Beyond the khaki, colour stirs the heart
The Age
Saturday November 28, 2009
Embedded with our troops in Afghanistan, Jo Chandler finds fleeting beauty amid the bleak landscape. I will not carry a gun . . . I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!€” Hawkeye PierceHAWKEYE isn't here. No recalcitrant draftees in this army. But courtesy of him and his khaki colleagues, much of the rest of the show is familiar. Helicopters and "incoming!"; callow kids and weary veterans; sandbags and latrines; bad food, bravery, bravado.And guns, lots of guns. Pistols at dawn lined up on the bathroom sink, and rifles at the dinner table (but kindly remove your hat/ helmet).The psychological journey into war requires a swift adjustment to omnipresent weaponry, to following orders, to "hurry up and wait", to the percussion of distant fire. It is achieved with worrying ease. I wonder whether this is the consequence of hard-wired human disposition, or whether the war zones of popular culture have instilled a lifetime of subliminal preparedness.The physical journey into the war zone is more disconcerting. It's a step into a surreal parallel reality. A place where you feel vulnerable and bulletproof in the same moment.A note travels down the cavernous length of the Hercules. Dozing soldiers, their ears plugged to keep out the engine roar, pass on the message €” "15 MINS UNTIL PUT ARMOUR ON" €” scrawled in red ink capitals. There's a scramble for flak jackets and helmets and goggles as we approach the border into Afghanistan.I find a jumpseat at a porthole and consider the pale, sharp mountain ranges stretching out below, natural forts, the hiding places of elusive enemies. I scan the distant earth for movement, as do so many other eyes in this crowded sky.The loadmaster summons with a crook of his finger, pointing out a huge cavity in the ancient floor, a deep, dusty bowl in the shape of a vast, empty harbour. We wonder at nature's miracle from our tin-can vantage point.After overnighting at the vast base in Kandahar €” diving sharply through airspace thick with Harriers and Hueys, Tornados and Chinooks €” we finally land in a dervish of talcum-fine dust at Tarin Kowt, Oruzgan province. The propellers never stop as the incoming troops are promptly disgorged from the belly of the plane and the outgoing are fed in, swallowed in one swift hydraulic gulp by the landing ramp.New arrivals are trucked to the now-familiar but never fathomable welcome briefing. In the event of rocket attack, this siren; in the event of biological attack, another one.I find my bag and my quarters: a bunk in a bomb-proofed shipping container. After two weeks in the care of the Australian military, I am accustomed to eating, showering and sleeping with strangers. In Kandahar my bunk mate was a young woman from "intelligence" who spent the evening tucked up with her laptop and an entire season of Gossip Girl.In Tarin Kowt it's a bloke called Terry, who introduces himself with a deep growl as I creep into my sheets late at night, climbing over piles of guns and kit. We spend intimate, steamy, snorey, desert nights together, me, Terry and four others. I never see Terry in daylight or with his clothes on.Kamp Holland is a blight on the bleakest of landscapes. A crowded suburb of tents and tin boxes, the ugly hardware of a makeshift frontier. Mad Max-type vehicles churn the pale rubble of the streets.It's hard to find beauty here but it can be glimpsed at dawn, when pale light falls on the distant ranges outside the wire. At night, the desert stars are bright above the inky darkness of the blacked-out camp.One woman tells me what she most misses from home (Tasmania) is colour. Everything on the base is bleached into the pale landscape by the sun or camouflaged by order.Everything except Ida, a Bosnian woman making milkshakes in the Dutch cafe. She wears a bright sundress to work and a bikini top as she sunbathes outside her tent. She has seen too much war, she says wearily. Why is she here? For the money €” she's a pharmacist but can't find work at home.Colour can be found in the real Tarin Kowt, an ancient township of crumbling earth walls a short ride in an armoured vehicle away. A flash of emerald green from the little girl who runs into the ruins on sighting our retinue of gun-toting guards. The brilliant blue of burqas skimming the dusty path into the girls' school, draped over the most courageous of women, the teachers. The bouquet of pink plastic flowers tied to the handlebars of a little boy's bicycle. He weaves through the patrol of combat foot soldiers walking the otherwise empty streets, a flash of cheeky grin shielded by pink petals. Guns and flowers.
© 2009 The Age
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