Free The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan by Graeme Smith Page B

through a wall constructed of dirt and straw.
    To break down those defences, NATO surrounded the Taliban and pounded them with air strikes and artillery. The valley had beenblanketed with warnings on radio and leaflets beforehand, and military leaders declared that no civilians likely remained in the target zone, a rectangular swath of roughly twenty square kilometres. Any women and children still inside that part of the Panjwai could be considered “camp followers” of the insurgents, they claimed, noting that thousands of residents had already evacuated. That zone became the most closely monitored patch of earth in Afghanistan, as military surveillance focused on the battlefield, a deployment of intelligence assets that resulted in the first casualties of the operation. Ground troops watched in horror as a British spy plane fell out of the sky in a streak of fire. The crash killed fourteen personnel, the largest single loss for British forces in decades. On the same day, September 2, most of the NATO force was assembling itself in a U-shaped horseshoe pattern around the target area, with the open side of the “U” facing away from Kandahar city. Military commanders at the time boasted about encircling the insurgents, but that was bluster; all signs pointed to a massive push to drive the insurgents away, via the loosely guarded western edge of the battlefield. It was reasonable to think the Taliban would retreat, surrounded on three sides and enduring a barrage of NATO firepower.
    I embedded with a unit on the north side of the “U” formation, Bravo Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment, which initially stayed back from the target area. Sitting on the roof of an Afghan police station, I watched the explosions in the valley, making deep sounds like the rumble of a thunderstorm. But soldiers would later complain that some of the planned air strikes never arrived. Even more baffling for them was the decision to rush ahead with the ground offensive on September 3, two days ahead of schedule, skipping forty-eight hours of bombardment. This led to a bloody debacle that has become celebrated in Canadian military lore, in which Charles Company charged north across the Arghandab River into a hail of enemy fire on that Sunday morning at daybreak. Of the fifty soldiers who crossed the river, four were killed, ten werewounded and others required treatment for stress. It was heroic, but they gained nothing. The commanders fed us journalists the usual lines: “It was an extremely successful day,” Brigadier-General David Fraser said, after his soldiers retreated.
    Despite their casualties, Charles Company was again selected the next morning to lead an assault on the Taliban stronghold. They gathered on a hillside on the south bank of the river in the early mist, but a US warplane accidentally strafed them just minutes before the attack. The American A-10 doesn’t so much fire bullets as belch them out like dragon fire, and it makes an eerie prehistoric howling sound in the sky. The errant blast would have killed more troops if the company hadn’t already been suited up for battle; even so, it left one soldier dead and a few dozen wounded. I could hear the commander of Canada’s battle group, Lieutenant-Colonel Omer Lavoie, who had warned his bosses not to rush the battle, cursing on the radio. “Fuck, we just lost a whole company,” he said. Charles Company would later become the most highly decorated unit in the Canadian military, but for the moment it was a shambles.
    The plan to attack from the south was scrapped, and officers started to talk about sending Bravo Company from the north. The men seemed nervous. An officer complained over the radio: “I just don’t get what’s not being understood. We need a lot more resources to do what we have to do, especially after the events of this morning.” The Canadians’ big artillery pieces, which had been banging shells into the Taliban stronghold for days, were running low