Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  On 1 September a barrage of enemy mortar fire began to creep towards the district centre throughout the day. On each occasion the men of Easy Company rushed to their sangars amid shouts of `incoming!’ as the crump and sickening echo of the loud bang that immediately followed it indicated another near miss. In mid-afternoon the sangar on the jail that had become known as the Alamo took a direct hit. Lance Corporal Roberts heard the call come in over the radio in the RAP. He raced to the roof of the Alamo with Corporal French. Corporal Keir and Private Jared Cleary were already treating Ranger Anare Dravia, who had taken the full force of the blast. They knew that they needed to get him off the roof fast. Mortar rounds were still landing in the compound as they carried him past a pile of rubble. Roberts noticed a boot sticking out of it. They cleared away the debris and found Lance Corporal Paul Muirhead, who had a serious head injury. The two medics managed to stem the bleeding to his head and both wounded men were rushed back to the RAP on stretchers. Mike Stacey did all he could for Ranger Dravia, but his wounds had been too grievous. But Corporal Muirhead was still alive and became the focus of the medics’ energies as they worked to stabilize him until the arrival of the casualty evacuation helicopter. Jowett had already requested it as soon as he knew he had casualties, but it would not come immediately.

  The risk of the casualty evacuation helicopter being shot down had to be balanced against the risk of Corporal Muirhead succumbing to his wounds. The aircraft was already stood to and the aircrew were being briefed as the senior medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Davis, spoke to me about his chances of survival. If it was assessed that Corporal Muirhead could not wait, we would launch immediately. Davis had been speaking to Mike Stacey on the Tac Sat radio. The two doctors concurred that he could afford to hang on for three hours before his condition deteriorated further. I used this clinical medical opinion to inform my tactical decision that we would use the time to plan and put the necessary risk reduction measures for the helicopter in place. We would wait for darkness when it would be safer to fly in. It would also give us time to coordinate supporting air arid ground fire to suppress the Taliban positions that could engage the helicopter. Additionally, it would give Jowett the necessary time to plan a deliberate operation to secure the LZ in the field outside the compound. I briefed the pilot that he was to spend only the absolute minimum of time on the ground necessary for Corporal Muirhead to be loaded and secured on the helicopter. Once Davis, who would fly the casualty mission as the MERT’s doctor, confirmed that Corporal Muirhead was safely on board, he was to lift and get the hell out of the fire zone. The pilot took me at my word and ended up lifting so quickly that Stacey was still on the aircraft when it took off. It meant that we would have to fly another nail-biting high-risk insertion to get him back into the district centre early the next morning. Once again the aircraft was fired on, but got in without incident. I left the JOC to grab a couple of hours’ sleep before dawn broke, relieved that we had made two sorties into Musa Qaleh without losing a helicopter. As I walked wearily along the plastic duckboards to my tent, I had little idea that we would be flying another such mission before the day was out.

  It was mid-afternoon and the mortar round landed with a deafening thump. The hard surface of the roof of the Alamo ensured that its shrapnel spread out to maximum and bloody effect. Kicking up dust and debris, it showered its lethal contents in all directions, the jagged fragments cutting into every individual manning the rooftop sangar. Responding to the call that casualties had been taken, Lance Corporal Paul Roberts once again rushed to the point of the explosion. On his way he passed Lieutenant Paul Martin coming in the other direction. Martin commanded Barossa Platoon of the Royal Irish, and had been hit but insisted that Roberts looked to the other wounded men on the roof. When Roberts got there he was met by a scene of carnage: four men were down. Some lay in shock and others writhed in agony among the dust and broken masonry of the rubble-strewn roof. He set about treating the most seriously wounded first. He knew that he had to act quickly; he needed to stabilize any bleeding and then get them to the RAP as fast as he could. Some were able to help themselves; others needed assistance to get off the roof as other men of Easy Company arrived to help move the wounded.

  The first part of his job done, Roberts rushed back to the RAP where he knew Mike Stacey would be in need of his help. As he came through the door, he saw Martin on the raised stretcher and was bloody glad that Bastion had taken the risk to fly Stacey back in earlier that morning. Martin lay stripped to the waist; he had serious fragmentation wounds which had torn into his chest and side. Despite getting to the aid centre under his own steam and turning down medical attention in favour of his men, he was the most badly wounded. Now he was fighting for his life. The razor-sharp metal fragments had lodged near his heart and had shredded his left lung in the process. Still conscious and in much pain, he groaned as the doctor and Roberts turned him over. The removal of the fragments would have to wait until he could be evacuated to the surgical facility at Bastion. As the RAP staff struggled to insert a chest drain that would stop him from drowning in his own blood, the headquarters staff in Bastion had already started planning how they would evacuate Martin and the other four men. Once again we faced the challenge of how to do it without getting a helicopter shot down in the process. Once again I faced the dilemma of balancing the lives of the men on the evacuation helicopter against the life of one man who would clearly die if we didn’t make an attempt to evacuate him. I picked up the phone and made the call to the field hospital; I asked to speak to Peter Davis for the second time in as many days.

  I watched the surgeons turn over Paul Martin as he lay on the treatment trestle in the pre-operation section of the field hospital. Though less seriously injured, the rest of his men also waited in another part of the hospital to undergo operations to remove shrapnel from their bodies. Martin was still conscious and I winced as his chest drain was adjusted. I noted the bright pool of blood gathering underneath him and thought keenly of the risks we were taking in Musa Qaleh and the difficulty we faced in getting the wounded men out and ammunition into the outstations. In the last four days, Easy Company had lost two men killed and eight men injured, which included Lance Corporal Muirhead who was currently fighting for his life in a hospital he had been evacuated to in Oman. As the medics worked, another of my soldiers was preparing to spend an uncomfortable night in Sangin waiting to be evacuated. Private Spence had lost the top of his finger to a Taliban bullet, but the threat to an aircraft inserting into the district centre meant that he would not be lifted out until just before first light.

  I discussed the issue of the risks we were taking with CGS later that night in the JOC. General Richard Dannatt was making his first visit to Afghanistan since becoming the new head of the Army and he listened intently to everything I said. He agreed with my view that the tactical realities of being in places like Musa Qaleh were beginning to outweigh the strategic imperatives of not being seen to withdraw from them. I rehearsed the risk equation I had run through with the staff of losing a helicopter and reiterated that it was a prospect that should be considered as a matter of when and not if. We agreed that if we lost a helicopter, it could be interpreted at the political level as a tactical failure, especially if it was packed with fifty paratroopers on the back. I said that psychologically we were preparing to meet that eventuality and I was confident that we could crack on if it happened, but I explained the additional dilemma if we lost a helicopter on a casualty evacuation mission to Musa Qaleh.

  If one Chinook went down over the town, it would take me several hours to launch a ground-based operation to rescue the crew and recover the dead. Easy Company was stretched as it was holding the district centre and lacked the necessary combat power to fight their way through to the crash site. Consequently, I would be forced to launch a helicopter-borne operation using the one immediately available company that was not committed to defending a fixed location. If it landed close into Musa Qaleh, it too ran
the risk of having a helicopter shot down and then I would have no one left to go to its immediate rescue. It was a doomsday scenario, but it was a potential risk that could not be ignored and I knew CGS appreciated my candour, as did Ed Butler who listened quietly as I spoke. Ed and I had already discussed the issue. I was aware he and General David Richards were still working hard to find an Afghan solution to Musa Qaleh that would allow us to withdraw without having to surrender the district centre to the Taliban. But there was no immediate prospect of this happening and I knew that in the meantime we would have to carry on as we were.

  CGS left Bastion the next day and another nine mortar rounds landed in the district centre in Musa Qaleh. One hit the accommodation where the ASP policemen were sleeping. One was killed and three were injured, one seriously. Once again we went through our risk assessment and another dangerous casualty evacuation mission was flown to Musa Qaleh.

  The risk we were facing from the mortars was already on my mind when Intelligence Officer Captain Martin Taylor interrupted my thoughts as I smoked a cigarette outside the JOC. He apologized for the intrusion and I told him not to worry, since it was probably the one time when anyone could have my undivided attention. He asked me if I could spare a few minutes to listen to Sergeant Hughes who had a theory about the mortars and an idea for defeating them. I followed Martin Taylor to the intelligence cell and found Emlyn Hughes poring over a large aerial photograph of Musa Qaleh. He looked up and went straight into it. We were convinced that we had already destroyed several insurgent mortar teams, but the rounds kept on coming. I also knew that we had sent in Engineers to destroy the radio masts in the town that the Taliban had used as aiming markers to line up their mortars to fire into the compound. But Hughes drew on the point to say that the location of the masts dictated the area from where the weapons systems were most likely to be fired. It had caused him to focus on a particular area of compounds.

  He had looked at the area again and again until he noticed something unusual about the roofs on a line of buildings. One roof stood out from the regular pattern of the others as it had a strange shadow on it. Hughes was convinced it was a hole that had been deliberately cut into the roof to allow a mortar to be fired through it from the room below. When the location of the building was lined up to where the aiming markers had been, it lay on a direct bearing to the middle of the compound. His suspicions had been confirmed by a more detailed picture he had tasked a Harrier jet to take of the suspicious building. Deep tyre marks in the sand suggested a heavily laden vehicle had been regularly driven to its entrance and were clearly visible in the second photograph he handed me. Hughes was convinced the impressions in the sand were from a vehicle that had been used to transport the mortar team and their weapon. The information was passed on to Jowett who confirmed that there were no civilians living in or around the target building.

  Two days later, Hughes’s painstaking intelligence work paid off. A loitering A-10 was tasked to check out the building with its surveillance pod when enemy mortar rounds began to impact into the district centre. The pilot spotted a vehicle and a mortar team getting into the back of it to make good their escape. He self-designated the target with his own aircraft’s laser and watched the screen in his cockpit flash brightly and then go black as the insurgents were caught in the centre of the exploding precision-guided bomb that he released. The mortar attacks against the district centre dropped off noticeably and Emlyn gave me an embarrassed smile and looked at the floor when I went to congratulate him.

  For the men of Easy Company it would not bring an end to the ordeal they faced in Musa Qaleh, however. At the time of the successful strike against the Taliban mortar team, they had spent just over two weeks there. Their occupation of the district centre would last another two months until their most unexpected and unorthodox extraction.

  14

  The Will to Combat

  I woke in the early hours of the morning feeling a distinct chill. It was pitch black outside as I glanced at my watch. The temperature gauge showed that it was still over 20°C, but we had become used to operating in conditions where the temperature never dropped below 35°C and it was definitely getting cooler during the hours of darkness. I opened my trunk and pulled out my lightweight sleeping bag, something that I had not used for the last four and a half months. The Afghan summer might have been coming to an end, but there was no let-up in the tempo of operations. We had fought 315 engagements with the Taliban in which we had fired over 300,000 rounds of ammunition, fired thousands of artillery rounds and dropped nearly 200 bombs. Since the beginning of July we had been suffering an average combat loss rate of four men killed in action and another ten men wounded a month. There were no battle casualty replacements and the shortfalls in manpower we had experienced since the beginning of the tour had never been made good. When we did receive reinforcements, such as the company of Fusiliers or the two extra Royal Irish platoons, they were immediately consumed by the additional tasks of having to hold an increasing number of district centres. Everyone continued to have to do the job of at least one other person as well as their own. After months of the continuous stress of combat and living in the debilitating conditions of heat and austerity, fatigue was becoming a common phenomenon across the Battle Group. In the vernacular of military slang, people were hanging out on their chinstraps.

  R and R provided some respite, but as well as exacerbating the manpower situation many found it disruptive both to themselves and their families. Men like Sergeant Darren Hope found it particularly difficult to have to say farewell to his family for a second time when his leave ended. Saying goodbye to his little boy, who said that he wanted to go back with him, was especially hard. Corporal Hugh Keir of the Sniper Platoon didn’t enjoy a single moment of his two weeks back in the UK and felt that his family was worse off for it. For many of the wives it disrupted the routine that they had settled into since their husbands had been away. They could never completely relax, knowing that the leave period would end all too quickly and that their menfolk would be going back to the dangers of Afghanistan. As well as having to count the days until their return, those on R and R would feel guilty about being away from their comrades, especially if their platoon or company took losses in their absence. Dan Jarvie felt it as the platoon sergeant of 1 Platoon when Corporal Budd was killed. He flew back into Sangin from the UK the day after the contact in the maize field. As he flew in, his platoon commander was getting on the same helicopter to fly out of the district centre on his R and R. The time that the helicopter could spend on the ground meant that the two men were hardly able to exchange a word to one another. Farmer wanted to stay with his men to lead them through the aftermath of Corporal Budd’s loss, but Loden rightly told him to go.

  The one man who didn’t take R and R was the man who routinely ignored my orders to get some sleep before an operation. Captain Matt Taylor was evasive whenever I brought up the subject about when he was going to take some leave. He relied on my preoccupation not to check on the detail of the R and R plot. By the time I found out that he had no intention of going it was too late, there were no slots left. The fact that he didn’t go was probably a poor reflection on me as his commander, but it was also an indication of the level of his dedication and devotion to duty. There is no doubt that soldiers need a rest from constant combat duty, which is why we tried to rotate the companies through the most difficult locations like Sangin. But once they had been given a day or so out of the line in the relative comfort of Bastion, most were good to go again after a shower, some proper food and a decent night’s sleep. On one occasion after being relieved in Sangin, B Company spent several days in the camp before their next operation. After three days, even the Toms were coming up to me and impatiently asking when they were going back into the field.

  With only two platoons available instead of the normal three, Jamie Loden felt the frustrations of the general lack of manpower more keenly than most of the company commanders. After the loss of Corporal Budd,
we had agreed that he would only conduct patrols into Sangin when he had dedicated air cover available. But he knew that if he had more troops he would have been able to have a more dynamic effect against the enemy. He also had to contend with the frustrations of working with the ANP and the ANA. The ANP reinforcements that Governor Daud promised in June had still not materialized and the numbers of ANP already in the district centre had fallen to just seven men. They refused to wear uniforms or conduct joint patrols; Loden was convinced that they were hedging their bets with the Taliban by reporting the company’s movements to them. His confidence in their loyalty was not helped by the fact that the Deputy Chief of Police was the brother of the local Taliban commander. Loden spoke to me about this and I agreed we should detain him, but A Company never saw him again and a few days later the rest of the ANP had either joined the Taliban or fled Sangin. The performance of the platoon of ANA in Sangin was little better. Although they wore uniforms and conducted joint patrols with A Company, their commander was corrupt and used his position to extort money from the locals. His removal led to the platoon splitting along tribal lines and a complete breakdown in discipline. Drug taking, sexual abuse of local minors and theft of equipment from the company were common until they were eventually replaced by a more reliable ANA platoon.