Talk to Me Like My Father: Frontline Medicine in Afghanistan

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Soldiers may not be fed if they are unarmed—though neither are they permitted entry if they are carrying a bag of any sort. I ask a soldier waiting in line with me for breakfast why this is. "In case a Taliban in disguise," he nods toward one of the Jordanians, "wants to blow us up." He suggests I stuff my camera bag in a jacket pocket. In line ahead of us is an American private from the perpetually deployed 10th Mountain Division carrying an M203 grenade launcher; in front of him the Jordanians stand in jungle-green fatigues, AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders, magazines jutting from their pockets.

The Romanians, who help provide airfield security, have quickly acquired a reputation for both aggressive patrolling and a certain erratic quality to their response times. Opinions vary over which characteristic predominates. Again and again, I try and fail to engage Romanian soldiers in conversation, but they keep to themselves. They've built a little church that appears to have been lifted whole from the shore of the Black Sea. On New Year's Day, Romania joined the European Union, and their presence in Kandahar can be explained both by the application to join and the expectation that it would be accepted. Everyone comments on how much the Romanians eat—great, heaping mounds of chicken and potatoes and steaks stacked like flapjacks. Still, their comparatively gaunt faces seem half the size of their corn-fed brethren, dark eyes under shaven heads gazing around at such foreignness. And all the food you can eat.

i am standing at the memorial to the 43 dead Canadian soldiers when the first rocket flies into the camp. A granite slab with Captain Nichola Goddard's picture etched into it smiles out from among the others. She was an artillery officer from Shilo, my old regiment, working as a forward observation officer (who directs the fall of artillery shells) when she was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade (rpg). Orthopedic surgeon Steve Masseours—we'd both been captains in Ottawa a dozen years earlier—is standing beside me. He's a major now, and was on duty when Goddard came into the hospital, in May 2006. "She had terrible luck," he says. "Fragment of shrapnel flew in under her helmet, over her armor, at just the wrong angle, and went into her head." She was the first female Canadian soldier killed in action in Afghanistan. Twenty-six years old. Horsey, good-natured grin. Almost beautiful. Beautiful, in fact. "We started to resuscitate her, but it was pretty clear it was hopeless," Steve says.

Just then, a rocket whistles overhead, a short, thin stream of red light trailing behind it. Steve is already ducking low when it explodes in the military police compound, a hundred yards away. A fraction of a second later, another. As the attack siren goes off, we lie on the concrete pad among the pictures of the fallen—smiling, large-toothed men and one woman self-conscious in their posed portraits; the common elements: shoulders and acne. After a few minutes, we scurry over to the nearest bunker, joined by a nervous clot of newbie soldiers from Canada and Holland, and Americans, who do 12- to 15-month tours and were long ago inured to such attacks. "That's the helicopters going up," one lanky Texan says, to the thumping sound filling the air. When it is next possible to be heard, he adds, "Give them 30, 45 minutes and y'all can go back to work." The Texan describes how the rockets are triggered when a block of ice holding down the release lever melts—leaving the Taliban time to get many miles away before the helicopters find the launch site. I nod more times than is necessary. He is entertained. The all-clear signal rings out and we walk quickly to the hospital. There is only one wounded—an American MP who was picked up and tossed by the explosion.

A little later, we eat with Major Sanjay Acharya, an anesthetist of Gujarati stock by way of Newfoundland who speaks with the rolling lilt of that island, almost Irish in its gregarious musicality. "What this represents, gentlemen," he declares, indicating the salmon on his plate, "is creeping mediocrity." Island peoples have high standards for fish, but Acharya also allows he's rattled by the rocket attack. "Bastards are probably off giggling like it's some fucking game of Knock Knock Ginger."

At home, in Ottawa, Acharya keeps workaholic hours—more than 120 on-call nights a year in critical care and anesthesia. Here, he sleeps heroically when the wounded are not coming. When upright, he lays out his plans: to start a cult modeled on Scientology—"I've already got that Eastern mystic-yogi-guru thing down"—to attend law school, to leave the military as soon as he's eligible for his pension. In an organization committed to the cultivation of zeal, he has proved barren land. He tells us he once dodged a court-martial (he had irritated his superior into apoplexy) by simply failing to cooperate, give a statement, or use the military-appointed lawyer. The functionaries, it is plain, would only ever be baffled by him. The nameplate on his room reads, "G. Assman."

by valentine's day spring is unfolding; this is pleasant, in that the rain has stopped and one can sit in the sun and read, but it causes some foreboding. Musa Qala, about 100 miles northwest of Kandahar in Helmand Province, has recently been seized by Taliban forces in defiance of a mutual-withdrawal agreement made earlier with the British. Today the British killed the Taliban commander with an aerial strike. Helmand looks to be this year's hot spot, where the British have just launched Operation Kryptonite, aimed at seizing control of Kajaki Dam, a major power source that has been off-line since 2003. There have been hundreds of Taliban casualties in the previous six weeks—a fact we can learn from Google News. But the bed censuses at the coalition hospitals tell the story just as well: The British-run Camp Bastion field hospital in Helmand is constantly in condition red, and the overflow casualties are coming to us.

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Photographs By: Kevin Patterson

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