Spoken from the Front

by Andy McNab

  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.

  11 May 2007 [diary]

  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.

  There are TICs [troops in contact] every day. Just as I arrived, our troops were firing mortars onto suspected enemy positions. But I am calm now and not as worried as I thought I would be. Even on the flight down from Bastion I was fine although I knew I'd be getting off the heli in one of the most dangerous places in the world ...

  I'm really looking forward to this. In a few days, we'll be patrolling and operating, which is an exciting prospect. We're sure to see some action. I don't want to sound flippant or macho but that is what I'm here for, and I know my lads feel the same. It's the pinnacle of soldiering and it beats sitting in an office. I wonder how I'll feel in a few months' time.

  May 2007

  Warrant Officer Class 2 Pete Lewis, The Mercian Regiment

  Warrant Officer Class 2 Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant (RQMS) Pete Lewis, 2 Battalion The Mercian Regiment, is forty. He was born and brought up in Nottingham, the son of a factory engineer. He had two sisters, but one died during his 2007 tour. Lewis left school at sixteen and worked for the next five years as a bricklayer. He joined the Army in October 1990 and has served for nearly two decades in the Mercians. During that time, he has been on four tours of Northern Ireland, two of Bosnia and two of Afghanistan. He is married with three children, and is based at the Mercians' barracks outside Belfast.

  Before we arrived [in Afghanistan], it was a constant worry for me how our men would react. How would they react last thing at night before going to bed and first thing in the morning? But from day one, as soon as we were out there, every man in the company was awesome.

  You hear of people refusing to go back on the ground once they have been in heavy contact. We had none of that. We were lucky in the respect that we were a floating company. We spent about ten days in [Camp] Bastion acclimatizing, and then we went to Sangin for two months. I was a company sergeant major in Grenadier Company. I would say I was a dad to the company, some of whom were only eighteen years old. I am the senior soldier. There's not a lot that happens in the company that doesn't come through me in one way or another.

  There were anything from 90 to 120 men in our company. My job is about discipline. The sergeant major has got to work closely with the OC. If they don't get on, then the company doesn't function. I was lucky: I had two OCs on the tour and they were both very, very good. They were very soldier-oriented. And because we spent those large periods of time out on the ground, it was a case of hardships shared. The blokes were eating rations; we were eating rations. The blokes were shitting in oil drums; we were shitting in oil drums. The blokes were burning the shit; we were burning the shit. The blokes were in contact; we were in contact. So the cohesion of the company just grew and grew and grew all the way through the tour.

  Sangin was relatively quiet. We had perhaps five or six contacts within those first two months. The only casualty we had was an Afghan interpreter, who got shot through the femur. That was after a thirty-eight-hour push-out. We were coming back into the DC [base] at Sangin. It was around 1400 hours so it was pretty warm. We had a heat casualty on the way back in. I was on foot for this op so a quad bike came out and picked him up, which fixed us on the ground for about thirty minutes. In hindsight, this enabled them [the Taliban] to put the ambush in on us. Because we had gone static, they could predict our movements. It was only two and half K back to base and they picked their spot.

  They opened up from across a canal with heavy machinegun. Luckily, we were within the arcs of the DC tower so they had their heavy weapons, which opened straight up. Compared to some of the contacts the boys were in, that was short, only fifteen or twenty minutes. We gave the casualty first aid, then extracted him back on foot with a casevac team. He was picked up in a Chinook. The interpreter was twenty-four or -five and he had worked with us for the first month and a half.

  The first confirmed kill we got was at a village near Sangin. We got a Taliban who was quite high up in that district. The boys had gone in to clear a compound and this guy came running out. He had a weapon and he was shot.

  Looking back, the only plus about Sangin was that it had a canal running through the base so it was a respite for the boys every day to jump in and cool off.

  I think Sangin was a massive reality check for the blokes, me as well. I had never lived on rations for more than three weeks. But we were on rations for two months solid. When we went into Sangin, all our water came out of the rivers from the Royal Engineers' Life Support [and was treated] so it tasted of chlorine. But Sangin was a goo
d staging point for the boys. It got their battle fitness up and it got them used to the heat.

  13 May 2007 [diary]

  Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

  Despite getting up at 02.20, I had a really good day, and saw my first real bit of action, although not personally involved. I went up onto JTAC Hill to watch the other platoon's mission unfold. At first light they hit a compound with several antitank rockets and lots of machine-gun fire. The plan was then to extract to ambush positions and wait for the enemy. They engaged an enemy, with covering indirect fire support. I was in a position to watch as the 81mm mortar and 105mm shells whistled over my head and impacted a few hundred metres ahead. Very impressive to watch and the noise was phenomenal! Any enemy on the receiving end would have been pulverized (but I am dubious). The platoon commander is a Grenadier Guard called Andy. He is a really nice bloke and very professional and capable.