A minute later there was a blinding flash, followed a couple of seconds later by a deafening blast. The damaged Vector was smashed to pieces. BDA was a direct hit, as if we needed it. We watched over that Vector until it was completely burned out, and we knew there was nothing of use the enemy could scavenge from it.
Then we were ordered to make tracks. En route to the base the A-10 was ripped by a pair of Harriers, Recoil Four One and Recoil Four Two. And under the watchful gaze of the British jets we were shepherded back through the gates of FOB Price.
We took the guy with the injured leg and dropped him at the sickbay. It turned out that he had a bruised — not broken — femur, where the mortar round had crunched him. None of the other Somme lads had the slightest injury — not even burst eardrums. Unbelievable.
It was 1400 hours when we gathered as a company for the postop debrief. None of us had so much as managed a wash or to get any scoff. Major Butt addressed the men.
‘This op was a massive success,’ he began. ‘The ferocity and sophistication of the enemy showed what they can do, but this mission also allowed us to put into practice what we’ve trained for, and to prove it. We worked in the FST and MFC on the high ground, like we’d trained for, and now it’s been tested against a toughened enemy. It was good to see the FST plugging us constant air for the first twenty-four hours.’
The OC paused for a second. ‘The mission went on for four days not one, reflecting the ferocity of the contact. The bravery of you lads brought us all together, and built confidence in each other in terms of what we can do. There are lessons to be learned. We need more signallers, to keep HQ informed. We need more medics, so we have one embedded with each platoon.
‘We know the sergeant major needs the means and protection to move around the battlefield and do resupply at will. The need for better resupply hindered offensive operations. At the time we had the right equipment in the right amount, but it was touch and go on water and ammunition. Next time, we’ll get those things right.’
After the OC’s upbeat briefing, we got the Intel assessments. Some fifty-plus enemy fighters were reported killed in the battle for Adin Zai, including four senior commanders, plus one complete mortar team had been taken out. My call sign — Widow Seven Nine — had thirty-two confirmed kills, from 6,500 pounds of bombs dropped, plus strafing runs. B Company had just the one injury — the bruised femur resulting from the flying mortar. That was it: a top op.
After the briefing I went to have a much-needed wash. The shower block was a length of canvas tenting, divided into cubicles. Outside each was a container of Army-issue disinfectant, all part of the drive to prevent the spread of nasty bugs. Water was rationed. You had to push a button, race inside your cubicle, lather up and shower before it stopped flowing.
I’d got myself a new tube of shower gel from the NAAFI. I stood inside my cubicle and let the warm water run over me. It felt like paradise. I lathered up my hair with the shower gel, and started to rinse. But the more I rinsed the more soap kept pouring down my face, and I couldn’t get the stuff out of my hair or my eyes. I knew the water was about to run out, and I cursed the bloody NAAFI for selling me some dodgy shower gel.
I tried scrubbing harder, but the more I rubbed the more suds there were. I was just starting to lose it, when from the cubicle beside me someone cracked up laughing. I’d know that laugh anywhere: it was Throp. An instant later I could hear Sticky creased up on the other side, and I realised what the two of them had been up to.
As I’d showered, they’d both been pumping Army-issue handcleaner on to my head — the bastards.
‘Fuck off, you tits!’ I yelled. ‘Or I’ll knack you!’
Throp and Sticky made themselves scarce, and at last I could scrub my balls in peace.
After, I retired to my tent for some well-earned kip. As I drifted off to sleep I reflected upon how we’d proven ourselves in battle. I have to admit it — I was feeling pretty good about it. But little did I know that we were about to get sent back into Adin Zai.
And this time, the enemy would be waiting for us.
Seven
GOING BACK IN
I came to my senses in the pitch dark. Someone was shaking me. It was Sticky, and he was muttering something about me having air. For a few moments I thought I was having a nightmare, for who could have allocated me air at FOB Price?
What do I need air cover for here, I felt like screaming. I’m in FOB Price. LEAVE ME ALONE. But it was hardly Sticky’s fault, so no point shooting the messenger.
Someone had booked me in for an Air Special Request from 0400–0800. An Air Special Request (ASR) is air cover booked in advance, for a specific reason. Why the hell someone had given me an ASR at FOB Price I couldn’t figure. But I was told that no one else could use it, so I had to.
It was a bit chilly, so I pulled on my battered yellow Hackett jumper and a pair of shorts and flip-flops, and hunched over my TACSAT. I had a giant B-1B supersonic bomber overhead — call sign Bone Two Three. All I could think of getting the poor bastard to do was fly recces over the desert, searching for enemy vehicles on weapons resupply missions. What a waste of a monster air asset like a B-1B.
At 0615 I told the pilot that I was going off station for a few minutes, and asked him to continue flying air recces. I couldn’t resist the smell of frying grub that was drifting over from the cookhouse. I was starving, and I just had to get a brew and some scoff. I left Sticky to monitor the air, and told him I’d be back in a jiffy.
I hurried over to the mess tent, piled a plate high with sausage, egg and bacon, perched on a deserted bench and started to ram it in fast. I felt a presence beside me. I glanced up from my plate to see the camp commandant standing on my shoulder. He was staring at me with ill-disguised contempt.
‘What d’you think you’re doing in mixed dress?’ he snapped.
It was forbidden to wear shorts around the main British Army bases, and I guess the captain hadn’t gone a bundle on the jumper, either. If nothing else it obscured any badges of regiment or rank I might’ve been wearing, so he had no idea who I was.
‘I’ve been up since 0400 controlling a B-1B,’ I answered, speaking through a mouthful of grub. ‘I’m going right back to it.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ the captain replied, stiffly. ‘Mixed dress isn’t acceptable…’
‘Right, well, like I said I’m just trying to get some bloody breakfast before going back to me jets.’
I couldn’t abide blokes like that. They stalked around in their starched kit and never left the base. There were a few more words between us, before I finished my grub and stomped out. The captain kept firing comments at me even as I left the mess tent.
I knew the camp commandant did a daily briefing to all senior commanders at 0800. It was 0745, and I asked the B-1B pilot if he could fly a low-level show of force over FOB Price, just to deter any enemy that might be eyeing us. I asked him to bring his jet in at 0800 sharp, right over the top of us.
‘I can come down to five thousand feet,’ the pilot told me. ‘Any lower I have to clear it with higher.’
‘I don’t think that’s enough of a deterrent,’ I replied.
‘What d’ya mean?’ the pilot queried.
‘Any enemy who’s dicking us to attack won’t be deterred by that. I need you lower.’
The pilot put it up to his superiors, and got cleared down to two thousand feet. I confirmed that was good enough, and repeated that I wanted the show of force at 0800 sharp.
‘What you up to?’ Sticky asked.
He’d been listening in on my shoulder. I explained to him the squabble I’d had in the cookhouse, and that I was planning to buzz the camp commandant’s briefing.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Sticky told me. ‘You’ll be right in the shit.’
At the same time he couldn’t help laughing. Throp was awake by now, and just as soon as he heard what I was up to he started egging me on.
Bang on the nose at 0800 this massive swing-wing
ed aircraft came screaming over the walls. It was like having a jumbo jet land in your back garden, only worse. The B-1B tore FOB Price to shreds in terms of the audio level, and left our ears ringing.
‘Bone Two Three, excellent show of force,’ I radioed the pilot. ‘Any enemy watching FOB Price would’ve definitely been deterred.’
The pilot signed out of my ROZ, and no sooner had he done so than a runner arrived at our tent. I was summoned to see the regimental sergeant major, who accused me of ruining the camp commandant’s briefing. He’d heard about our argument in the cookhouse, and he demanded an explanation for what I’d been up to with the B-1B.
‘Show of force to deter any enemy dicking FOB Price, sir,’ I told him.
‘Fuck off. There’s been no attacks on FOB Price for months, as you well know.’
I was ordered to go and apologise to the camp commandant. I went to see him, and said I was sorry for being so abrupt in the cookhouse over my mixed dress.
‘It won’t happen again, sir,’ I assured him.
‘Thanks for apologising, Sergeant Bommer,’ he replied. ‘Doing the manly thing and all that. I never knew who you were, actually.’
He didn’t mention the B-1B, so I left it at that. I returned to our tent feeling honour had been satisfied, but Chris collared me and tried to give me another bollocking.
‘Bommer, you can’t bloody do stuff like that,’ he was saying, ‘It’s just not on. It’ll build a barrier between us and them…’
But at the same time as he was trying to be serious, Chris couldn’t help laughing. I headed to the gym with Sticky, to pump some iron and work it out of my system. We made a good training partnership, and whenever we were back at FOB Price we’d hit the weights together.
I ran into Butsy in the gym. He gave me a thumbs-up, before taking me aside for a fatherly chat. ‘If you ever have problems in the cookhouse or whatever, Bommer… I know what you did and why you did it, but you’re one of mine, so come and speak to me about it. I won’t tolerate people speaking to my lads out of turn like that bloke did you.’
I knew I’d got a gentle bollocking, but I knew why. And what Butsy had said just served to reinforce the sense that he considered all of us in the FST as his own.
Once I was done in the gym I managed to place a phone call home. My wife, Nicola, had seen a lot on the news about lads getting killed and injured in Helmand, and she was understandably worried.
‘You are OK, aren’t you?’ she asked me. ‘You would tell me?’
‘ ’Course I would,’ I reassured her. ‘Nowt’s been happening our end,’ I lied. ‘I’ve not heard a thing about anyone getting injured or anything. It’s nowhere near here and nowt to do with us lot, anyhow. So come on, tell me: how’re the nippers?’
Nicola told me that Harry and Ella, my infant son and daughter, were just fine, but missing their dad, which I liked to hear.
‘Roger-dodger. Well, put ’em on the line then.’
I had a couple of words with my little ones, by which time my ration of phone minutes was almost done. The Army allowed us twenty minutes’ talk time a week. Nicola came back on the line.
‘So, have you been using your new job?’ By that she meant JTAC-ing.
‘Yeah, a bit,’ I told her.
‘So how is it?’
‘Tell you the truth, it’s class.’
Nicola and I had been married for seven years, and she’s a fine lass. She’d had a good education, as her dad was in the Army and he’d served all over the world. The one thing he’d been dead against was his daughter marrying a soldier. So when Sergeant Grahame came along I was hardly flavour of the month. Things were all good now, mind, and Nicola’s dad and I were spot on. But I had no illusions as to how tough it was on a young wife with two kids when her man went off to war.
After finishing JTAC school I’d been sent for six months of continuous training and exercises, to get me combat-ready. I’d been all over the UK, Canada and the US, doing drops with dummy bombs and then live ones out on the ranges. In that six months I’d had two weeks off at Christmas with the family. Then I’d had my final JTAC exams, passed, and that was it — I was off to Afghanistan.
I’d first gone to a real war — as opposed to a ghost war like Northern Ireland or Bosnia — in 2003. The night I was leaving for Iraq I’d gone into my son’s bedroom to say goodbye. It was 3am and he was fast asleep. I went to give him a kiss, and suddenly I was all choked up. I couldn’t stop crying. Christ, I thought, this could be the last time I ever see him.
By the time I got to The Light Dragoons’ base, I was still all red-eyed.
‘What’s up with you, mate?’ one of the lads had asked.
‘Nothing. I’ve just been saying goodbye to the nipper. I ended up blubbering.’
Well, that was it — a load of the other lads came right out and admitted the same. They’d been crying too, when saying goodbye to their women and their kids. They’d been standing outside the gates for twenty minutes chain-smoking fags to try to dry their eyes out.
It wasn’t easy on relationships, being away fighting a war. But as far as I was concerned that’s what I’d signed up for at age seventeen, when I’d joined up. All I’d ever wanted was join the British Army. Since the age of four when I was given my first Action Man soldier, soldiering was all I’d ever been interested in.
At first I’d done pretty well at school. I’d got nine O-levels, and my parents were chuffed as nuts with me. Trouble was, school just wasn’t for me. I was the only one in my class with tattoos, and with the burning desire to be a soldier. I left school and got a job with a local locksmith, to kill time until I was seventeen and could sign up. I did a lot of work assisting the police breaking into cars that had been stolen and abandoned. That was pretty handy — learning how to nick cars at age sixteen.
But the owner of the locksmiths was having trouble with his marriage, and one day he came into work drunk and tried to take it out on me. Being a punchy lad I floored him and was given the sack. I was on the cusp of my seventeenth birthday, so I told my dad I was off to join the Army. He told me that I’d never last two weeks. ‘Two weeks and you’ll be out,’ was what he said. My dad’s words were like a red rag to a bull.
The Light Dragoons are based in the north-east of England, so lads from my neck of the woods automatically went into them. When I went to sign up the recruiting officer told me that the regiment operated behind enemy lines, in tanks. I’d always wanted to drive a tank, so that was me in.
I lasted the first two weeks of basic training, and after that there was no looking back. I joined The Light Dragoons on 14 February 1996. On my first day one of the lads, a bloke called Gary ‘Baldy’ Wilkinson, nicknamed me ‘Bommer’. It was pretty obvious how Baldy had got his nickname: he had alopecia, a disease that makes the hair fall out. But I didn’t have a clue why he’d decided to call me ‘Bommer’.
When I asked, he said he’d named me after Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham, a black British boxer. His career had peaked in the late 1980s, but he was trying to make a comeback. After that the name just stuck. A year later and if you asked the lads for Paul Grahame, they’d not have a clue who you meant. Everyone knew me as plain ‘Bommer’.
The Light Dragoons are a Formation Recce regiment. Their role is to forge ahead of the main battle group in small units, gathering intelligence on the enemy. Troop positions, areas of special interest, high-value targets — those were the kind of elements that interested us. In formal Army speak, our role was to enable a ‘done-by-recce-pull’ — pulling the main battle group through, with its big tanks, convoys and troop numbers.
But that was conventional war fighting, and originally designed to combat a Soviet threat. In Iraq and Afghanistan we were waging a totally different kind of warfare. We were up against insurgents who wore no uniforms and did their best to hide amongst the local population. In Afghanistan in particular, The Light Dragoons formation recce concept had to be radically redrawn.
In Helmand the new s
oldiering ethic was to work as small, highly mobile units independent of resupply for days at a time. We’d carry all of our food, water, fuel and ammo with us, using CRVT (Combat Recce Vehicle — Tracked) vehicles for cargo-carrying and mobility. We’d be a recce and strike force, with sniper teams, Javelin missile units, and Scimitar light tanks providing firepower.
The role of the JTAC was central to this new concept of war fighting. Working behind enemy lines, we’d have eyes and ears prior to other units, placing JTACs in an ideal position to smash any targets of opportunity. The JTAC could call in airstrikes where the unit didn’t have the firepower, or the reach, to hit. That’s how I’d ended up being put up for training as a Light Dragoons JTAC. By then I’d been ten years in the Army, and I was a qualified crew commander, which meant I’d been trained how to command and fight my own Scimitar light tank. It was rock-hard to get on to the JTAC training, and I was dead happy to be put up for it.
Prior to Afghanistan, a lot of soldiers had trained as JTACs, but they’d never really got to use their specialist skills. Even in Iraq, commanders had failed to use the JTACs properly, or to integrate them into battle plans. Few understood the JTAC’s capabilities or role — that of being integrated with the fighting troops, and calling in danger-close air missions on the front line.
But my course was specifically tailored to Afghanistan, and there was a feeling that in Helmand, the JTACs were really going to come into their own. I started at JFACTSU (Joint Forward Air Control Training and Standards Unit), based at RAF Leeming in north Yorkshire. JFACTSU has a winged tommy gun and pair of rockets as a cap badge.
My instructor was a Corporal Grant ‘Cuff’ Cuthbertson, and he’d been out in Helmand serving with the Gurkhas, and doing the job for real. He told me that as a JTAC, I’d get to see action for sure in Afghanistan. But first, there was the best part of a year’s training ahead of me, for which Cuff would be my mentor and guide.
Being a JTAC, the instructors explained, was about bringing the biggest and the best weapons systems to any party with pinpoint precision and accuracy. It made perfect sense to me. It was the mechanics of it that were so challenging. We started with the fundamentals — learning the theory of bringing in low-, medium- and high-level air attacks, and what munitions to choose for which target.
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