I can’t remember where the mortar landed. We were getting hit on such a regular basis I’d given up noticing. Anyway, the Sky crew must’ve decided they had enough in the can by now, for they moved off with the convoy back to FOB Price. I wasn’t overly sad to see them go. At least it meant I could stop hiding in the back of the Vector.
Later, I rang home and spoke to the wife. She sounded unusually excited, and it turned out I’d been spotted on TV. They’d been watching Sky News, and all of a sudden there was a report from our base. There was a scene of me in the back of the wagon in my shorts and T-shirt, on the TACSAT talking to some air.
Harry had rushed forward and pointed at the screen: ‘Look! Look! There’s Daddy!’
I didn’t tell Nicola about my toilet troubles of earlier. I preferred the image of me in the back of the Vector looking manly, to me and Alex having a cosy chat in the shitters.
We had two new developments on the Intel front, but it was hard to assess how real they were. We had Intel from elders who’d approached a patrol. Word was that the enemy had brought in a seriously big weapon with which to hit us. There was no telling exactly what it was, but it was a step up from what we were used to.
The second lump of Intel came to me via a spy plane. The aircraft had picked up enemy comms about a new commander arriving in the Triangle. Commander Hadin was a nephew of Commander Jamali — the previous big cheese and the cop killer — the guy I’d smashed with the Harrier, putting a JDAM through the roof of his ‘hardened position’.
We had no idea how accurate the first piece of Intel was. But apparently, Commander Hadin was getting his men in position and ‘was ready to attack soon’.
In which case, the OC decided we’d go and pick a scrap with them first.
Twenty Four
WOLF MAN
Like all good battle plans, this one was simplicity itself. We’d take a big patrol down to Alpha Xray. We’d do whatever it took to get a rise out of the enemy at Golf Bravo Nine One, their front line of defence. Once they’d revealed themselves, I’d flatten them from the air.
We went out in provocative strength. The patrol consisted of the new OC, his HQ element, our entire five-man FST, plus two platoons. By the time we’d reached Alpha Xray we’d not had a sniff from the enemy. It was dark, and we decided to try a new ruse on their fighters over at Golf Bravo Nine One.
We got a sound commander set up on the roof of Alpha Xray. The sound commander is basically an enormous speaker — the sort of thing you’d have stacks of at a Motörhead concert to pump up the volume and blow your eardrums. It sits on its own legs, and has a microphone into which you can talk.
I had one eye glued to the Rover terminal, which was feeding me images from the air. I could see the positions all around Golf Bravo Nine One picked out in the eerie green glow of the aircraft’s infrared scanners, but not the hint of a glowing human figure could be seen.
I spoke into the microphone: ‘Aye-up, Talitubbies, it’s us lot here.’
My voice boomed out over the darkened, silent landscape, echoing back to us. All around the battle-scarred rooftop figures hunched over their weapons — SA80s, grenade launchers, Gimpys and the big 50-cal. I handed the microphone to Alan, our terp, so he could translate as best he could what I was saying.
Over the days and weeks Alan had become more and more like one of the team. As Sticky’s beard had thickened, so he and Alan had ended up looking like identical twins. I’d made the two of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder whilst I took a photo. When Sticky saw it he had to admit that they did look like two grinning idiot-brothers.
The photo got passed around a bit, and Alan had got renamed ‘Sticky’s Brother’. That’s what we all knew him as now. I had no idea how he was going to take to the sound commander ruse. But we knew how much he hated the Taliban, so we had to presume that he’d like it. So far he was doing a cracking job of translating my words.
‘Now, here’s a thing,’ I continued. ‘You might not know this, but Hadin, your new commander, he’s on our payroll. That’s how we keep tracking you down with them big bombs. Hadin’s one of ours. He’s on our side. So what d’you reckon to that, Talitubbies?’
I stopped talking, and Sticky’s Bro translated. The echoes rolled in from the shadows and the darkness. The silence that followed was broken by a distant cry — the first bellowed response from the enemy. Golf Bravo Nine One was less than two hundred metres away, and the voice drifted over to us faintly on the still night air.
‘British soldier! First we fuck you, and then we fuck your women! Allahu akbar! Allahu…’
The sound commander drowned him out. ‘Complete load of bollocks!’ I started yelling, but Sticky’s Brother grabbed the microphone.
‘You meant to say that you fight like women!’ he yelled. ‘In fact the British soldiers’ wives fight better than you can!’
Sticky’s Bro was grinning from ear to ear. I was praying for the hidden enemy fighters to show themselves. I kept checking my Rover terminal for any sign of their presence. As soon as they were spotted I’d get the call from the air, and we’d mallet them. Stacked above I had two Apaches, a solo A-10 Warthog, a pair of Harrier jets, and a B-1B up high. Each aircraft was scouring the ground, and I was just waiting to get the call. We were the priority air mission for the night, and I had reserve air until morning.
‘Hadin’s a British spy, you daft clefts!’ one of the 2 MERCIAN lads yelled out. Everyone was getting into it now. ‘Get wise! Hadin’s on our bloody payroll.’
Suddenly, the radio chatter went wild, as Commander Hadin himself responded: ‘Don’t listen to them, brothers! It’s all propaganda and lies! Don’t listen!’
The OC ordered the platoon to open up from the rooftop with the 50-cal, and the Gimpys. Blasts of tracer went arcing into the night, sending fingers of hungry fire groping towards the hidden enemy positions. When there was no response, I got Sticky’s Brother to yell out the Pashto equivalent of: ‘You’re a bunch of fucking fannies: you won’t even fire back at us when we’re itching for a fight.’
Again the enemy chatter went mad. ‘They’re trying to provoke you to open fire!’ Commander Hadin was yelling. ‘Don’t fire! Hold your fire! They’ll see you if you open fire!’
‘Hadin told us you’d come out to fight tonight!’ Sticky’s Bro yelled. ‘But looks like you’re soft as shit! What are you, a bunch of men or a bunch of girls?!’
I gave Sticky’s Brother an approving grin. He gave me a cheeky smile in return. All we needed was one round to be fired, and the eyes in the sky would detect the muzzle flash, and I could call in the bombs.
‘Hold firm! Hold firm!’ Hadin urged his men. ‘Stay in your positions! Hold your fire!’
At this point the Apaches picked up two heat sources moving through the trees. I glanced at the fluorescent blue-green glow of my Rover screen. Sure enough, two fuzzy heat blobs were creeping towards us, but no weapons were visible. No Afghan civvies would be creeping through Golf Bravo Nine One at night, of that I was certain, but under the rules of engagement we couldn’t just take them out. I told the Apache pilots to fire warning shots, then fly off into the open desert as if they were leaving.
Moments later the image on my screen erupted in a shower of white-hot sparks, as the 30mm cannon rounds tore into the earth to one side of the target. The heat blobs froze, and a second later they had disappeared. They’d either covered themselves in blankets, to hide their heat signatures, or snuck underground. They didn’t have to get very deep before the infrared scanners on the aircraft would lose them.
Gradually, the sound of the Apache’s rotor blades faded away on the hot night air. The jets were too high and too distant to be audible.
‘We’ve even sent the helicopters away!’ Sticky’s Brother yelled, once the sky had fallen silent. ‘Maybe now you’ll be brave enough to fight us!’
Still there was no response. It was getting a bit frustrating. I suggested to Major Hill that we tell the enemy that we had them surrounded.
They just might get a flap on and open fire. The OC thought it a grand idea. I was about to do just that, when Sticky’s Brother reported a new item on the intercepts.
‘Commander Hadin’s saying that he has us surrounded. He’s saying he’s got Alpha Xray surrounded.’
For a moment I stared at Sticky’s Bro in confusion. ‘Hold on a minute, that was our idea… We were supposed to say that.’
Then the first spine-chilling wolf howls rent the darkness. Scores of enemy fighters started calling to one another, and as they did so we realised they were all around us.
There’s not a lot that’s spookier than the way the enemy do these animal howls at night. The chorus went up from one fighter to another, and on and on and on. They had crept in unnoticed and they had us surrounded. They sounded close, like spitting-distance close.
I locked eyes with Sticky. ‘Where the fuck did they come from?’
He shrugged, keeping one eye glued to his night scope. ‘Maybe we should’ve played them Barney the Dinosaur after all.’
The spine-chilling howls went circling around and around the darkened rooftop. I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up. We’d set out to trap them in the open and waste them, but instead they’d encircled us.
‘Widow Seven Nine, all call signs in my ROZ,’ I spoke urgently into my radio. ‘Can you see anything? They’re all around us at Alpha Xray.’
‘Bone Eight One, negative.’
‘Recoil Seven Four, negative.’
‘Hog One Five, negative.’
‘Arrow Six Seven, negative.’
Arrow was the US Apache’s call sign. Bloody fantastic. That was two Apaches, an A-10, a pair of Harriers and a B-1B — and none of them had seen a sausage. Somehow, the enemy had crept in right under our noses without being detected. So much for the sound commander ruse, and our eyes in the sky.
‘Is that the best you bunch of women can manage?’ Sticky’s Bro bawled into the microphone. ‘Instead of howling like dogs, why don’t you come out and fight us?’
We carried on abusing them for a while, but all we got in answer were those wolf cries. If we couldn’t beat ’em, maybe we should join them. I started howling into the microphone. Sticky’s Brother stared at me for a second, and then he was laughing his wheels off.
The rest of the lads on the rooftop got right into it, and soon we were all howling away. So there we were — them barking at us and us barking at them. It truly was barking. After a while the enemy still hadn’t opened fire, and we realised that our howls weren’t cutting it. I reckoned we should’ve brought Woofer with us, and given him a go on the sound commander.
Woofer had stuck with us through thick and thin. No matter how many times PB Sandford got hammered by mortars, 107s or RPGs, Woofer never deserted us. The lads appreciate real loyalty, and we had warmed to Woofer as only British soldiers can. He was fat and sleek and healthy, in spite of all the running for cover from the bullets and bombs.
In fact, PB Sandford was getting to be a right zoo. A flock of ducks had colonised the pool of dirty water next to the well. The lads were forever going and feeding them bits and pieces from the ratpacks that they didn’t much fancy. The ducks were as happy as pigs in shit, and they’d recently been joined by a bunch of noisy, nosey chickens.
Plus there were all the stray cats that the lads were feeding with their leftovers. I’m not such a cat man myself, but I did kind of warm to the chickens. But what won top prize had to be Throp’s donkey. One day he’d turned up at the gates riding bareback on a donkey, a set of makeshift reins gripped in the one hand. Throp’s a big lad, and as he trotted back and forth on the ridge line his toes could touch the ground. He had the lot of us killing ourselves. What made it all the funnier was that Throp never once so much as smiled, or lost his composure. You’d have thought he was riding the Grand National, the way he carried on.
But no matter what animal noises we tried down at Alpha Xray, not a thing seemed to do it: we just couldn’t get a rise out of the enemy. It never got close to kicking off, and by 0300 I’d lost all my air. There was nothing for it: along with the rest of the lads I dossed down on the dirt at Alpha Xray and slept like a lamb.
With Woofer to keep fed, Sticky had one more mouth to cater for. He’d taken to boiling up job lots of meals-in-the-bag in the empty GPMG ammo tin. The day after our warped night’s howling at the enemy, Sticky went to hoof the lid off the tin to check on his cordon bleu cooking. As he did so, the pressure blew up in his face.
The ammo tin let rip and Sticky was left soaking wet and howling. The lot of us couldn’t help it — we were rolling around on the dirt with laughter. That was until we realised how badly he’d been hurt. His face was blistering up, as were his forearms. Sticky was so bad he had to be casevaced to Camp Bastion. Word was that he’d be out of action for a couple of days at least, and the medics were worried that he’d have permanent scars. Still, the show had to go on.
Twenty Five
JASON’S MAD MISSION
At stand-to the following morning I had an A-10 check in to my ROZ. As per usual, the airwaves were going crazy, with Commander Hadin urging his men to ‘ignore the jet, and prepare to attack the main camp of the enemy’.
We’d heard it all before, and most of the 2 MERCIAN lads went back to their pits to get some extra kip. But the intercepts were as good an excuse as any to give those lads a second early-morning wake-up call.
‘Hog Zero Three, Widow Seven Nine,’ I radioed the pilot above. ‘Sitrep. We’re TIC-imminent. I need a low-level show of force over the top of our position.’
‘Yes, sir. Commencing my run-in now for a show of force.’
I stood on the roof searching all around me for the Warthog. I could hear the growing whine of its jet engines as it swooped in towards us. All of a sudden the squat, ugly black form of the jet reared out of the sunrise, wingtips just over the HESCO walls.
The pilot screamed over the compound, banking around the sangar, the tidal wave roar of his passing smashing into the base. From JTAC Central the pilot was level with me, he was that low.
I was just getting on my TACSAT to congratulate him on a firstclass show of force, when the lads came tumbling out of their beds, fully tooled up and ready to rumble.
Everyone was screaming all at once: ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
Then they noticed me on the roof doubled up.
‘What the fuck?’ someone started yelling.
‘What’re you up to, you wanker?’ another cried.
‘We’re TIC-imminent,’ I managed to choke out. ‘I had to do a low-level…’
‘Fuck off we are!’ one of the lads cried.
‘All the fucking terps are asleep!’ roared another.
‘You crazy fucker!’ yelled a third.
‘We are, lads,’ I insisted. ‘We’re TIC-imminent. It was all for your own good.’
Later that morning some elders turned up at the gates. The top news was that we’d smashed a lot of enemy with the air missions over the last few days. It was amazing how much Intel we could get off the locals. They wanted the Taliban out of the Triangle just as much as we did, and would risk brutal reprisals against them or their families. More often than not we’d be wandering about in the Green Zone, stop to have a chat with someone, and there’d be a peachy bit of information passed over.
Whenever we were out on patrol and it wasn’t kicking off, the kids would gather round. The local nippers were fascinated by us lot of pasty-faced foreigners carrying all this space-age kit. We’d hand out the sweets, and as we did so I’d try and whip the caps off the nearest boys’ heads. The locals wore these skull caps beaded in all different colours. A lot of the boys looked to be around seven or eight years old, the same kind of age as my Harry. Like him, they were cheeky and curious, and they loved playing that dodge-the-crazy-foreigner-hat-grabber game.
It was crap for security, of course, for any one of those kids could have been a suicide bomber. But it was great for hearts and minds. It was o
bvious you couldn’t win over the locals without having contact with them, and there was no better point of contact than the kids.
The locals wanted the Taliban out of The Triangle just as much as we did. And once they were gone, the elders wanted things to go back ‘to normal’, which meant they wanted pretty much the same as we did. With things ‘back to normal’ we’d all return to a life at home with our folks. We’d be reunited with wives and kids and girlfriends, and put Helmand behind us. And here in the Triangle the locals could plant their crops, feed their families and put their kids through school, in the hope that life might improve in the future.
But not with the Taliban holding sway. Those bearded lunatics wanted to force the country back into the Dark Ages. In some warped, pseudo-medieval throwback, girls would be banned from school, women treated like cattle, and non-Muslims declared the eternal enemy. Under their rule, the most a young lad like my Harry could aspire to was to blow himself up, with the promise of seventy-two virgins to follow.
With the elders warning us that Commander Hadin was shipping in new fighters, the fight looked to be far from over. Sure enough, that evening Alpha Xray got whacked. It was 1900 hours when a volley of RPGs smashed into the base walls. With each new hit the cracks in the rooftop were getting ever wider, and new splits in the walls kept appearing. Sooner or later one of those rocket-propelled grenades was going to smash open AX, and cause carnage in there.
My fellow JTAC across the river at PB Arnhem had a pair of Apaches on hand. I borrowed one, and got it fast into the overhead. Chris ordered the mortar and artillery units to go to ‘check fire’ — to cease firing — so the gunship could hunt out the enemy.
As soon as the Ugly call sign was audible, the firefight died to nothing. I got the Apache over Golf Bravo Nine One, and within minutes the pilot had detected four enemy fighters. The Taliban were nothing if not creatures of habit: the stupid sods had been hitting Alpha Xray from the crater left by a previous thousand-pound JDAM strike. I still had the coordinates of that airstrike in my little black JTAC log: I passed them up to the Apache, and cleared him in to do four strafes with 30mm. The enemy were hardly able to scramble up the sides of the crater, before all four of them were whacked.
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