Suddenly, Carr heard the loudest, but most welcome bang in the world: it was the crack of a 30mm cannon. The patrol had finally broken through the edge of the field and into the more open river line without the help of the Harriers. Carr looked up to see one of the Scimitars firing its Rarden over their heads into the mass of crops behind them. Farmer’s men made it into a shallow wadi depression that gave them a degree of cover as tracer continued to spit towards them and rounds ricocheted off the large pebbles. The Scimitar’s cannon fire raked into the fields that they had just left and was joined by fire from two WMIKs crewed by the Engineers who had been sent out to reinforce the supporting fire. Mortars and artillery also rained down into the fields as the patrol used the limited cover of the wadi to complete their extraction. Private Jamie Morton was thinking, Fuck, this is cheeky, as rounds struck at his feet as he manoeuvred with the rest of the platoon back to the protection of the base’s HESCO bastion perimeter.
Despite the impressive weight of fire, the Taliban were still not backing off and continued to engage the troops as they moved along the wadi. The men on the roof of the district centre also started to come under enemy fire from the town. One of the armoured vehicles shed its track as it manoeuvred into a fire position to cover them. The disabled Spartan attracted the attention of the insurgents and began to receive fire as the crew scrambled for safety. With the break in contact and a clear delineation between friendly and enemy troops on the ground, the Harriers were called back in by the JTAC on the roof of the district centre to drop their ordnance. Loden wanted them to drop their bombs to end the contact and allow him to recover all his troops back into the base. But moving at 600 miles per hour the Harrier pilots were struggling to make out where the enemy were in the thick foliage. The first pilot fired marker rockets to try to get his bearings on the enemy, but they struck the perimeter of the HESCO bastion behind which some of Farmer’s men now sheltered. Angry directions from the JTAC on the roof brought the Harrier back on but she was low on fuel and her wing man took over. He dropped one 100 pound bomb 300 metres short of the Taliban, but it caused them to pause. The second 1000 pound weapon he released was 700 metres off target and landed on the LZ by the district centre. Thankfully, it was a dud and failed to explode. Had it done so the number of friendly casualties it would have caused could have been catastrophic. He was waved off in disgust, but the contact was over. Amazingly, none of Farmer’s men had been hit during the engagement that lasted nearly two hours. He and his men were totally knackered. Carrying heavy kit, wearing body armour and helmets, they had fought through nearly 1.5 kilometres of waterlogged ditches, hard rutted ground and thick vegetation in the high summer heat. For most of his already combat-experienced men it had been their worst moment to date since arriving back in Sangin, but fate was to dictate that worse moments were to come.
The shifting nature of the contacts A Company had begun to face later caused Loden to rethink his tactics for patrolling. He consulted his junior commanders to get their views and decided to beef up each patrolling platoon with a fourth section of eight men. Their principal task would be to secure a casualty collection point, as Loden recognized that taking a casualty on patrol would fundamentally alter the dynamics of any engagement. One wounded man would require a whole section to carry and protect him, which would drastically denude a platoon of fighting power. Carrying a fallen comrade under fire is an exacting task and slowing down a patrol’s movement would make it vulnerable to taking further casualties. It was also agreed that patrols needed to continue to increase the number of routes they could use and Loden decided to repeat the successful tactic of blowing holes through unoccupied compound walls. On 20 August Loden tasked 1 Platoon with a patrol mission to expand the number of routes to the north of the district centre. It was more open than the area of the Gardens to the south, but it still consisted of a dangerous mix of compound buildings, thick mud walls and a patchwork of high-standing crops. The area was bounded on one side by the Helmand River to the west. To the east a small wadi ran north along the fringes of the main part of the town.
Corporal Guy ‘Posh’ Roberts had planned to fly out of the district centre on R and R before the patrol. But his helicopter had been delayed so he volunteered to go out with Farmer’s men to act as the MFC. He shared the MFC task with Corporal Carr, but felt that it was his turn to go out and he liked the sound of the mission. It was eleven o’clock in the morning as he headed out with Corporal Budd’s section. They were tasked to provide right flank protection to the group that would blow the holes through the walls. Budd led his group towards a prominent building called the Chinese Restaurant, so named because of the gaudy lime and pink cement facings that adorned its front. Corporal Andy Waddington moved his men along the river line to provide depth protection and Farmer went with the group that would carry out the explosions. The platoon’s initial movement was covered by two WMIKs. One was stationed in the wadi to the front of the district centre and the other tried to cover Waddington’s section. But they soon lost sight of the advancing sections as they were swallowed up by the vegetation in the surrounding fields.
Budd’s men had gone several hundred metres when he took over as point man of the section; Roberts was just behind him. Budd suddenly stopped in his tracks and gave a thumbs-down signal. He had seen Taliban to the right of his position across a field, but they hadn’t seen him. He then made the signal again, showing two fingers to indicate the number of insurgents he had identified. One of the Taliban had a white beard. He was carrying an AK and was looking intently up at the sky. He was distracted by a high-flying aircraft whose engines had masked the approach of Budd’s men. Budd doubled the section back on itself. He wanted to get a better approach to launch an attack on the men he had spotted through the edge of the field of high-standing maize. He gave quick battle orders and shook his front fire team out in extended line. They slipped their safety catches to the fire position and pushed through the crops with their weapons pointing forward.
As the five men broke through the other side of the field the firing started. One of the WMIKs to the south had been contacted and the noise of the firing alerted the Taliban Budd had spotted. The enemy saw the fire team emerge from the crops and started engaging them. Roberts lost sight of Budd as he became fixated by trying to hit one of the fighters. The insurgent kept popping up from behind a wall 15 metres away. Roberts would fire several rounds to drive him down again as bullets came back in his direction. Frustrated at the limited effect his rifle was having, he grabbed Private Sharpe’s grenade launcher. He fired it at the Taliban and cursed as he watched the 40mm explosive projectile sail over his enemy’s head. He went to load another of the fat stubby rounds when he felt a sharp whack on his left side as an AK round hit him through the open side of his body armour. It felt like he had been smashed in the chest by a giant baseball bat. He momentarily thought, What the fuck was that? Then he realized he had been hit and went down.
Budd’s attack had alerted more Taliban in the Chinese Restaurant who now entered the fray from the left flank. Roberts pressed himself into the ground as their rounds started spurting into the earth where he lay. Private Lanaghan grabbed Roberts and started dragging him back into cover, and as he did so a bullet struck him in the shoulder and exited through his face; he went down too. Roberts was convinced that Lanaghan had been killed; the round had split open his lower face exposing his teeth and covering him in blood. Then he saw him move and knew he was still alive. Privates Stevie Halton and Sharpe were the last two standing members of the team. Halton stood over his stricken mates and fired short, disciplined bursts back at the Taliban from his beltfed Minimi machine gun. Sharpe was helping his two wounded comrades when he suddenly dropped to the ground with the wind knocked out of him. He struggled for breath as he frantically pushed a hand under his body armour expecting to feel the warm, sticky sensation of oozing blood. Three of the section were now down but they managed to crawl into the cover of an irrigation ditch. Budd wasn’t
with them and had last been seen making a lone charge towards the enemy.
Hugo Farmer closed up behind Budd’s men with Corporal Charlie Curnow’s section. They immediately started treating the wounded. Lanaghan looked in a bad way, but Corporal Billie Owen focused on Roberts, assessing him to be the worst hit. The medic applied a tourniquet to Roberts’s arm which cut into his wound; Owen knew he was hurting him, but he had to stem the flow of blood. Sharpe was still in shock and others stripped off his kit looking for an entry wound, but he was lucky. The bullet had hit his ceramic plate in the front of his body armour which stopped the round. Farmer was demanding to know where Budd was. Halton told his boss that the section had lost sight of him as he went right-flanking on his own.
Shit! Farmer thought. One section was out of the game, the rest of his sections were now bogged down in an extended firelight and Corporal Budd was missing. He knew he had to find him as there was no way he was going to leave one of his men behind. He decided to push on with Curnow’s section from the right along a small stream and began to creep forward at the head of his men. He came across several dead Taliban and as he looked up he saw weapon muzzles pointing out of a building ahead of him. Constrained by the stream on one side and a wall on the other, he knew that he was in a tight spot even before an enemy machine gun opened up on them. A burst of automatic fire split the air around him and his platoon signaller, Private Briggs, who was standing behind him, screamed out that he had been hit. Briggs had been struck in his ceramic plate and Farmer yelled at him to bug out as he felt a piece of shrapnel bite him in the backside. Curnow was also hit by shrapnel in his lower leg as the three men moved back under covering fire provided by Privates McKinley and Randle.
Loden had launched a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) under Corporal Tam McDermott from 2 Platoon when he heard there were casualties and Sergeant Major Schofield had been sent out with a quad bike and trailer to collect Lanaghan and Roberts. Andy Mallet was champing at the bit to lead the rest of his men out, but Loden was as steady as a rock and held them back until he knew more of the situation he was about to launch them into. When he heard that Farmer had taken more casualties, he launched Mallet. The remaining two sections of 2 Platoon raced out of the district centre with two additional sections made up of military policemen, Engineers and dismounted Household Cavalrymen. They passed Roberts and Lanaghan being carried back on the quad and came across Corporal Curnow sitting by a WMIK that had been disabled in the fighting and was now acting as a casualty collection point. A sporadic engagement was still going on around them as Mallet linked up with Farmer. Farmer briefed Mallet that he wanted him to take his platoon and go left-flanking to try to find Budd. The platoon broke left of the WMIK and came upon an open field. Mallet placed a section with their. GPMGs to cover them as they started sprinting across the exposed ground. They had gone only a few steps when they came under fire. The Taliban were firing from loop holes cut into a compound wall, which made it difficult to suppress them. Every time they moved forward they were pinned down and were unable to make any headway. The situation was not helped by the fact that two RAF Harriers, which had arrived overhead, were unable to identify the enemy. Intelligence reports also indicated that more Taliban were being brought into the fight.
Farmer was confident that with the river behind him his rear was secure. Then some insurgents began firing from the reeds along its banks. He was now in the middle of a 36o° firefight, but he knew that he had to get Budd back. Farmer ordered Corporal Waddington’s section to make another attempt from the right flank, and started to give fire control directions to the two Apaches that had arrived on station. He had learned his lesson about using smoke and popped a signal grenade over a high compound wall to prevent it giving away his position to the Taliban. The pilot asked what effect he wanted them to have on the building that most of the Taliban were firing from. ‘Just fucking level it,’ Farmer replied.
Hovering at several thousand feet, the Apache Wildman call-signs had a ‘God’s eye view’ of the world beneath them. Although the attack helicopters were sometimes hit, their height and armoured cockpits protected them against small fire. They were also not sweating and slugging it out in the close contact battle like the Paras below them. However, identifying enemy fighters in close proximity to their own troops amongst the dense maize fields was no easy task, particularly if the target indications they were given were frantic and unclear. The front seat commander of the Apaches could hear Farmer’s laboured voice in his headset mixed with the crack of bullets and the thump of RPGs in the background. ‘Wildman, Wildman, they are in the building! They are in the building!’ But which building? Then he saw the tell-tale wisp of signal smoke that gave him the point of reference that he was looking for.
The target acquisition device system attached to the helmet of the front-seat pilot of the leading attack helicopter slaved the Apache’s nose gun on to the Taliban below them. He gave directions to his rear seat pilot to bring the aircraft into the right attack angle. When he was happy that the helicopter was lined up he lazed the target for range with the thumb knobs on the PlayStation like control system in front of him. The energy of laser reflected back from the wall of the compound from which the Taliban were engaging Farmer’s men. It fed back into the onboard weapons computer that automatically adjusted the aim of the cannon. The pilot confirmed the choice of weapon type and verbally rapped out the engagement sequence as he squeezed the trigger on his joystick: ‘Good range, engaging with cannon, gun firing.’ A killing burst of twenty 30mm rounds streaked away from the barrel of the Apache’s cannon to deliver a devastating stream of explosive shells towards the insurgents. As he watched them impact on to the target, he shouted instructions to his pilot to manoeuvre the aircraft so he could adjust his fire: ‘Come left, come left, can you see them? There they are! Good range, firing now. Got them!’
As death rained down on the Taliban from above, Corporal Waddington began to probe from the right flank with twelve men. Private Martin Cork pushed through the high-standing maize and thought that this could be his ‘last fucking day’. As the section pushed forward, visibility to their front was little more than a few metres. Cork had lost sight of Private ‘Jay’ Morton in the thick vegetation when he heard him shout, ‘Corky, Corky, I have found him!’ Bryan Budd was lying face down in a ditch. The body of one dead insurgent lay next to him, with another curled up a little way off. The two men checked for a pulse, but could find none; Bryan Budd had died as he pushed on alone to carry his attack to the enemy. They lifted his body on to the back of Private McManus and ran him back to where Farmer had gathered the remainder of his men.
With the recovery of Budd’s body, Farmer reorganized his platoon and started pushing back to the district centre in a coordinated movement with Mallet’s platoon. They set off at speed and Farmer was grateful that covering 2 miles of rough terrain in under eighteen minutes wearing battle kit was a standard Parachute Regiment test. The Taliban called in their 82mm mortars and harried them all the way back to the HESCO. As they reached the compound the exploding mortar bombs were landing 40 metres behind them.
As the platoons reorganized themselves in the relative safety of the district centre, the Taliban prepared to launch a 107mm rocket attack on the base. Loden now had US A-105 on station. He cleared the Apaches off to the east. With the airspace now clear, the A-10s made their run in dropping four 500 pound bombs and firing over 1,890 cannon rounds, putting an abrupt end to the Taliban plan of attack.
For the men of A Company, losing Budd was the lowest point. Up until that moment, they had always come out on top in the contacts with the Taliban. Even though seven insurgents had been killed including a senior Taliban commander, and another twelve wounded, it felt as if they had been on the back foot and it was the insurgents who had gained the upper hand. Budd was also an extremely popular and highly respected NCO. His personal gallantry and decision to take the initiative to launch his section into the attack typified the professionalism and
courage of Parachute Regiment junior commanders. He was also loved for his humility. Softly spoken and gracious, he was never flustered and took everything in his stride. He was a passionate family man and would often talk about Lorena and Isabelle, his wife and daughter. Lorena was expecting their second child and would give birth to another daughter who would never meet her father. Lance Corporal Mark Keenan was back in the UK on R and R when he heard the news. He was devastated; Budd had been his old section commander and was a good friend. When he arrived back in Sangin a few days later he thought the blokes looked ten years older than when he had left them.
Bryan Budd’s loss was felt keenly across the company. Some doubted whether it was worth it and some questioned the effect they were having going out day after day just to get hit. Corporal `Zip’ Lane was standing in as the platoon sergeant for Dan Jarvie who was also on R and R at the time. He knew that some of his men were in shock as he went round and chatted to them. He got them to crack on with routine tasks such as cleaning their weapons and cooking up their rations, recognizing that they needed to be kept busy. Other commanders, such as Loden, Farmer and Mallet, talked to their men too. But the blokes largely dealt with Budd’s loss among themselves. Martin Cork and his fellow platoon members felt gutted and deflated. They talked about what had happened, they debated the ‘what ifs’ and things that might have been done differently. But they knew that they had to accept what had happened and that they still had a job to do. Everyone knew that they would be going back out again. Mallet gave his men a pep talk and stressed the importance of the mission and the need to keep on patrolling. When he finished there was silence, then Private Card, one of the youngest Toms, just said, ‘Yeah, okay, boss. No dramas. When are we going back out?’
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