“Incoming!” came the yell from the sangar.
Suddenly, men were flying everywhere, running for their body armor and weapons. I sprinted for my room, but tripped over an abandoned jacket, and went sprawling in the dust.
The first RPG exploded about 200 yards outside the compound. The noise was horrendous, and the plume of dirt rocketed 90 feet into the air.
I covered my head with my hands, and pushed my face into the loose dirt on the ground. When the dusty shower had subsided, I crawled on my hands and knees into my room, and pulled on my body armor and helmet in double-quick time. Then I grabbed my camera and nervously pointed it out of the tiny window, taking snap after snap of the Marines as they took their positions. Then the durg-durg of the heavy machine guns started.
Another RPG exploded, closer this time, and I dropped to the floor, counted to ten, and peered out of my window. After a minute of what seemed like organized chaos, bellows and shouts, silence rippled outwards.
My heart was thundering in my chest, and I realized my hands were shaking. I began to wonder if a nice, safe job in a bank might be a good career move.
Sebastian’s head suddenly appeared around my door, and I nearly yelled out in fright.
“You okay, baby?”
“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me,” I replied, rather breathlessly.
He nodded, and disappeared.
The Taliban had a new tactic: sleep deprivation. Intermittently throughout the night, they’d fire an RPG randomly towards us. None of them came close enough to cause concern, but it was successful at stopping us resting, not that sleeping in body armor was possible anyway – at least not until complete exhaustion had set in.
Sebastian didn’t have another chance to come near me again: I guessed he was in Grant’s office to interpret the insurgents’ radio chatter and thus help the gunners try to work out targets. At dawn, we were all gritty-eyed and pissed off as we stumbled into line to get breakfast.
I don’t know why, but an old Beatles song came into my head, and I started humming the opening bars of ‘I’m So Tired’ – the lines that said his mind is on the blink because he hasn’t slept a wink. That was exactly how I felt.
The Marine behind me started singing the tune softy, and I turned around to smile at him and joined in. Then two more started with the harmony. Soon, about 20 burly Marines were singing out of tune and getting their groove on in the breakfast line. It wasn’t much, but it was damn funny – and we really needed to laugh.
Captain Grant appeared from his office, unshaven and with dark rings around his eyes, accompanied by Crawley and Sebastian. When Grant saw the kids from Glee getting funky to the Beatles, his face split with a huge grin. I didn’t even know the man had teeth. He gave me an ironic salute, and disappeared back into his den. Crawley laughed out loud, and Sebastian smiled at me proudly.
From that moment on, the men called me ‘Yoko’, and I laughed happily, seeing their pleasure in something so simple.
It was the last time I laughed for a very long time.
The patrols that day were kept short. Crawley and his team checked out the old marketplace, which seemed to have taken the brunt of most of the RPG activity; two others moved parallel to either side of the main road; Sebastian was gone the longest, disappearing into the foothills with Jankowski and a fast-moving foot patrol.
When they returned, long after everyone else had finished their evening meal, Sebastian looked hot, sweaty, and tired.
He smiled at me wearily, and went to debrief with Grant and Jankowski.
The kitchen reopened, handing out chili-flavored MREs to the dusty crew. Sebastian had just started eating, when Grant called him back into the office. He was in there nearly half-an-hour, and his abandoned food gone cold, when he suddenly re-emerged and headed my way, his face set and grim.