Richard Johnson -- Canadian artist in Afghanistan

It's been a while since I linked to a milblog, not by any deliberate omission on my part but simply because we have so little in the way of common interests. But I appreciate good work where ever I find it and Richard Johnson's sketches are top-notch. His blog, Postings from Afghanistan, a Kandahar Journal, which appears online in Canads's National Post, is three months old. That is where he posts sketches, both written and drawn, describing his experience as a reporter/artist assigned to Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

This morning, drilling into an old post I took another look at Argghhh!!! blog (the name of which defies description). The blogmaster linked to The Torch, a group blog where member Damian Brooks pointed to Richard Johnson's work. The Torch, incidentally has excellent reference maps of Afghanistan in the sidebar for anyone wanting to know the details of ethnic/tribal or military distributions there, as well as an atlas-type geographic map. Very detailed when enlarged.

Readers are urged to look at Richard Johnson's work and words. His up-close and personal descriptions show the human side of war that usually gets circulated only among warriors.

Another day another perfect blue sky - bleeding to beige/red as it meets the land. I did a little laundry, some archiving, some emailing, some shaving and then started thinking about some of the photos I have waiting for me from which I hope to create some of the bigger art pieces. I looked unenthusiastically through them for a few hours and then sketched Francis Silvaggio in his Olympic standard slouch behind me at his desk.

In the afternoon I heard back from Lieutenant (Navy) John Nethercott (one of the PAFOs I had emailed) that he had received clearance to allow me into the base hospital. It was only a short walk away.

There I met Aziz.

Aziz is six-years-old.

A month ago, on the day I arrived into Kandahar, Aziz was shot twice through the abdomen by coalition forces during a skirmish with the Taliban. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was caught in the crossfire. His life was saved by the same machinery of war that almost took it.

Aziz has had a tempestuous month since then. He has had multiple surgeries and complications from those surgeries that have taken him close to death a number of times. He has become very frail, his muscles have atrophied and his eyes have sunk deep into his head. Still he manages to smile and give a thumbs up to the nurses.

Aziz is the only child in a ward full of men. They are all fairly seriously injured. Some are Afghan National policemen with concussions and broke bones, caused by IEDs. Some are Afghan National Army soldiers with shrapnel scars and abdominal bullet wounds. One is a Taliban soldier who slept while a Canadian soldier sat at the bottom of his bed.

I am introduced to his Aziz's father Hajibaba and an interpreter explains to him what it is that I wanted to do. Hajibaba looked numbly at me, but agreed to let me draw his son. From the nurses I learned that his father has not left his side in a month. Someone also explained what I am doing to Aziz.

I spent a little time just standing out of the way and watching him. The nurses and doctors came and went with the rhythm of the ward. Aziz smiled and looked brave and gave a thumbs up for the men, but grimaced and reached for the hands of the women who attended him. One of the nurses, Jo-Anne Hnatiuk a Navy lieutenant from Fernie, B.C. told me she thought he needed his mother. She also told me that he had recently "turned a corner" and that this was one of his better days.

I stood at the foot of his bed and drew him while he looked at his father. I had to stop and move a number of times as his morphine infuser continually tripped an alarm and someone rushed to reset it. Periodically he grimaced in obvious discomfort. He is a favourite for many of the medical staff, as a steady stream of on- and off-duty soldiers of all nationalities came by to say hi during their shift change. One woman had made him an origame bird mobile (His favourite was the crow with the orange beak). I continued to draw as the foot traffic ebbed and flowed.

I would like to capture one of his sketches for this post, but I think they are not available to be reproduced without permission. At least the usual "properties" says "Unavailable" when I looked for the link. But that's not important. What is important is that readers go and look at this man's work and appreciate it for what it is: wartime journalism at its best.

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As I was putting together this post I heard a theme playing in the background of my mind: Why do you, a card-carrying conscientious objector and openly critical opponent of this and all wars, feel the need to point to a milblog and war journalism?

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Part of the answer lies in little observations I made along the link journey.

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The milblog community -- and yes, it is a community, rather closed off and isolated from outside influences and quite defensive about criticisms -- is more than a collection of soldiers and their supporters. It is an extension of war itself. Suggestions that war is in any way not the best way to resolve conflict are quickly conflated into an unpatriotic, possibly subversive effort to undermine the troops and argue for defeat. The word propaganda is invoked in a flash, even though the discussion may very well be restricted to an internal forum not likely to be of any influence to undecided recipients of the discussion.

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Also, I didn't have to look far to come across a not-so-oblique macho reference to sex in one of the links. Pin-up girls have been part of morale-building resources for all wars, and this picture, along with the mildly salacious (and completely normal) comments it draws from appreciative readers, illustrates the point. One of the links in my aggregator is to a blog from one such contemporary princess that I think is cute as she can be...but there is no denying that the connection between girls and guns has a visceral stimulating impact on those who lay their very lives on the line in uniform.

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My purpose in linking here is simple. I hope that by showing the human elements of both sides of what has become the most divisive political conflict of our time I can build bridges of understanding between them. Otherwise I am contributing to the rhetoric that continues to divide the country.

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One afterthought: In the same way that the Republicans have handed the immigration issue over to Democrats, my instinct is that Democrats are trying to delay the end of the Iraq war in order for a Democrat president to be credited for having ended it. If that makes me a cynic, so be it. No one has said such openly, but I can easily believe that at the upper reaches of political party strategy planning such a scheme has been openly discussed, perhaps even acted upon. That would be a great scent for some clever political reporter-sleuth to sniff.