Heart-stopping moments at the battlefront with KDF

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By Dann Okoth

It was perhaps one of the high points of my career – terrifying and intriguing as it turned out – but sticking it out with the military while on duty in Somalia was an amazing experience.

You only live once as they say – unless you are a cat of course. But while embedded with the military, I felt like I lived a thousand lives.

High adrenaline, suspense, raw fear, anticipation and apprehension were what characterised life during my brief stint with the military in Somalia. It was also a learning experience that would leave an indelible mark on me.

The write sits on what used to be a tanker[Photo:Standard]

This is how it all began.

It is a sultry October morning and my phone rings, interrupting an animated conversation I’m having with a friend back in my rural home.

It is The Standard News Editor, Biketi Kikechi. He needs me to report to the office immediately to take up an urgent assignment. "You are going to Somalia – you will be embedded with the military," he breaks the news after I insist he briefs me on the assignment.

Embedment briefing

I am apprehensive as well as excited. I have heard of journalists being embedded with the military in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it never quite occurred to me I would one day file stories from the battlefront.

I report early at the Moi Air Base (MAB) in Eastleigh on December 21, last year, to take the flight to the warfront.

I regret having missed the pre-embedment briefing at the Department of Defence (DoD) the previous day as it turned out that nothing had prepared me for what was to follow.

At MAB, I’m made to fill a form that suggests what I was about to get involved in was dangerous and I might not make it back alive. One section requires me to name by benefactor (next of kin) in case of "an accident."

For once I’m really afraid, but it is too late to back out.

From now on you live and behave like a soldier, warns the Kenya Air Force Major accompanying us on the flight.

Here we take orders and obey them – few questions asked, he barks as he ushers us on to the plane. I find this odd because, as a journalist, asking questions is my stock in trade. The six-hour flight that takes us to Elwak, Wajir, Liboi and Manda is bumpy but the jetlag quickly subsides as soon as we hit officers’ mess at the Manda Naval Base in Lamu.

The state-of-the-art TV room complete with a 40-inch LCD TV, cozy leather sofas and incredibly cheap drinks at the bar, make me forget the difficult mission ahead, albeit briefly.

But it is also at Manda that I come to terms with military order and discipline.

Unwritten rule

At first, it’s a bit frustrating because the officers view us with a lot of suspicion. Our interaction is mechanical at best.

No one tells you what to do; you are supposed to figure it out yourself. This is the reason I get into trouble after sitting on the ‘wrong’ chair at the dinner table.

"You see every organisation has its own rank and file and people observe order here," says a senior Navy officer after he catches me sitting on seat reserved for the base commander at the dinner table.

The dining hall is not your ordinary cafÈ. There are no waiters as those serving you are soldiers.

You simply sit down and wait – only that sometimes the wait can be very long depending on the number of senior officers you are sitting with at the table. The unwritten rule here is senior officers get served first. I was always served last all the time as they really didn’t know how to rank me.

Here, we ate the same type of food everyday.

Yet in spite of all this, Manda is still a holiday camp. I come to learn there are tougher locations on the menu as I get entrapped in military camps tucked away on a rugged terrain in Somalia.

Given password

A quick helicopter ride to Ishakani on the fringes of the expansive Boma forest and then a two-hour lorry ride to Kiunga in the south-easterly coastal border with Somalia mark the begging of the ‘real embedment.’

For over two weeks, we live on the edge, having to make do with sleeping bags in an open-ended tent.

Our host, Captain Sunday, takes us through a raft of safety instructions in what would become known as security briefings. In each briefing, we were assigned a password.

The idea is should you arrive late at the camp, or need to go out for a call of nature, any officer standing guard would pronounce the first word and you are supposed to complete the password by shouting out the second word – in a split second or you are taken down.

On Boxing Day, my colleague Govedi Asutsa and I left for the local shopping centre to buy water. But at the gate, a soldier on duty advised us against it because there was an imminent Al Shaabab attack at the camp.

On second thought though, he allowed us to leave – after all he also needed a bottle of water and he would not mind us buying him one.

As we approached the gate on our way back, he shouted the code word. Incidentally, we had not been given a password on that day and so we didn’t know what to say in response.

We heard a crackling sound as he cocked the automatic weapon. We stood transfixed.

It may have been just a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. Apparently the soldier remembered he had let us out and the drama is soon over.

With soldiers and automatic weapons around me, there is also the occasional oddity to deal with like a soldier’s gun going off accidentally and a snake crawling into the sleeping bag.

But basically the real threat in Kiunga came when a red alert was declared over the camp. One came on Christmas day just hours after top military bosses flew in from Nairobi to give the soldiers a morale booster.

Word had gone round that Al Shabaab were planning to attack several targets in the area. We had our meals earlier than usual. At seven, we were called to a security meeting with Captain Sunday.

Well, there was nothing much to worry about as this was part of housekeeping. But a little rider later in the conversations wiped off the sleep from my eyes.

"This people are funny. They wait until you’re dead asleep in the wee hours of the morning to attack. Probably the last thing you will hear is Allah Akbar," Captain Sunday said.