by Andy McNab
When I arrived, I was part of the OMLT. Our role was to train the ANA. We were training them in lots of different subjects: basic field drills, patrolling skills, teaming through their own weapons, and getting them converted from the AK-47 to the M16, the American rifle. We went out on patrols with them. We took them through IED clearance, mine clearance, room clearance, compound clearance. Our aim was that they would eventually be able to do it themselves without the British.
Some of their skills were nearly there [to a professional level] but the thing that confused them was having different [British] regiments coming in with different perspectives. So they ended up with one regiment training them to do something in a particular way and then our regiment, or another regiment, would do it completely differently. And then they would have to try to adapt to it.
Some of the ANA's soldiers were average but many of the new recruits coming in were absolutely terrible. We always spoke to them through an interpreter. Our role was to turn them into an effective fighting force. We knew it was going to be a challenge.
April 2008
Major Jonathan Hipkins, Royal Military Police (RMP)
Major Jonathan Hipkins, of 156 Provost Company Royal Military Police (RMP), is forty. He was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. His father worked as a car designer, his mother as a PA to a company managing director. Hipkins, who has a younger brother, left school at eighteen. He hoped to become a fast jet pilot in the RAF but failed a secondary hearing test and was commissioned into the Supply and Movement Branch in 1988. After nearly six years in the RAF, he left to become a civilian police officer in Coventry from 1994 to 1997. During his time in the force, he also became a yeomanry officer – a TA cavalry officer. After a short-service voluntary commission with 9/12 Lancers, he transferred to the RMP in 1999. In the last decade, he has done tours of Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Married to a police officer, he has two sons and is based at Colchester, Essex.
The Royal Military Police does a traditional policing role for the military – investigations into crimes, etc. But we also provide Provost support – myriad military police tasks from reconnaissance to route signing and from prisoner and detainee handling to evidence gathering. If a British soldier is killed in Afghanistan, that incident has to be investigated for a UK coroner by the RMP.
The role of the Royal Military Police in Afghanistan is often unsung but it is hugely important. There was an incident when, in a convoy of vehicles, the first vehicle hit a mine. Everyone in the first vehicle was killed. It was a Snatch armoured vehicle and four service personnel died. In the second vehicle, I had two members of the Royal Military Police who then had to get out and conduct the preliminary aspects of a murder investigation in a hugely threatening environment. Then they literally had to pick up the bits of the friends they had just seen killed and put them in their day sacks. They were scraping up hands and feet – literally. These lads were in their early twenties. On other occasions, I have had soldiers who have had to take DNA swabs from the dead body of their friend, take photographs of it.
It's hard to imagine more horrific circumstances and, for me, the quiet courage of those individuals on that day was something that is very rarely acknowledged, but is worthy of recognition. It wasn't a case of an individual charging an enemy machine-gun. It was just normal blokes doing a normal job – or perhaps it's more accurate to say, doing an extraordinary job in extraordinary circumstances. I think there is a perception in Civvy Street that soldiers are to a certain extent immune from what they see. But nothing is further from the truth. I have had individual RMP guys who have seen and done too much out here and I have had to take them from their jobs and put them in less stressful areas to give them some down-time because of the things they have seen and experienced. These lads are so young and it does affect them. I know it affects them. I certainly wonder in later life what sort of impact the things they have seen and done here will have on them. For me, this quiet heroism, this unsung heroism that never gets talked about, is worthy of note.
There is this kind of approach to life in the military where it is all about machismo – retaining that manly, macho approach to life. But you can see that some of them are hurting through some of the things that they have seen whilst they have been out here. Very often they won't talk to me because I'm their boss. I'm the person who writes their confidential report and any sign of weakness could be seen as just that. But I would never look at an individual and consider them weak in that respect. I would consider them an individual who has seen a little bit too much and they need, probably, a little bit of extra care to make them feel better about themselves. The way they are treated will reflect that. But I have plenty of people around here who are trained to do that and have done it for some of my soldiers. People are different. Some individuals will talk about it quite freely, others will bottle it up. I'm not going to force people to talk about their issues but we're there for them if they need us. And as I say, to date, I have had a number of individuals who are obviously in need of a rest.
It's blatantly obvious, because of a reluctance to go out or the fact they are in some way, shape or form behaving differently from how they were prior to an incident. In that respect I have pulled people off front-line duty and put them back into the police station in order to give them a bit of respite. But they are also very young and, for most people who are in a position of command/responsibility, it is something we're very aware of out here – high stress, you know, a very fast pace of life, a hugely dangerous environment for them to work in. If you're any sort of decent boss you've got to be acutely aware of that and to react on an individual basis when your people have got something that they need, when something is happening in terms of their normal approach, which is not normal any more. Then you need to give them the care that they require.
7 April 2008 [diary/interview]
Ranger Jordan Armstrong, The Royal Irish Regiment
Ranger Jordan Armstrong, 1 Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment, is twenty. He was born in Omagh, Co. Tyrone. The son of a computer worker, he is the second of five brothers. Armstrong was an Army Cadet until he was seventeen when he decided to pursue a military career. He joined up in May 2007, when he was eighteen. He enlisted because he specifically wanted to go to Afghanistan, which he saw as a great challenge and an opportunity to gain experience of battle. During his time in Afghanistan, he kept a daily diary about his thoughts. Armstrong, who is single, is based at the Royal Irish's barracks at Tern Hill, Shropshire.
I joined up just as our boys were starting to go to Helmand province. I wanted to go and experience the fighting. I knew before signing papers in the careers office that I would go to Afghanistan. I had seen videos of the boys in Afghanistan. It definitely looked mad but I still wanted to try it. I always got a nervous feeling just thinking about it.
We flew to Afghanistan for my first tour on 25 March 2008. I had been abroad once before – to the South of France for holidays – and that was it. We flew out from [RAF] Brize Norton [in Oxfordshire] to Kandahar. I was thinking: This is it. I'm going to do whatever I have to do and hopefully I'll come back. I had butterflies when we were on the runway at Brize Norton. I thought: I have a long six months ahead of me.
My first impression when I arrived in Afghanistan was of the heat and dust – and how flat it was. It was flat in Camp Bastion. I'm an LMG [light machine-gun] gunner. That is my weapon. I'm trained to fire it. I was in Corporal Harwood's section. There were eight of us in it.
April 7 was a bad day. The ANP [Afghan National Police] came back from a patrol to Sangin DC. We were supposed to go out at the same time that they came back in – around 3 a.m. But the FSG [Fire Support Group] boys were firing off Javelins [anti-tank missiles]. One got fired and instead of going off into the distance it actually landed in the camp [Sangin DC]. But it didn't explode so they cordoned it off. This meant our patrol was delayed. It was good for us because we were then still at the base to deal with a major incident.
An RPG, being carried in a bag by the ANP, went off inside the camp. I think it was dropped by mistake. They had been carrying the RPGs in a bag on their backs. It blew up seven of them. Two of the men were killed, others lost limbs. It had gone off at the back of the base – Sangar Two. It was an ND – negative discharge. I don't know if it was bad drills or bad luck.
We were nearby unloading. I ran over with the others. I saw a lot of boys with their guts hanging out. There was one being carried away with both legs blown off above the knees. He wasn't screaming. He was quiet. We got them [the injured] on stretchers and took them over to the med centre. I had to pick up one of the dead boys. His back was blown out and I had to throw him up in the truck. It sounds a bit rough to throw him in the back of a Land Rover but that was what I was told to do.
I hadn't seen anything like that before [Armstrong was then just nineteen and only two weeks into his first tour]. I was actually all right when I saw them [dead and maimed bodies]. I wasn't sure whether I was going to be sick but, as soon as I saw them, I was all right. I thought I would have been faintish, but I wasn't. We had a good platoon sergeant. He took control and said: 'Get a grip, boys. Just get the job done.' Some boys were sick, though – they couldn't handle it. You don't know how it's going to affect you until you see it.
15 April 2008
McNab: Some deaths inevitably capture the public's attention more than others. This was one: Senior Aircraftman Gary Thompson, fifty-one, became the oldest serviceman to be killed on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He died with a comrade, Senior Aircraftman Graham Livingstone, when their Wolf Land Rover was blown up during a patrol outside Kandahar airfield. He left a widow and five daughters, aged from sixteen to twenty-four. His family said that Thompson, who was the ninety-third British serviceman to die in Afghanistan, 'touched the lives of everyone that knew him'. In February 2008, he had told the Rutland and Stanford Mercury, near his base at RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire: 'I have five daughters, three of whom are at university. I want women in Afghanistan to be given the same opportunity as my daughters have had.' Thompson and Livingstone served with the Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment.
May 2008
Ranger David McKee, The Royal Irish Regiment
My first contact was when we were out on foot patrol in Musa Qa'leh. It was during an afternoon patrol – from 2 to 4 p.m. – with the ANA. We were six Brits and thirty ANA. We went through this big piece of open ground, then past a graveyard. I was carrying a 51mm mortar plus my LMG. We got up to the graveyard and it came over the net that they [the Taliban] had spotted us. 'Get your men ready, get your guns,' they warned us. So the boss, on hearing this, decided to pull us back and get back into the base, which was about three miles away. We had noticed that on the way in there were people about. There were shops open, kids running around. But now we looked behind and everyone had gone. The place was deserted. At this stage, we knew we were going to get hit. As soon as we reached that open ground again, one single round was fired, followed by this big burst of machine-gun fire hurtling up beside us. We were in open ground, so there was no cover. All you could see was the splashes everywhere. All you could hear was 'Contact rear,' and the boys were just running to find a decent bit of cover.
Before I knew it, most of the other boys were in cover. But I was still running. There was me, my mate [Ranger] Simon Wade, and the boss, Captain [Graham] Rainey. So I jumped behind this small bit of dirt [mound] that was on the floor and Simon and Captain Rainey were in a compound firing out of a hole. At that time, I was shitting myself, proper crapping myself. I could see the rounds bouncing, literally beside my feet. And I could hear the cracks flying over our heads. It was the first time I had ever come under contact. I thought: Oh, fuck, here we go. I had to lie down flat on my stomach because the mound wasn't that big at all. And I knew that if I stuck my head up, I'd have exposed every part of my body, pretty much. So I was down. I was hoping to fire my LMG, but I didn't fire it once. Then the boss came over the radio and said: 'Get the 51 out and start firing it.' I shouted down to the GPMG gunner to give me fire support so I could get the mortar up. He started firing up towards the hill [where the enemy was firing from].
And what we could see was a [Taliban] PKM gunner on the top of the hill plus and an AK. The PKM gunner was down on his belly, firing the machine-gun. The other guy was standing firing and moving about down the hill trying to get away from us. So I got the 51 up and I asked Sergeant [Charlie] McKinney what to do – because he is an MFC – a mortar fire controller – and he knows all about this. He came up to give me guidance on the target. First of all he said: 'Go for 250 metres.' So I dropped in the bomb first and fired. It came down but it landed behind the hill. So I decided to drop fifty metres and go for 200 this time. So I threw the mortar down the barrel and I was waiting for the splash to come up, just waiting, and it was bang on target. That PKM gunner would have shot his mouth out after that bomb had landed on top of him. And everyone said later: 'You got him. You definitely hit him.' But because of the dust and all that, I don't know if it landed right on him or slightly beside him. But it shut him up and he didn't fire at us ever again. So he was gone. He was out of the picture then.
The next thing for us to do was extract. There was no fire coming from our front, but we had to worry about our flanks – because we had just come under attack from the flanks. The boys were exposed on the left. We – me, my mate Simon and Captain Rainey – were right in front of the urban area. We were the ones that were more protected. We decided to give fire out in the flanks so the other boys could extract back through us. But what I forgot to do was to pack the mortar away. I was in a predicament where I had to get people to come down and protect me so I could pack the mortar away, get my weapon – my LMG – and extract. All I could do was to get one of the lads to give me cover. He had a UGL [underslung grenade launcher] and he was firing grenades at them. He was firing away. He said: 'Right, leave your LMG where it is and get the mortar into the hard cover.' I went down, packed the mortar away, put all the bombs in the rucksack and then got my LMG. But I couldn't move yet. I was standing behind a wall with my weapons and the rounds were coming in. But in the end I just grabbed my LMG and everything and did a runner. And that was us [heading], all the way back into base. We were power smoothing: you had two [soldiers] moving down and then another two moving through you and so forth, all the way down. Just to give protection. That was really, really scary, so it was. You hear people talking about it [a contact] and you see it in the movies, when the rounds are landing beside people's feet. But I didn't actually think it happened like that. I always thought: If they're going to start shooting, they're going to hit us. The rounds aren't going to start landing all over the place. But that day, the rounds were landing all over the place. I'd seen it, the fucking dust kicking up by your feet and thinking: Oh, my God!
May 2008
Lance Corporal Daniel Power, The Royal Welsh
I was with the Royal Welsh in a sniper role. We were up on the hill above Now Zad that looks over the old town. We had all the fire-support elements up on there – machine-guns, etc., Javelin anti-tank missiles, etc. We were all sleeping in these man-made bunkers, which were only waist high. We had to crawl in; at best you can sit in them. On a daily basis, we used to get contacted there, mortared, we had rockets fired from there. Now Zad is deserted; most of its residents have been moved out of the town. We were over-watching the old town and there was enemy known to be in that area. We identified where they were hiding out in the Green Zone. We would often push into the town, to draw the enemy out into a contact, then hit them hard. We would normally have a couple of contacts.
We were out on an op one day in May. We surged into the Green Zone on a planned op. We had no reaction, really. A couple of rounds, but there was nothing to sustain it – to fix on the enemy. But on the route back one of the MFCs initiated a victim-operated device – a pressure pad – which exploded into his groin area and he ended up losing half his foot for
that. This was Corporal Dan Sheen, who is in his mid-twenties. He was on a foot patrol and he stood on the device and initiated it. This was just after midday, close to Now Zad. I was nearby at the time. I saw him being carried on to the Chinook. You can't really crowd the situation. As much as you want to help you have to leave it to the trained medics. They got on with that. But something like that is always disturbing. We have been quite fortunate as a unit. We have been in quite a few contacts during two tours in Afghanistan and – not to lose anyone – we have been really lucky.
I would say I have been in five big ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have been in a lot more contacts, but proper ambushes? About five. I count myself quite lucky to be alive from that. The thing with ambushes is that you [the target] are not meant to survive. For the initial part in any contact, you are on auto-pilot: you do what you have been trained to do, like a racing-car driver does, or a boxer. You train that much that your reaction becomes instinctive. With the Taliban, you rarely get to spring ambushes on them; they normally spring them on you for the simple fact that they can blend quite easily into the civilian population – their biggest weapon. And it's hard to keep track of them. The Taliban were fighting long before I ever joined the Army. They have a lot of skilled people, they are well organized. They are always well concealed. If they were wearing uniform, this job [restoring law and order to Helmand province] would be done and dusted by now, I imagine. But the hardest part is identifying your enemy. One thing is certain – when dealing with the Taliban, I will never get complacent.
