Spoken from the Front (34 page)

The ANA didn't like us helping him. So, as I was patching
him up, one of the ANA came over and he cocked his AK and
stuck it in my head. The interpreter said: 'He says he's going
to kill you if you don't stop.' So I thought: This is it. This guy
is going to kill me. I sort of put my hands up in the air. But
then the boss, who was on the radio, and Sergeant McKinney
came over and pulled him out of the way and told him to
wind his neck in.

At that point, the casualty was still lying there and then,
suddenly, we were fired on again from this compound. The
boss told me to engage the enemy. I saw this guy who was
firing his AK-47 from less than a hundred metres away. He
was fiddling about with his weapon behind a tree. I lifted my
LMG up to fire, but then I got a dead man's click. It didn't
work. It was a stupid moment. I moved into the smallest
piece of cover [from a wall]. I was trying to rectify the
stoppage. Captain Rainey had asked where he [the Taliban
attacker] was and I showed him.

The boss sort of moved around and he looked but he said
he couldn't see him. Then you could hear a round: it zipped
past his head and hit the wall behind him. The boss then fell
at this stage and I thought he had taken a round, a hit. So this
was where I started getting a wee bit scared and panicky.
I was still fucking around with the weapon, trying to get it
fixed. But the boss was all right – he got up, then he said:
'Right, try and get that stoppage rectified and we'll go and
flank him [the attacker].' So the boss and Sergeant McKinney
went round to flank him. The rest of the team were inside the
compound. But this [Taliban] guy, he was persistent in trying
to get me. He was firing like mad and the wall kept
crumbling. I saw the wall starting to fall apart – the cover was
getting small – and I couldn't get the weapon fixed. My only
option was to make myself as small as I could. I sort of curled
up into a ball. But the longer the boss and Sergeant McKinney
took, the more panicky I started to get. I went into a stage of
battle shock, so I did. I was calling a mate, Ranger Simon
Wade, and he was there with his LMG and I was telling him
to fire on him [the enemy], but there was a wall blocking his
view. There was no point bringing him into somewhere
where he was going to get endangered. So he was there and
trying to calm me down saying: 'Davey, calm down. You'll be
all right, you'll be fine.'

But he [the Taliban fighter] was still firing, I shouted to my
mate: 'Fuck this here. Listen, I'm taking a chance.'

He said: 'Right, I'll get on the radio to Charlie.' That's
Sergeant McKinney.

Sergeant McKinney says: 'Right, on my countdown, I want
you to move after five seconds.' He started to count down on
the radio: 'Five, four, three, two, one.'

As soon as he got to one I was gone. I was straight past that
gap [in the wall where he could be shot]. I could hear the
rounds smacking into that wall. And it was just me. As soon
as I hit the ground, I sat down to get my breath back and all
that. There were loads of things going through my head. I just
sat there and my mate came up, gave me his water bottle and
a fag and told me to smoke it to calm myself down.

When I had calmed down, I got myself back to the casualty,
where I was treating him. But then the worst possible thing
happened. The ANA came into the compound and it wasn't
one soldier [getting angry] this time. It was the whole lot. As
I was treating him, as one got my attention, another one come
from behind. It was fucking mayhem, they were trying to get
more boots and punches in. It was me and the Taliban
casualty. All the ANA soldiers had managed to come into the
compound by this time. There were at least twelve and they
were all wanting a piece of him. So there's me, in the middle,
with loads of ANA soldiers around. My mates were trying to
get in, to get them away, but I just got up and I lost my rag.
The ANA sergeant major came over and cocked his weapon
in my face. But what I did was I jumped up and pushed him.
Very violently I pushed him. He lifted his hand as if to backhand
me and he swung to hit me. But I moved out of the way.
In the end, Sergeant McKinney, he came running in then. He
shouted: 'Right, if you want to kill him, you have to get
through me first.' They [the ANA] were all scared of Sergeant
McKinney – really frightened of him. He was giving me a wee
bit of support as well, as if to say: 'Listen, you're not on your
own. Don't worry about it.'

One guy [ANA] now came walking into the compound.
And when you saw this guy you thought, He's no happy
chappy – and he always looked like an angry person. And he
came walking in and he saw us with the Taliban and he saw
all the ANA shouting and he came over and he cocked his
weapon – with his finger on the trigger. He was walking
backwards saying something in Pashtu. He was all for
pulling the trigger on me with the casualty. But by that stage
the ANA officer had come in: the main commander. He had
heard and seen what was going on. So he went mad and
started slapping his boys about, and throwing them out. Next
the [British] QRF [Quick Reaction Force] came in, and everything
went mad. They had managed to come down in their
vehicles to help us out. I now got away with the casualty.
But he was complaining that the splint was annoying him
and the ANA said: 'Just take it off. Don't worry about it.' I
knew the leg was broken. But they made this guy walk
back three miles with a broken leg. It was quite sickening.

But as we were going back to our patrol base – Satellite
Station North – we heard on the radio that it had come under
RPG attack. So the boys we had left to secure the camp were
now having to fucking defend it. It was a mad day!
Eventually, all the fighting stopped and we did a body-count.
It turned out there were three Taliban killed. When we were
coming back from the patrol I was thinking: Fuck. That was
crazy. But then you and your mates start joking about it. 'Did
you see him falling, back there?' one of them said, pointing at
me. Because I had fallen in the river, as I was trying to get up
near the boss. I had properly fallen in when we were under
fire. Eventually, we got back well after midday. We had been
fighting through midday heat, which is about 50°C.

When we got back, I just wanted to get my clothes off. I was
soaking wet with sweat. My helmet and body armour needed
to come off. I wanted to have a sit down on my own, have a
cigarette and think about what had just happened. I was
thinking: I was nearly killed. I didn't think I was going to get
out of there. I was thinking about my family, about the people
back home, [times] when I was happy. All I wanted to do was
to think happy thoughts.

But I wasn't happy at all that day with some of the ANA and
since then I have been paranoid. After that, I was always watching
the ANA more than I was watching what I was doing, if you
know what I mean. Because I was always scared of one of them
popping off a round and putting one through me. They're the
sort of people who will hold grudges and they will try their best
to get rid of you if they can. It was the sergeant major and one
of the sergeants who didn't like me. We knew the sergeant by
his nickname – Medoza. He was a nut, he was crazy.

Ranger Jordan Armstrong, The Royal Irish Regiment

My first contact was in Wombat Wood, when we stayed in a
compound for five days. It's just over a kilometre from
Sangin in the Green Zone. We were on foot. There was a base
for the Afghan National Army. We were there as a decoy,
while others were building a new FOB for the ANA. They
were putting their base in the Green Zone, up north. It was
Friday, 13 June. We – 7 Platoon – went out on patrol in the
morning, around 10 a.m. We went out on foot with the whole
platoon – twenty-seven of us – and there were a couple of
interpreters and medics. We also had five American snipers
out with us as well. We were on a resupply route, and we
went out as a section over to the ANA [base]. We had rations
for them and we were in a convoy, on foot, from the base. Two
days later we left the base. The whole platoon went back on
the same supply route that we had come in on.

We left at 1430. We just knew, because we had comms [from
intelligence], that something was going to happen that day.
We had a feeling we were definitely going to get it – even
though we had never been hit before. The terp [interpreter]
was acting all nervous too. Our section and the quad [bike]
pushed up on the open ground and that was when they [the
Taliban] fired the first RPG. It landed about fifty metres from
where I was but closer still – about thirty metres – to one of
the other boys. They started attacking us with small arms.
Then the second RPG came in. I think it was an airburst
[calculated to explode before it hit something]. It just
happened so fast. As soon as that happened, we started firing
in their general direction, but it was very hard to pick them
out. We fired for a bit. My gun [a light machine-gun] was
ready – all I had to do was pull the trigger. My first reaction
was to hold it up by my hip [to fire]. Then I got down on my
belt buckle and started firing. I had to crawl forward, because
we had got caught in open ground, and let off a couple of
rounds.

We got penned down for a wee bit – a good ten seconds.
Then we ran to a ditch. All the section were in different places
by this stage, taking cover. But it [the contact] was soon over.
It lasted about ten minutes. We didn't take any casualties, but
one of the snipers was sure he hit one [of the Taliban]. It all
happened so quickly. You go through the drills – which
meant the fear didn't hit me until it was more or less over and
then you can think about it a little bit. I can honestly say I
wasn't scared because it all happened so quickly. You just had
to do what you had to do and return fire. I thought, once it
had calmed down: That was a bit close. But we got through
it. It showed our drills definitely worked. I thought: If you
listen [to orders and training], you can get through, no
problem. So that was our first contact, but I was sure it
wouldn't be our last.

McNab:
Sergeant Sarah Bryant, twenty-six, became the first
British woman killed in action in Afghanistan. She died along with
three SAS reservists in what was the deadliest attack since
hostilities had begun nearly seven years earlier. Their Snatch Land
Rover was hit by an explosion near Lashkar Gah. Des Feely,
Bryant's father, said: 'It's truly devastating ... an absolute massive
shock. Ever since she was a schoolgirl she wanted to be a soldier. I
cannot believe she will not be coming home.' He added that he and
his wife, Maureen, were 'absolutely devastated to have lost the
beautiful daughter we adored'. Bryant, who served in
the Intelligence Corps, had married a fellow intelligence officer,
Corporal Carl Bryant, two years earlier. She had been due to end her
tour in Afghanistan the next month. Her husband said: 'Although
I am devastated beyond words at the death of my beautiful wife
Sarah, I am so incredibly proud of her. She was an awesome soldier
who died doing the job she loved.'

Captain Alan 'Barney' Barnwell, 845 Naval Air
Squadron

Captain Alan 'Barney' Barnwell, a Sea King helicopter pilot, from
the Royal Marines serving with 845 Naval Air Squadron, is forty-nine.
He grew up in Portstewart, Northern Ireland, and attended
Coleraine Academical Institute until he left school at eighteen.
The son of a printer and one of four siblings, Barnwell joined the
Royal Marines as a 'grunt' – a standard Marine – in 1978. Serving
in Commando units as an assault engineer until 1986, he saw
action in Northern Ireland and the Falklands War. In 1986, he
became the first ever corporal pilot in the Royal Marines.
Barnwell served three three-month tours in Iraq in 2006 and
2007. He went to Afghanistan in June 2008 to serve his first
three-month tour there. Married with two grown-up children, he
lives in Montacute, Somerset, and is based at RNAS Yeovilton.

I am loving it [the tour]. Some parts are harder than others,
but I enjoy it – or I wouldn't be here after thirty years. My
decision to become a pilot was conceived by an incident in
1982. I was in a minefield at night getting 'artilleried' and
shot at. I decided I was never ever going to be in another
minefield for the rest of my life. The only way of doing that
was by being a pilot and you could fly over the top of them.
So I went through pilot selection and training with the Army
Air Corps at Middle Wallop [Hampshire] and, after many
years of flying the Gazelle, here I am now as a Sea King
helicopter pilot.

The helicopter is absolutely crucial in a conflict like this. It's
the same as in Ireland in the seventies and eighties: nobody
ever moved around South Armagh on the road. We are in the
same sort of position here, even more so. Every road and
track has a proliferation of IEDs, which can be laid quite
quickly. The baddie locals, the Taliban, bury the IEDs months
in advance sometimes, before they are used [detonated]. So to
move anywhere on the ground at all, which is the only way
you can dominate an area, is very dangerous. The proliferation
of IEDs is such at the moment that there isn't a day goes
by when we don't have five or six explosions, and people get
hurt and killed. So to use the Sea Kings to carry the troops in
makes it much safer for them to move around.

The Sea King is a support helicopter, now some forty years
old, which cruises at 120 knots. It normally has a crew of
three: an aircraft commander, a pilot [effectively the co-pilot
working to the commander] and a crewman. The commander
and the pilot sit side by side with the commander in the left-hand
seat and his pilot in the right-hand seat. The pilot
normally flies the aircraft but the commander takes charge of
the situation, doing the map reading, the radios, and he flies
it if he wants to. In its original days, the Sea King could lift
twenty personnel. It has been updated over the years –
including a special update to go to Afghanistan – and it
is now Sea King Mark IV Plus. It can carry up to sixteen
men – less than before because men now have their
body armour and so much kit – and it has less performance
in high temperatures. The crewman also acts as door gunner,
firing a GPMG.