by Andy McNab
8 June 2008
McNab: Another tragic landmark. The number of British servicemen who had died in Afghanistan reached 100 when three paratroopers were killed by a suicide bomber. It happened when an insurgent detonated a large explosive device strapped to his chest as servicemen were on a routine patrol near their base in Helmand province. The three privates who died, two aged nineteen and one aged twenty-two, were from the 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment. A fourth was injured. It was the deadliest attack on British forces to date in 2008 and the biggest single loss of life by troops in the country since August 2007. The 100 victims were aged from eighteen to fifty-one. Of those who died, seventy-four were killed in action from enemy fire or explosives and twenty-six died as a result of non-combat-related injuries. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said of the 100 servicemen: 'They laid down their lives for their country and their comrades. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy.'
June 2008
Ranger David McKee, The Royal Irish Regiment
As part of the OMLT, we worked with the ANA. But that didn't mean we trusted them all. Me and my mates said the only people we trusted in Afghanistan were the Taliban – because we knew they were the ones that were trying to kill us. Some of the ANA were a bit dodgy: we suspected that some of them did support the Taliban or, even, that some of them were members of the Taliban. There were some situations where it got out of hand and weapons were pointed.
I had first-hand experience of that in Musa Qa'leh. We had gone out on a foot patrol in the Green Zone, just to get a bit of ground orientation with the ANA. There were six British and thirty ANA soldiers. It was daylight. It was an early-morning patrol – when we would leave at about 7 a.m. and be back in at 10 a.m. But we weren't back in for ten that day – trust me.
To start with, it all went well. Then, suddenly, bang on right beside us, there were mortars being launched. They were being launched at British forces and PBs [patrol bases]. It was a co-ordinated attack. The mortars were being launched beside us but they were hitting different PBs, including Roshan Tower. When it kicked off, we had been out for about an hour and it was eight o'clock. When you hear the first bang, your initial reaction is to get on the ground, find cover and find out where it is coming from. This was only our second contact of the tour.
When it kicked off we had three different teams of ANA – one with us [the British] and the other two off to the flanks. The ANA commander got on his radio and tried to find out what was going on. He discovered our right flank had come under heavy contact – including RPGs. They were fighting like fuck up there, so they were. And they needed reinforcements to come up and help them. But as we went up to help them, we came under contact from our left.
So we ran. It was a beast of a run: I'd say we were running at least 800 metres in that heat on uneven ground with boys falling all over the place. It was boiling hot. I was an LMG gunner so I was carrying my LMG, full-scale ammo, a pack of water, water bottle, rations just in case, body armour and helmet. It must have all weighed about eighty pounds. It was absolutely lethal, so it was.
Our first reaction was to get the boss, Captain Rainey: he was the OMLT commander. At this point we got a few rounds off. I managed to get some off. I could see clearly what I was firing at. There were people running across the fields with weapons and they were firing – they were taking pot-shots at us as they were running. They were doing the team drills that the British Army do because obviously they had been watching us out on patrols. So there was one guy firing, there were other guys peeling around him and getting down and firing as well. I would say they were at least 500 metres away from us. Light machine-guns can fire that far and pretty accurately. But it was impossible to say whether I hit anyone.
I was firing at the ones running into the compounds, which were all linked together. Me and the boss were going to go around and flank the compound. But before we could get out in the open, these boys [of the OMLT] had called us back [on the radio] and they sounded pretty scared. Initially we thought one of our boys had been injured. We had run down and the compound door had been kicked in. And we went in and the ANA were beating up a member of the Taliban whom they'd caught as he was trying to run away. They were beating him up with boots and fists. Around that one Taliban I would say there were six or seven of them. So the boss, being aware of the Geneva Convention, ordered the ANA to leave him alone. All we wanted to do was to get the ANA off him, treat the Taliban casualty and extract him so we could gain information from him. He had not been shot but the boss wanted me to patch him up. Through the interpreter, Captain Rainey was shouting at the ANA, telling them to get off him. Most of the ANA stopped and backed off, but our main concern was the ANA sergeant major. He didn't take too kindly to us pretty much offering our help to this Taliban. He – the sergeant major – was the boss of that group we were with.
So I – the team medic – was patching up the Taliban casualty. He had a gash on his head, blood running from his nose. His one leg was badly swollen: I mean, the whole leg was massive compared to his other leg. We felt around – he was complaining about pains in his side – and there were a couple of ribs knocked out of place. He had also taken a good boot to the head, which had hurt his neck. He was young, early twenties. He was in a bad way. But he wasn't frightened – he was angry. He was slabbering [ranting] like mad, even though he was in pain. When I was down patching him, he was slabbering and spitting. But you have to take that, you know what I mean?
The ANA didn't like us helping him. So, as I was patching him up, one of the ANA came over and he cocked his AK and stuck it in my head. The interpreter said: 'He says he's going to kill you if you don't stop.' So I thought: This is it. This guy is going to kill me. I sort of put my hands up in the air. But then the boss, who was on the radio, and Sergeant McKinney came over and pulled him out of the way and told him to wind his neck in.
At that point, the casualty was still lying there and then, suddenly, we were fired on again from this compound. The boss told me to engage the enemy. I saw this guy who was firing his AK-47 from less than a hundred metres away. He was fiddling about with his weapon behind a tree. I lifted my LMG up to fire, but then I got a dead man's click. It didn't work. It was a stupid moment. I moved into the smallest piece of cover [from a wall]. I was trying to rectify the stoppage. Captain Rainey had asked where he [the Taliban attacker] was and I showed him.
The boss sort of moved around and he looked but he said he couldn't see him. Then you could hear a round: it zipped past his head and hit the wall behind him. The boss then fell at this stage and I thought he had taken a round, a hit. So this was where I started getting a wee bit scared and panicky. I was still fucking around with the weapon, trying to get it fixed. But the boss was all right – he got up, then he said: 'Right, try and get that stoppage rectified and we'll go and flank him [the attacker].' So the boss and Sergeant McKinney went round to flank him. The rest of the team were inside the compound. But this [Taliban] guy, he was persistent in trying to get me. He was firing like mad and the wall kept crumbling. I saw the wall starting to fall apart – the cover was getting small – and I couldn't get the weapon fixed. My only option was to make myself as small as I could. I sort of curled up into a ball. But the longer the boss and Sergeant McKinney took, the more panicky I started to get. I went into a stage of battle shock, so I did. I was calling a mate, Ranger Simon Wade, and he was there with his LMG and I was telling him to fire on him [the enemy], but there was a wall blocking his view. There was no point bringing him into somewhere where he was going to get endangered. So he was there and trying to calm me down saying: 'Davey, calm down. You'll be all right, you'll be fine.'
But he [the Taliban fighter] was still firing, I shouted to my mate: 'Fuck this here. Listen, I'm taking a chance.'
He said: 'Right, I'll get on the radio to Charlie.' That's Sergeant McKinney.
Sergeant McKinney says: 'Right, on my countdown, I want you to move after five seconds.
' He started to count down on the radio: 'Five, four, three, two, one.'
As soon as he got to one I was gone. I was straight past that gap [in the wall where he could be shot]. I could hear the rounds smacking into that wall. And it was just me. As soon as I hit the ground, I sat down to get my breath back and all that. There were loads of things going through my head. I just sat there and my mate came up, gave me his water bottle and a fag and told me to smoke it to calm myself down.
When I had calmed down, I got myself back to the casualty, where I was treating him. But then the worst possible thing happened. The ANA came into the compound and it wasn't one soldier [getting angry] this time. It was the whole lot. As I was treating him, as one got my attention, another one come from behind. It was fucking mayhem, they were trying to get more boots and punches in. It was me and the Taliban casualty. All the ANA soldiers had managed to come into the compound by this time. There were at least twelve and they were all wanting a piece of him. So there's me, in the middle, with loads of ANA soldiers around. My mates were trying to get in, to get them away, but I just got up and I lost my rag. The ANA sergeant major came over and cocked his weapon in my face. But what I did was I jumped up and pushed him. Very violently I pushed him. He lifted his hand as if to backhand me and he swung to hit me. But I moved out of the way. In the end, Sergeant McKinney, he came running in then. He shouted: 'Right, if you want to kill him, you have to get through me first.' They [the ANA] were all scared of Sergeant McKinney – really frightened of him. He was giving me a wee bit of support as well, as if to say: 'Listen, you're not on your own. Don't worry about it.'
One guy [ANA] now came walking into the compound. And when you saw this guy you thought, He's no happy chappy – and he always looked like an angry person. And he came walking in and he saw us with the Taliban and he saw all the ANA shouting and he came over and he cocked his weapon – with his finger on the trigger. He was walking backwards saying something in Pashtu. He was all for pulling the trigger on me with the casualty. But by that stage the ANA officer had come in: the main commander. He had heard and seen what was going on. So he went mad and started slapping his boys about, and throwing them out. Next the [British] QRF [Quick Reaction Force] came in, and everything went mad. They had managed to come down in their vehicles to help us out. I now got away with the casualty. But he was complaining that the splint was annoying him and the ANA said: 'Just take it off. Don't worry about it.' I knew the leg was broken. But they made this guy walk back three miles with a broken leg. It was quite sickening.
But as we were going back to our patrol base – Satellite Station North – we heard on the radio that it had come under RPG attack. So the boys we had left to secure the camp were now having to fucking defend it. It was a mad day! Eventually, all the fighting stopped and we did a body-count. It turned out there were three Taliban killed. When we were coming back from the patrol I was thinking: Fuck. That was crazy. But then you and your mates start joking about it. 'Did you see him falling, back there?' one of them said, pointing at me. Because I had fallen in the river, as I was trying to get up near the boss. I had properly fallen in when we were under fire. Eventually, we got back well after midday. We had been fighting through midday heat, which is about 50°C.
When we got back, I just wanted to get my clothes off. I was soaking wet with sweat. My helmet and body armour needed to come off. I wanted to have a sit down on my own, have a cigarette and think about what had just happened. I was thinking: I was nearly killed. I didn't think I was going to get out of there. I was thinking about my family, about the people back home, [times] when I was happy. All I wanted to do was to think happy thoughts.
But I wasn't happy at all that day with some of the ANA and since then I have been paranoid. After that, I was always watching the ANA more than I was watching what I was doing, if you know what I mean. Because I was always scared of one of them popping off a round and putting one through me. They're the sort of people who will hold grudges and they will try their best to get rid of you if they can. It was the sergeant major and one of the sergeants who didn't like me. We knew the sergeant by his nickname – Medoza. He was a nut, he was crazy.
June 2008 [diary/interview]
Ranger Jordan Armstrong, The Royal Irish Regiment
My first contact was in Wombat Wood, when we stayed in a compound for five days. It's just over a kilometre from Sangin in the Green Zone. We were on foot. There was a base for the Afghan National Army. We were there as a decoy, while others were building a new FOB for the ANA. They were putting their base in the Green Zone, up north. It was Friday, 13 June. We – 7 Platoon – went out on patrol in the morning, around 10 a.m. We went out on foot with the whole platoon – twenty-seven of us – and there were a couple of interpreters and medics. We also had five American snipers out with us as well. We were on a resupply route, and we went out as a section over to the ANA [base]. We had rations for them and we were in a convoy, on foot, from the base. Two days later we left the base. The whole platoon went back on the same supply route that we had come in on.
We left at 1430. We just knew, because we had comms [from intelligence], that something was going to happen that day. We had a feeling we were definitely going to get it – even though we had never been hit before. The terp [interpreter] was acting all nervous too. Our section and the quad [bike] pushed up on the open ground and that was when they [the Taliban] fired the first RPG. It landed about fifty metres from where I was but closer still – about thirty metres – to one of the other boys. They started attacking us with small arms. Then the second RPG came in. I think it was an airburst [calculated to explode before it hit something]. It just happened so fast. As soon as that happened, we started firing in their general direction, but it was very hard to pick them out. We fired for a bit. My gun [a light machine-gun] was ready – all I had to do was pull the trigger. My first reaction was to hold it up by my hip [to fire]. Then I got down on my belt buckle and started firing. I had to crawl forward, because we had got caught in open ground, and let off a couple of rounds.
We got penned down for a wee bit – a good ten seconds. Then we ran to a ditch. All the section were in different places by this stage, taking cover. But it [the contact] was soon over. It lasted about ten minutes. We didn't take any casualties, but one of the snipers was sure he hit one [of the Taliban]. It all happened so quickly. You go through the drills – which meant the fear didn't hit me until it was more or less over and then you can think about it a little bit. I can honestly say I wasn't scared because it all happened so quickly. You just had to do what you had to do and return fire. I thought, once it had calmed down: That was a bit close. But we got through it. It showed our drills definitely worked. I thought: If you listen [to orders and training], you can get through, no problem. So that was our first contact, but I was sure it wouldn't be our last.
17 June 2008
McNab: Sergeant Sarah Bryant, twenty-six, became the first British woman killed in action in Afghanistan. She died along with three SAS reservists in what was the deadliest attack since hostilities had begun nearly seven years earlier. Their Snatch Land Rover was hit by an explosion near Lashkar Gah. Des Feely, Bryant's father, said: 'It's truly devastating ... an absolute massive shock. Ever since she was a schoolgirl she wanted to be a soldier. I cannot believe she will not be coming home.' He added that he and his wife, Maureen, were 'absolutely devastated to have lost the beautiful daughter we adored'. Bryant, who served in the Intelligence Corps, had married a fellow intelligence officer, Corporal Carl Bryant, two years earlier. She had been due to end her tour in Afghanistan the next month. Her husband said: 'Although I am devastated beyond words at the death of my beautiful wife Sarah, I am so incredibly proud of her. She was an awesome soldier who died doing the job she loved.'
June 2008
Captain Alan 'Barney' Barnwell, 845 Naval Air Squadron
Captain Alan 'Barney' Barnwell, a Sea King helicopter pilot, from the Royal Marines serving with 845 Naval Air
Squadron, is forty-nine. He grew up in Portstewart, Northern Ireland, and attended Coleraine Academical Institute until he left school at eighteen. The son of a printer and one of four siblings, Barnwell joined the Royal Marines as a 'grunt' – a standard Marine – in 1978. Serving in Commando units as an assault engineer until 1986, he saw action in Northern Ireland and the Falklands War. In 1986, he became the first ever corporal pilot in the Royal Marines. Barnwell served three three-month tours in Iraq in 2006 and 2007. He went to Afghanistan in June 2008 to serve his first three-month tour there. Married with two grown-up children, he lives in Montacute, Somerset, and is based at RNAS Yeovilton.
