Spoken from the Front (24 page)

We came back to Bastion, had our orders and then pushed
out with two platoons' worth of Vikings. On the ground were
7 and 5 Platoons, our mortar-line, FSG [Fire Support Group]
B and the OC's tac. The idea was to find concentrations of the
Taliban, to disrupt them, and to damage their combat
effectiveness. It started off fairly quiet as we headed out into
the desert.

The plan was to raid into the Green Zone over a period of
four to five days, find and disrupt the Taliban, then extract
back into the desert. We started off in a town called
Zumbelay, which had been known for some heavy contacts in
the past. The other platoon commander and I were expecting
things to be fairly serious. That first day we contacted a few
sentries who fired RPGs at us. They then legged it. We cleared
into Zumbelay a few hundred metres and encountered little
else. We then extracted back to the vehicles and moved back
to a leaguer [harbour or short stop-off point] in the desert.

The next day we went into Pasab and set up our overwatch.
On this occasion, 5 Platoon were kept back on the high
ground in reserve. As with the day before, the mortar-line and
the FSG, under Company Sergeant Major Snow, set up on a
dominating feature. There was a canal that ran along the edge
of the fertile Green Zone, separating it from the desert. The
village was mostly spread out in the sand with a few
compounds dotted amongst the trees on the far side of the
canal. We had seen the women and children move out and,
getting the familiar rush of adrenalin to the stomach, we began
to patrol through the compounds. There were a few elderly
people about who told us the Taliban weren't there, had never
been there and would never be there – which made us instantly
suspicious.

It was not too long after meeting these locals – at about 7
a.m. – when we were contacted from beyond the canal. We
engaged this firing point: 1 Section moving quickly into fire
positions to suppress it with GPMG and rifles. The Taliban
were engaging us with automatic fire – probably from a PKM
and AKs. We used an 84mm – a light anti-tank weapon. We
saw muzzle flashes and movement amongst the compounds
on the other side of the canal but it was often difficult to pinpoint
precise enemy positions. As we more or less silenced
the first position, 3 Section began to take fire from our left
flank and a couple of RPGs crashed into the ground nearby.
We had to cross a bit of open ground to properly engage
these positions, so I got 3 Section to put heavy fire down onto
the enemy as we moved to a better position.

The Taliban were often very mobile, not carrying a lot of
weight, and they liked to try and get around our flanks. We
occupied this compound and continued to suppress these
two positions. It became apparent there was movement in the
branches of the trees about fifty metres away. Corporal Parker
gave his whole section 'rapid fire' into this new target, whereupon
two Taliban fighters dropped dead from the trees into
the canal.

With these two fighters gone, it quietened down for a
couple of minutes. We got orders to put in a bit of deception
as if we were going to cross the canal, to try to draw some fire
from the enemy, the idea being to pinpoint their position and
to engage them with the FSG. We threw a bit of smoke,
notionally to give cover, then ramped up our fire and shouted
a few commands. This seemed to work and the Taliban began
to fire into the smoke, giving their positions away. They were
only thirty to fifty metres away, on the other side of a ditch.
We and the FSG poured a heavy rate of fire onto them,
quickly silencing the positions. We had effectively done an
arc around this village and the OC gave the orders to pull out.
But I was not keen to run my guys over the open ground, in
full view of the enemy's old positions. The Vikings were sent
forward and we piled into the back of the vehicles. During
this time, we fired mortars onto the positions to cover our
extraction. At a guess we were fighting a little over a section's
worth of Taliban [eight men].

On day three, we moved into an area called Hyderabad,
setting up our fire support on a higher feature, dismounting
and patrolling in on foot along the desert and in the
compounds. We saw a number of civilians, some fleeing into
the desert, but many who stayed amongst the compounds.
We spoke with a few elders, trying to put out the message
that we were there for security at the request of the Afghan
government: we weren't the enemy. We even arranged a
shura [meeting] for the afternoon.

It was an hour or so after dawn. We asked the locals in
Pasab if they had seen the Taliban. They told us they had
never been there. At just that moment, we heard a burst of
automatic fire, from 5 Platoon's position ahead of us. We got
close enough to support them. This involved a dash between
compounds and along narrow alleyways. 5 Platoon had
pushed up to a couple of fairly large compounds and it was
there they had taken fire from a medium machine-gun. We
also received intelligence that the Taliban might be moving
around to strike us. 5 Platoon established a fire-base on the
roofs of the two compounds and started to suppress this
enemy position.

I was concerned about hanging around to the rear of 5
Platoon, with so little cover. Spotting a deep irrigation ditch
to our flank, I moved the platoon there. It was a bit too
crowded. Within seconds, there was a very large explosion –
from a mortar – twenty or thirty metres away, on top of our
last position just as one of the section commanders, Corporal
Stef Martin, was getting down into cover. He landed pretty
much on top of me. He was hit, not too badly but he had
taken some frag through his upper arm, passing through
his triceps. Another mortar then landed a little further
away.

The FSG were up on the high ground and spotted the
mortar position – a puff of smoke and the area it came from.
We got air to look into it. It was a B1 bomber overhead that
properly identified the position and dropped a large 2,000-pound
bomb on it. We took no more mortar fire afterwards.
Corporal Martin had the medic pick the frag out, bandage
him up tightly and he cracked on.

We had orders from the OC to advance into the built-up areas.
In some of the bigger compounds we used bar mines to blow our way through
the walls as opposed to cutting across open areas in full view. We were moving
forward in bounds. We went through house-clearance drills. There was a chance
of running into civilians in the area and we didn't want to cause any unnecessary
casualties. The OC tasked my platoon to move forwards to the area of a bridge,
more or less on the position we'd stayed, during our recce. We closed up towards
the canal pushing through a graveyard. I dropped off one section in over-watch
and I held myself and 2 Section back as 3 Section advanced on the left flank
through a fertile poppy or cornfield. It was five feet plus full of crops
so it gave a bit of cover from view. They advanced up to a mound forty metres
short of the bridge. The ground on the other side of the river was visible.
You had about fifty metres of open ground that sloped upwards to compounds
on the other side. There were compounds left and right of the slope.

We were being very cautious at this point, having already
been in contact and knowing the bridge would be a perfect
spot for us to be ambushed. We did have ladders as an alternative
means of crossing but they were too short to ford the
canal. Just before he moved, Corporal [Stu] Parker said he
was going to take a couple of guys to check the bridge out just
in case it had been IEDed [booby-trapped with an improvised
explosive device]. We had an irrigation ditch on our right-hand
side and decided that if we got contacted it would be a
good place to take cover. Just as he broke cover from the tree-line
on the edge of the ditch, there was a whoosh and an RPG
came from the compounds on the far side, shooting over our
heads and exploding ten metres behind us. Everyone piled
into the ditch pretty rapidly. The Section 2IC, Lance Corporal
Stevie Veal, was knocked out briefly by this blast but was
uninjured and was dragged into cover. Corporal Parker
jumped into the ditch and 3 Section opened up on their side
and started to suppress these positions. For a few minutes it
felt like everything was coming at us. Parky lost count at
seventeen RPGs in the first five minutes of fighting. I jumped
into the ditch with 2 Section, up to our waists in water, and
pushed forward, trying to get eyes on the enemy position. It
was difficult to see forward without leaving cover because of
the foliage. Parky had brought a couple of GPMG gunners
with him. They managed to scramble out of the ditch into a
decent firing position. I pushed forward and got some pretty
good eyes on, keeping Lance Corporal Veal's fire team back
to provide flank protection. Ironically, the compound we
were taking the most fire from was one we had spent three
nights in less than a week previously.

I managed to send a full contact report over the radio,
having had to scramble half out of the ditch to get comms. We
moved back a short distance and Stevie Veal shot two Taliban,
trying to outflank us. One of his blokes, Gilly [Private
Gillmore], had been injured in the thigh by the first RPG but
was still engaging the Taliban with LMG [light machine-gun]
fire. After those two [Taliban] had been killed, it quietened
down a little on that flank.

At that stage, we were just over a hundred metres from the
main enemy position – it was mostly open ground between
us. I had not heard anything from 1 Section over the net so I
was quite concerned. I couldn't get hold of them [on the
radio]. I pushed back along the ditch another thirty metres,
leaving Parky to carry on the fire-fight and taking Gilly with
me to where I expected to be able to find the OC. I couldn't
find Mick [Major Mick Aston] but met with the Viking troop
commander who told me that 5 Platoon had also been
contacted to the flank. I then heard over the net that we had
taken further casualties – two privates injured by fragmentation.
I couldn't get hold of the platoon sergeant because he
had been trying to casevac them. There was also our medic,
Corporal McLaughlan, who was shot in the gut and he was in
a pretty serious way. He had been shot just outside the compound
and was dragged into cover, under heavy fire, by
Private Ronnie Barker, who started to administer first aid.
Ronnie was only a team medic, not experienced in putting in
an IV drip, and Mac was bleeding pretty heavily. Mac
managed to talk him through the process, despite the pain.
He was a T1 [critical] casualty so it was absolutely vital that
we got him back as quickly as possible. The round had gone
under his body armour and exited out of his lower back. The
two guys who had been fragged were not as serious but it
was still a concern. They were suppressed in the compound,
unable to exit through the doors due to enemy fire.

1 Section had an engineer with a hoodlum bar [a large
crowbar] and he smashed through the rear wall of the compound
to get the casualties out. Having sustained casualties
and completed our task in the area, we were ordered to pull
out. I asked the Vikings to push forward so we could prepare
our extraction back. It was annoying, not assaulting the
enemy, but there was no way we could cross the canal with
the kit we had, without taking serious casualties. We put
down a heavy rate of rapid fire to give the rear section
enough time to get out and enable us to push the Vikings
forward, then piled into the back of the vehicles. We
were effectively the last troops out of the area. I jumped into
the last Viking, nicely burning myself on 2 Section's GPMG
as I did so. At least that raised a smile! We stopped for a
quick head count and extracted back to an HLS. We
got our casualties into the back of the Chinook and away.

Five casualties was quite a big deal – although everyone
survived. The contact had gone on for over an hour and,
without indirect fire and with 1 Section's casualties, all we
could do was sit tight and kill as many of them as possible.
We were getting low on ammunition by the end of it. It was
one of those few occasions when you think: Hang on a
minute. We could be in the shit here. This might be real
trouble. In the final contact we saw about eight Taliban killed
but it's hard to tell if there were more – I'm not sure about 5
Platoon's BDA [battle-damage assessment]. The Taliban are
good at getting their casualties and dead away and we didn't
assault into the enemy position. Later that day we received
orders to return to FOB Robinson. That afternoon, we had a
mine strike and Sergeant [now Warrant Officer 2, Keith]
Nieves and a couple of others were badly injured, with
Private Nadriva, Keith's mortar man, rescuing him from the
front of a burning Viking. Fortunately, no one was killed but
it was a fairly hairy day.

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

I'm finally on the ground, probably as far from home as I
could possibly be. I've arrived in the town of Garmsir with an
advanced party of TSM [troop sergeant major], patrol
commanders and signallers. The rest of the troop arrive in
two days. Garmsir is basically the front-line against the
Taliban. We are the furthest south of any friendly troops and
the enemy have to come past us on their journey north from
Pakistan. Garmsir is a ghost town: it's seen nothing but
fighting for some time now. The Taliban occupy positions to
our south; there is a trench system they use to get up close
and occupy, before attacking friendly positions.

These positions consist of the main base called Delhi and
then two smaller positions, JTAC Hill and the Eastern Checkpoint,
where Guardsman Davison was killed last week. I'll
spend most of my time in Delhi, which is an old derelict compound
surrounded by a wall and barbed wire. It is only
approx. 200 metres in length and width and there are no
facilities – it's completely barren. We are very isolated here; as
such we must conserve everything. At the moment we
will get one litre of [bottled] water a day – the rest comes
from a well. There are no fresh rations, electricity, gas, etc.
We will get a resupply by helicopter roughly once a week
and once a week a large convoy brings supplies down
to us.