Throp hung it back on Sticky’s pack but the wrong way round. You couldn’t see Snoopy’s face any more: all you could see was the dog’s back covered in knobs. A little later Sticky was back with us and fiddling around with his kit. All of a sudden he noticed that his Snoopy dog had been horribly defaced. He threw a track.
‘Who the fuck’s been drawing knobs on my Snoopy?’ he snarled.
I turned away from him trying to hold the laughter in. I grabbed my mug of lukewarm tea, took a slurp and got my eyes on my Rover screen. Throp just stared at Sticky with that look of his: What am I accused of doing this fucking time?
‘It’s fucking Chris, isn’t it?’ Sticky raged. ‘Ever since I got it he’s hated that Snoopy.’
Throp shrugged. ‘Fuck knows. All I know is it wasn’t us.’
Sticky reached out for the toy dog, took it off his pack and put it away carefully in his pocket. He had a right arse on. I’d never seen him so angry.
He glanced at Throp and me. ‘Look, lads, all I want to know is who drew cocks on my dog?’
That was it. I cracked up laughing, spluttering tea all over the wagon. All that morning Sticky kept asking the same question — Who drew knobs on my Snoopy? As he wasn’t getting any answers, he just concluded that it had to be Chris. It was fair enough, really. After all, it was Chris who’d ordered me and Throp to get rid of it.
But it was Jess, not Sticky, who was becoming the real victim of the FST wind-ups. Jess was the newcomer on the team, so I guess it was only natural for him to get picked on. He was a good lad, but he used to bite easily. And there was this weird clash between him and Chris that we reckoned all boiled down to hockey.
Jess had one glaringly obvious shortcoming: he didn’t seem able to grow a proper beard. By now the four of us had manly beard-fungus sprouting all over our faces. We hadn’t shaved since arriving at Monkey One Echo, two weeks earlier. We all had proper monster beards coming on. But for some reason Jess only seemed able to manage a light dusting of fuzz under his chin, with a couple of sprouts to either side of his mouth. Chris had nicknamed him ‘Upside Down Beard’, and Jess bloody hated it.
Sticky and I had got into the habit of tying up Jess’s clothes, whenever he was away at the well. We’d get his trousers, knot them, then each grab a leg and run in opposite directions. Then we’d do the same with his shirt. Jess would come back from the well and try to get his trousers on, only to find a knot in them the size of a boiled egg.
We’d be sat in the back of the wagon, pretending we were seriously busy. Jess would come over twisting. The four of us would look away, trying to pretend it was nowt to do with us, and doing our best not to crack up. How he managed to get those knots undone I will never know. Plus we were always hitting Jess with MRE-bombs.
With that lone Hellfire strike having smashed the enemy, there was nothing doing from their side, so we decided to have a big cricket day. We each kept the score in our heads and no one tried to cheat. If someone kicked off saying the ball hadn’t hit the stumps, and they had twenty of us saying they were out, then they were out. It was a great way to keep fit and to have a laugh, and to get a good suntan.
At 2200 I got allocated air, having two F-15s for three hours on yo-yo from a refuelling tanker. I got them scanning the length and breadth of the Green Zone, but there was zero happening. There wasn’t the slightest hint of an enemy presence anywhere. If you weren’t careful you could forget there was a war on. The total lack of enemy activity was spooky. That one Hellfire strike from the Predator couldn’t have put them all out of action. So where were they? And what were they up to?
The following morning we had two journalists pitch up at PB Sandford. They’d come down on a road move with a big resupply convoy. John Bingham was the writer, and Andy Parsons the photographer. Andy was the younger of the two, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and he was a top lad. He turned round to us on that first morning, and said: ‘I’m here to take photos, and John’s here to write stories. So watch what you’re doing and watch what you’re saying around us.’
It was fair enough, and I appreciated the up-front honesty of the bloke. They carried with them blue body armour and helmets, to mark them out as being press. I didn’t think it would make the enemy any the less inclined to kill or capture them. But they had their rules, just like we had ours, and one of theirs was that they wore blue kit when going to war.
At last light I was up on JTAC Central with a pair of F-15s in the overhead. I was determined to find some enemy, if only to show the reporters we really were at war. From up on the roof I could sense they were out there, watching and waiting, ready to strike.
I’d just tasked the Dude call signs to fly search transects the length and breadth of the Green Zone, when they got ripped away to a TIC up at Kajaki, in the far north of Helmand. There was no more air available, so I went to bed none the wiser about where the enemy might be, or what they were planning.
After stand-to the following morning Butsy gave the order to take a foot patrol down to Alpha Xray, and Sticky and me were on it. The main purpose was to show a presence in the Triangle, and to check on the lads down at the Alamo.
Over the past couple of days there’d been a bit of a nasty fright on at AX, with bouts of horrible sickness. The OC had pushed a convoy of WMIKs and Snatches down to the base, and extracted the sickest of the lads, who was airlifted to Camp Bastion. A visit from a foot patrol would cheer their morale. Plus we could give the two journos a look-see around the Triangle.
We set off at 0900, taking Route Buzzard east along the high ground to Monkey One Echo. As soon as we were out of the gates, the radio chatter was buzzing that the enemy were visual with us. From Monkey One Echo we hooked south towards Route Crow, and were sucked into the suffocating humidity of the Green Zone. As we pushed ahead, well spaced in single file, I could feel eyes in the bush to either side of us.
We made Alpha Xray without incident, and filed into the base. I’d been down at AX quite a bit now, and I supposed I’d got used to it. But the reporter’s eyes were out on stalks. If PB Sandford was luxury, then Alpha Xray was the fucking pits. It was a place for fighting, eating, sleeping and defecating, and that was about it. It was the Alamo transported to the wilds of Afghanistan in the midst of a twenty-first-century war.
The entry point into Alpha Xray was a mud bridge over a shallow canal running along Route Crow. The bridge terminated at the main building, a two-storey square structure. Its thick mud walls were pitted with bullet holes and RPG craters, like a bloody great big sieve. Strung around the base of that building were rolls of razor wire, and the one gateway in was barred with coils and coils of the stuff. Inside, there was a rectangular compound, hemmed in by thick mud-brick walls twice the height of your average bloke.
The sandy-floored compound was doss house central for the twenty-odd lads garrisoning AX at any one time. It was threaded across with makeshift washing lines, slung with socks and pants hung out to dry, with heaps of kit stuffed into the thin shadows at the base of the walls. In one corner of the compound a blue Fosters lager sunshade had been erected over a rickety garden table. To either side the rectangular windows in the walls had been filled with sandbags, leaving just a slit of a gun turret through which to put down fire. There was a palpable sense of the siege about the place, and after their four-day stint none of the platoons was loath to leave.
A rank of body armour, backpacks and helmets lined the wall nearest the main building. Leaning carefully against each set of kit was an SA80, GPMG or Minimi Squad Assault Weapon (a drum-fed light machine gun). Belts of ammunition were wrapped carefully around the weapons, to keep the links out of the dirt. A rickety wooden ladder led up to the flat rooftop above. It was from there that the real defending, and the killing, was done.
The rooftop position at Alpha Xray had all-around vision over the surrounding bush. The three sides of the position looking away from the compound were lined with sandbag walls, to give a prone or crouching soldier some cover. A b
attlement in each corner provided a fire-turret for the GPMGs, and the lone 50-cal on its chunky tripod mount. Comms antennae bristled from radio packs on just about every corner. Piles of spent shell casings littered the roof, testimony to the ferocity of the recent fighting.
Scattered in amongst them were empty plastic water bottles and discarded helmets and crates and crates and crates of ammo. From the rooftop, the nearest treelines and thick cover were spitting-distance close. You could get around eight soldiers up on the roof, and that was the backbone of the defences here at Alpha Xray.
We had a chat with the lads, and all seemed to be bearing up well. Then we set off on the return leg of the patrol. Sticky and I were halfway across the river bridge on Route Crow, when Alan the terp alerted us to an item of radio chatter.
‘They’re saying they can see three figures on the bridge,’ Alan muttered. ‘They’re saying the central one has the stubby black aerial that controls the aeroplanes.’
Oh fuck. I hurried across the bridge with a feeling like ice running down my spine. I felt like someone had a sniper’s crosshairs bang on my head. It was horrible. But not a shot was fired. We reached PB Sandford without having been engaged, and herded through the gates. I just couldn’t understand why they hadn’t whacked us.
The OC couldn’t understand it, either. He’d pushed a big looping patrol all through the Green Zone, from the eastern side of Rahim Kalay to the western edge of Adin Zai, yet not a sniff of the enemy. Not a shot had been fired since that Predator’s Hellfire strike.
Where the fuck was the enemy? What were they up to? What were they planning?
The OC gave orders to push out a second foot patrol, for the early hours of the following day. This time, we’d head out from PB Sandford as two full platoons, and at night. And we’d press further eastwards than ever we had before, into real bandit country.
The eastern limit of the patrol was to be an enemy position marked as Golf Bravo Nine Eight on the GeoCell maps. It was a full half-kilometre beyond Alpha Xray, and totally uncharted territory as far as we were concerned. The patrol would consist of both platoons from PB Sandford, so forty-odd men, plus the OC and his HQ element and the full FST. We’d leave only a skeleton crew behind, and we’d link up with more lads at Alpha Xray. Plus we’d take the two journalists, Andy and John, with us. If that didn’t get a rise out of the enemy, then nothing would.
At 0130 I had my first air checking into ROZ Suzy. I had two A-10s, Hog Zero Seven and Hog Zero Eight. I tasked both aircraft to fly air recces over the vanguard of the patrol, as we pushed south and east into the Green Zone.
At 0200 we filed out of PB Sandford in the pitch dark, a long snake of heavily armed fighters on foot, and all on night-vision. Apart from the clink of gunmetal on body armour, and the jet-whine of the A-10s high above, the valley was utterly still and silent. But we knew the enemy were out there somewhere, and we were going hunting.
By 0320 we’d advanced a good four hundred metres past Alpha Xray, and were deep into unknown territory. We were moving ahead at a dead slow. A dozen paces, then the whispered order to halt passed along the line. The entire column would remain motionless for a minute or more, crouching and listening intently in the hollow, ringing silence.
We pushed ahead for a good twenty minutes or so, before a cry rang out in the darkness. It came from the direction of our front, and it sounded like a verbal challenge in Arabic. An instant later, the night exploded all around us, as a barrage of RPG rounds came howling out of the trees and slamming into the bush. I dived for cover, brought up my SA80 and was about to open fire, so strong was the soldier’s instinct to get the rounds down and to fight. Instead, I forced myself to grab Sticky by the arm, as I yelled into his ear.
‘Get the point platoon’s fucking coordinates!’
As Sticky got on his radio, I was hunkered down against a tree trunk and bawling into the TACSAT. Rounds were fizzing through the air above, and all around me our lads were putting down a savage amount of return fire. It was deafening.
‘Hog call signs, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: under massive contact RPGs and small arms. Stand by to attack.’
‘Roger. Standing by.’
Sticky had his face in mine, yelling out the grids.
‘Hog Zero Eight, enemy forces are eighty-five metres to the front of our lead platoon, in a treeline running between Golf Bravo Nine Three and Golf Bravo Nine Five. Treeline runs for two-fifty metres, in a south-east to north-west dogleg. Friendly grid is: 93850269. Readback.’
The pilot confirmed the grid.
‘I need a 30mm strafe on enemy treeline, on south-east to north-west attack run, to keep it away from friendlies. Repeat: friendlies are eighty-five metres to the south-west of target, danger-close at night.’
‘Affirmative.’ A pause. ‘Widow Seven Nine, I’m visual with the leading edge of your platoon. Plus I’m visual on the IR with three heat sources in the enemy position, plus…’
The last words of his message were lost as an RPG round tore through the bush above me, exploding with a massive boom. It sounded horribly close, as the walls of vegetation threw back the raw crunch and slam of battle clatter in a deafening wave of sound.
‘I repeat,’ came the pilot’s voice, ‘now visual five heat sources in enemy position. Tipping in.’
‘Roger. Nearest friendlies eighty-five metres!’ I yelled. ‘Nearest friendlies eighty-five metres west of target!’
Above the battle noise I caught a few scrambled words of Chris putting out an all-stations warning about the strafe, and then the pilot was radioing for clearance. I couldn’t see him through the crush of vegetation, and I sure as hell couldn’t hear him. I’d have to clear him in blind.
‘No change friendlies!’ I yelled. ‘Not visual your attack! Not visual! Clear hot! Ground Commander’s initials SB.’
‘In hot.’ A beat. ‘Engaging.’
Above the staccato roar of the battle, there was a new noise now — the howl of the diving jet, and the purr of its Gatling gun pumping out the 30mm shells right above us. The instant it had finished firing Sticky had the lead platoon commander on the air.
They could hear screams coming from the positions to their front, where the A-10 had hit. That had to mean there were enemy wounded.
‘Hog Zero Eight, good strafe,’ I yelled. ‘We hear screaming from that enemy treeline — their wounded. I want immediate re-attack, same position, same line of attack, no change friendlies, and danger-close.’
‘Roger. Banking round.’ A pause. ‘Tipping in.’
The A-10 put in a second, much longer strafe, for several seconds the awesome throb of the seven-barrelled cannon drowning out the battle noise. His confidence had been boosted by the first strike being smack-bang on target. This time he had a BDA for me: two pax confirmed dead. Fucking great news: we were starting to win the firefight.
The patrol had gone firm in its positions, awaiting further orders from the OC. I got the A-10 pilot searching in the treelines to the north of where he’d strafed, scanning with his IR scope for heat sources. Within seconds he came back to me with this.
‘Visual six pax north of the treeline targeted, and to the east of an L-shaped compound. Visual muzzle flashes from out of that position.’
‘I want immediate attack with 30mm,’ I told him. ‘I want both Hog call signs shooter-shooter, on a north to south run.’
‘Shooter-shooter’ meant the aircraft would be coming in sixty seconds apart, with the first A-10 strafing, and the second doing a follow-up strafe as soon as the first was off target.
‘Negative, Widow Seven Niner. I need Hog Zero Seven to keep a watch on my wing. I’ll do two runs at the same time: one at altitude, and one as I’m closer in.’
This was fast and furious now. I was asking the pilots to do repeated danger-close strafes at night — the most challenging and risk-laden airstrikes possible. The pilot was going in more or less blind, over a dark and confused battlefield. He needed his fellow pilot — his wing — to watch
over him, guiding him in as he did two strafes from altitude.
‘Happy with that,’ I confirmed. ‘Friendlies eighty-five metres danger-close.’
I cleared him in. Chris put out the warning of a double-strafe, and for all the lads to get their bloody heads down. The A-10’s dive was a long one, and the first 30mm strafe rumbled through the dark night like a distant, rolling peal of thunder.
A few seconds later came the second, the long throaty roar of the cannon closer and more threatening. But as the Gatling gun ceased firing, I could hear the coughing of the A-10’s big jet engines, set high and ugly on the aircraft’s tail. I knew in an instant what had happened. The kick back from the two strafes had caused the A-10’s engines to stall. As the aircraft plummeted earthwards the pilot was having to try to restart his engines in mid-air. For a second or more I held my breath, and then the reassuring jet-whine cut through the night again. The aircraft picked up power, howled out of its dive and thundered low and fast across the valley.
Phew. Thank fuck for that. As the scream of the A-10 died away, I realised that all around us the bush had fallen silent. After those two mega-strafes, the firefight had died away to nothing. I breathed easily for a moment, then dialled up the A-10 pilot.
‘Hog Zero Eight, awesome strafe. Requesting BDA.’
‘BDA: lots of tiny heat sources in the treeline, but no further movement. Six pax dead. And Widow Seven Niner, BDA almost included one US pilot. I pretty much lost my engines for a second there.’
‘I know, mate. I heard it. Thanks. It was class. It was the best strafe of the tour.’
Alan was on to us now about the radio chatter. The enemy were going bananas. There were repeated calls for various units to check in, but no answers. After those four monster strafing runs from Hog Zero Eight, I wasn’t particularly surprised.
I glanced upwards. The sky to the east was lightening with the first rays of dawn. I caught a glimpse of the stubby silhouette of an A-10 circling above. I said a quick ‘thank you’ to the pilots. They’d smashed the enemy in a danger-close battle at night, and in the midst of a murderous ambush on our patrol. It was a top job, to put it mildly.
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