The Taliban Don't Wave (2 page)

Preface

The first time I laid eyes on Robert Semrau (not counting the front-page photographs) he was sitting in a military courtroom in Gatineau, Quebec, his shoes shined to a polish, his dress uniform green and crisp. In so many ways, the 36-year-old captain was just a typical soldier in today's Canadian Forces, one of thousands of courageous men and women who have risked their lives on the front lines of Afghanistan. But inside that courtroom, nothing was typical. Every step was unprecedented.

Semrau was on trial for second-degree murder—the first time a Canadian soldier had ever been accused of homicide on the battlefield. According to investigators, the captain was on patrol in October 2008 when he encountered a gravely wounded insurgent lying on a dirt path. (The man, shot in the stomach, was bleeding so profusely that one eyewitness said he was “98 per cent dead.”)

Under oath, two eyewitnesses said they were with Semrau when he pulled the trigger. “He felt it was the humane thing to do,” one of them testified. “He couldn't live with himself if he left a wounded insurgent, a wounded human, to suffer like that.” In the end, though, the jury found Semrau guilty of a lesser charge: disgraceful conduct. They fully believed that he shot the injured man, but with no corpse and no forensic evidence, they couldn't be sure, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the man actually died.

Yet in the eyes of so many Canadians—both in the ranks and outside—Semrau was a hero, not a criminal. His trial sparked a fierce national debate about the ethics of mercy killing in a combat zone, and what happens to the law of war when it comes face to face with the reality of war. Whatever your opinion, the optics were difficult to stomach: if convicted, Semrau faced a mandatory sentence of life behind bars with no chance of parole for ten years. In other words, a brave and articulate soldier who was willing to die for his country—and was forced to make an impossible decision along the way—could be left watching his two young daughters grow up from behind bars.

Before the judge delivered his sentence, he heard powerful testimony and read dozens of emotional letters from some of the soldiers who served with Robert Semrau. One described how the captain saved his life during an enemy mortar attack. Another, Semrau's commanding officer, said he would welcome him back to the battalion “without reservation” if he were allowed to continue serving. One friend and fellow officer said he respects Semrau so much that he would “follow Rob through the gates of hell.”

This book—a rare battlefield memoir from a Canadian soldier—helps explain why. It is Semrau's chance to tell the other side of his historic story, the one that began long before his fateful encounter with that wounded, unnamed man.

Michael Friscolanti
Senior Writer,
Maclean's

List of Abbreviations

'geers
combat engineers

2 I/C
second-in-command

2 Para
elite British Army airborne light infantry unit, the best of the best

421/422/429
different types of authorization to engage anyone who may not be posing an immediate threat

72A
Seven two Alpha

72C
Seven two Charlie

ack
acknowledge

ANA
Afghan National Army

ANP
Afghan National Police

AO
area of operations

Backblast
the extremely hot and dangerous propellant that exits out the end of a rocket launcher when it's fired

BFG
big f-ing gun

BIP
blow in place; blown up in place

boom-stick
Canadian M777 artillery gun, or any type of large cannon/rocket launcher

BUB
battle update briefing

CF
Canadian Forces

CFB Pet
Canadian Forces Base Petawawa

comms
radio communications

COP
combat outpost

CP
command post

CSM
company sergeant major

DEWS
donkey early-warning system

FAM
fighting age male

fives and twenties
five- and twenty-metre checks for IEDs

FMP
field message pad

FOB
Forward Operating Base

FOO/FAC
forward observation officer/forward air controller

GAFF
“give a fuck” factor

go firm
halt

GSR
gunshot residue

Icom
two-way radio, used by the Taliban

IED
improvised explosive device

int
intelligence

Int O
intelligence officer

in the shit
in a life-and-death situation, usually in combat

IR
infrared

KAF
Kandahar Airfield

KIA
killed in action

LAV
light armoured vehicle

LCMR
lightweight counter-mortar radar

LD
line of departure

leaguer
vehicle camp

LN
local national

LO
liaison officer

locstat
location and status

loggy; loggies
logistics personnel

MBITR
multiband inter/intra team radio

mikes
minutes

MIST
method of injury, injury, signs, treatment given

NCO
non-commissioned officer

NDS
National Directorate of Security (Afghanistan's version of the CIA)

Neil Diamond
negligent discharge (accidentally shooting one's weapon)

net
radio network

nine-liner
a nine-line radio report for wounded personnel

NIS
National Investigation Service, a special branch of the CF Military Police

NVG
night-vision goggles

OC
officer commanding

O-group
orders briefing

OMLT
Operational Mentor and Liaison Team

op
operation

OPSEC
operational security

OTR
on the run

PKM
Russian belt-fed light machine gun

PPCLI
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry

PPE
personal protective equipment

PRR
personal role radio, used by the OMLT small teams and CF platoons to talk to each other

PRT
Provincial Reconstruction Teams

PT
physical training

PX
post exchange (US army base store)

QRF
quick reaction force

R&R
rest and relaxation

RAF
Royal Air Force

Ranger
Ford pickup truck

RCR
Royal Canadian Regiment

recce
reconnaissance

RG-31/RG
mine-protected armoured personnel carrier, usually outfitted with a remote-controlled weapon system on the roof

RPG
rocket-propelled grenade

RRB
radio re-broadcast

RV
rendezvous

sec-for
security force

SIGACTS
significant actions/activities

sitrep
situation report

SOP
standard operating procedure

spec ops
special operations forces

Spig 9
Russian recoilless rifle

tac
tactical

TCCC
tactical combat casualty care, an advanced combat first-aid course

terp
interpreter

TI
time in

TIC
“troops in contact” with the enemy

TLA
three-letter acronym

trace
projected route

UAV
unmanned aerial vehicle

UXO
unexploded ordnance

VSA
vital signs absent; dead

wire
protective confines of a base

Prologue

I looked around the room and wondered how in God's name it had all come to this.

I wasn't in combat, fighting in the heat, dust, and confusion of Afghanistan. I wasn't in that God-accursed country, fighting for my life, scared out of my head, just trying to stay alive. I was somewhere much more frightening—a climate-controlled courtroom in Gatineau, Quebec, charged with murder in the second degree, attempted murder, conduct unbecoming an officer, and failure to perform a military duty. And all things being equal, I would rather have been in “the Stan,” taking my chances there.

I looked around the courtroom and at the five members of the panel, the men who would be responsible for handing down my fate, and wondered if they had ever been shot at—or mortared, or rocketed, or blown up. I wondered if any of them had ever heard a bullet, travelling at supersonic speed, crack the sound barrier as it passed an inch from their head, then felt a sickening fear in the hollow of their gut. I wondered if they had ever been literally soaked in another man's blood, or held a fellow soldier as he was dying, with no help on the way.

My team of Canadian soldiers belonged to the Operational Mentor and Liaison Team, or OMLT for short. And because of that, we were training the Afghan National Army soldiers and patrolling and fighting right alongside them. When they got shot at, we got shot at. We shared the same hardships, and when they suffered, so did we. Because of that, we experienced things both in combat and in daily life that were so far outside the range of normal that it was hard to believe.

I thought I was having an okay tour. And then, before I knew what hit me, two military policemen got off a Chinook helicopter at my lonely outpost in the far west of Panjway Province in Afghanistan, and placed me under arrest. Suddenly, I was back home—charged with murder by the country I love, and sitting in an air-conditioned courtroom while the five officers in the panel snatched looks at me, wondering who I was and what, exactly, had happened over there.

I knew the truth. I knew exactly what had happened, and yet . . . I still couldn't believe it.

Chapter 1

If the commercials are true and Disneyland is truly the happiest place on earth, and if everything in life must have an opposite, then the saddest place on earth must be Afghanistan. I once heard it described as the dark side of the moon, but with mines.

I had been in Afghanistan once before, as a member of the British Army's Second Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, so I had a better clue than most of what we were about to get into. I was on an operation in Macedonia when 9/11 happened, and right then and there, we all knew the world had changed. Within a couple of months, my parachute battalion joined the first coalition troops to form ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force. We landed in Afghanistan at Bagram, north of Kabul, on January 7, 2002, and the Royal Marines we were replacing, who were meant to hand over their ammunition to us, got onto our Hercules transport aircraft and took off, leaving us with nothing. No bullets, no grenades, nothing. I told the lads I'd be okay, because I knew how to shoot mind bullets. No one laughed. We then made the long, scary drive down from Bagram to Kabul with no ammo.
Nice.
Chalk up another reason why the Paras hate Marines.

On our tortuously slow, winding route through the hills north of Kabul, we passed several burned-out Russian tanks, and quickly sped through the obvious ambush and choke points. Thankfully nothing happened—that time. That was my first taste of the Stan, and as any sane person could imagine, it tasted awful. Passing through the towns and villages we saw—up close—extreme poverty and utter despair, with almost every single building bombed or burned out to the point where it was uninhabitable. It was brutal to have to see people living in such terrible conditions.

The choking dust coupled with the smell of garbage and raw sewage made your eyes sting and your throat gag. I found out that most of the damage to Kabul was actually done by the Afghans fighting each other in their civil war,
after
they'd kicked the Russians out.

A story that nicely summed up the Stan for me came out of that tour. We'd been there a few months when somebody at the coalition headquarters in Kabul asked a bunch of famous British soccer players to come and play a fun game of footy against the Afghan national team. The day of the match would coincide with Afghanistan's recently scheduled first-ever “Day of Peace.” There would be a band, some doves, a few speeches, and then a great game of soccer. So a group of brave footballers (and because I was an ignorant colonial I hadn't heard of any of them) came down to practise a bit and then play a match.

We were posted outside of the stadium in Kabul (where the Taliban used to publicly execute people) on the day of the game to act as a quick reaction force if the Taliban decided to attack. More likely, however, we would act as riot police since there were ten thousand angry spectators locked out of the stadium because only government lackeys and their families were invited to sit inside to watch the game.

Shortly after the opening ceremonies we all knew things were going Pete Tong wrong. If Paras have a gift, it's the ability to sense danger and smell violence in the air. I had just looked at one of my friends and said something along the lines of, “It's going to kick off here, big time!” when I heard a sound like cattle stampeding, and then people screaming. I spun around and looked up at the stadium just in time to see several people get violently pushed over the railing at the top. They seemed to tumble in slow motion as they fell at least three storeys to the hard cement below, where their bodies made a wet smacking noise when they hit the ground. Some Dutch troops who were also on duty casually walked over to the pile of twisted, broken bodies and started commenting on their injuries and debating the order in which to triage them, as though seeing people fall to their deaths was no big deal. I guess that sort of thing happens all the time in Amsterdam. Being from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, this was a new experience for me.

Things quickly began to escalate out of control. The crowd on the outside of the stadium, eager to see the action from the inside, started pushing up against us. I gently started shoving people back with my 7.62mm general-purpose machine gun, when this Afghan cop/thug came up to me. If I was reading his body language right, he was saying, “
You're doing it all wrong.
” He then started swinging his AK-47 by the barrel like a baseball bat, violently cracking people on the head and face with it.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing; this was a policeman, one of the so-called good guys, and he was dropping people left and right with his AK-Louisville Slugger! I ran over to stop him but people in the crowd started shouting and running all over the place, knocking into me and trying to pull my weapon out of my hands. Angry Afghans began climbing up on to a German armoured vehicle, but the wily Krauts (like all good Germans) had a contingency plan. One of their soldiers popped out of the hatch with a fire extinguisher and started hosing down the civvies, spraying them in the face with chemical fire retardant.

A Para friend of mine screamed, “Fuckin' 'ell lads, it's kickin' off! Up your jumpers!” and started delivering vicious kicks to anyone within boot-stomping range. Now the Paras' love of a good riot was
almost
matched by their love of putting
down
a good riot, but this was too much. It was utter madness!

Later that day, I got the story as to how the whole thing started from a friend of mine who was posted inside the stadium. It seems the crowd had seen too many news clips of soccer hooliganism and decided that starting riots (if the rest of the world was anything to go by) was just the sort of thing that one does whilst watching a footy match. So after a brass band played a few notes, the mayor of Kabul gave a flowery speech and then stepped down from his podium to release a bunch of caged pigeons to celebrate the Day of Peace. The poor pigeons, however, having been locked up in this tiny cage for weeks on end, didn't soar for the sky like at the Olympics, but fluttered rather half-heartedly the few feet to the ground and collapsed in sheer exhaustion right in front of their cage.

It was too much for the crowd in the stands. They couldn't get the image of public executions out of their mind. During the Taliban's black reign of terror, the stadium had been transformed into a coliseum. And coliseums were all about
blood.
Now the crowd wanted blood.
Any
blood.
Pigeon
blood!

So like a ten-thousand-strong human wave, they bum-rushed the field and, in their eagerness to take home a memorial pigeon, literally ripped the birds apart in the struggle for possession. My friend told me it was one of the damnedest things he'd ever seen, and he was from east London, so that's saying something. Blood and feathers flew in all directions and people started beating and kicking each other to get a piece, any piece, of the torn-apart pigeons to put on their mantels back home.

By some miracle a small boy managed to capture a live bird and make a break for it. He was halfway across the field when the crowd quickly gave chase and tackled him to the ground. Twenty hands shot in to steal his beloved pigeon, quickly ripping it to shreds as the boy screamed and cried over his murdered pet. My friend saw the young boy later, all bruised and bloodied, crying as he picked up flesh and feathers, as though he'd be able to put the mangled pigeon back together.

Then people began getting shoved over the balcony railing as the crowd in the upper decks fought to get down to the action on the field. That's around the time I saw people falling for three storeys and heard the sickening crunch as their bodies smacked into cement. People were screaming and running in all directions; children were crying because they'd lost their parents; complete strangers were fighting to the death, rolling on the ground, choking and eye-gouging. AK-47s were swinging in parabolic arcs until they made hard contact with soft heads. Crumpled, broken civilians were all over the ground as German soldiers screamed “
Aussteigen!
” in their angry, guttural tones, spraying down civilians in the face with fire-retardant foam. It was total anarchy and chaos.

Sadly, and not surprisingly, it all took place on Afghanistan's first Day of Peace. Needless to say, this didn't bode well for the country.

But that was another time, and on August 25, 2008, as I was reminiscing, the ramp on my Herc came down at Kandahar Airfield (KAF), and there it was again,
the stink of the Stan,
which I had tried so hard to forget. It was a gruesome combination of burning garbage and raw sewage, and it always brought the Stan back to my mind whenever I smelled it anywhere else in third world countries. It hit me square in the face, and for a moment, I was right back in Kabul, smothered in a flood of memories and bad emotions. I looked over at a sergeant I'd never met before, and judging by the look in his eyes, I knew he'd been in the Stan before as well, and that the stink was bringing him back to another time and place, one he'd evidently preferred to have forgotten.

He looked at me, shook his head, and quietly said, “Fuck, I hate this place.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied and walked down the ramp, into the burning heat, dust, and odours that made your nose sting and your eyes water. I thought to myself,
Ya gotta love it!

I looked over at my team as they exited the Herc. Warrant Officer Longview, a very switched-on professional, was my second-in-command (2 I/C); Private Fourneau would be our driver; Corporal Hetsa would be our vehicle's gunner and light-machine-gun-toting killer on the ground; and then there was me, their newly minted captain. Most of the guys were from the First Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment (1 RCR) from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, in Ontario. But a few guys, like myself, had come over from 3 RCR (also located at CFB Pet) to make up the numbers. Our Canadian OMLT, consisting of four 4-man teams, would be called 72 Kandak.
Kandak
means
battalion
in Dari, the language of the Afghan National Army (ANA), and the Canadian Forces (CF) had implemented the word in a show of solidarity with them. My four-man team's designation, or call sign, would be 72 Alpha (pronounced
seven two
, not
seventy-two
).

I looked over and made eye contact with my buddy, Rich, who was also in charge of a four-man OMLT team. He smirked and scratched his eyebrow, giving me the finger at the same time. Originally from Cape Breton, he was now a reservist fighting out of Hamilton, Ontario. We'd immediately hit it off when he arrived at CFB Pet and discovered that if I sat in the front seat of his car, I could navigate our way to the Tim Hortons on base and he wouldn't have to drive
off
the base by accident any more. After a series of self-described disastrous life choices, he found himself attached to a regular force unit, about to deploy to Afghanistan to mentor and guide the Afghan National Army during combat operations. His dubious navigational skills aside, he was an incredibly switched-on soldier. All the guys loved him, and we took the piss out of each other constantly.

Rich was what soldiers in the infantry lovingly called a shit magnet. Later on during our tour, almost every time I patrolled next to him and his call sign,
bad things
happened. The enemy was drawn to him; they smelled him from afar and travelled from wonderful places just to kill him and his men. I never liked patrolling with him; I was scared I was going to get caught up in his vortex of death. I labelled him call sign “Bad Karma” because Death seemed to be stalking him.

A logistics (loggy) sergeant had just marched up and was shouting at us to follow her to the tent city, our new home away from home, when a couple of black Hilux Toyotas with tinted windows and cab covers screeched to a halt right next to us, spitting up dust. The window slowly lowered and a full-bearded face glared out the window, spit out some tobacco juice, looked me in the eye, and said in a voice eerily similar to Clint Eastwood's, “You guys OMLT?”

You'd better say “yes,”
I thought to myself.
He's probably got the drop on ya!

“Yeah,” I said back, not sure who or what the hell I was looking at. He looked like he was in the special forces, the only place you'd be allowed to grow a three-month beard like that. His eyes had big bags under them, like he'd been in the shit (seen serious combat) recently and was just in Kandahar Airfield for a day's R&R (rest and relaxation) before he had to go back to killing the Taliban with his bare hands and tobacco breath.

He snorted and spit another wad of juice into the dirt. “Get in,” was all he said, looking straight ahead again as his window rolled back up.

I shouted out to the OMLT boys next to me, “You heard the man—pack your gear in the trucks and let's get outta here!” I moved to the back of the truck with my bags and shouted, “Warrant, police up our men, we're pulling a Jeffersons!”

“What's a
Jeffersons
?”

“We're movin' on up! Better digs! C'mon, let's go.” I threw open the back of the truck, pushed in my gear, and helped Fourneau and Hetsa with theirs. We all crammed into the cab. The rest of the boys piled into the other trucks and we sped off into the night.

“Where're we going?” I asked Grizzly Adams. His passenger, an equally bearded man, spoke into a cellphone.

“Yeah, we got 'em; coming to you now.” He clicked the phone shut. He leaned over the back of his seat and said, “OMLT don't stay in that shithole! We've got you suites at the vip centre.” (He pronounced it “vip,” not “v-i-p.”) “You'll stay there for two days, listen to the stupid briefings, and then go off to the Panj to win the war for us. We're on our way out, you boys are relieving us; name's Mike,” and with that quick explanation, he looked forward again.

“Fair enough,” I said, and looked over at Fourneau and shrugged. VIP accommodation sounded a lot better than the surly loggy's tent. The three trucks came to a screeching halt outside a long two-storey block and kicked up enough dust to choke us all out.