I’ve heard this story retold so many times over the years, I figure it was finally time to break the silence.
So for starters, I owe many of y’all an apology. I lied about never having been in Afghanistan. I was, in fact, there, in the early days of that war. And that is where this story takes place, in 2002. So what had happened was…
That early in my military career, I was pretty gung-ho. I was also fairly young, being just 23 years old. For comparison, aside from the eleven guys I finished training with (all part of my team), the average age in the Company was about 28 to 30. So as you can well imagine, I and my teammates were definitely rather large pains in quite a few asses.
Naturally, we weren’t at the very tip of the spear. Sure, we were kinda high in the ‘problem-solver’ hierarchy, but whenever battalion got whiff of a nice, juicy target, they would only consider sending us after if if the more senior teams were otherwise occupied. Which, to be fair, is very understandable. You don’t really want to be putting your least experienced troops into the worst of the fighting, but you do want them to get some experience. As a result of this, when another team who was out on patrol near a little town called Tarlik that was nestled into a rather pretty valley up in the north end of Kandahar Province went radio silent, that seemed like a great job to assign to the Fucking New Guys.
Or, at least, it seemed like assigning it to us would be better than tapping into the regular Army to do it. Note the foreshadowing there.
Now, you need to understand that this is in Southern Afghanistan. There’s not a lot of rainfall down there, even in the mountains. What there is a lot of is sand and sunshine. So even up in the higher elevations, it’s hot. Not like, Iraq hot, but still. If you were heading out in a humvee, you were coming back with a bad case of swampass.
‘Fortunately’, we got a lift from a chopper. I say ‘fortunately’ because a seventy-five mile drive in a vehicle designed to maximize the discomfort of the troops inside isn’t exactly fun. Imagine driving for two and a half hours in the back of a covered truck that has had its shocks and struts welded down tight, sitting on a folding metal chair the whole time, with people occasionally taking a potshot at you. Yeah, no fun. But I also put ‘fortunately’ in quotes, because getting a lift via chopper meant we’d be hoofing it around once they dropped us off. Fortunately, we were light infantry, so we only had about fifty pounds of kit, each.
Well, that’s not including the twelve pounds of water. Because hot.
Anyways, we got dropped off at the north end of the valley and began hoofing it up one of the ridgelines where the missing team should have been. It was some rough going, but fortunately, ahem, I mean ‘fortunately’, it was less than a thousand feet of vertical ascent. So we made it up there, not exactly fresh, but not as exhausted as I would spend far too much of my time overseas. We moved carefully, because we’d heard reports that the townsfolk in the valley below were weirdos who might be harboring some Talibani. We made it across a shallow saddle and began the descent into the next valley over.
About halfway down that slope, we figured out exactly what had happened to the other team. You see, there was a cave there. And outside that cave was a few packs, some uniforms and some weapons. All issued gear. Of course, that sounds ominous, but that’s because you weren’t there. You see, coming from the cave was the smooth, lively jam of Nelly crooning to us about how hot it was in there, and how we should take off all our clothes. Alongside Nelly’s practiced and professional vocals, there was a chorus of off-key barking and howling masquerading as a sing-along with the music that would be easily recognizable to anyone who’s ever brought alcohol into a barracks.
So naturally, we reported in to command that the missing team was partying in a cave in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by god knows how many Taliban fighters, making quite a ruckus.
Hah! I bet you believed me for a second there. No, what we actually did was head on inside to find a large cave full of old crates and thirteen very drunk, very happy soldiers. As it turns out, this had been a smuggler’s cave, and it was full of enough vodka to piss off half the livers in the Kaf (that’s what we called the Kandahar Air Field) bad enough to simply quit and request a replacement.
As we were professional soldiers and thus highly respectful of military traditions, no matter how new, we promptly went back outside, stripped naked, and went back in to party with our fellows. And party we did. I’m not exactly sure how much I drank, but it was a lot. Time passed, and our scheduled check-in came and went, with our RTO too busy twerking to pay attention, and our Captain too busy laughing at all of our antics to remind him.
Hours passed. Those were, hands down, some of the best hours I had overseas. We had an absolute blast, let me tell you. We danced, we played games, we even had an impromptu marksmanship competition (I won, because as much as I like drunkenness, I didn’t like the taste of vodka as much as the others).
Night fell, and we kept drinking and dancing until we collapsed in the hour or two before dawn. And when the sun crept back up over the mountains, our first priority was to get back to work eliminating the stock of illegal vodka. It didn’t take long for the party to resume.
At some point the second afternoon, about twenty four hours since our last contact with the Kaf, things began to wind down. People were exhausted from almost twenty four hours of partying (more, in the case of the other team), and naps began to spread like herpes in a whorehouse. I eventually found myself passed out and sleeping lightly (as I usually do when drunk) near the mouth of the cave, apart from the others, who were much further back in, nearer to the booze.
I was woken up some time later by the sound of voices, just outside the cave. American voices, speaking English. So I got up, went further back in, grabbed a handful of bottles and an old leather blanket that had covered one of the crates, wrapped the blanket around myself and headed out to greet the newcomers to the party.
I found a very confused team out there, picking through the detritus outside the cave, wondering how it had all gotten there, no doubt. At the sight of a filthy, naked soldier wrapped in a hide approaching them, they were naturally quite wary, but the bottles in my hands easily handled any thought they may have given to shooting me or demanding a passphrase or doing anything other than cheering my approach, really.
I passed out the bottles and we began to party again, this time, on the outside of the cave.
There was one soldier with that group, whom I recognized as Dan. Dan (Dan has a new name these days, but I’m not going to dox her. Yes, I said ‘her’. Hence the name change.) was a short, slender and frankly, disappointingly good-looking fellow (made the rest of us feel bad). Rumors swirled about how much she’d benefited from the “don’t ask” policy in place at the time, as well as speculation about what she might have had to say were it not for the “don’t tell” policy. On that day, I learned that the rumors were true.
Dan and I danced for quite some time. The new guys hadn’t stripped down to their birthday suits the way we had, but Dan still managed to get her ass out at some point, and found herself busily twerking against my groin.
Now, I need to disclaim here that I’m not gay. I’m vaguely poly, at best. And Dan, white rather feminine, was not at that time identifying as a woman, and only really looked like one in dim lighting. And only when she shaved. Dan, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that mustache was the worst one in the whole battalion, and mine earned me a not-so-flattering nickname before I shaved it off.
So while I then and still consider myself a (mostly) straight man, I was drunk. Drunker than the others by this point, owing to my renewed partying with the newcomers. And Dan was a pretty, pretty soldier. So I have to admit, I got randy when she started twerking. And being an itty bitty lil thang, I had no need to find us a comfortable spot to lay down. I picked her tiny ass up and impaled her upon ole Jormugandr.
Yes, I worked Sergeant Dan the Shawty like a squealing, sweaty fleshlight, right then and there. Just standing there with one thigh in either hand, pumping away with the enthusiasm that can only come from knowing that I’m teetering on the edge of whiskey dick and might not finish if I don’t get there quick. And, despite the prevalence of homophobia among the troops, the others were also drunk. They didn’t give a rat’s ass. In fact, they cheered us on. Hooting and hollering and chanting “hit that!” over and over. They repeated Dan’s cries of ecstasy and my own grunts of exertion right back at us. And when Dan loudly announced that she was coming, they began firing their guns off into the air. They kept firing through my own approach of the edge, and didn’t stop until I collapsed. Dan and I cuddled up (as one does) and the blessed darkness took me.
The next thing I knew, I was terrified. Not that I’d been caught in the act of doing something that could get me dishonorably discharged. Everyone involved was guilty of that. Nobody would be reporting either me or Dan for our little romp. No, what I was terrified of was the fact that I was wrapped up in a cargo net, slung beneath a Chinook, about two thousand feet above the landscape below and being buffeted by the wind.
The Chinook took us back to the Kaf. Predictably, we caught hell from Battalion. Yes, I learned my lesson, and would never again engage in drunken shenanigans in a combat zone. (Note that I specified only ‘drunken’ shenanigans.) And that’s the end of the story.
So to recap by pointing out where the reality differs from the rumors and acknowledge what the rumors got true….
No, I’m not ten feet tall or bulletproof. They weren’t shooting at me, and I’m really only six feet tall. I just looked bigger in comparison to Dan, is all.
Yes, I had been allowed to grow my beard out to a much longer length then than I kept it in later years.
Yes, I’m a redhead, and my hair was a brighter orange then than it is now.
No, while I find the comparison flattering, that was not a ten-foot-long spear I impaled Dan with.
Yes, I stunk to all high hell.
And finally, the nickname of ‘The Kandahar Giant’ originally referred only to a specific part of me. Honestly, I would have never encouraged the spread of that nickname if I knew it would give rise to such a persistent rumor as all of this. Of course, at the time, I just appreciated the ego rub of a bunch of macho motherfuckers being honestly impressed enough by my length and girth to give me a nickname over it.
Hope this clears things up for y’all.