Because of our limited patrols, Kilo Company had not had much of an opportunity to interact with the locals of Now Zad. I guessed the dog represented, for now at least, my Afghan hearts and minds operation.

I found the dog sitting on the dried mud platform outside his hiding place. As usual he sucked up the attention and biscuits I lavished on him. There was now a definite trust between us and, in the bright daylight, I managed to take a closer look at him.

The right side of his face just below his eye carried three deep scars. I figured they must have been inflicted during a previous dogfight. He actually looked to have been quite lucky not to have lost his right eye.

I took the opportunity to check out his bloodied ear as I fed him some biscuits. It was looking bad. I couldn’t just leave it as flies were always hovering around it and I didn’t want it to get infested or infected. I used my free hand to massage some antiseptic cream I’d brought along across his ear. I braced myself in case the scarred dog didn’t appreciate my efforts, but he just continued to munch on the biscuits from my left hand, not paying the slightest attention to the gentle rubbing.

I wondered how many fights he had been made to take part in. I felt sorry for him and the other dogs that were on the other side of the compound walls, constantly scavenging for scraps. This was no kind of life. But what could I do to help him and the thousands of other dogs across Afghanistan?

Back in the UK I could call the RSPCA and a horde of volunteers would appear as if by magic. Here I was a million miles from anywhere. The possibility that I could do anything other than feed him biscuits was nil.

I felt despair at my inability to bring about change. But I couldn’t just walk away. My problem now was that the dog with no friends and I were actually becoming mates.

*

It was good to hear Lisa’s voice even if it was 2 a.m. and she might as well have been on the other side of the moon.

It was finally my turn to phone home on the one satellite phone we had for our company. I suppose we should have been glad we had been given a phone in the first place, but one phone between 60 of us made it slightly difficult to get much use from the weekly phone cards that allowed 20 minutes of talk time. The constant recharging of the one battery pack was also a major source of annoyance. Finding the time was another problem, especially with the five-hour time difference between us and the UK.

I wasn’t that interested in politics but I always shook my head in mock amusement when politicians would announce that they had improved the welfare of squaddies in combat zones. Extra Internet terminals or added welfare minutes was great back in the main bases, but it made next to no difference to our lives in the forward operating bases. We had been told that Tony Blair had recently visited Afghanistan as a morale-boosting exercise for the armed forces. From where I stood and looked around the compound it was clear that nobody gave two hoots as to whether Tony Blair had visited or not. It made no difference to us. We would have been more impressed if they had given us a share of the money it cost to get him here. That would have boosted morale.

At least Lisa was in the services too and was used to the difficulties of staying in touch. When she had served on board HMS
Manchester
a few years previously, as part of an anti-drug-smuggling operation to the Caribbean (I guess I joined the wrong part of the Navy), we had grown to accept the infrequent single-page emails and early-morning calls as a part of life. We each knew what the other was facing and so didn’t really have to talk about it.

This wasn’t the case for some of the other lads though and many of them struggled to convince their loved ones
back
home that they really could not call on demand. More than a few ‘Dear John’ letters were in circulation back at Bastion.

Being in the military, Lisa also knew I was not able to talk openly on an unsecure phoneline. We had been told that the main military powers in the area would probably be trying to monitor all calls. If truth be told, I wasn’t that bothered that some bored signaller in a shack was listening to me discussing Fizz and Beamer and what was going on in the world of the HMS
Raleigh
PT department.

I waited until we had almost run out of things to talk about when I mentioned the fighting dog. I spent a few minutes explaining how I had found him and how I had witnessed the dogfight.

I heard the sigh on the other end of the line.

‘Honey – you are not bringing home a dog from Afghanistan,’ Lisa said. She didn’t sound annoyed, just practical. I couldn’t blame her.

‘I know, but I have to do something for him. He’s got no ears, Lisa. There must be some form of animal welfare organisation in Afghanistan.’ I realised I was almost pleading now.

‘And then what?’

‘Well, they will rehome him I suppose?’

It suddenly dawned on me that I really hadn’t thought this through properly at all. Who would want to rehome an Afghan fighting dog?

‘All right, I’ll look, see what I can find,’ Lisa replied, more to keep me quiet than anything else.

‘Love you, honey,’ I said. I meant it.

‘You are a nightmare, but love you too,’ Lisa said. ‘Stay safe.’

I pressed the button to end the call just before the beeps sounded.

I hated saying goodbye.

*

With Lisa now hopefully on the case looking for an animal welfare organisation, I had to make the fighting dog’s residence in the compound a little more formal. That at least meant building the dog a small enclosed run. I still didn’t understand his temperament fully, so I couldn’t risk him wandering free around the compound, just in case he decided to have a go at any of my lads. I was also concerned in case the ANP tried to use him for a fight again.

Before I did any of that, however, I would have to inform the OC of my plan. After all, it was his compound.

I waited until the next morning meeting of the officers and SNCOs. I cornered him as he left the room, before he walked into the ops room.

‘Boss, can we have a chat?’ I asked.

The boss was a tall lean figure who always took the opportunity to remind us that he supported the Scottish football team, seeing as the Euro Championships had been playing just before we deployed. We didn’t hold that against him. He was softly spoken and it took a lot to rattle him. I thought he was a very approachable officer and I enjoyed working for him. He listened to the advice his two sergeants gave him and, at times, acted upon it.

I got straight to the point. He knew I had been pretty hacked off after the encounter with the ANP at the dogfight. I was gambling on the sympathy vote. As I described discovering the dog in the outbuilding and my plan to have him sent to a rescue he just nodded. I lied slightly and said Lisa had already found an animal welfare organisation that was willing to take him.

‘We’re just trying to organise the transport,’ I said.

Throughout the boss remained quiet, with a slightly wry smile on his lips.

He didn’t say ‘yes’ but he didn’t say ‘no’ either, which I assumed was the permission I needed to crack on with my rescue plan.

I made my way to the door, smiling slowly to myself.

‘So what are you calling him then, Sergeant Farthing?’

I stopped and turned to face him. He still had the wry smile on his face but he was also looking up towards the ceiling and shaking his head.

‘Good point, Boss, I don’t have a name. I’ll get back to you on that.’

As I emerged from the ops room on my way to the lads’ compound I pondered over some names for the now legally resident dog.

Bullet? No. Royal? Perhaps not; the military angle didn’t sound good. What about AB? After all, the biscuits that he loved so much were properly called ‘AB biscuits’, although I had no idea why.

I found Dave with the rest of his off-duty section, gathered around the wooden table that had become the focal point for the daily moaning sessions. Currently, the main grievance was the government’s so-called deployment bonus, which involved servicemen receiving a tax rebate on the tax they have paid on their wages during their six-month deployment. You’d think that this would make us all happy, but the sting in the tail is that the amount of tax rebate is calculated on the pay band of the lower ranks. As most of us are in the salary bands above that the actual amount of tax rebate or ‘deployment bonus’ is nowhere near the amount of tax that we pay during a six-month tour in a war zone. It was something we could moan about for hours.

‘So how did it go?’ Dave asked as I joined them. He was three weeks into growing a incredibly dodgy gringo moustache and was engrossed in a magazine with several pictures of topless women festooned across its front cover. Dave had been over to feed the dog a few times. For all his good intentions, however, all he had received in return was an extremely menacing bark and growl as he bent down to feed him.

‘Yeah, good. The boss seemed okay with the idea. Put it this way: he didn’t say no,’ I replied. ‘He did ask what we were going to call the dog though – any ideas?’

‘What about Commando?’ Dave offered, even though he still had one eye on his magazine.

‘Yeah, something like that, or maybe Bootneck?’

‘Bootneck’ was the slang term sometimes used to describe Royal Marines.

Dan, one of the lads sat at the table, lowered his own lads’ mag.

‘How about Nowzad?’ he said, looking towards me and Dave.

We had Dave’s full attention now and he put his magazine down.

‘The town is battle-scarred, right?’ Dan continued, justifying his choice of name. ‘Well, so is the fighting dog, no ears, scars on his face.’

The lad had a good point. Nowzad sounded good and it had meaning.

‘Well done young Dan,’ I smiled. ‘Have a night off duties.’

‘Really?’ he said, looking well chuffed with himself.

‘No,’ I said, bringing him down to earth with a crash. ‘If I had the manpower yes, but I haven’t, so maybe next time.’

As I walked off I looked back at the marine. ‘I’d wait until I am out of earshot before you call me a tosser,’ I said.

It looked like a good spot. The building had long ago lost its roof and one of its walls. With a little imagination and the application of some of the DIY skills that Lisa kept telling me I didn’t have, I could fence off the three remaining walls and make a run for Nowzad.

I looked at him tied to a metal stake behind me. He was lying in the shade panting heavily as the midday sun beat down. Mad dogs and Englishmen, I thought. Although maybe it was only me who was slightly mad.

I had at least two hours before I needed to be on watch. The letter-writing session I had planned would have to wait until later. I figured I had just enough time to build a dog run. Not that I had ever built one before.