Poet well versed on war
Suzanne Steele, Contributor
War poet Suzanne Steele gets a bird's eye view of Aghanistan.
A half-hour after takeoff, we crossed the Afghan border into friendly air space.
I knew we were on the home stretch once I saw the load specialist, who covers arcs out the window of the C-130 Hercules, take off his PPE (frag vest, helmet, and ballistics). And while soldiers always give the impression of "what ever" in a war zone, I felt a collective sigh of relief throughout the military transport aircraft. When the plane landed they would head off for their HLTA (leave) and the "tourist" civilians would head home, their missions completed.
I got up, stretched and looked out the little window down at the mountain ranges of the Middle East that looked like a relief map carved of blue cedar, put on display just for us.
I went to Afghanistan as part of the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP) to witness 1st Battalion Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry (1PPCLI) at war. As the first poet in CFAP, I hoped to bring back a sense of what it means to be Canadian and fighting in a country on the opposite side of the world.
I started my journey on a rainy night in the autumn of 2007 when DND Public Affairs set me up to interview a young veteran who had served in Afghanistan. I wanted to know what the experience was like for a new generation to go to war. Had been shot at and had to shoot.
The Corporal and I spent several hours over a few months drinking coffee together as he told me his story. He was a young reservist who had gone to Afghanistan as a member of a rifle company and lived to tell the tale. I wrote a few poems from that interview and then was encouraged to apply for the artists program, which would send me to Afghanistan to see for myself. I am not a well known artist, so I was amazed to be chosen.
CFAP's program is extremely limited, only one short "deployment", so my luck was extraordinary when I met the Commanding Officer (CO) of 1PPCLI and was invited to spend as much time as I could with the battalion on their "road to war" preparations. I spent the next 14 months visiting 1PPCLI during their workup training.
That year was one of the toughest physically, mentally and emotionally, but also one of the best of my life. It was marked with doors being opened, and doors being slammed in my personal and professional life. A young Captain remarked how eerily similar my experience of the road to war was with that of the soldiers. I experienced the surreal notion of all who sign up for a tour share - that one might not come home alive. My family suffered this stress too. For some it was too much.
The day I set out for Afghanistan, Victoria piper Nathan Roberts showed up at the Victoria airport in full Highland dress and piped me to the departure gate. I kissed my two friends and my daughter goodbye, hugged the big, handsome ex-Canadian Scot goodbye and spent the next 48 hours in transit. After arriving at 0200hrs at the staging base, I caught a few hours sleep, put on my PPE and boarded a Herc filled with next-of-kin and soldiers heading back into theatre after their HLTA. The Herc was eerily silent except for the drone of engines. I found out later the soldiers were not comfortable in the presence of the next-of-kin flying in to visit the spot their sons, brothers, and husbands had died. They are always aware of the presence, the potential for death, but they are good at compartmentalizing it.
For me as an artist, this was a poignant beginning to a journey I had obsessed over for months. Everywhere I went at the Kandahar Air Force base I ran into the next-of-kin. On the day I was driven to the airfield to catch my chopper to go outside the wire, they were having a tour of the airfield. One of them hugged me and warned me to be careful. A father said to me that he envied me. He wanted to see exactly where his son had died.
I'll be honest. The night before I flew outside the wire my nerve faltered. I told my visit officer that I couldn't do it. That evening I had a knock on my door. It was a young recce corporal who had just taken a 20 kilometre stroll across the countryside.
"If you don't do it you'll regret it all your life. Besides," he said, "You've got to see the red desert, the wild camels, the nomads. KAF isn't Afghanistan."
I spent a short time with the rifle company I had been tracking since its inception at Shilo in 2008. I got to watch village life from a strong point, ate, chatted with the soldiers, including a navy diver from Victoria, went on sentry, bivouacked with the troops, most of whom I knew and watched 200 soldiers and the CO roll in one night and prepare for a big operation.
My time in Afghanistan was very short but every minute there had a curiously long feeling to it; a nerviness takes over after a rocket attack, but so does a kick of adrenaline and suddenly it's hilarious that you didn't get hit.
As far as my work goes, the words are spilling from me. I haven't enough time to write. My work is being read at Nov. 11th ceremonies, studied in schools in Ontario, B.C., and Manitoba, as well as the University of Glasgow in Scotland. My online project, www.warpoet.ca has had 45,000 hits. I'm publishing in Canada and the U.K.
War is bewitching. To go to war, and to survive whole of body and mind, is intoxicating, though not for the faint of heart. Never for the faint of heart. I guess that's why guys sign up for third tours. A second tour is for unfinished business. A third is that the country, or the fight, or something un-nameable, is in the system and needs to be worked out. I know that I'd go back in an instant if I could - my time there was far too short, my mission as a war artist incomplete, even though I kissed the ground when I reached home safely.
