Chapter 13: Kandahar (Past and Present, Part 2)

I looked over at Bill and said, “Go ahead. Tell them. I can’t.” Bill said, “All I can do is read it, Ken. You’re going to have to fill in the details.” He pulled up the official citation on his phone and read it aloud;

“Marine Forces Europe and Africa Command Headquarters, Boblingen, Germany, 10 January 2015,”

“For extraordinary acts of valor under fire during ground operations against a superior hostile force in the Republic of Afghanistan, Marine Sgt. Kenneth R. Davis is awarded the Bronze Star of Merit.”

“On 27 November 2014, while on duty at Green Zone Security Checkpoint Alpha 6 of Kandahar International Airport, Sgt. Davis, Checkpoint Commander Army K-9 officer Lt. Tina German, and her K-9 unit Cash were ambushed by a superior force of Taliban militants.”

“Prior to the action, an Afghani non-combatant, a female juvenile, approached the Checkpoint to ask for aid. While Sgt. Davis was interviewing her, the non-combatant was attacked and killed by a Taliban militant, who fled on foot.”

“Sgt. Davis gave pursuit, and a force of Taliban militants that was waiting in ambush opened fire, wounding Sgt. Davis in the shoulder. Another bullet was deflected by Sgt. Davis’ helmet, the impact of which rendered him unconscious. Lt. German was wounded in the neck, arm and torso, rendering her unfit for combat, although she remained conscious. Lt. German’s K-9 partner, Cash, dragged both his handler and the unconscious Sgt. Davis to safety behind a concrete traffic barrier before also being struck by enemy fire.

Upon regaining consciousness, Sgt. Davis rendered life-saving first aid to both Lt. German and Cash, recovered his M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, and rose above the concrete barrier he was sheltered behind for the purpose of returning fire. Almost immediately, his M27 was struck by enemy fire, rendering it useless. Lt. German’s weapon was beyond his reach.”

“Despite his wound, and with selfless disregard for his own safety, Sgt. Davis used the checkpoint’s concrete traffic barriers as concealment to engage the enemy using only his standard issue Ka-Bar fighting utility knife. By the time relief units arrived, Sgt. Davis had eliminated no less than seven Taliban militants, including the murderer of the Afghani non-combatant.”

“Sgt. Davis’ actions were in accordance with the highest and best traditions of the Marine Corps of the United States, and he is hereby awarded the Bronze Star with the V device for valor. Appended to the Bronze Star is one Gold Star for heroism in rendering aid a wounded comrade while under fire, and a second Gold Star for absolute adherence to duty in engaging the enemy to preserve the integrity and security of his post, despite the loss of his firearm and the enemy’s superior numbers and weaponry.”

“Pursuant to this action, both Sgt. Davis and Lt. German have been awarded the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat. Also pursuant to this action, Army K-9 unit Cash was awarded the Soldier’s Medal, for using its own initiative to rescue Sgt. Davis while under enemy fire, and guarding his handler once Sgt. Davis’ situation was secure.”

“The above actions were witnessed and reported by K-9 Officer Lt. Tina German of the United States Army, filed by her at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, 08 December 2014.”

“Signed Major General Francis P. Neidlove, Chief of Staff ISAF 10 Jan 2015.”

“That’s the official Citation of Merit,” Bill said. “Lt. French witnessed the whole thing. Both she and her dog Cash are alive and well and living in Tennessee, thanks to Ken.”

Everybody turned to look at me, but I was looking at the ground. “I’m glad Tina’s okay,” I said after a few seconds, “and glad that Cash made it, he deserved his medal more than I did. Tina saw what she saw, but she didn’t see everything. She made it sound heroic, but it was murder. I was out of control.”

Everyone was silent for a few moments, and then Pop asked, “Why don’t you tell us your side, son?”

I looked quickly at Trini, glad she was there. She had seen me freak out before, and now she was in full-blown officer mode. She could handle me, I was used to taking her orders. I hoped her command presence would keep me sane.

“Tell ‘em, Gunny,” she said. “Nobody here is gonna judge you. Keeping it secret will only make you ashamed and afraid, and you’ll never be okay with yourself. Out with it!”

I stared at her for a moment. She already knew my side of it. We had gotten really drunk one night after work, training some Navy Seals in LeJeune, and I told her about it. I thought she’d been too drunk to remember, but evidently I was wrong.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Trini. It’s hard to cop to being a psycho. I’m stone cold sober, now, and I don’t wanna go there. It’s all still right in front of me, do you understand? She’s all over me!”

“Report, Gunny.” Trini commanded, couching it as a debriefing order, and that brought me back to the here and now. I was too used to obeying her orders to argue with her.

Kryssie touched my arm. “In Dallas, the day after we picked you up, I told you the same thing you just said, baby,” she reminded me. “I told you I was crazy, and out of control. So I know what it’s like to be scared and ashamed of not being able to control myself.”

“But you got through to me, Kenny, remember? You that showed me that my past doesn’t count. Your past is keeping you apart from the people that love you, so own it. Take power over your past, get rid of the fear, you’re not the same person you were then.”

Amy kissed me on the cheek and touched my other shoulder. “That’s what that scar is,” she murmured. “They did a good job. It’s only a scratch now.”

The whole family was gathered around me, all murmuring their love and support. I came back to myself, and wrapped myself in the warm comfort of their love. It was better than body armor. I sat back down and everybody else followed suit.

“I swore that I would never tell another living soul about it, but we swore to have no secrets,” I growled, “So listen up, everybody, because I’m only going to tell this story once.”

I closed my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret what I did. It kept me alive, and it kept my team alive, and that’s good enough for me. They had it coming.” I took a deep breath and started talking, knowing that if I stopped, I’d never get it told.

“I hated Afghanistan. I hated it the minute I got there. I often wondered what the fuck Marines were doing in a landlocked desert that was stuck in the dark ages. I hated the entire country, and everybody else in my unit did, too.”

“When I arrived in-country on my first tour, I was stationed at Camp Leatherneck in Helmund Province. By the time I got there, the Marines had just about driven the Taliban out of the entire province, largely because of two things; we ignored a lot of bullshit political rules that the Army had to follow, and we used female troops and interpreters in our forward operations to talk to the local women. That innovation was highly useful in Iraq, and it worked just as well for us.”

“We saw a lot of combat that first year, and I got promoted quickly, as people got killed, wounded, or rotated out. After two weeks in country, I was a Lance Corporal. A month later, full Corporal. After six months I was a Sargent.”

“There were still Taliban around, and they were working with ISIS and Al-Qaeda. One night, Camp Leatherneck was attacked by twenty suicide bombers, all wearing vests packed with C-4 and disguised in Marine uniforms. Only nineteen of us died that night, thanks to an alert Private, Harald Smith, who was on perimeter watch. He recognized the intruders and was able to warn us by emptying a full clip from his M-27 into them before they blew him to bits. Smitty was a friend of mine.”

Sarah whimpered, and Pop looked grim. Krys started to say something, but I shushed her with a gesture. Amy tried to rest her head on my leg, but I pushed her away and stood up.

“So don’t think that when I say the Marines had driven the Taliban out of Helmund that we were safe, far from it. The people we were fighting were fanatics, religious zealots. Men and women. Suicide bombers were all over the place, as well as minefields and booby traps. They had recently begun using a trick we called ‘rolling thunder,’ a vehicle stuffed with explosives and a suicide jockey.”

“Smitty was the reason I signed up for my second tour. A lot of us did. Our anger at the senseless ferocity of our enemies grew into white-hot hatred, and often when we were in forward areas, in villages gathering intel or flushing out the enemy, the lines between combatant and non-combatant became blurred. More times than I can count, villagers told us that there were no militants in their town, and we would get ambushed as soon as we left.”

“There were lots of atrocities, on both sides. But some of what the reporters called ‘atrocities’ were usually just grunts like me trying to stay alive. I killed my share of those so-called ‘civilians.’ Do you guys know what you call a twelve year old boy with a rifle? You call him a soldier. A little girl wrapped up in a vest of explosives? She’s a terrorist that’s trying to kill you.”

“About three months into my second tour, we got orders to train Afghan Army units to take over our area of Helmund. It was a no-go from day one. You can’t train anyone that doesn’t speak (or pretends they don’t speak) your language, and interrupts training sessions to face Mecca and pray. My company commander, Lt. Wellbron, could only shake his head helplessly when us NCO’s came to him with complaints about those raghead cocksuckers’ ineptitude.”

“The goddam brass didn’t learn a goddam thing from Vietnam,’ is what he said. He was right. The enemy these soldiers were supposed to be fighting were their own neighbors and relatives, people they had grown up with. Most Afghan Army ‘soldiers’ would sell their mother to their worst enemies for a little money, or a bag of heroin. Corruption is part of their culture, and has been for thousands of years.”

“Not long after that, the Marines began to withdraw from the Afghanistan theater, and my unit was split up, some going back to Bagram Airbase, and some going to Kandahar International Airport, to assist the Army with security. We were glad to go. Both places were subject to attack by militants on any given day, but it was far safer than going into the desert to find them. I was sent to Kandahar.”

I looked around at my family. “I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand that by the time I got ordered to Kandahar, I was already a combat veteran, an NCO, not some wet-behind-the-ears recruit. I knew what I was doing, and what to look for. That’s why they put me where they did.”

“My duty post was Checkpoint Alpha Six, a guard shack on the airport perimeter, on the main road from Kandahar City. (The airport is 10 miles out of town.) My watch commander was an Army K-9 unit, Lt. Tina German and her Rottweiler, Cash. Cash was trained to sniff out both explosives and heroin, and he could do it from a hundred yards away. He’s a helluva mutt.”

“When I say ‘guard shack,’ what I really mean is a temporary fortress. The main road was blockaded by jersey concrete barriers, set in sixteen foot intervals perpendicular to the road to about a hundred yards in front of our shack, which turned the road from a straight-line approach into a series of hairpin turns that forced traffic to slow to a crawl as they approached our post.”

“The shack itself was shielded by quarter-inch steel plate. In order to approach the airport, vehicles first had to make arrangements in Kandahar to let us know when to expect them, and when they got there they had to pick up a telephone at the outer perimeter and identify themselves. If they were on our list, we gave them the go-ahead to weave between the barriers to within about fifty yards from the shack, where Tina and Cash would give them the once-over, while I covered them with an RPG. If Cash didn’t signal he’d found something, we’d let them approach and check their manifest and/or orders. Sounds pretty secure, right?”

I looked at the night sky of Texas, tears springing to my eyes unbidden, emotion choking my voice. “Wrong. We knew about the Taliban. We knew about suicide bombers and land mines, we knew about IED’s and rolling thunder, but they never told us anything about teenage girls.”

I closed my eyes, vainly trying to stop the tears. “There was an enclosed walkway to the shack, covered and narrow, so that foot traffic had to approach single file. One night, a civilian girl in a blue robe and hijab approached us. She looked scared, and kept glancing back over her shoulder.”

“She must have been a student at the American school, because she wasn’t scared to talk to me directly. Fundamentalist Islamic females are forbidden to speak to a man unless he’s part of her family.”

“Anyway, Cash didn’t react to the girl, so Tina told me that she would cover me while I spoke to her. The girl was eager to talk, and understood English very well.”

“She said her name was Asal, and that she was fleeing from her family. Her father was Taliban, and had been released from the P.O.W. camp at Bagram. She said if he found her, he would kill her for going to the American school. She begged me to let her onto the base.”

“Now, in 2012 a girl in Pakistan named Malal was the victim of an assassination attempt by the Taliban. They shot her in the side of the head, just for going to school and encouraging other girls to do the same. It made the news all over the world. So I knew that Asal wasn’t just making her situation up. I knew the danger to her was real.”

“I heard Tina order someone to stop. I turned to see a bearded Afghan male in a turban with both hands raised above his head, approaching us on foot. Once again, Cash didn’t detect any explosives, drugs, or ammo, so Tina let him come. He identified himself as Asal’s father. He said he only wanted to talk to his daughter.”

“Tina and I were fools. We should have shot him on sight, but we thought he was unarmed. We thought that a little controlled family conversation wouldn’t hurt anybody. Asal was terrified, but I told her I would protect her. After all the guy wasn’t gonna try anything with us there, right?”

“Wrong again. As soon as he got within arm’s reach, her father whipped a kukri knife from his turban and struck his daughter in the abdomen and cut upwards. He gutted her like a fish! Then he shoved her at me and dove over the barrier into the roadway.”

My voice started to shake, and tears rolled down my face. “I tried to catch her. It was reflex, but she was already dead. I dropped my weapon and fell backwards with her on top of me. I’ll never forget her face, she looked so surprised! I rolled over and tried to put everything back inside her, thinking I could somehow help her! I was covered with her blood, and bits of her guts! She’s all fucking over me!” I screamed, shaking like a leaf.

All the women in my family were sobbing, even Trini, who had heard the whole story before. Pop and Miles looked sick, and even Bill was a little green. I was crying, too and staring at the sky.

“Tina called my name. It took me a minute to realize we were under fire. Asal’s father hadn’t come alone. I started to jump over the barrier to go after him, but when I cleared the top of the barrier, I took a bullet in the shoulder and one on the helmet. It knocked me cold.”

Talking about the firefight calmed me down. I had been debriefed so many times after combat that recalling what I did was automatic, so I was able to get Asal out of my head for a minute.

“When I came to, I was in the roadway in front of guard shack, with Cash licking my face and whining. I looked over and saw Tina sitting against a barrier, bleeding badly from a wound that had broken her her collarbone. I put a pressure dressing on it and looked her over. She was hit in the arm, but like my shoulder, the wound was through-and-through, not too serious. She had taken another round in the chest, but her body armor stopped it. It busted a couple of ribs, though, and she was in a great deal of pain. Anyway, after I got her bleeding stopped, I had a look at Cash.”

“I had to apply another pressure dressing to the dog. Cash had actually jumped over the barrier I was behind to get me, and took a bullet when he did. Even wounded, he dragged me, unconscious, around the barrier, and back to Tina. What a dog! After I patched him up, I took stock of our situation. The RPG was in the shack, which we couldn’t reach, along with the commlink and most of our weaponry. It would be suicide to try and get there, and we couldn’t holler for help. The only thing we could do was fight it out and hope somebody came looking for us.”

“I jumped back over the barriers to where I’d been hit, to retrieve my M-27. Asal was lying in a massive pool of blood, the look of surprise still on her face, and I became aware that I was still covered in her blood. That’s when I lost it. All I could think of was how I failed her, and that I had to murder her father. I grabbed the M-27, sighted over the next barrier and began firing, and then another bullet blew my rifle apart. It didn’t even slow me down, though, and that probably saved my life. The bastards thought they had me pinned down, unable to move.”

“They were wrong, though. Cash had shown me a great trick. I placed my ruined rifle on top of the barrier to give the fuckers something to shoot at, and crawled around the barriers instead of firing over the top. They never saw me coming. I don’t think that any of them would have even believed that a wounded man with only a knife could still attack.”

“I didn’t count how many of them there were, and I don’t remember a lot of the details. I do remember that I eviscerated all of them the same way they had gutted Asal. I stuck them in the belly right above their nuts, and let their buddies listen to them scream as I slowly and deliberately disemboweled them. I enjoyed doing it, too. I laughed the whole time.”

Jackie whimpered, and Krys looked at the pool, the sky, the house, everywhere except at me, her face distorted and tears flowing. Sarah was bawling, and Miles was holding Sandy close, her face buried in his chest. Amy was nodding her head in sharp little jerks, while Trini just stared at me, tears rolling down her face. Bill’s expression was bleak and haggard. Pop was gripping the back of the chair in front of him, rocking back and forth.

“Asal’s father was the last one. I remember every little detail about murdering that sack of shit. He was out of ammo, and had listened to the screams of his buddies while I tortured them to death. He shit himself when he turned around and saw me right behind him, covered in his daughter’s blood and with a gore-dripping knife in my hand.”

“I surrender, I surrender!’ he kept shouting. I guess he had learned some English while he was a prisoner. He must have thought that I would be okay with just sending him back to a nice little P.O.W. vacation back in Bagram, too. He was wrong.”

“You killed your own daughter, you worthless piece of camel shit,” I said to him. “How does that square with Allah, you filthy, murdering boy-lover?”

“Do not speak to me of Allah! Do not speak his name, infidel!” he said as I zip-tied his hands behind him. “And cover your naked face! Your very countenance is an affront to God!”

“So your beard is what lets you murder little girls, eh, you self-righteous bastard?” I asked him. “And now you want to surrender to me, after I’ve killed your sons? It’s not me that’s an affront to God, you pig-licking coward!”

“To shave the beard is haraam! You will burn in hell!”

“We’ll see who burns, cocksucker!” I said, and set his beard on fire. I laughed while he flopped and rolled, screaming and beating his head on the pavement, trying to put the fire out with his wrists tied behind his back. When he finally did, I gutted him slowly, like all the others, making sure that he was conscious and aware of what I was doing. He took a long time to die.”

“When reinforcements got there, they found me standing over him, covered head to toe in blood and laughing like a fucking maniac. I had broken with reality completely. My relief said that when I finally recognized them, I curled up in a fetal ball, shaking and bawling like a little kid.”

I looked at my arms and my body. “The blood, it’s still there! I’ll never be able to wash her away, do you understand?” I lifted my face to the sky and screamed, “I see her face! She’s all over me! I killed her! I fucking killed her! She’s all fucking over me!”

My head hurt like a sonofabitch where the bullet had deflected. Tina was wasted, and Cash was panting heavily as he bled out. I pulled my Ka-bar from my boot and vowed to take the next raghead I saw right in the throat.

I crawled around the barrier to look for the enemy, but SHE was there. She was standing in the middle of the road, her guts hanging obscenely from the gigantic wound in her belly. She looked in my eyes.

“You said you would protect me!” she cried piteously, “I trusted you, and look at me! You’re no better than him! You watched while he killed me! Why did you kill me?”

I looked at the kukri in my hand, dripping with her blood, and yanked on my beard.

She was till looking at me. “I loved you, papa,” she said, and I felt her blood soak into my clothes as she embraced me.

I watched in horror as papa stabbed me, the awful sensation of cold steel cutting upwards through my belly making me sick. I tried to flee, but I couldn’t move my arms and I stumbled over my own innards and fell to the ground.

I have to get out of here! There’s a thousand Taliban trying to kill me, all around me, and I can’t run because of her guts wrapped around me! Why can’t I move my arms? Someone’s calling my name...

Krys got me back. She had my head in her lap, and was shouting my name over and over. We were still by the pool, but somehow I had been handcuffed, and Bill and Trini knelt on either side of us.

“Krys? Sweetheart?” I asked, a bit disoriented. Then I remembered what happened. “I’m back, it’s okay,” I said. I sat up and looked at my sobbing fiance in wonder. “I heard you, baby,” I said. “You called me back. Nobody’s ever done that before.”

“Sorry, Gunny,” Bill was saying as he unlocked the cuffs. “You were ‘gone in Saigon,’ and I wanted to give us as much of a chance as possible if you flipped out all the way.”

Krys kept bawling and shaking, still terrified. Everybody else in the family wasn’t in much better shape. I looked at Trini.

“Did – did I hurt anybody?” I asked. I felt a bit of relief when she shook her head, but I still felt shattered. I think it’s what an epileptic must feel like after a seizure. This was the first episode I’d had since Quantico. The first full blown one, anyway.

Bill sat down next to me. “Mine was a pregnant girl in Somalia,” he murmured. “Just a kid. She was begging us to help her, but she was wired. Her or us. So I killed her.” I jerked my head around towards him. He had tears in his eyes, and I could see what it cost him to tell me that. He understood.

“Talk to your family, Kenny,” Trini said. “Everybody’s scared, and I know you fell like crawling in a hole somewhere, but they’ve got to know what’s going on with you. These are the people you trust.”