An idea came to me. I’d learned about it in JTAC school, but it was rarely if ever used for real, in combat.
‘I’m calling a bug-splat!’ I yelled at Chris and the OC.
The two of them ceased firing for an instant, and stared at me, like: What the fuck’s a bug-splat?
By calling a bug-splat, I was gambling on the exact trajectory of the bombing run. I’d be dropping five-hundred-pound bombs twenty-five metres from our lads, hoping the momentum of the drop would hurl the frag away from us and into the enemy.
‘A bug-splat? You’re fucking cleared!’ The OC yelled, without waiting for me to explain. ‘Just get the jets in!’
‘Dude One Three: I’m calling a bug-splat!’ I pawed the dirt-spattered map in front of me, double- and triple-checking our positions. ‘I want you to drop a GBU-38 twenty-five metres to the north-east of our lead grid, coming in on a 045-degree line of attack. Confirm.’
The pilot repeated the instructions. ‘Banking south-east to begin attack run. Stand by.’
As the jet came around in a screaming turn, my heart was in my mouth. I knew if I had the grid one digit out, I’d kill a lot of our guys. Plus if I’d got my map-reading wrong, or misjudged the line of attack, I might kill the enemy but smash the lads at the same time.
The OC’s blind faith in me, his JTAC, was humbling. Yet right now, I didn’t have a clue whether I was about to save us, or damn us all to hell.
Twenty One
SAVING PRIVATE GRAHAM
I guess Chris didn’t know what a bug-splat was either, but he knew I was about to try something completely fucking desperate. As the jet tipped in, he was screaming for all stations to get their bloody heads down.
Above the crack and thump of battle, I had a call coming in on the TACSAT. I guessed it had to be the F-15 pilot seeking final clearance to do the mother of all insane airstrikes. It wasn’t. It was his wing.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude One Four: I’m visual with more enemy rushing your lead position. Scores of heavily armed fighters converging on your lead grid.’
‘Roger. Stand by. Dude One Three: attack now! I need that fucking bomb in! No change friendlies danger-close twenty-five metres from drop — you’re clear hot!’
‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed. A beat. ‘Stores.’
‘Thirty seconds! Thirty seconds!’ Chris was screaming over the radio, so the lads still fighting could get their bloody heads down.
As the JDAM plummeted earthwards from 20,000 feet, its four V-shaped tail fins steered it into target. The dumb bomb had been rendered smart by the addition of a simple GPS-based homing system. It was upon that I was relying to smash the enemy, and not us.
In the bomb came, a five-hundred-pound blunt-headed warhead the height and breadth of tree trunk. As it screamed down, the snarling wolf-howl of its inrush drowned out even the battle noise. Then the detonation.
The flash was right on top of us, white-hot and searing. The blast wave punched through the trees like a tidal wave, the snarl of the explosion entombing us in a roaring wall of deafening noise. As the blast thundered onwards across the valley, all around me soldiers lifted their heads and their weapons from the dirt. I could see that the lads here were still alive: it was the boys of 2 Platoon who’d been right under the bomb.
‘BDA!’ I screamed. ‘BDA!’
‘BDA,’ came the pilot’s voice. ‘Bomb impacted thirty-three metres north-east of your lead platoon. Five enemy pax killed outright.’
YES! GET IN! But we needed confirmation from 2 Platoon that none of them had been smashed.
The OC was yelling for the lads to check in. ‘Arsenic Two Zero, Charlie Charlie One: confirm all OK.’
Silence.
‘Repeat: Arsenic Two Zero, Charlie Charlie One: confirm all OK!’
Silence again.
‘I repeat,’ Butsy yelled. ‘Arsenic Two Zero: confirm all OK!’
Chris and the OC got on the net, screaming for the lads to get on the air and respond.
Finally, a voice came up on the net. It was 2 Platoon’s radio operator.
‘Arsenic Two Zero: sorry about that, but we’re deafened. We couldn’t hear you. Confirm all are A-OK.’
‘Dude call signs: friendlies are all OK,’ I yelled into the TACSAT. ‘Repeat: all A-OK. I want immediate re-attack, same ordnance, advise best target.’
‘Dude Zero Four: visual enemy pax north-east your lead platoon. In static positions, thirty metres from nearest friendlies.’
‘Roger, attack as before: come in on a 045-degree run exactly, no change friendlies.’
‘Roger. I’m tipping in with a GBU-12 to hit that position.’
Chris and the OC put out the all-stations warning for the lads to get on their bloody belt buckles. The GBU-12 is an eight-hundred-pound bomb, so bigger than the first drop. It homes in on the hot point of a laser beam, as opposed to being GPS-guided. As Dude Zero Four went in to do the drop, his wing would have a laser fired at the target, to guide in the bomb. In theory, laser-guided was more accurate than a JDAM. But it relies upon the person firing the guidance laser, so more could go wrong.
The pilot started his run, as rounds and RPGs slammed into the bush all around us. We had to smash the enemy fast if we were to get our wounded lads out, and the bigger the bomb the more we could kill.
‘Call for clearance,’ came the pilot’s voice.
‘No change friendlies,’ I yelled. ‘Clear hot.’
‘In hot,’ the pilot confirmed. ‘Stores.’
The second warhead came howling through the skies like it was coming in right on top of our position. For an instant I wondered if the pilots had lost their laser spot, or got the grid a digit off. I held my breath, tensing for the impact.
And then the bomb was tearing past and slamming into the earth. The pulse of the blast was more powerful this time, like a giant’s sledgehammer smashing through the trees, as eight hundred pounds of high explosives tore the ground and the air asunder. Blasted chunks of shrapnel and rock and shredded branches were spinning through the air, and smashing back down to earth. I yelled for a BDA.
‘BDA: the bomb hit in the centre of the enemy mass,’ the pilot reported. ‘Scores of dead and injured.’
An instant later we got the call from 2 Platoon: again, they were deafened, but still breathing.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude One Three: visual with pax extracting their wounded to the north-east of your lead grid. Plus visual with six-man RPG team approaching your positions.’
‘Leave the wounded, smash the RPG team. No change friendlies, same attack run, you choose munition.’
‘Roger. Tipping in with a GBU-12. I can see them firing an RPG: get your boys to get their goddamn heads down.’
I cleared the pilot in, and the second GBU-12 was on its way. As the eight hundred pounds of high explosives tore into the earth some thirty metres to the north of us, the lads and I were burrowing into the dirt of the ditch like proverbial fucking rabbits.
A third massive, ear-splitting explosion engulfed us, the violent suck of the detonation tearing the air from my lungs. It left me shell-shocked and reeling, with the blood pounding in my head and ears.
The crushing roar of the bomb was followed an instant later by the crump of secondary explosions, as RPG rounds cooked off in the bush alongside us. A belch of black smoke spat into the sky high above, blocking out the rays of dawn sunlight that filtered through the trees.
‘BDA: direct hit,’ came the pilot’s voice. ‘I saw one guy with a backpack of RPGs exploding all over him. Four pax killed. But two stood up two metres from the impact point and ran off northwards. I have no idea how they’re still alive.’
‘Nice work, Dude One Three: keep hitting ’em.’
There was a cry from Alan, ‘Enemy commanders are ordering their men to hold their positions, and to press home their attack!’ He glanced at Chris and me. ‘We have to get out of here! We have to get out of here…’
There would be time to deal with a traumat
ised terp later. Right now, it was our injured that were on my mind, plus getting us lot out of here without a horrible friendly-fire incident. We were still being hit from all sides, and there had to be more of the enemy we could kill.
‘Dude call signs: tell me what you can see,’ I yelled. ‘I want targets.’
‘Dude One Three: I see enemy fighters bugging out with wounded to the north of you.’
‘Dude One Four: roger that. Enemy pax hauling out bodies to your north-east.’
Fucking smashing job. Maybe we were beginning to win this one at last.
‘ Dude call signs: do not engage enemy with dead or wounded. Find those still firing at us, and smash ’em.’
‘Roger. Stand by.’
The F-15s did several more bombing runs, putting in GBU-12s danger-close to the north and south of our column, and pounding the enemy to either side. Each time, I was shitting myself that we’d get it wrong, and kill and injure our own men. But with each bugsplat we threw the blast away from our positions, and into the faces of the enemy.
It was 0630 by now, and we were forty-five minutes into the maddest hour of our entire combat tour. Those two American pilots above us were the very best. Without that pair of F-15s on station a lot of us would no longer be breathing, and I knew it. As for the lead platoon and their injured, they’d have been killed or in the hands of the enemy by now.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Ugly Five Zero.’ I had an Apache checking in to my ROZ. ‘I’m two minutes out with the IRT heavy, request LZ.’
We didn’t have a fucking LZ. We didn’t even have our hands on the wounded, to extract them. But we sure could use that Apache.
‘Ugly Five Zero, get the heavy to hold off to the western tip of ROZ Suzy, out in the desert. Unsafe to land as we are in GZ, in midst of contact.’
‘Roger that.’
‘Ugly, this is our lead platoon’s grid: 59368219. Can you get your gunship smack-bang above it looking bastard-ugly, to deter the enemy.’
‘Roger. Moving over grid as given now.’
‘Dude call signs, push up to 5,000 feet. I’m bringing Ugly in low to deter the enemy.’
‘Roger. Pushing up to 5,000 feet.’
‘What’s the heads-up with the LZ?’ I called over to Chris, Peachy and the OC.
‘There’s a big open field to the south-west of Alpha Xray,’ Peachy yelled back. ‘Get the Chinook down there.’
It was a bloody risky plan, but what else were we to do? I knew that field well, and Qada Kalay was just south of there. If the enemy were out in force at Qada Kalay, they could use their 107mm rockets, or even an RPG to blast the Chinook out of the sky.
Chinooks rarely if ever went into the GZ to extract casualties, and for good reason. Wherever possible the casevac was done in the open desert, where an iron cordon of security could be thrown around the LZ.
‘Ugly, ask the heavy if he’ll put down in the GZ,’ I radioed the Apache. ‘We don’t have an alternative.’
‘Stand by: I’ll speak to the pilot.’
‘Roger. And Ugly, stay slap-bang where you are above us.’
‘Roger that. I’m not moving.’
I could hear the throb of the Apache’s rotors thumping through the air, like the reassuring heartbeat of some friendly beast of prey. Above that, the scream-hum of the F-15’s jet engines was letting the enemy know that I still had those warplanes on station.
We had three men down, and we had no idea how bad they were. Plus we didn’t know how many of the other lads had taken injuries, and were keeping it quiet. It was amazing what damage the boys could take, and remain in the fight alongside their fellow warriors.
With the air stacking up above us, the contact died down to just about nothing. The OC gave orders for all platoons to extract, with 2 Platoon moving back through us as a protective screen. We threw smoke grenades, and under their cover those most-forwards began to fall back.
A circle of figures bent double came hurrying through the trees. For a moment I felt physically sick. They were hefting a poncho between them, weighed down with the body of a man. Carrying that weight in a makeshift stretcher over such terrain in the furnace of the Afghan heat was hellish, let alone doing so after hours of extreme combat. Whoever that young lad was in that poncho, he had to be in a bad, bad way. Or, in the time it had taken us to smash the enemy from the air, one of our injured had died of his wounds…
‘Widow Seven Nine, Ugly.’ The Apache pilot’s call tore me away from my dark thoughts. ‘Visual three pax with weapons fifty metres east and moving in on you.’
‘Roger. Stand by.’
I relayed it to the OC, and he told me to hit them.
‘Ugly, Widow Seven Nine: hit them with 30mm. Nearest friendlies our position fifty metres south-west.’
‘Roger. Engaging now.’
Thump-thump-thump-thump… the 30mm cannon of the Apache’s turret spat out a long, twenty-round burst of pinpoint accuracy firepower. I felt the air around us judder and shake as the shells thumped into the bush.
‘Ugly: BDA.’
‘BDA: two killed, one on his heels and running away from your direction. I’ve lost him.’
‘Top job, Ugly. I want you to do two long strafes to the east of our position, as we extract, to deter any pursuers, on a north to south run.’
‘Roger. Standing by.’
I glanced at the OC. He gave me the nod, and put the order out on the net for the last platoon — us lot — to withdraw.
‘Ugly, extracting now,’ I told the Apache. ‘Fire when ready.’
We began to edge our way backwards, following the route we’d come in on. As we did so, the Apache started malleting the positions we’d abandoned. With a wall of 30mm cannon rounds to our backs, we headed west for Alpha Xray.
We reached AX, and I got the Apache to move south over the Helmand River. I wanted it flying low and fast up and down the water, looking very capable of extreme violence. That way, it would provide a block between Qada Kalay and the Chinook, as it went in to extract the casualties.
The OC got a ring of men thrown around the LZ — an open field of thick green crops, fringed with woodlines. With the lads out in force surrounding the landing point, it was about as secure as we could make it. Still, all it would take was one lucky RPG fired from beyond the range of our lads, and the Chinook would be toast.
On the deck our worst casualty, Private David ‘Davey’ Graham was being worked on by the company medics. He had a bloodstained bandage strapped around his middle, to keep his guts in, where a burst of AK-47 fire had torn into him. Plus he had drip-bags pumping fluid in to replace all the blood and liquids he’d lost.
Eighteen-year-old Davey Graham was a Minimi-gunner, and having that drum-fed light machine gun at the cutting edge of the patrol had made perfect sense. Davey had taken point, leading 2 Platoon into the enemy terrain.
The ambush had come from out of nowhere, at five metres’ range. Davey had taken three rounds under the breastplate of his body armour, and as he’d twisted and fallen a fourth had hit him in the backside. The enemy gunman had stepped around a tree to finish Davey off, levelling an AK-47 at his head.
Before he could open fire, the soldier behind Davey had rushed forward and shot the enemy fighter twice, in the face. He’d then grabbed Davey’s body under fire, and dragged him back into the safety of the main body of troops.
Amazingly, Private Graham was still conscious as the medics worked on him. He even asked Andy, the press photographer, to shoot pictures of him as they casevac’d him out of there. Andy had one problem. As the ambush was sprung and Davey had been hit, Andy had dived on to the deck, snapping the lens off his top-notch camera.
He’d flung the broken bit of camera kit at the enemy. Then he and John, his fellow reporter, had hunkered down as the bullets and grenades, and then the 20mm strafes and the big bombs had rained down all around them. Somehow, unbelievably, everyone had got out of there alive.
Sergeant Major Peach popped a green smoke grenade,
to mark the landing zone, and I cleared the Chinook in to land. The massive helicopter came swooping in, banking hard and low across the river, the unmistakeable thwoop-thwoop-thwoop of the twin rotors beating out a powerful rhythm on the air.
It took nine men to lift Davey’s makeshift stretcher, with one holding up the drip. They rushed him out to the Chinook, clambering through flooded irrigation ditches and hauling him over treacherous mudbanks. The two other injured lads had nasty shrapnel wounds, but even so they tried to refuse to leave their mates, and the battlefield. The OC had to order them on to the Chinook. He told them that for today at least their war was over. Once they’d been patched up at Camp Bastion, he’d get them straight back out to the Triangle. We got that Chinook in and out without it being hit, and the wounded en route to the best medical care a British field hospital can offer.
With the heavy in the air, I got the call from the F-15s above.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude One Three: low fuel, we’re bugging out. Stay safe down there.’
‘Roger. And look fellas, absolutely fucking fantastic. You saved our fat arses today, ’cause we were right in the proverbial. Top job.’
‘That’s what we’re here for, Widow Seven Nine. It’s not us who’s down there taking the hits — we’re just up above y’all.’
‘Aye, and we owe you guys a good few beers.’
‘Affirmative,’ the pilot laughed. ‘Meantime, we’ll drink a few for you at KAF.’
KAF is Kandahar Airfield, where the F-15s were based. And from that day on if ever I had an F-15 check into my ROZ, I’d always have a ‘how’re you doing’ passed down for Widow Seven Nine, from those two pilots who’d fought above us that day. The pilot of Dude One Three was a Captain Tabkurut, or at least that’s what his name sounded like. A lot of the 2 MERCIAN lads — not to mention us lot — owe him and his wing our lives.
An hour later we were back at PB Sandford. Ugly Five Zero had stayed with us all the way up Route Crow, shadowing us in until the gates clanged shut on the last man of the patrol.
I glanced around me. There were lads everywhere slumped against the walls, wiping the sweat and shit and blood off their faces. Every man was a picture of shattered exhaustion. The looks in the eyes said it all: How the hell did we get out of that lot? With the last of their energy, lads struggled out of body armour and helmets. The adrenaline was pissing out of our veins now, to be replaced by a crushing, leaden fatigue. The OC had ordered all men on foot patrols to wear full body armour and helmets: today’s action had proven his decision 100 per cent the right one.
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