Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  Like A Company, B Company’s defence of the district centre relied heavily on the prolific use of artillery support from the light gun battery in FOB Robinson. As the call for fire support came in, the gunners of 1 Battery would rush to man their 105mm guns. Gun position officers would scream out bearings and elevations, as the long, heavy gun barrels were laid on to the given coordinates. High-explosive shells would then be rammed home into empty breeches, which would snap shut as the gun commanders shouted `On!’ to report that their artillery pieces were ready to fire. Hands were pressed tight against ears to shield them from the deafening roar of each gun, as firing handles were pulled back and 30 pounds of high explosive and metal were sent screaming towards the district centre. The process would be repeated by the sweating gun crews until the bellow of ‘Rounds complete!’ would announce that another deadly salvo of shells had been fired in support of their beleaguered comrades 7 kilometres away to their north in Sangin. Bombs, rockets and cannon shells from Coalition aircraft added to the lethal mix of projectiles used to break up repeated Taliban attacks. It became a vital lifeline to the defenders, but much of the fire was delivered ‘danger close’, as shells and bombs vectored in to land within 100 metres of the compound. Men pressed themselves flat at the bottom of their bunkers as incoming rounds landed close enough to spray the fronts of their sangars with red-hot splinters of shrapnel.

  Infiltration was another tactic the Taliban used to reduce the effectiveness of our air-delivered munitions and artillery, as they attempted to sneak unseen into attacking positions close to the district centre. One night in the second week of July, a team of ten insurgents used the cover of night to creep through the darkness towards the perimeter. They had skirted round the Pipe Range using the fields and buildings behind the orchard to get within 20 metres of Corporal James Harrop’s sangar that covered the south-eastern sector of the compound. All that separated the insurgents from their quarry was a 2-metre-high crumbling mud wall. If they could get to a large gap in the wall undetected, the assault party would be able to launch a vicious surprise attack using their RPGs to destroy the sangar at point-blank range before the defenders knew what had hit them.

  On the other side of the wall, Corporal James Harrop cocked his ear to the warm stillness of the night air; could he hear something other than the insects chirping in the background? He physically checked the location of the clacker firing control on the sandbags in front of him. It was attached to a wire that led to the five claymore mines that had been linked together in a daisy chain on the other side of the wall. Harrop peered into the gloom. Suddenly bright flashes lit up the darkness a few metres in front of him, as AK rounds thumped into the sandbags. Harrop hit the bottom of the sangar as the world around him erupted in a bright frenzy of orange flashes and explosions. Instinctively, he reached up above him with one hand. His fingers fumbled for the clacker and closed around the soft green plastic of its grips. He snapped it shut twice to be rewarded by the thunderous crash of the five claymores detonating on the other side of the wall. A split-second interval seemed to occur between each explosion, as their deadly contents of thousands of small steel ball-bearings were blasted into the insurgents. The firing stopped abruptly. From the other side of the wall the Taliban commander was heard screaming into his radio that there were mines everywhere and that all his men were down.

  If artillery, bombs and claymores were the blunter instruments used in the defence of Sangin, the employment of snipers provided a more surgical tool. Each of the company groups had a sniper section attached to it consisting of six men from the Battalion’s Sniper Platoon. Its members were especially selected and trained. After attending a rigorous ten-week sniper course, they were capable of achieving a one-round, one-hit kill over distances in excess of 1000 metres with their .338 sniper rifles. The snipers stationed themselves in positions that gave them a commanding view of the ground around the district centre and worked in pairs. The more experienced of the pair would act as the spotter. Using a laser range-finder he would measure the distance to a target, calculate the wind speed and get his `oppo’ to input the data into the Schmidt and Bender telescopic sight of his rifle.

  One of their primary tasks was to counter the threat of insurgent gunmen attempting to conduct their own snipes against the soldiers moving around in the district centre. The snipers’ precise and lethal effect was demonstrated on numerous occasions. In one particular incident, an intelligence report indicated that a Taliban marksman would attempt a shoot from a given location at a given time. A sniper pair was tasked to cover the likely firing area and neutralize the threat when it materialized. Working from a concealed position, both men scanned the rooftops in the distance. Although over 1,000 metres away, they spotted the slight movement of a weapon being placed on the flat rooftop of one of the two-storey buildings in the town. It was followed by the black silhouette of a lone figure pushing himself up on to the roof. As the bottom half of his torso was raised level with the ledge of the roof, a single shot rang out. The insurgent was flung backwards by the force of the heavy-calibre .388 bullet that struck him in the chest and he slipped from the roof before he had a chance to get his hands on his own weapon.

  Despite these successes, the Taliban weren’t in any danger of giving up. They continued to conduct attacks against the district centre on an average of four to five times a day. The compound’s defences had been improved slightly, but they were still vulnerable. Men continued to be pinned down behind low sandbagged emplacements or had to dive for cover as RPG rounds exploded within the perimeter. The supply bridge to the district centre also remained precarious. Repeated attempts to fly in ammunition and rations had to be aborted as Chinooks came under heavy fire as they tried to get into the LZ by the compound. After ten days of constant attacks the supply situation was exacerbated by a series of severe sandstorms. Visibility dropped to less than 6 metres and flying became impossible.

  On 11 July B Company’s soldiers were issued with their last days’ worth of rations and told to make them last. The next day there was nothing left to issue and the men scavenged for the remnants of ration packs that no one would normally eat. Packets of the disgusting sticky treacle pudding and hardtack brown biscuits were pooled into pathetically small piles. In Corporal Karl Jackson’s section this amounted to three boil-in-the-bag sachets of the sickly dessert and a few packets of biscuits. By the end of the day they had only a few of the unappetizing biscuits to feed the whole section of eight men; like the rest of the company they began to try to minimize activity to conserve energy. Drinking water had also run out and men were forced to draw alternative supplies from the canal. Although sterilized and boiled, it was hard to forget that it had passed through the sewage outlets of several thousand people who lived in the upstream villages.

  With the weather preventing helicopters from reaching the district centre, an attempt was made to parachute supplies to the beleaguered garrison from a Hercules aircraft on the night of 12 July. The hungry men watched in eager anticipation through their night vision devices as the aircraft flew in from the north. As it approached the DZ marked out on the field by the side of the compound, they willed it to start dropping and watched in dismay as it overshot the DZ. It started its drop too late and the bundles of much-needed rations tumbled out of the back of the aircraft to drift under their parachutes into the middle of the town. Private Thomas Brown accompanied a patrol from 5 Platoon that was sent out to recover the lost stores. His eyes were like ‘shit-house rats’ as they moved cautiously between buildings looking for the ration containers. In their desperate search to find the food they pushed well beyond the cover of the base’s machine guns. As they pressed deeper into the town, dogs began to bark and lights came on in the houses around them. Ravenous as they were, no one wanted to die for a box of boil-in-the-bags and the patrol headed back to the compound empty-handed. They would have to wait for several more days until another method of resupply could be organized.

  Sangin was not the
only outstation held by 3 PARA that was under pressure: four of the other bases now garrisoned by elements of the Battle Group were also under attack. The Taliban were becoming increasingly bold in Now Zad and their probing attacks and mortar fire against ANP Hill were the prelude to direct assaults against the district centre there. Kajaki was receiving a daily diet of habitual mortar fire, although the high ground occupied by the mortar teams and members of an FSG kept the Taliban from getting too close to the dam. FOB Robinson was also coming under intermittent fire and the insurgents were beginning to attack the Pathfinder Platoon in Musa Qaleh, which was now supported by a troop of gunners acting as infantry, allowing us to withdraw 6 Platoon and send them to join B company in Sangin. Like A Company, the Pathfinders had only expected to be sent to Musa Qaleh as a temporary measure, but instead they had ended up spending weeks there. As the UKTF reconnaissance platoon they were needed elsewhere and the gunners’ presence denied the Battle Group a troop of its artillery. I had argued that I could only take full responsibility for holding Musa Qaleh if a compensating reduction in one of the other outstations was made. Given that this was politically unacceptable, UKTF eventually managed to persuade the squadron of Danish reconnaissance troops who were contributing to the UK effort in Helmand to take on the task. The Danes’ initial attempts to get through to the Pathfinders failed, but on 26 July they managed to get their column of armoured jeeps and personnel carriers into Musa Qaleh. But the Pathfinders’ attempts to get out met with a series of intense firefights and they were forced to withdraw back to the confines of the district centre. Getting them out would be another task that was to fall to the Battle Group.

  As resources became spread ever more thinly, the requirement to send people back to the UK on R and R was also beginning to bite. Each soldier was entitled to two weeks’ leave during the tour and they were rotated out of Afghanistan in groups of fifty. I had been against the R and R policy from the start, as I knew that it would reduce the Battle Group’s manpower even further. But we were directed to do it, the soldiers had been promised it and we were duty bound to make it work. Picking up people from the outstations to meet their R and R flights from Kabul consumed more of the precious helicopter hours. It also entailed risk and individuals fretted about whether the Chinook would make it into their location to get them out in time. R and R was also dependent on the overstretched and ageing RAF air transport fleet. When passenger flights were delayed in either the UK or Kabul the flow of incoming and outgoing troops would overlap. The result was that the Battle Group would end up being short of over 100 personnel who were desperately needed in Helmand.

  Despite its other commitments, 3 PARA was also still expected to contribute to US offensive operations as part of Mountain Thrust. On 8 July Major General Ben Freakly flew into Bastion with David Fraser to discuss our next role in the operation. Before he briefed me on our task, I asked him to meet some of the men of A Company. I introduced him to a small collection of 1 Platoon under the shade of a stretched camouflage net. He shook each man by the hand, expressed his sorrow for the recent loss of Damien Jackson and told the assembled men how well they were doing under trying circumstances.

  We then gathered with my planning team to pore over maps of the intended target location for the forthcoming raid. We already knew the outline details. Codenamed Operation Augustus, it would be a strike mission to kill or capture a Taliban commander and neutralize his hardcore fighters. Intelligence indicated that the target individual was operating from two compounds several kilometres to the north of Sangin and that we could expect to face up to fifty insurgents who would fight hard to protect their leader. Freakly was convinced that the raid would severely disrupt the Taliban’s command chain and would also serve as a warning to less committed insurgents that there was nowhere to hide. With only A Company and the Patrols Platoon not already allocated to defending a static location, I would have to pull C Company out of Gereshk for the operation. Even then I doubted that I had enough troops for the task and Freakly agreed to provide a company of Canadian infantry mounted in light armoured vehicles (LAVs).

  I travelled back to Kandahar on board Freakly’s command flight of two Black Hawk helicopters. As I sat next to him in the back of one of the choppers, he asked me if there was anything else I needed. I replied that having the aircraft we were travelling in as command platforms for the raid would be extremely useful. He looked at me, smiled and agreed to let me have the two helicopters for the mission.

  I spent the next two days in KAF planning the raid and talking it through with the Battle Group’s liaison officer at UKTF. Major Nick Copperwaite was normally one of 3 PARA’s company commanders but he had been sent to KAF to act as the Battle Group’s permanent link to the brigade headquarters. A bright, young and highly capable officer, he kept himself abreast of my thinking and spoke with my authority at UKTF when I wasn’t present. He was worth his weight in gold, but he was another high-priced officer who had to be employed away from Bastion. Nick, Matt Taylor and I talked through the operation with the brigade staff long into the night. We ignored an incoming rocket attack, trusting to the inaccuracy of the Taliban as we studied maps and air photographs of the target area. I back-briefed David Fraser on my proposed concept of operations for the raid using a PowerPoint pack of fifty-one slides that the UKTF staff had put together. I pitied the poor bugger who had worked tirelessly on creating the presentation, as I used only four or five of the most important slides. Fraser was content to give his consent to the plan and then I took it to Ed Butler to get his buy-in and the national UK tick.

  I noticed the fatigue on his face as we spoke. He had a huge weight of responsibility on his shoulders and was being pulled in numerous different directions by the competing, and often contradictory, agendas of others. He had the unenviable task of attempting to mesh UK military objectives with those of the EGO and DFID. Although he was only one part of the Triumvirate, he seemed to be the only one working to try to make a concrete difference across all the various strands of activity. He also had to balance national objectives against those of NATO and the Americans. Butler didn’t get on particularly well with Freakly and I later read that the American general had claimed that he had come close to punching his British subordinate. Had it come to blows, my money would have been on Butler.

  Having missed another night’s sleep, I arrived back in Bastion to news that the Secretary of State had announced that another Boo troops were to be sent to Afghanistan. As official and media reports of the intensity of the fighting began to circulate in the UK, it was recognition of how badly stretched we had become; 3 PARA was to receive 125 men from the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers stationed in Cyprus. It was welcome news, but with the endorsement of the plan for Operation Augustus, our focus was on the refinement of the mission and the endless series of last-minute adjustments and briefings.

  The plan involved two distinct phases. The first phase was the flying in of A and C companies to assault the target compounds to kill or capture the Taliban leader and his fighters. Phase two involved the move in of the Canadians’ LAVs and other Battle Group elements by road to support the assault. The critical part of the plan was getting the assault troops in undetected. If they landed at an offset LZ and then moved in by foot, it was highly likely that their presence would be discovered and we would lose the element of surprise. Additionally, the two compounds were surrounded for several kilometres by other compounds and it would be difficult to find an empty piece of desert to land in. Consequently, I had made the decision to land right next to the compounds and assault straight off the back of the helicopters. The Canadians would then drive in from an offset position at high speed to support us. They would bring a section of 3 PARA’s Mortar Platoon and the Patrols Platoon with them to give additional support and then provide us with a safe route out to an extraction LZ.

  The critical element of the plan of delivering the assault troops to the target objective rested with the men of A Flight of t
he RAF’s 18 (B) Squadron, who crewed the five CH-47 helicopters that we would use for the mission. The flight was commanded by Squadron Leader Mike Woods. As their flight leader, ‘Woodsy’ had made an immediate difference to the troop-lift helicopter support the Battle Group received from the moment he took over from the flight of Chinook crews they had replaced. Mike was a forthright and energetic Geordie, who made it his business to get involved in the detailed planning of all Battle Group missions. When not flying a mission himself, he was always in the JOC overseeing one of his aircraft’s sorties and on hand to give expert advice to the Battle Group staff. He was there because he wanted to get it right and because he cared for his men. Most importantly, Mike and his crews were prepared to breach the rules and take calculated risks to get us to where we needed to go and to pick up casualties. Each time they went out they were pushing the envelope. I never asked them to do the impossible, but the flying we demanded of them was close to it.

  Having arrived in May, Mike’s team of pilots, loadmasters and air gunners were coming to the end of their eight-week tour of duty before being replaced by a flight from another Chinook squadron in the UK. He and his men had each flown over 100 hours, and the constant demands of operating in extreme flying conditions and regularly coming under fire meant that they needed a break. But it would also mean a vast loss of experience at a time when it was desperately required for Operation Augustus. Ed Butler asked A Flight to stay on to fly the raid and Mike agreed. However, he suggested that his crews should be mixed with the new crews from the UK to spread the experience.