Spoken from the Front

by Andy McNab

  The interpreter showed me some long, green leaves he'd taken from one of the little children. Apparently the child had been thinning out the poppy plants somewhere, and had come back with spare poppy leaves to make into soup. That's what poor people do, even though it puts opium in their bloodstream. It's like nettle soup I suppose.

  Anyway, we came across another group of men, sitting next to a small, mud-walled building, which they said was their flour mill for making their bread. And again they told us there were no security problems in the camp, no Taliban here. This time the elder sent a tiny child off to bring us some chai and a little dish of colourful sweets, and we stood in that desolate place with the wind howling around us, and we drank chai with them, and I thought even though they have nothing, they give us what little they have ... I felt quite guilty taking it, but it would've been incredibly rude not to, that's their culture. Then one of the men asked us to help his son, who was knocked over by a car and is paralysed in a wheelchair. The crowd wheeled him out to us, and they all stood round expectantly, like we'd have some magic medicine to cure him with. We called over our medic to take a look, and apparently the young man had a huge bedsore on his hip, so he gave him some aspirin and put a dressing on it. The interpreter told the crowd the dressing cost $16, so they were all very pleased and were beaming at us and thanked us. It was as if we'd made him walk again. Eventually, we thanked them for the chai and we moved on.

  The next group of men we came across were sitting on a wall by a little shop, which was selling a few apples, and some bread, and that was about it. One of the men was quite old, he was a Spingiri, and he told us he was from the Kuchi tribe. He said before the Taliban he lived in the deserts in the north, near Kabul, but when the Taliban took power, his people were attacked by the Uzbeks and Tajiks, who hated them because they were Pashtuns, like the Taliban. So they moved south, and their livestock was looted by the Taliban. They headed for Helmand, which is traditionally the Pashtun heartland, and they came to Mukhtar and built themselves mud houses and compounds and settled there. But now the government is telling them they'll have to move on, and this old man was saying: 'Where can we move to? We have no land, we have nowhere to go and we're happy here.' Apparently the government stopped the UN providing aid to this camp a year ago, because it wants the people to move on. It hopes they'll leave if they become desperate enough. It's heartbreaking, and you can understand why they end up harbouring and supporting the Taliban. What choice do they have?

  And then I come back to the office, and Sky News is on, and I see the world is in anguish about what Jade Goody's said on Big Brother ...

  24 January 2007 [email home]

  Robert Mead, Ministry of Defence press officer

  Salaam aleikum, my children.

  Peace be upon you all from Muhammad's mountain retreat and all his Pashtun brothers and sisters.

  Morning, all.

  You join me as the tour-clock ticks into the second third. Irritatingly my colleague to my right has just pointed out that he has 8.72 days to go according to his personal 'chuff chart', whatever the hell one of those is.

  This may sound like I am counting down the days but it's all been so far so good: I have not been shot, I have not developed dysentery, I have been out to meet the good people of Lashkar Gah for the first time, I have clean sheets on my bed. All is perfectly average with the world. Apart from having to look at Jade Goody seemingly every minute of every day for the past week.

  Yes, my children, the past 7 to 10 days have been exceedingly interesting. No doubt you will have read and seen much about the heroic deeds taking place in this fair and slightly-chilly-at-night country, but more of my antics with the locals later.

  In the meantime, I hope you all read the Sunday papers for my exclusive interviews with those daring chaps what risked life and limb to agree to be grilled by me on what was a bit of a hairy situation when they rescued their fallen comrade on the wings of an Apache. I was privileged, and I don't use that word lightly, to speak to five of the eight who took part in the rescue.

  As my 'bootneck' colleagues would say, it was 'hoofing'. Yes, as if one incomprehensible and slightly irritating language were not enough, the Marines have two. So in addition to TLAs (all together now ...) I am subjected to such sentences as: 'I'm off to the heads before scran then it's back to the grot to get my head down in the scratcher – hoofing.' Remarkably, this isn't a quote from my 'Five Fucking (sorry, Auntie) German Students' porn video sent by the boys which, incidentally, does exactly what it says on the tin. It roughly translates as: 'One is going to visit the lavatory before the evening meal, then it's back to the abode to sleep peacefully in my bed – marvellous.'

  I also have to listen to people talk about 'granularity', telling me to 'crack on', 'talk off line', get things 'squared away', and generally be 'threaders' if things don't go to plan.

  In something of a backlash against this brain-washing and in a bid to integrate and enjoy the moment more in this ancient land I have decided to attempt to be at one with the locals. To that end, rather than now, like my heathen infidel room-mates, who bemoan the 'wailing' of the local Imam as he calls the faithful to prayer at 5 a.m. each morning, I now awaken at 4.30, wash with sand, as the Prophet Muhammad would have done, and dress in a simple garment of muslin, a free T-shirt from the Sun saying 'Page 3 stunner', and leftover Christmas wrapping paper. I then scale the wall before venturing out into the streets to take my morning prayer.

  I have discovered the one thing that is less enticing in the morning than my regular 100-metre dash with only a small towel to protect one's dignity is doing it in the rain.

  One thing the good men of Afghanistan have in common with those in Blighty is how to loaf. Particularly good practitioners are the construction industry, clearly the same the world over. Currently we have many Afghans apparently digging random holes and ditches all round camp. One assumes this isn't a less than cunning plot to join up with Taliban trenches and allow the insurgents to infiltrate the camp under cover of darkness. For every two men digging the hole, there is always at least four times that many stood or sat around enjoying the sun, having a fag or gently discussing last night's nan bread. It's just like being back home.

  So what of my tales in Lashkar Gah? Up until last week, apart from a quick 5 mins through the streets of Kabul or looking out the window of a Chinook helicopter, which incidentally is an awesome ride, especially when it whizzes along at low height, I had yet to see what Afghanistan actually looked like up close. I have now not only seen it up close, I have also smelt it, and at times it hums. I went out on what turned out to be a 6-and-a-half-hour patrol with a team of Royal Engineers who were accompanied by someone from PsyOps, i.e., Psychological Operations, i.e., touchy-feely propaganda, and CIMIC, Civil Military Co-operation, who try to identify local projects to spend money on.

  Then there was me and our cameraman. The deal is you go out with a convoy of three Snatch vehicles (stop sniggering, children, this is serious). A Snatch is basically a Land Rover with a bit of armour plating. Only a bit, mind, as most of the troops killed in roadside bombings in Iraq were travelling in Snatches – so they provide some protection but not total.

  Not to worry, in you pop in the back, which is a bit of a squeeze with four of you, plus a driver and commander in the front. You don't get much of a view, unless you're one of the top cover troops. But for that privilege you pay the price of having to wear a bloody great bit of body armour, which not only covers the torso but also your neck and your arms down to the elbow. Still, nice view, I hear. Especially when the kids start throwing stones at you.

  All I can see is what can be made out through a dirty window about 10 inches square with bars across it. But what this Pope-mobile lacks in view it makes up for in scratch-and-sniffability. Then we trot off through the streets of Lashkar Gah, though streets is an ambitious term, being as they are more like dry tracks across a potato field in the height of summer with the only signs of moisture being the
human excrement dribbling down the middle. No lumps, mind.

  You drive along these 'roads', rocking and rolling all over the shop, and every now and again you can't avoid piling through this mucky stuff, which throws up a truly incredible smell, a viciously potent sulphur-type pong that tastes as good as it whiffs and sticks to your teeth.

  Yet local children can be seen running alongside the paths, in a desperate bid to keep up with us and wave, more often than not in bare feet. One particularly unfortunate tyke was caught right next to one of these pungent puddles as we drove by and, like the comedy movie when a car piles through a puddle as you are walking to work in your best togger, this lad got covered up to his bare ankles in black shoot. Nice.

  Our intention was to go to a play area so the troops could have a hearts-and-minds-winning game of football with the local kids. The play area was something of a dusty wasteland, the kids weren't expecting us and, upon being handed some balls, clearly had not been taught the rudiments of Association Football by a qualified FA coach. The three balls were hoofed up in the air with packs of kids racing after them. I tried in vain to get some pics but the ball never stayed in one place long enough. Within 5 minutes the first of three balls had gone walkabout and within another 20 the remaining two had been had.

  There must have been 50–100 kids running around, many of them bare-footed, most of them looking like they hadn't washed for several weeks. But among the children, not a girl, or for that matter a female of any kind, could be seen.

  The CIMIC bloke had got chatting with some elders and we wandered off down an alleyway to what turned out to be a religious boarding school, a Madrassa. Eton it wasn't. I've seen slightly smarter pigsties. The CIMIC man got chatting with the head, and we listened as he told us about his 120 pupils who were basically taught the Koran. But the conditions were wretched. It didn't look much from the outside but there was apparently a basement-type design as grubby boys stuck their heads out from somewhere down below as we spoke to the head. Some of these boys didn't look much older than about 3. Others were in their late teens. We then went inside and down into three classroom/bedrooms. I would have found it hard to believe that 120 boys could stand in the rooms available but apparently they all slept on the floor. Very cosy.

  It was not until afterwards that the cameraman, Aidy, a Marine by trade, said we should never have gone into there without first having checked it out and that several rule books were discarded for us just to wander in. Luckily I was oblivious to how death-defying and heroic I was being – 'twas ever thus.

  We cleared off and stopped at another spot to generally amble about and engage with the locals. In true Afghan fashion, there was another old chap digging a random hole with a crowd of people stood around. Once again there were masses of kids about, this time with one or two girls. But only girls of at most 5 or 6 because by all accounts any older than that is trussed up and not let out except on official occasions.

  Our final stop was a bit of an interesting one: we stopped at Lashkar Gah prison, which is supposedly the current home of the odd Taliban inmate. Though you wouldn't have known as the term 'open prison' could well have been made for this establishment. There was a railed gate. Some turrets and a big wall. Other than that there was a lot of vicious, fairly unhappy-looking chaps being passed several table-sized bits of nan bread through the railings and some equally ramshackle chaps wandering about on this side of the gate who were allegedly the guards.

  Bearing in mind that arguably the Taliban are my current worst enemy, I would have had second thoughts before I wished it upon them.

  Then it was back home in time for tea. Steak en croûte with onion chutney and veg followed by chocolate pud and custard. De-lish.

  And I'd like to leave you with a message from one of the random bits of junk mail that regularly appear in my Yahoo junk box. The subject of the message from Antonio Kelly is: 'with silver, and at the east to their flesh'.

  Well, quite.

  Now get writing.

  February 2007

  Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal Engineers

  In Kajaki, every night you got mortared. You could set your watch by it: it was quite comical. When you were out building the new FOB, you were constantly being shot at too. It was harassment fire: you have Land Rovers with GPMGs [general-purpose machine-guns] or 50-cal machine-guns to look after you. Because you have got them covering you, there is no use shooting back with your pea-shooter [SA80 assault rifle]. So you wait until they've cleared the area [of Taliban], then you get back out again. It was like: they're shooting at us; we'd better stop. The shooting has stopped; right, get back out there. In Kajaki, we built an area there for the police to do road checks and we constantly got harassment fire. It took us two days to build it because they [the Taliban] were just constantly firing at us – on and off – all the time. They would fire and then try and move off. Or some would have the guts to fire and stay there. The lads on the hilltop in the OPs [observation posts] would spot where they were and hammer them. If things got really bad, Apaches would be called in or fast air [support] too.

  But, for me, it couldn't have been a better tour. One, you were getting all the incidents – you were getting shot at and all that kind of thing. But, second, everything [the kit] was completely knackered [when we arrived] so I was actually plying my trade. If I had gone there and everything was working perfectly, it wouldn't have been as good. Of the twenty-eight pieces of kit that we inherited when we arrived, twenty-six pieces got fixed. I loved it. Yet as soon as you come home, it's back to normal. It is as if you have never been out there. All you have is the memories.

  March 2007

  Flight Sergeant Paul 'Gunny' Phillips, RAF

  We were doing IRTs [incident response team work with a MERT] up at [Camp] Bastion and at the same time there was a big op going on in the upper Sangin valley. They put a load of troops on the ground to try and clear out a few known Taliban-friendly areas. With the IRTs, you are on thirty minutes' notice to move to pick up injured guys. Anyway, the boss [Squadron Leader Ian Diggle] referred to it later as 'the night of nights' because it was probably one of the busiest IRTs that we have ever had. We had nine call-outs in one night. It was that bad. We had been hoping to get to bed just after midnight but in the end it was just a case of 'Well, I might as well stay up.' Because the minute you got into bed you got another nine-liner [emergency call] coming through. So we just gave up and sat outside the tent drinking Coke and smoking cigarettes all night.

  We had been into various places to pick up guys – smallarms injuries or they had fallen over and broken a leg – and then we had the last shout of the night. It was almost dawn when we got a call to go and pick up four Americans in the upper Sangin valley. They were all walking wounded, so they had minor injuries effectively. It took us for ever to find the HLS, because one compound looks pretty much like any other. There were that many friendly troops on the ground you didn't know which [helicopter landing site] was which. So we were flying around for five or ten minutes and eventually found it. We landed in this field – it was an old poppy field. It hadn't been cut back so it still had the old poppies growing in it. I was in the front door [of the helicopter], sat behind the mini gun. So the ramp went down and these Americans start walking towards the back of the cab.

  There was a whole load of mincing going on at the back of the cab. People were saying: 'Who's injured? Who's not? Who's coming with us? Who's staying here?' It was one of those times where no one felt particularly threatened. I actually said to the boss: 'This is a pretty good spot actually.' Because we had a compound directly to the rear of the aircraft, a compound either side of us and then quite a dense tree-line to the front. So I thought the only thing that was going to get us there was IDF [indirect fire] really. And there was still all this mincing around at the back of the aircraft and we got three of the guys on and the boss was saying: 'What's happening? What's happening?' We'd been there for about three minutes by now but they were still t
rying to find this fourth casualty. I was looking out of the front door and literally just underneath the rotor disc there were three American troops that had been put out to give us a bit of force protection. It sounds cheesy and overused but literally the ground in front of these guys just erupted. It [the bullets] must have been about five feet in front of them. You could see the rounds just splashing right in front of their faces. And of course they let rip and all their mates started to let rip and we were like: 'Fucking hell. Contact!' We just got the ramp up and departed. We could see all their tracer going towards this [Taliban] compound but I couldn't tell where they were firing at. So I couldn't use the mini gun, which was incredibly frustrating.