The Right to Sleep

We were tasked with supporting a special forces operation to locate a missing journalist who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. At least that’s what we were told. When you’re far enough down the food chain, you learn not to confuse the stated objective with the full truth of what’s happening.

We were operating in a highly remote settlement. Mountains on one side, desert on the other, days of travel in every direction. It had its own water source, presumably coming off the mountains, though I never saw rain fall once. It was beautiful, really. Another time, another world, you could imagine yourself on some kind of pilgrimage here. Like an oasis miles from anywhere. The sort of place perfect for fighters to use for downtime or to recover from injuries away from the fighting.

Going compound to compound, we weren’t finding much. No fighters. No obvious signs of Taliban presence. There was the usual opium processing. Poppy was the main cash crop. We were under instructions not to interfere unless it was a significant facility.

About three-quarters of the way through a long, dust-filled day, we went to ground. Armour and kit stayed on, but we were able to rest the weight for a moment. We spread out around what would pass for a shopping precinct back home. Like a strange caravan of camels finally allowed to sit.

I’d barely got my water bottle out when I was called forward with my interpreter. My role was interacting with civilians, so “Wally”, the terp, was always with me.

Inside the building we were taken to, it looked like the town chemist. Shelves. Containers. The floor was a mess of used medicine boxes and paraphernalia.

Through the interpreter, it was intimated that the man was a doctor, though in Helmand that could mean many things.

Then I noticed a section of the earthen wall that was slightly lighter than the rest.

Call it intuition. Something in the man shifted when I paid it attention. These were relaxed people, accustomed to centuries of warfare. Inshallah was never far away. It usually took a lot to disturb that composure.

But he stiffened.

The wall was false. Behind it was a cache of medical equipment. Not basic first aid, but trauma kit. The sort of equipment used to control catastrophic bleeding. The kind paramedics would use back home after a serious road traffic accident.

There were barely any vehicles in the village. No industrial machinery. And the equipment had been deliberately concealed.

It was clear what this place was. Either fighters were being treated here, or the supplies were being pushed forward to other locations. Either way, the intelligence we’d been given checked out.

This was well above our pay grade. So we radioed back to command.

I don’t remember how long it took for a decision to come back. It felt immediate.

“Just leave it.”

Continue with priority tasking. Find the missing soul.

In theory, there was nothing unlawful about destroying the equipment. The rules of war would have allowed it. But the question wasn’t legality. It was cost. Not to the enemy, but to the men expected to carry out the order.

Once someone is hors de combat, injured and no longer an immediate threat, asking a soldier to turn medicine into a weapon asks something deeper of him.

A good leader knows that some lawful actions aren’t worth what they take.

Soldiers understand risk. We accept it when we sign up. We don’t need officials to protect us from danger beyond proper training and the equipment to do the job. We’ll take responsibility for our own lives, and for the people to our left and right. What we cannot be asked to surrender is our honour. A soldier would sooner face a bullet than the slow suffocation of his own conscience. Without a higher cause, violence collapses into something else entirely. And once that line is crossed, no amount of justification can put a man back together again.

War may not be ending any time soon. And young men and women will continue to be sent into harm’s way.

Which is why leadership matters.

A leader’s job is to look after those they send into harm’s way. Not just by issuing body armour or providing the best training, but by protecting something harder to see. A soldier’s right to sleep in peace once he comes home.

That judgement doesn’t show up in after-action reports.

But it shows up years later.

When a man puts his head on the pillow.

When his body is exhausted, but the moment his eyes close the inner world lights up in unforgiving detail. No handrail. No distance. Just memory, played back without mercy.

What he carries into that darkness was shaped long before that night.

Often by a single order.

Given, or withheld.