Soldiers learn what we in NZ take for granted

Hayden Giles

There's not a metal road in New Zealand as rough as those leading away from Bamyan.

Each day, high in the Hindu Kush mountains in Central Afghanistan, patrols made up of the three arms of the New Zealand Defence Force head out to explore this strange and foreign land. Their job: to keep the peace, meet with local elders and try to explain how they can't work miracles. It's hard work. Each journey is bone-jarring and dusty, slow and difficult. The four-wheel-drives are mainly not armoured, unlike many of those used by coalition forces and aid agencies. A flak jacket slung over a door is token protection if the patrol is fired upon. While Bamyan is peaceful now, it would take little for it to slip back into the violent anarchy it has witnessed in the past.

Three patrol groups live out in remote bases for three weeks out of every four, and most days from Kiwi Base above Bamyan township, Kiwi 3 ranges out into closer countryside.

Signaller Whetu Matehaere is driving with New Zealand Army Captain Zac Johnson. Each carries a rifle and grenades, and a US anti-tank rocket is slung in the back seat. We head out of town, the convoy of four 4WDs bouncing past Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Mountains tower above the valley, watching over the people who have slowly returned and over tank wrecks - evidence of conflicts past. Twenty kilometres from Kiwi Base we find our first village, Sibartu, just a bazaar and a few homes.

The soldiers meet the village council, the shura, to hear their problems. They want help with an agricultural canal which was damaged 18 months ago. A guide is offered to show the Kiwis the canal to see if it can be fixed.

Royal NZ Airforce squadron leader Rob Cato leads the patrol. Now 29, he signed up aged 18 and trained as a helicopter pilot.

"There's some good pieces of kit floating around here," he says, pointing to the Blackhawks and Apache gunships occasionally seen at Bamyan. Cato's only flying will be to and from Bamyan. This is land-based work. "The job here is not specifically for any service, but uses all those skills we all should have. It's man management and liaison with the locals."

Able medic Jo Fraser, 22, signed up after leaving Rangitoto College in 2002. Now she's a Navy woman in a land-locked country. It's not quite what she expected, thinking the Navy would be a grown-up version of the Sea Cadets, which she joined aged 10. "I love my job and everything I've done. I never did want to do the university thing."

Friends back home, who call her GI Jane, still have years before finishing their qualifications. In that time, Fraser has been to Papua New Guinea and Noumea to train others in first aid and has worked in Indonesia after the tsunami which killed 300,000 people. Like anyone there, she saw so much death but also delivered almost 60 babies. "I'm getting paid for something I love while they're studying their arses off." She's dressed in combat fatigues, carrying an automatic rifle and wrestling a four-wheel-drive through beautiful terrain over ugly roads and admits it can be hard being the only female. "It's different from what I expected it to be. It's the longest I've been away from home."

The patrol turns off the main road on to an even dustier dirt track which climbs sharply rolling hills for about 30 minutes, covering barely 10 kilometres.

Cato calls a stop and turns back to a village spotted on a hillside nearby. The New Zealanders are told the village is called Motoqamar, which he believes has not been visited before. "I'm still amazed at the number of villages in this area," he says. Cato and the six Afghan men of the shura arrange themselves on the grassy slope beneath the village. They tell the New Zealander their houses were destroyed by the Taliban and villagers were killed. The council head explains that the 20 families in the village have all returned, and some are forced to live with others because there is no money for all the house repairs. "The mosque is destroyed. Because of the economy, we can't make bricks and wood."

Some families have turned away from crops to find work in nearby towns so there is money to feed their families, but a grim winter is promised. A neighbouring village has also started raiding this village's wood supply, the difference between life and death in the coming winter. "We tell them it is not good to come here and take our firewood. Next we will fight with them." Living is survival in Motoqamar.

Corporal Hayden Giles, 25, was working in a Palmerston North bar called High Flyers when he signed up. He'd just turned 20 and was following his brother, who was already in.

From his hometown of Gore he sat the written test in Invercargill, moved north to take the fitness test in the Manawatu and was sent to Waiouru for training in winter. "It was hard, as it is meant to be. Just mentally. I'm quite a fit person but it was mental fitness to keep pushing yourself. And getting used to being yelled at all the time."

Since joining, Giles has served in Timor and Afghanistan. "This trip is not as enjoyable as the Timor trip. When people say we take things for granted, you look at this place and know we do.

I wasn't expecting the water they were drinking, out of the drains they wash in. The constant need to be aware is draining, although the first month was the most tense.

"Leaving base the first time was freaky as we'd been told, it's a pretty hostile country. It will be good to get home. I'm looking forward to getting home just to run on a normal field and not having to worry about mines. That's the main one in the back of guys' heads, walking off the road and seeing mines."

And then it's back to base. The convoy retraces its route to Bamyan town, caked in dust. The patrol has been much like any other. Kiwi 3 comes back past the Buddhas, and local children stand at the roadside waving and shouting. The Kiwis shout back.

One young Afghan voice comes through the window. The boy shouts at Kiwi 3: "Sweet."