Spoken from the Front

by Andy McNab

  Their dreams never haunted by enemy dead?

  The reflection of war makes us question our sanity –

  Do we fight for humanity, or one nation's vanity?

  It's not for honour of queen and country we fight,

  But for our brothers in arms to the left and right.

  With their selfless courage, commitment and unwavering nerve,

  In this company of heroes, my honour to serve.

  25 June 2007 [diary]

  Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

  I found out today that my regiment lost another soldier and that four others were badly injured. Drummer Wright was killed when his vehicle was blown up. I don't remember him, but I know two of the others who were injured, one of whom is in intensive care. Another sad day for British forces and my regiment in particular.

  We've now got Internet access here in Garmsir, which is a massive bonus as it gives us a little more access to the outside world. No bad thing!

  RIP Dmr Wright.

  30 June

  It's been raining. The place has flooded; it's unbelievable how much it has rained. It's nice and refreshing after the heat, but it's turned into a quagmire. The flood water has receded today but there is still a dark cloud over the camp tonight. I've just found out that Captain Sean Dolan was killed today [it was eventually revealed he died from enemy mortar fire]. His vehicle was hit by some sort of explosive device and he was killed instantly. Sean was a friend; he was, more importantly, a husband and a father. He was an ex-regimental sergeant major and a legend in his own right. His death will be felt hard across the battalion.

  There has been another dozen or so casualties across theatre in the last twenty-four hours, meaning our ambush has been cancelled tonight, as all our aircraft are deployed to assist with casualty extraction. I suppose this is what you would call a war. Back home there have been a number of terrorist attempts to kill innocent civilians in both London and Scotland. Three British soldiers were killed in Iraq also.

  RIP Sean Dolan.

  July 2007

  Private Tom Dawkes, The Mercian Regiment

  Private Tom Dawkes, 2 Battalion The Mercian Regiment, is twenty-three. He was born in Bromsgrove, south Birmingham. His father worked for an air-conditioning company, but was forced to retire after a serious accident. His mother works as a power-press supervisor and he has one brother and two sisters. Dawkes left school at sixteen and worked for a production company, then later as a tool-maker and as a fork-lift-truck driver in a warehouse. He entered the Army in January 2007, shortly before his twenty-first birthday. He had wanted to join at sixteen, but had to wait for an operation that could only take place when he was fully grown. Dawkes, who is engaged to be married in 2010, is based at the Mercians' barracks just outside Belfast, where he has earned a reputation for writing poetry.

  I was still training at Catterick when my section commander came in and told us which companies we would all be going to. He said there was a good chance that I would be going to Afghanistan to catch the end of the tour [with the Mercians]. Some were still under eighteen so they couldn't go. It was confirmed I would be going to Afghanistan shortly afterwards. I was scared. It was going to be the first time that I had left the United Kingdom. It was also going to be the first time I had ever flown.

  14 July 2007 [diary]

  Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

  Things were looking up for a short while. A large operation was planned for the end of the month down here. They planned to attack a village known as Madrassa, an objective known to be full of Taliban. Prior to this, they wanted a detailed recce of crossing points over the river Helmand and routes into Madrassa. The best thing is we got tasked to do this, a very important and high-profile job. I spent a few days planning for an MOG [manoeuvre outreach group: it deploys, self-sustained, into the desert for a period]. I planned to go out for four days and see some good stuff: it looked like being a very good op.

  It seemed destined for trouble from the start. The medic I was taking out fell ill with diarrhoea and vomiting, so we were delayed until he got better. We eventually deployed a little late. Under my command, I had 10 vehicles, 21 Marines, a field-support team, interpreter, anti-tank team and my own troop: in total 51 men and one woman. Quite a big command for a junior captain. All was going well. We recced the river and were looking at a suspected Taliban village – then we were suddenly told to come back.

  The whole operation was being cancelled. All the resources were being sucked up north for an even bigger op as things seem to be going wrong there. I was utterly disappointed, especially after all that's happened previously. It looked like we had finally got a decent job and it was pulled away at the last moment. Nobody's fault, just the way things happen. One never knows what's going to happen next.

  Anyway, we're back in [Camp] Delhi now and back in the same old routine. Groundhog day! Worse still, I spoke to the battle group second-in-command and he still doesn't know when we will leave here. The only thing I've got to look forward to now is going home on leave in 3 weeks. It seems such a long time and I know it's going to drag. I've got a lot planned: can't wait to see everyone and do everything I've missed these last few months. It seems to be all I can think of recently – all I can do is wait.

  Another soldier was killed a few days ago – a Grenadier Guard attached to my battalion in Gereshk – and things seem to be going from bad to worse in Iraq, where several more have been killed. And I bet they got nothing more than a tiny bit of media coverage. Pathetic.

  16 July 2007

  McNab: It was revealed that the rate at which British soldiers were being seriously injured or killed on the front-line in Afghanistan had reached that suffered by our troops during the Second World War. The casualty rate in the most dangerous regions of the country was approaching 10 per cent. Senior officers feared it would ultimately pass the 11 per cent experienced by British soldiers at the height of the conflict sixty years ago. The rise was partly driven by a ten-fold increase in the number of wounded in action – those injured, but not killed – over the past six months as fighting in Afghanistan intensified. In November 2006, only three British soldiers were wounded in Afghanistan by the Taliban, compared with thirty-eight in May 2007. The official injury rate given by the Ministry of Defence among the 7,000 British troops in Afghanistan was about three per cent. But when the figures were applied only to the three infantry battalions on the front-line, it rose to almost 10 per cent.

  18 July 2007 [diary]

  Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

  The camp was mortared this morning. I didn't imagine they would get this close so soon. Fortunately nobody got hurt. The round landed just outside the perimeter (about 25 metres from my room) and the majority of people were asleep under hard cover anyway. If it had landed another 5 metres in [to the] camp during the day, it would have been a different story.

  I was awake on duty at the time and heard the whistle, then the loud explosion. I've heard hundreds of mortar rounds go out, but it was a strange feeling hearing one going the other way – pretty helpless, really. Cpl Green saw the explosion on his way back to the block – his heart rate upped a little!

  We had jets in the air pretty soon and it's believed they destroyed the mortar. However, it's thought they [the Taliban] have several others in the area. I just hope they don't get any more accurate. We are pretty defenceless if they do.

  19 July 2007

  McNab: It was announced that two Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFC) had been awarded for bravery in Afghanistan. They were to Captain Nick Barton and Captain Tom O'Malley, of the Army Air Corps. Barton was given his award for his bravery when his Apache helicopter was struck by a heavy machine gun round on Christmas Eve while he was supporting troops in a contact at Now Zad and for his part in supporting the Jugroom Fort rescue mission. He calmly kept control of the helicopter – even though it was severely damaged – and even completed his attack on the target. O'Malley received h
is award for his courage when, under a hail of enemy fire, he flew, with another Apache, to retrieve the body of Lance Corporal Mathew Ford at Jugroom Fort in January 2007. Warrant Officer Class 1 Ed Macy (a pseudonym) and Staff Sergeant Keith Armatage were awarded the Military Cross (MC) for their part in the rescue mission. Captain Dave Rigg's MC was also announced for his bravery during the same incident.

  28 July 2007 [diary]

  Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

  As I count down the days to leaving here, more bad news. I received a message on the Internet from a friend's girlfriend that raised more questions than it answered. But I could guess that he'd been hurt: Martin is a close friend of mine that I've had since uni and we went through our Army training together. He's a Para and now out in Afghanistan.

  I had an agonizing couple of hours before finding out what happened. I called her back in the UK. Basically Martin was shot in the shoulder and badly wounded; he's now back home in hospital. He's safe and that's a positive, but the shoulder is in a bad way. I was quite shaken. I've known people who have died out here, but never a close friend. It's quite shocking.

  Anyway, I'll be in the UK in about 10 days so, hopefully, I'll be able to visit him. I just hope he makes a full recovery now.

  6 August 2007

  Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, The Royal Anglian Regiment

  Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, 1 Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, is thirty-eight. He was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and was brought up on the Suffolk/Norfolk border, attending Stradbroke High School. His father is a peat salesman and his mother runs her own beauty business. Panter, who has one younger sister, left school at sixteen. After working as a chef for four years, he got fed up with having to work nights at weekends when his friends were having fun so in 1991 he joined the Royal Anglians as a private, aged twenty. He has completed tours of Croatia, Iraq and Northern Ireland, as well as two tours of Afghanistan. He is married, with two boys, and is based at Pirbright barracks in Surrey. His military career is currently threatened by a serious ankle injury he received on his second tour of Afghanistan.

  On my second tour of Afghanistan, I was based in Sangin. I was a 3 Corunna platoon sergeant with A Company in 1 Royal Anglian. Our general role was reassurance of the Afghan national population and deterring the Taliban. I was based at Sangin DC. It was relatively quiet because the CO of the battle group had built a ring of steel around Sangin by using the PBs [patrol bases] to take the pressure off Sangin. It had worked: people had come back to Sangin and it was a thriving market town again, just as it had been before.

  On this particular day, our battalion CO [Lt Col Stuart Carver, DSO] was on R&R. Major Charlie Calder, the second in command of the battalion, was at Sangin DC for a couple of weeks while the CO was on leave. Inkerman patrol base, which is three or four miles north of Sangin, was under heavy attack, day in day out. Anyway Major Calder wanted to go to Inkerman to check on the morale and see how the troops were. I was tasked with getting a group of men in four WMIKs to take him up there. We left at 0100 and got there at 0145. We had the route picketed – almost completely lined by the Afghan and British troops – because the 611 was a notoriously dangerous road.

  We then got our heads down and were awoken by the sound of gunfire and RPG fire early in the morning when the base was attacked. It was seven or eight in the morning and we had been sleeping beside the vehicles in the open. It all kicked off and we stood to and tried to identify Taliban positions and engage them with mortar. We used all the weapon systems available at the base because it overlooked the Green Zone. They [the Taliban] were probably 200 metres away, 300 max. It was heavy and sustained fire.

  It lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes and that was pretty much it. And then we found out that C Company were going out on patrol later that day and so I went and spoke to the OC designate at the time, Captain David Hicks, MC [since killed in battle]. He was in charge while C Company OC was on his R&R. I went and spoke to him and said: 'Do you mind if I get eight men and tag along and help you out on this patrol?' I knew they were undermanned because of the R&R.

  He gave orders to go out at 1600. The plan was to reassure one of the local hamlets just out to the front of Inkerman. Within forty-five minutes, we'd got to the outskirts of the hamlet and then the forward platoon saw the Taliban in a position with RPGs and AKs so they opened fire on them. We had in the region of eighty men: twenty to thirty ANA and the rest Brits.

  I was with 11 Platoon and I was in their third section. I was at the back and there was a lot of RPG and AK fire coming our way. It was getting quite close and I could hear a lot of firing and RPG fire on our left flank. I was speaking to the platoon sergeant at the time, saying we were not sure whether that was ANA or enemy. So I was trying to get in comms with the platoon commander to let him know that we had got some firing on our left flank. Because I was reserve, I thought I would go over there and check and keep an eye on the left flank. In the end I spoke to the platoon sergeant, who thought it was a good idea, so I took the section of eight men and off we went.

  We got in this ditch, no more than fifty to a hundred metres away from the main body of the company. I could still hear a lot of gunfire and RPG rounds – coming not directly at us but across our flanks. I was trying to still get comms to find out whether it was friend or foe. There was a lot going on. I couldn't get in comms with the OC or the platoon commander so in the end I took it on myself to go up there with the section. The main reason I did this was that I didn't want a blue on blue [friendly fire] situation to happen. I thought we had best make our positions known to each other with a face to face.

  We got the section and started going up along the ditch and I was thinking: This is a bit noisy. Just in case it was Taliban, I was worried they could hear us coming. So I decided to get out of the ditch and go along the bank. After no more than twenty or thirty metres, I heard some more RPG fire and a few rounds getting fired. It was not at us, but to our front, and then after another few metres I actually saw four Taliban in this ditch. They were no more than 100 to 150 metres away from me. We positively identified the Taliban, fired straight at them.

  We may have got one on the first burst. We were firing SA80 [assault rifles] and LMG [light machine-gun]. They had AKs and RPGs. We had surprised them. A little bit of a firefight ensued and then I thought: We have to take the bull by the horns here and dispatch these Taliban. So we concocted a quick plan. With the remainder of the section giving fire support, me and another lad, Private Patrick Casey, pepper-potted along the ditch and encountered a Taliban just fifteen to twenty metres in front of us. We hadn't seen him initially. I killed him: I shot him with my rifle. At this point I thought: Bloody hell, they're getting a bit close. So I put the bayonet and a fresh mag on, and as I was doing that I saw some movement in front. I chucked a grenade towards the initial area where the Taliban were and after that we didn't really get any incoming fire back from them. Then one of the lads spotted a Taliban running to our left. He fired and I fired and the Taliban dropped. But I didn't know whether he had gone to ground or not. Then I spotted him again in the ditch about twenty metres away. I fired some more rounds and he was down. I jumped into the ditch towards him. He still had his weapon – an AK variant – in his hand and he was still breathing. I had my bayonet fixed and I bayoneted him, straight into the chest. Several times. We were taught in training: once you shoot, then bayonet them because they have been known in the past to jump up behind you after feigning death or injury. So it's always good to make sure they're dead. He was probably in his late twenties, no more than thirty. He was in black with a black tie around his middle and he had chest webbing on as well. The first guy was dressed exactly the same.

  To our right flank, the company were still having a bit of a bun-fight with the Taliban. I think the Taliban we encountered had been trying to sneak up on the main company and ambush them from the flank but they got surprised by us because they didn't know we were there. Then we had a qui
ck chat. Me and Casey went up towards the position where we had first seen the Taliban. And there was another Taliban in there. He may have been injured but he still had a weapon with him so he was shot. I shot him. That was that for the time being. We had a mini re-org to call the rest of the section in, covering all our arcs, doing a head count and re-arming.

  Whilst this was going on, a fourth member of the Taliban opened up on us, again from the ditch. This was three or four minutes after we thought the fire-fight had ended. He was firing with AK: it was automatic gunfire from under a hundred metres. So we now fired back at that Taliban position. I said to one of the guys who had an ILAW [interim light anti-tank weapon] rocket launcher: 'Fire at that position.' He couldn't get the damn thing to work so I took it off him and fired at the position, and all the other guys fired everything we had for a couple of minutes. We didn't get any return fire so we assumed he was killed in that initial volley, from less than a hundred metres away. I thought: I'm not going to send any guys up to confirm the death for safety reasons.