Spoken from the Front

by Andy McNab

  But we got back to Bastion and said: 'We just had a contact.' And they said: 'Yeah, we're just listening to the American comm chat [communications chatter] now.' And what had happened was, from the compound on our right-hand side, thirty metres from our aircraft, some little bad lad had stuck his AK-47 over the top of the compound wall and did the old 'spray and pray' [opening up with fire and hoping for the best]. I couldn't believe that their guy had been thirty metres from me and I couldn't shoot him because the mini gun doesn't elevate very high. If I had been behind an M60 [machine-gun], I could have got some rounds off if I'd known where he was. But in the end, the guy got a proper shoeing from the Americans [who killed him].

  7 March 2007 [email home]

  Robert Mead, Ministry of Defence press officer

  My children.

  (Brace yourselves, you may need to get a cup of tea for this one.)

  Lawks a Lordy, having just checked the dates, it's been a month, a whole thirty days, since my last update. No doubt those days have been barren, desolate, empty wastelands of sorrow for you all in the absence of words from Mullah Mead. Possibly some of you have even turned to heavy narcotic abuse. If you have, save some for me: I'll be home soon.

  Where to begin. Well, let's start with the news that you are going to have to wait just that little bit longer to welcome home your hero. This is because I am so irreplaceable that those blighters at the MoD have extended one's tour for a few weeks. Return date has slipped not once, not twice, but three times, from 20 March to the dizzyingly late 10 April. That's a whole extra three weeks. Cripes, I'm glad I'm getting overtime for this. But, as you can see, the timings of these things change so bloody often that I've got more chance of pissing my name in the sand on a beach and it remaining unchanged.

  Now the good news – the beard has gone. The fair to middling news is it will be back by the time I return. One shave a tour is enough for any respectable man. Frankly I did not have enough favourable comments from the ladies to make it worth my while keeping, so serves you right if you liked it and didn't reply to my email, which in fairness was practically all of you.

  And speaking of non-replies, while my perfectly decent and not-in-any-way-questionable-or-lurid request for naked photos from my lady-friends was well and truly ignored or, worse, earnest promises were made which have been proven to be total dogs-droppings, one of my colleagues then received a collection of gratuitous happy snaps from some lady doing personal things in personal places. Bloody cheek. He showed us all, of course, but I won't – honest. They'll be just for me.

  Instead, to add a slap in the knackers with a wet towel to injury, I have had to make do with naked bloody Marines. Let there be no doubt, there is nothing more tiresome and disturbing than, after having been woken at an indecent hour and having stumbled to the bathroom, to open the door to see a butch Marine standing stark bollock, proudly towelling himself down with one leg casually hitched up on the sink. Every bleedin' morning. This is no way to start the day. What is it with men who profess to be more butch than a bulldog with three penises that they display more woofter tendencies than a team of Kenny Everett impersonators?

  Right then, what can I tell you?

  What has happened? Pah, what hasn't happened?

  Let's be honest, not a lot. Well, not a lot warlike anyway. At least not here. Plenty going on out and about as you can probably tell. Having said that, one day seems largely like any other so it's not easy to keep tabs on events. What hasn't happened is I still haven't been shot at yet, though I am repeatedly and reliably informed this is a good thing. This is largely because I haven't really been anywhere where I could get shot. Most of my past month's activity has taken place firmly behind the walls of camp Lashkar Gah. But, goodness, hasn't it been exciting?

  I've visited one of our sentry turrets, for some reason called sangars, which is quite curious, because they don't in any way resemble a sausage, and when you look out of the gaps in the walls you see the town of Lashkar Gah is about 10 feet away and only succeeds in reminding you how close you are to potential nasty people.

  What else? Well, we've had some visitors, and mildly famous visitors at that. A few weeks back we were treated to the delights of Jim Davidson and 'Forces' Favourite' opera singer Katherine Jenkins. A right incongruous duo those two were. But this was put in the shade by a follow-up show two weeks later. Not by the two male laddish comedians, whose names escape me, but the lovely Claudia, Megan and Jane, the CSE [Combined Service Entertainment] dancers. Grrr, woof and bark.

  As I was beginning to pine, Media Ops arranged a game of football and duly beat the hapless plum-duffs of 28 Engineer Regiment in a rousing game of five-a-side. This was followed by several sharp pains in the lower-leg region for days after, due to the large gap between this game and my last, the poor footwear available, and the utter unsuitability of the playing surface, i.e., a rock-hard square of concrete more commonly used for the landing of helicopters. And, indeed, a halt was called 45 mins into the match for two of the cheeky overblown Flymos [helicopters] to drop their load. Normal service was soon resumed and we smashed the sappers. Huzzah.

  This was followed only days later by an unexpected late entry into a six-a-side tournament on the same surface. This time it was against a number of sides from the Marines and a few local Afghan sides. Flushed from our recent victory, and buoyed with, what turned out to be, hopelessly overblown overconfidence, we imagined lots of Afghans rolling up in even more unsuitable clothing for football than ours; namely those long shirts and pyjama bottoms that everyone seems to wear, blankets wrapped around the shoulders (despite it being blazing hot) and either sandals or perfectly normal shoes, which they all seem to have the strange habit of wearing as slip-ons, i.e., not bothering to unlace but just flattening down the heel. (My mother would be livid. She never would have stood for this. I can hear her now: 'Undo the bloody laces!')

  We stood waiting on the pitch, all quiet save for the standard friendly banter of 'Give it here, you fat poof', and the distant twang of hamstrings snapping after months of unuse. Media Ops already looked hugely out of place. Most of the Marines, as I have explained before, are, to a man, massive, or at very least, considerably fitter than most marathon runners. Still no sign of our local opponents, though there was a hefty crowd forming. Then, slowly shimmering over the horizon, came a large number of athletic-looking youths resplendent in dazzling bright yellow Barcelona away kits, juggling balls and looking a lot like they knew exactly what they were doing, which was preparing to give our arses a sound kicking.

  The first game began. Thankfully we weren't in it. India Company 42 Commando vs the Afghans A side. Seven-minute matches. Hectic stuff. The whistle blew and they were off. Quickly a pattern emerged – the bandy-legged Afghans running absolute onion rings round our hapless Marines. Within two minutes the Afghans were 2 up. The Afghan half of the crowd was going wild. The UK side was either shatting itself among those braced for future games, or falling about in hysterics for those only spectating. The Afghans won. Much cheering and indefinite Islamic praises to Allah followed.

  We were third up, also playing a team of Afghans – though, not wishing to be in any way politically incorrect, it could just as easily have been the same 6 players as the first game as to a man they all looked the same. (Is this conjuring up images of the match in Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks? As well it might.) In the words of our photographer, every time we got the ball it was like being surrounded by a swarm of locusts, so quickly were we smothered by the opposition. How we only lost 1–0 Basil Brush only knows. I think I touched the ball in those 7 minutes for approximately 4 seconds and that was only to retrieve it when it had gone off the pitch. We left with our tails between our legs.

  In amongst these latest acts of dare-wing-do, and following on from the pasting my lungs received in the above games, I have arrested the decline of my body shape and taken to the gym on a daily basis. I shall therefore return a lean, mean media-ops machine. Grrr. Though currently ev
erything aches massively.

  (This is a long one isn't it? Don't complain: it has been four weeks, you know, you ungrateful lot.)

  That's not to say there hasn't been some warlike activity. Only the other day we were minding our own business at about 2 p.m. when a rather loud explosion went off. The ground wobbled a bit. Cor, that was quite loud, I thought. Probably a controlled explosion. Then a major (it's OK, it wasn't me) who knew a bit about these things came scampering into our HQ tent looking more perturbed than was healthy for us all, saying to no one in particular: 'Is there any planned controlled explosion today? Does anyone know?' He came back seconds later saying, 'Put your helmet and body armour on, ladies and gentleman,' in a very dignified fashion, presumably having found the answer to his question. Now I was quite excited as it gave me my first opportunity to wear my new blue-cover Osprey body armour, the stuff troops wear. Until now I had been wearing the version which anyone who has visited my home in the past year will have seen and probably tried on. Bit snug, isn't it? Not to mention the breast plate being somewhat small. The Osprey is the new super-duper one with larger bullet-repelling bits, and now I have one of my very own. So, we toddled back to the tent to pick up my helmet, when another explosion, this time a 'kin' loud one, feeling altogether closer, louder and explosiver, went off. Lummy. Make for the hills. The best we could offer was the safe-haven office of the combat camera team for a can of 7Up, thumb through this week's Zoo mag and a game of Shithead – which irritatingly I keep losing and had to get up early the other day to bring everyone breakfast in bed. Knobs.

  As we toddled off, someone came from the other direction, looking considerably less armoured, who told us it had been a false alarm and it was a controlled explosion after all. Excitement over.

  However, this is not your hero's only scrape with certain maiming in the past week. No, sirree. After being holed up here for the best part of 4 weeks, trying all I knew to find a reason to get out on the ground (I offered to cook dinner for the governor, unblock the questionable Lashkar Gah plumbing, sleep with a variety of members of the local hierarchy, you name it) finally I was unleashed for a trip to see two new bits of road, one that has been built, one that is being built. However, upon visitation, the first road was in no way similar to anything you, I or next door's gerbil would call a road. Having said that, most major paths of transport have a closer resemblance to the bottom of a gerbil's cage, hardened and then smashed into lumpy pieces before being doused in more lumpy stuff, with extra lumps in, and hardened again, so any improvement that possesses the basic property of simply being flat is a considerable bonus. This road had that going for it – it had little else. It was a raised dirt/gravel track not much wider than a car's width, which fell away steeply for about 2 metres on either side; a field on one, a river on the other. So we stopped at this road, which I expected to be a bit of a bustling country route, and instead saw ... one old chap come bobbing along on his rickety old bicycle. And possibly a goat in the distance, though it was some way off so we couldn't be sure.

  The man agreed to talk to us. It didn't look as though he had much else to do that day. Abdul was his name, and he told us he was 55 but he could have easily passed for 85. Nice bloke, but turned out not only did he not have much to do, he didn't have much to say either.

  We bade him farewell as the traffic began to build up and two men in the distance rolled up on a motorbike. They were a bit more enthusiastic telling us how this road had cut their journey time from 1 hr 15 mins to 30 mins as this chap had to go to the doctor and it had been very useful, etc. (See how my sophisticated tactics of subliminal messaging is seeping the MoD mantra into your feeble minds without you knowing. You are all under my power, yesss, under my power. These aren't the droids you're looking for, ooooh.)

  After this peak of excitement our convoy of three Land Rovers rolled off along this road heading back to town. I was in the front vehicle, looking out the back, when slowly but unmistakably, the middle vehicle veered gently off course. Its front left wheel went over the edge of the gravel road, slowly followed by the left back wheel. As if in slow motion, the vehicle leant slightly before it found itself on the bank of the road, and decided the best course of action was to roll over onto its side. I tapped gently on the gunner who was sticking his head out of the roof keeping top cover.

  'Um, the vehicle behind has rolled.'

  'RTA [road traffic accident]!' he shouted.

  Oh, the irony. Here we were coming to see a new road to benefit the Afghans and the first time we use it we roll a military vehicle and block it for all the Afghans. Ace. But the irony didn't stop there. Oh, no. Thankfully no one was injured bar a bump on the head for the driver. Anyway, standard procedure here is for all to leap out and form a protective cordon while the emergency response team is called to get us out of here before the Taliban get wind of it and come and get us – or if you're a civilian, huddle down in the back and keep well out of the way. Yoicks.

  However, your hero couldn't stay low for long and he clambered out to get a good view, and essentially to take some pictures. We ended up being there for about half an hour, the busy local traffic of a couple of battered 4x4s, a goatherder and some raggedy children creating a devil of a bottleneck. Until along came a chap in a tractor and, irony upon irony, he kindly offered to pull the Land Rover out of trouble. Phew, dangerous stuff, hey?

  In fairness I came closer to facing death a few weeks ago when the chefs decided Friday night should be fish-and-chip night and served up such an artery-busting deep-fat-fried menu, including deep-fat-fried Mars bar (which, incidentally, tastes better than the real thing) that I'm not sure if their intention was to feed us or kill us.

  (Nearly there, not long to go now, into the home straight ... Yes, all right, I do go on, yes, I know.)

  A few weeks ago I sent some of you the fantastic website www.alemarah.org, otherwise known as the Taliban website Voice of Jihad. Most of this esteemed organ and bastion of exemplary journalistic principles is involved with concocting fantastical stories of Taliban victories over the infidel. (Not unlike my job in reverse you might say. Yeah? Well bog off.)

  One of our Land Rovers gets a puncture, they say they've blown up seven tanks and killed five foreign invaders. It really is a cracking read. Most of it is in Pashtu, but for those not versed in the local lingo, one section is in English, or rather the most comic attempts at 'Allo 'Allo!-style 'Good moaning' English you will ever read.

  A particularly fine example of this garbling of Eengleesh was 12 February when, following an attack on a Taliban leader, the website denied their man had been 'martyred'. Instead it said: 'In airstrike only civilians including women and Chileans martyred.' Which seems a bit unfair on the Chileans.

  And finally, this week's instalment of Marine-speak is a short yet suggestive affair. It has become common to hear in the evening briefings (you remember those, full of absolute nonsensical military shag-pile) reference to: 'The Marines left Charlotte this morning before moving onto Beatrice and Annabelle tonight. They will take up positions in Frances on Friday.'

  Fnar, fnar. This, though, is not a reference to sexual deviancy, but the naming of certain areas of the AO (that's Area of Operations) by giving them girls' names. Thus, one large irregular shape of land approximately 10 sq km is called Beatrice, another is called Annabelle, and so on. One curious observation. Should the Marines continue their journey, they will come to AO Thrush. Sounds painful. Perhaps it is sexual deviancy after all.

  Titty bang.

  PS I have a month to go. Therefore you stinking weasels who have yet to write to me have a month in which to redeem yourselves. Get to it.