Fire Strike 7/9

by Paul Grahame Bommer

  At stand-to that morning we’d discovered a mangy old mutt asleep under the Vector. It was like he’d blown in with the sandstorm. He looked a bit like a Labrador, but he was in a seriously bad way. Every one of his ribs was showing; his fur was hanging off in big clumps; he was full of fleas and mites; and his two front feet were all askew, as if he’d had his legs broken.

  I’m a self-confessed dog-lover with two British bulldogs — Trevor and Honey — cluttering up the living room at home. Once the fighting was over, we took the stray to the well and scrubbed him down with British Army hand wash. That dealt with the parasites. He was so weak we thought he was a goner, but we did our best to get some food into him.

  Bully beef turned out to be a real favourite, and in no time he was perking up. We named him ‘Woofer’, after The Worcester and Foresters — ‘The Woofers’ — one of the regiments recently amalgamated into 2 MERCIAN. Woofer was adopted as the FST’s mascot, and he took up residence lying by the open door of the Vector.

  From somewhere Sticky found Woofer a genuine metal dog’s bowl, and tucked it away under the wagon’s rear axle. Woofer quickly developed a liking for sausage and beans, and there never seemed to be any shortage of lads who wanted to unload some on him. Every now and then Woofer would wander off, but he was always back at feeding time.

  Over the next twenty-four hours there was a growing sense of impending menace in the Triangle. At Monkey One Echo we had a ‘walk-in’ — a local elder who came to the base offering up Intel. He told us that the enemy had shipped in two hundred extra fighters, and that they’d resupplied themselves with shedloads of weapons and ammo. We asked him where the enemy were positioned, but he just shook his head. He had no idea exactly. He pointed downhill into the Green Zone.

  ‘Two hundred metres that way,’ he said. ‘Down there by two hundred metres.’

  The enemy were preparing for the ‘big push’, he told us, to force us out. I was getting more and more frustrated. What were the enemy waiting for? If there was going to be a shitfight, let’s get it on was my attitude. But it was often like this in the Army: hurry up and wait.

  In the burning heat of the afternoon Sticky, Chris, Throp and me decided to have a swim. There was a tributary of the Helmand River some fifty metres into the Green Zone. It was pretty insane to take a dip in the midst of fighting a war, but we needed to do something to defuse the tension. We were going spare with the heat and the waiting, and we needed to cool down.

  Somebody had blown up the bridge over the river. The locals had improvised a new one using a gnarled old tree trunk, which was bleached white in the sun. It made the perfect platform from which to take a dive. The river was deep enough, and marvellously refreshing.

  A couple of young 2 MERCIAN lads chose to come with us. Sticky stood guard while we larked around diving off the log, and holding on to it with the current roaring past. I noticed the 2 MERCIAN lads having a whisper and a giggle, and then they disappeared upstream. A few minutes later Throp saw something floating down towards us. It looked like a stick. He went to grab it, so we could chuck it around a bit.

  ‘Oh shit!’ he yelled. ‘It’s a shit! Literally it is!’

  Throp had grabbed hold of what turned out to be a massive man-log.

  ‘You’re fucking joking!’ I yelled. ‘It’s a human land-mine!’

  Throp and I were laughing so much we were half-drowning. Up on the riverbank Sticky was killing himself. But Chris wasn’t amused. In fact, he had a massive arse on. He stormed out of the river and started yelling in the direction of the 2 MERCIAN lads.

  ‘You fuckers! Fucking get here!’

  He was a captain and they were ranks, so they pretty much came running.

  ‘You fuckers!’ he roared at them. ‘You just did a shit towards us!’

  ‘We didn’t do it, sir!’ one of the lads protested.

  ‘It wasn’t us!’ said the other lad.

  You could tell in an instant that they were lying, and Throp, Sticky and I were doubled up. The more Chris lost it, the funnier it became. Eventually, he threatened to put the two lads on a charge. It was priceless.

  ‘What are you going to charge them with?’ I gasped. ‘Defecating in a forbidden position? Or defecation of duty?’

  Later, back at Monkey One Echo, the guilty party came to have a quiet word with me. He was looking a bit sheepish.

  ‘Erm… about what happened in the river…’ he began.

  ‘Shut up, man,’ I cut in. ‘It was class.’

  He grinned. ‘It was me who did the turd. But don’t tell Chris, eh?’

  I promised him that I wouldn’t. Just as soon as I saw Chris, I told him who it was had laid the log in the river.

  ‘So mate, what d’you reckon you’re going to charge him with?’ I needled him.

  Chris had calmed down a bit by now. He had to laugh. After all, what was a little shit between blokes, when soon we’d be fighting back-to-back to save each other’s lives?

  When it all went noisy the only place to get eyes on the Green Zone was sat atop the old boy’s back wall. From there I could see everything, but I was also a bullet magnet. As the rounds went flying everyone was running for body armour and helmet, whilst I was getting a leg-up from Sticky on to the wall. The 2 MERCIAN lads would be staring at me like I was insane. To be honest, I never used to think about getting shot. If I did, I knew I’d never go up there. And it was the only place where I could see the battlefield, to talk in the air.

  With the enemy chatter buzzing that they were poised to attack, the OC decided to push a patrol down to Alpha Xray. He wanted to check on the platoon in the Alamo, and to recce around their position. We formed up with the lads from Monkey One Echo, in a convoy of WMIK and Snatch Land Rovers, with Throp and me on a quad bike.

  The quad was a beast of a thing, with four knobbly wheels like mini-tractor tyres. It was mostly for Sergent Major Peach to use, as a fast and manoeuvrable ammo resupply and casualty evacuation vehicle. I’m a bit of a petrol-head, and no way was I letting Throp drive. I stuck him on the pillion and grabbed the controls.

  We left Monkey One Echo at 0900 and were out patrolling the Green Zone for four hours. The OC hoped to provoke the enemy into showing their hand. We were frustrated and bored and dying to get a reaction, but there was nothing. By the time we turned up the dirt track that led back to our base, not a shot had been fired at us.

  Halfway up the hill I pulled a massive wheelie, without warning Throp. In an instant I had the beast rearing up on its back wheels, with Throp screaming that he was falling off. I held it like that for several seconds and then slammed it back down again, by which time the two of us were laughing our tits off. But not for long.

  I glanced ahead to check for the convoy, and realised that we’d lost them. At that very moment the enemy opened up. There was an ear-splitting burst of gunfire, and the first rounds slammed into the vegetation barely metres behind us. I twisted the throttle with sweating hand, giving it maximum revs, and went flying up the track like a bolt from hell. I reckoned the convoy had to be just ahead of us.

  As we bucked and weaved our way through the trees, more and more weapons were opening fire. Bullets hammered into the dirt throwing rocks and shit all over us. Over the roar of the quad’s engine I could hear something horribly big hammering away — thud-thud-thud-thud-thud — the rounds from which were chewing up the bush. It sounded like a Dushka, and it was absolutely fucking terrifying. A Dushka round would take your head clean off, or rip your arm or leg from your body. All it would take was one 12.7mm bullet tearing into the quad, and it’d be smashed to pieces. Or a round in the petrol tank, and Throp and I would be nicely torched.

  Our only hope lay in speed. It takes great skill to shoot and hit a man sprinting at speed, or two lunatics on a careering quad bike. I drove the race of my life, throwing the machine from side to side and cannoning off the banks to either edge of the track, and flying over ruts and bumps, ducking branches and vines as we went.

  We sl
ewed around a blind corner, and up ahead were the vehicles. I gave it one final blip of throttle, caught up with the rear WMIK, and grabbed one of the vehicle’s handrails. We had them tow us into Monkey One Echo, under the safety of their 50-cals and Gimpys. I powered down the quad and sat astride her for a second, my whole body shaking. Whether it was from nerves or the bone-rattling ride I wasn’t sure. I’d been shitting myself out there. As for Throp, he looked as white as a bloody sheet.

  Now we knew just how closely the enemy were watching us, and how many of the fuckers were out there. The moment they’d got us on our own, they’d unleashed a storm of lead on us.

  It promised to be some shitfight, whenever it might come.

  Sixteen

  THE SIEGE OF ALPHA XRAY

  We moved up to PB Sandford using Route Buzzard, a dirt track that led along the ridge line. Accommodation here was five-star, compared to where we’d just been. Sticky and I grabbed our own room, in what must have been the camel or donkey house.

  There was the one arched doorway with no door, a dirt floor, and a couple of mud-sculpted feeding troughs for whatever animals had once lived here. I managed to scrounge a camp bed, which was sheer luxury. Sticky cobbled together a bed of sorts from an old frame made of branches and strung with paracord for a mattress. It was a stickyback-plastic-and-cardboard-box kind of bed, and Sticky bitched a lot ’cause I had a real camp bed. I told him that I had a camp bed because I was the JTAC, and the JTAC needed a good night’s kip. As it happened, it was too hot to sleep in that room during the day, and too stuffy at night. We’d have been better off dossing down outside.

  The roof above was a dome of smooth mud plaster, and the topside became my new JTAC position. Being domed, it provided an all-around view south over the Green Zone, and north over the desert. It was perfect for controlling warplanes, but provided zero cover from enemy fire.

  Along with the move to PB Sandford, we’d picked up a fifth member of the FST. Bombardier Karl ‘Jess’ Jessop was going to be Chris’s right-hand man, cueing up the field guns, and leaving Chris free to keep an overview of FST operations.

  Chris played hockey for England, and Sticky, Throp and I were always winding him up about it.

  ‘Hockey — that’s a girls’ sport, isn’t it?’

  ‘No it’s not,’ Chris would argue. ‘It’s for real men.’

  It turned out that Jess was also a keen hockey player, so we reckoned the two of them were made for each other. But it soon became clear that there was this love-hate thing between them. Maybe it was about who was the better hockey player? Fuck knows. Either way, the rest of us were determined to get some good mileage out of it.

  It was a suffocatingly hot afternoon and I’d gone to get a brew on. The chill-out area at PB Sandford was another real luxury. From somewhere the lads had got a massive, soot-stained tin kettle. It sat on a clay stove, with a fire burning whatever wood we could find beneath it. You could get a brew on at any time of day or night, and there was a U-shaped arrangement of ‘sofas’ cobbled together from wire mesh and sacking.

  Whilst I’d been away getting my AIDS test some cheeky bastard had stolen my mug, so I’d blagged a new Jack flask from stores, and stuck a big square of white gaffer tape on the side of it. On that I’d scrawled in black marker pen: FAT JTAC’S MUG — TOUCH THIS AND I’LL JDAM YOU. It seemed to be working, for whenever I went for a brew my Jack flask was waiting for me.

  I was supping my tea sweet and strong, just as I like it, and marvelling at how it could be so suffocatingly, crushingly hot. The heat would build through the afternoon, until it was a furnace inside and out. The one big downside to PB Sandford was there was no river to take a dip. There was just the one, bloodworm-infested well in the centre of the compound. Come mid-afternoon there was a queue of overheating British squaddies seeking a bucket-load of water to chuck over their heads.

  Above the natter of the lads I heard a faint boom. It sounded as if it had come from the south-east of us, in the direction of Qada Kalay. The longer-term plan was to get a fourth patrol base (PB) established, on the southern side of the river, to choke off both sides of the Green Zone. Qada Kalay was where we intended to build it, and it was a known enemy stalking ground.

  I raced outside, mug of tea in hand, and pounded up the steps that led to the rooftop. As I got there, I heard a familiar sound — the faint whistle of an incoming 107mm warhead. We had a rocket inbound. Mikey Wallace, the dude with his mortar-locating kit, was with us at PB Sandford, but for some reason his gizmo didn’t always register 107s.

  ‘107 INBOUND!’ I yelled.

  As the lads ran for cover the warhead swooped down on us, howling like a banshee. It ripped into the desert right on our southeastern wall. From up on the roof I saw the blinding oily-yellow flash of the explosion, and the shockwave of the blast tore over me. As the ear-splitting roar of the detonation echoed around the Green Zone, a gout of angry smoke fisted darkly into the sky. The warhead had landed fifteen metres outside our front wall, and it had been fired from a kilometre and a half away. Not bad for a first shot.

  I needed to get air over Qada Kalay pronto, so I could find the launcher and smash it. I dialled up Widow TOC, and as luck would have it there was a Predator barely a minute out from my ROZ. At least it would enable me to get eyes-on. I radioed the operator.

  ‘Overlord Two One, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: we’re under a 107mm rocket barrage, being fired upon from 1.5 kilometres southeast. I want you over that position looking for a tripod launcher tube.’

  ‘Roger that, sir,’ came back the reply. ‘Banking around now.’

  Positions on the opposite side of the Helmand River had been allocated November codenames, and I gave the operator the GeoCell location of where I thought the 107mm had come from: November Nine Five.

  There was always a weird disconnect when controlling a Predator. Here was I, a British JTAC under a burning Afghan sun, talking to a ‘pilot’ who was flying the thing remotely from an air-conditioned bunker in Nevada. He’d be sat in some padded leather chair staring into his screen, whilst I crouched on a mud roof under a plume of smoke from a 107mm rocket strike.

  However much the American operator might try to sound as if he was ‘with’ me, we both knew he was a million miles away. More than likely, he’d stopped off at a Hooters for a mountain of doughnuts and a gallon of coffee en route to work, and was looking forward to a few chilled beers once his shift was done. Getting a Predator operator’s head into the mindset of the war we were fighting was never easy.

  Sure enough, the operator did discover a metal A-frame at the November Nine Five location. I took a good long look at the grainy image on the Rover screen. Like most feeds from 20,000 feet, the Predator’s was jumpy and prone to breaking up whenever the aircraft hit turbulence.

  I wasn’t sure about that A-frame. I called one of the 2 MERCIAN lads to take a look — a guy who was a weapons boffin. He studied the image for a few seconds, then shook his head. There was no way it was the tripod for a 107mm launcher. It was too widely splayed apart for that. It was more than likely a frame to hang a cooking pot over an open fire.

  I had the Predator for several hours, during which time a couple more 107mm rockets slammed into the base. We combed the terrain all around Qada Kalay, but nothing. No one was injured from the 107mm strikes, but the enemy chatter was going crazy. Their leader, Commander Jamali, was crowing about the rockets scoring ‘direct hits’ on us lot.

  Jamali called for his men to gather at ‘the mosque’ for a preattack briefing. Come on then, I was thinking. If you’re going to hit us,fucking hit us. Let’s get it on. I guess the OC must have been feeling equally frustrated, for that evening he issued a set of orders to take the fight to the enemy.

  At 0300 we were to push a stick of lads into the Green Zone on foot. It was to be a fighting patrol at night, and the aim was to root out the enemy. Via Routes Buzzard, Sparrow and Crow — three dirt tracks threaded through the bush — we’d do a U-shaped circuit of the G
reen Zone, the furthest extent of which would be Alpha Xray.

  It was to be a platoon-strength patrol — so twenty-odd men — and Sticky and I were on it. As the two of us prepared our kit, stuffing spare mags and water and grenades into our packs, I heard Chris let out a laugh.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ he demanded.

  I glanced up and there was Chris pointing at Sticky’s Bergen. Sticky had one of those little fluffy Snoopy dog key rings hanging off one of the straps.

  Sticky grinned. ‘It’s a Snoopy key ring.’

  ‘I know that,’ Chris snorted. ‘I mean, what’s it doing on your backpack?’

  ‘It’s a present from my girlfriend,’ said Sticky. ‘Kind of like a lucky charm.’

  ‘Well it looks chippy as fuck,’ said Chris. ‘Get it off.’

  ‘Can’t,’ Sticky said. ‘It’s my good-luck charm. I promised her I’d wear it.’

  ‘Look, we’re meant to be a bunch of professionals attached to an infantry company,’ said Chris. ‘But you’ve got a cuddly toy swinging from your kit. I’m not happy with it.’

  Sticky shrugged. ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll take it off.’

  By the time we’d mustered for the patrol at 0245, the Snoopy dog was still swinging from Sticky’s pack. You had to laugh.

  The OC had warned us to expect danger-close engagements, and I had air booked for the duration of the patrol. I had a B-1B supersonic bomber, call sign Bone One Two, ramped up high. And below him I had a lone Apache, Ugly Five Zero. I tasked the B-1B to search for any vehicles moving in the Triangle, in case the enemy bussed in reinforcement to hit us. I tasked the Apache to fly directly overhead, shadowing the patrol. When the enemy showed themselves I’d give the pilot a simple direction and a distance from us, and he’d mallet that position.