Where Youth and Laughter Go by Seth William Bell Folsom

Author:Seth William Bell Folsom [Folsom, LtCol Seth W. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612518725
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

21

Hearts and Minds

The labyrinth of the Fishtank continually amazed me. Each time I ventured with one of the rifle squads into its cobbled, nonsensical network of stone and crushed gravel paths, winding corridors, and steeply walled compounds I wondered whether anyone could ever drag the area into the twenty-first century. Of more immediate concern, though, were the narrow alleys—some only a meter across—that connected the different neighborhoods and served most often as clandestine locations for the locals to relieve themselves. The narrow paths became tactical throughways for the Marines to move under cover from neighborhood to neighborhood, and the Taliban fighters in the Fishtank had taken note. They responded by lacing many of the constricted lanes with IEDs that waited patiently to take out entire squads with the combination of their explosive blast and the concussion magnified by the enclosed passages.

On December 6 I patrolled once more through the Fishtank, this time with Lima 1-2. Led by David Wood, a twenty-three-year-old corporal from Pomona, California, the Marines of 2nd Squad moved south and skirted the steep face of the Sangin Wadi. As usual, the patrol negotiated its way through throngs of the ever-present “chocolate gnomes,” a term for the local kids I had first heard coined by Lima 3-3’s squad leader, Cpl Ian Ward, at Patrol Base Mateen days earlier. Over the course of the deployment Corporal Ward and I developed an unusual ritual during our patrols together through the Green Zone. He always inquired about the Jeep I had insisted I would buy once we returned home. Months later, when I picked up the vehicle at the dealership, I fought the urge to contact him and tell him I had actually gone through with it.

The demands for “chock-lee-ate” were preferable to the other sporadic bouts of weirdness I experienced with Lima Company. On one occasion, as I patrolled with Lima 2-1 elsewhere in the Fishtank, a boy who looked about twelve years old began following me closely, jabbering away the entire time. Before long he started poking the index finger of one hand through the curled index finger of his other hand and raising his eyebrows quickly, playfully. Surely that doesn’t mean the same thing here as it does in the United States, I thought, frowning. Suddenly he pulled down his pants and displayed his goods for me, shaking them back and forth vigorously. I was mortified.

“That kid just showed me his junk,” I told one of the Marines nearby.

“Yeah,” he replied, “he does that.”

Now, as we moved further east, the squad entered a row of cultivated compounds built into the lee of the wadi’s northern face. Moments later I bumped into Hajji Bayazid, a hefty, jovial, outwardly pro-American member of the iDCC. For weeks I had avoided him and his offers of free advice about local government corruption, advice I knew would come with a request for some sort of outrageous favor or special privilege.

No one in Sangin, no matter how supportive of ISAF and the Coalition, was ever entirely altruistic when it came to anything.

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