With the last days of the tour upon us, we were being held in reserve for the operation. But we were in no doubt that we were going to get used at some stage or another. In addition to which we expected our own world of trouble. Once the lads went in to take Qada Kalay, it was bound to stir up a hornets’ nest in the Triangle.
I was told to put together an air plan for the coming operation. I knew there’d be several JTACs working on it, and I talked it through with Damo over the air. We decided to put together a High Density Air Control Zone (HIDACZ). One JTAC would be in overall control, and we’d break the area down into kill-boxes each controlled by a separate JTAC.
I got the job of being the HIDACZ commander. Under me were Widow Eight Seven, across at PH Arnhem, the guy I’d kept nicking air from. Then there was Sergeant Dave Greenland, a fellow JTAC and a bit of a living legend, who’d be embedded with the Afghan National Army (ANA) troops. My old mentor — the guy who’d been all teared up after overhearing my first live drops — Grant ‘Cuff’ Cuthbertson, would be with the C Company 2 MERCIAN lads. Plus Sergeant ‘Bes’ Berry, the guy who’d nicked my boots to replace the broken pair, was going in with the Estonian force. It was going to be a busy old party.
At 0400 the assault force broke into the Green Zone and began its advance. I had two A-10s in the overhead, with a downlink to my Rover screen. From up on JTAC Central I had eyes on the battlefield. Before the lads had pushed two hundred metres forwards it kicked off big time, with the roar of RPGs and the answering thump of our 50-cals echoing across the valley.
Rounds started slamming into the roof at JTAC Central, as the enemy in the Triangle woke up to the assault against Qada Kalay. But no way was I about to leave. I needed eyes on the battlefield to orchestrate the HIDACZ. I passed the A-10s to Dave Greenland, who was in the heart of the battle, so he could start smashing the enemy.
Next I got allocated a new platform, Green Eyes, a drone similar to a Predator. It was brand spanking new in theatre. It proved to have an excellent downlink facility, giving me eyes on the firefight in close-up detail. Via Green Eyes I spotted three males of fighting age exiting a compound, and moving off towards C Company’s position at the top of a ravine. They were carrying heavy, blanketwrapped bundles, but even with Green Eye’s super-optics I couldn’t make out exactly what they were.
I got on to Cuff and described to him exactly what I could see. A couple of minutes later there was the thumping great roar of a 50-cal opening up, and C Company reported three enemy fighters killed in the ravine. Top news. Whatever it was the enemy were carrying, they’d not been able to hit the lads before the lads had hit them.
But the battle wasn’t going all our own way. Sadly, two 2 MERCIAN lads were reported Killed in Action (KIA) in the very first stages of the operation. Although they weren’t from the company that we were embedded with, we felt their loss acutely. Having two KIAs this early in the battle cast a dark cloud over things.
After a day’s rock-hard fighting Qada Kalay was still in enemy hands. We were told that the Danes were coming out to relieve us in the Triangle. We would then loop south via FOB Price, re-bomb and rearm, and join the push past PB Arnhem into the enemy stronghold.
The Danes arrived in a massive, overland convoy, and pushed down Route Crow to Alpha Xray. I had a Predator in the overhead, and I got it flying search transects above the enemy firing points to the east of Golf Bravo Nine One. Nothing was seen, other than one deserted cooking fire.
The Taliban fighters were in there but well hidden, as the intercepts kept confirming. There was a lull in the fighting south of the river, so we reckoned the enemy were planning to have a go against us. Most likely, they were going to hit Alpha Xray, having seen us handing over to the Danes.
At 1300 I got allocated an F-15, Dude Zero One. I brought it over the top of Alpha Xray at thirty metres altitude, firing off flares. Just as soon as he’d done his low-level pass the airwaves were hot about ‘the jet being over us, but we’re in our attack positions’. Our lads were still down at the Alamo, finishing off a very cramped handover with the Danes.
At 2100 it all booted off. Under cover of darkness the enemy had sneaked in right to the very walls, and they hit Alpha Xray with a massive barrage. From up on JTAC Central the base looked like it was the core of a volcano ringed with fire. The Danes’ response was immediate and savage: they were very well equipped, and they weren’t fucking around.
As the Danish troops smashed the enemy back as good as our lads ever had done, we felt certain that we were leaving the Triangle in good hands. I got on the air. Cuff told me he had two Ugly call signs over him, and that I should take one of the Apaches. I got Ugly Five One, talked him around the battle and got him searching. A couple of minutes later I got the call.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Ugly Five One: visual enemy pax with weapons east of Golf Bravo Nine One. They’re in a deep ditch in the treeline.’
I checked the grid that he’d given me. It turned out they were just to the north of the bunker we’d destroyed during Jason’s mad mission. I passed it up to the OC, and he told me to hit them. Throp was getting very excited: just one more enemy kill would take us to an official two hundred.
‘Ugly Five One, Widow Seven Nine: engage target with 30mm.’
‘Roger. Engaging now.’
The lone Apache spat fire into the darkness. The gunship did six 30mm strafes, but still the enemy hadn’t been hit. The hole they were hiding in was providing too good a cover.
‘Ugly Five One, Widow Seven Nine: switch to rockets.’
‘Yeah, no dramas,’ replied the pilot. ‘I’m going to fire four times HISAP CRV7s.’
‘Roger. You’re clear hot.’
HISAP stands for High Incendiary Semi-Armour Piercing — or in layman’s terms, the business. They should be more than capable of wasting that enemy ditch position. A burst of violent yellow flame bloomed on the Apache’s rocket pods, as the missiles fired. They streaked in towards the target, detonating with four sharp cracks in amongst the treeline.
‘BDA,’ I requested.
‘BDA: third and fourth rockets scored direct hits. Four enemy fighters in that ditch have just been nailed across the trees.’
The battle died to nothing, and I handed back the Apache to Cuff.
That was it: 203 kills.
After stand-to the following morning the platoon at Alpha Xray tabbed up Route Crow to join us. AX was now fully in Danish hands. The platoon at Monkey One Echo came across the high ground, leaving a Danish contingent there too. We did a company photo at PB Sandford, and then we mounted up for the road move back to FOB Price.
As we did so, I had very mixed feelings. I’d been with 2 MERCIAN for five and a half months now, and for five of those we’d been fighting to seize and hold the Triangle. During that time Alpha Xray had been smashed to pieces; PB Sandford had been given a right good pounding; and as for Monkey One Echo, there was nothing much there to smash up anyway.
But for better or for worse, the Triangle had become like home. This shitty little patch of the Green Zone had become the front line in the war the British Army were fighting in Helmand. Dozens of times we’d had the enemy at our very walls, especially down at AX. They’d sent in repeated mass assaults to overrun and rout us, but we’d given no quarter.
Sadly, they’d killed a couple of our lads in the Triangle — Sandy and Guardsman Hickey — and we’d suffered a dozen or more seriously wounded. But the enemy losses had to run into the many hundreds: my JTAC log testified to 203 that they’d lost to airstrikes alone. We could feel justifiably proud of what one company of British infantrymen had done here.
We left the Triangle a bunch of scraggy, bearded, shaggy-maned fighters with eyes like saucers, addicted to the adrenaline rush of day after day of full-on combat. During the last two months, it was only the adrenaline that had kept us going. But whilst our leaving was long overdue, we left with nagging regrets.
Somehow, we would all miss the Triangle. Somehow, it still felt li
ke we were abandoning our posts. We’d grown roots here. We’d demonstrated the best of the British Army’s fighting spirit — how with a brew and a cricket-off and the will to fight and win we could take the battle to the enemy, and smash them every time. Now it was all over.
I’d grown closer to my fellow soldiers than ever before, especially those on my FST. To a man we left the Triangle with our heads held high. No one had fucked us out of here: we were leaving of our own free will, at a time of our choosing. And we were handing over to a kick-arse bunch of Viking warriors in the Danes.
Perhaps the feeling was best summed up by Sticky. As Throp got the Vector under way, Sticky and I had our heads thrust out of the turrets, having one last look around the Triangle. Sticky pulled something out of his pocket, and sat it on the turret rim. It was his Snoopy dog key ring, with knobs on, and he got it waving a last goodbye.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I guess it couldn’t last.’
Yet even as we left the Triangle, we knew that the fighting wasn’t over. There was still the big push into Qada Kalay to come. By 1100 we were back at FOB Price, and we set about cleaning all our kit and rearming, and readying ourselves for the next battle. The push into Qada Kalay was scheduled for the off at 0500 the following morning.
It was then that we heard the bad news: a replacement FST was heading down to FOB Price, and they’d more than likely take over from us immediately. We’d started our tour two weeks prior to the 2 MERCIAN lads. It was during that time that we’d done the Sangin assault with 42 Commando. In theory we should be out of theatre two weeks earlier, hence the new FST coming in to replace us.
But that would mean we wouldn’t accompany ‘our lads’ on the big push into Qada Kalay. It was going to be the last op of the tour, and we were unlikely to be going on it. The 2 MERCIAN lads were less than happy. They were kicking off that it was an insane moment to be losing us, and getting a new and untried FST. We didn’t want to leave them, either. We told the OC that no matter what, we wanted in on the Qada Kalay mission. He told us that it wasn’t up to us: orders were orders. A couple of the lads came up to me in the Naafi, where I was getting a brew on.
‘Listen, Bommer, mate — you got to know you saved our bacon out there,’ one of them remarked.
‘Shut up, you clefts,’ I told him. ‘We all helped each other. It’s just we do different jobs, that’s all.’
‘All right, but what about this new FST that’s coming in?’ the other lad said. ‘Come on, mate, it’s dogshit. That lot’ll never have done a drop with us before.’
‘Yeah, but be fair — neither had I when I first arrived,’ I said.
‘But we’re taking bloody Qada Kalay,’ the first lad said. ‘We bloody need you with us, mate.’
‘Look, I’d stay if I bloody well could,’ I told them. ‘When I first arrived I’d never done owt — so you got to give this guy a chance.’
It was all getting a bit tearful, and in truth I reckoned the lads were right. It was a shit time to be losing their FST, on their last op of the tour, and such a major one.
At 2330 the replacement FST was dropped by helicopter at FOB Price. I was up until 0400 doing the handover with the new JTAC, a lanky captain fresh out of the factory. He was being thrown in at the deep end with live targets that shoot naughty bullets that can chafe. He was horribly nervous, just as I had been when I arrived in theatre.
I wanted the guy to have the sort of handover that I’d never had, so I talked him through all the kind of air controls that I’d been doing. He kept staring at me like I was a complete lunatic, especially when I told him about the kind of danger-close air missions that we’d been doing on more or less a daily basis.
‘But you can’t do that,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s breaking all the rules.’
‘I’ve just been doing it for the last six months,’ I told him. But then, six months ago I wouldn’t have believed it possible either.
The last words I said to him were these: ‘Listen, mate, you’re taking over a legend with Widow Seven Nine. Make sure you use it well.’
At 0430 I went out and shook the hand of every man in B Company, 2 MERCIAN. I could feel my chin quivering and the tears pricking my eyes, as they mounted up the vehicles to go out on the op from hell, and without us. I watched until the last vehicle had disappeared through the gates: it was an emotional moment if ever there was one.
Chris, Sticky, Throp, Jess and I got a lift out of FOB Price on some US Army Blackhawk helicopters. En route to Camp Bastion the American pilots offered to do us a slight detour, so we could get an overflight of the area where we’d been doing battle for the last five months — the Triangle.
As we thundered over the battle-scarred terrain, I felt as if I knew every treeline and track and bush intimately. Our lads had fought and bled and died here, but not once had we yielded to the enemy. We flashed overhead PB Sandford and Alpha Xray, and as I gazed down I could see those Danish lads with all their gleaming kit, now holding the front line in the Green Zone.
I glanced south from the Blackhawk’s porthole-like windows. Across the Helmand River lay Qada Kalay, the target of the coming assault by B Company. From this altitude the compounds that we’d marked as the main enemy strongholds were clearly visible.
And I wished that I was on the ground with the lads, going in one last time to smash the enemy.
EPILOGUE
I got back to the UK three days after the B Company 2 MERCIAN lads had gone in on the assault to take Qada Kalay. That operation was a success and none of the lads were killed, which was a massive relief. The Triangle had been turned into a full kill-box, in which to choke off enemy movement throughout the Green Zone.
We had drawn a line across the Green Zone, a line that we had handed over to the Danish battle group, and whoever else might inherit it in the future. Regrettably, I never managed to find and destroy that 120mm mortar tube, or its team of operators. But the Danes had some seriously top-notch kit, and I reckoned their JTAC would be just as capable of finding it and smashing it as ever I was.
Once I was back at home I took my wife, plus Harry and Ella, to Disneyland, as promised. It was a much-needed break for us all. A few weeks later I was down in London for the remembrance service for Paul ‘Sandy’ Sandford, and Daryl Hickey, the two men who had lost their lives seizing the territory that became known as the Triangle.
After the service, I was drinking with Major Butt and Major Hill — our two OCs during the duration of our tour — plus some of the lads, in London’s Tiger Club. We were hitting the Sambucas, and getting well oiled. There was a young lad who kept staring at me, although for the life of me I couldn’t recognise him.
Eventually, he came over to have a word. ‘Bommer,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’
It was Private Graham, the lad who’d been airlifted out of the Green Zone with four bullets in his guts. I couldn’t believe it. They’d done a fantastic job of patching him up. He didn’t seen to have anything much wrong with him. An older bloke came over, and stood on young Davey Graham’s shoulder.
‘I know who you are,’ the guy said to me. ‘I’m Davey’s father, and you’re Bommer. You saved my son’s life. Anything I can do for you, anything — just name it.’
‘Tell you what,’ I said, ‘buy me an ale.’
‘You what?’ said the dad.
‘Buy me a lager-top and we’re quits.’
‘A beer?’ queried the dad.
We were all filling up by now. ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘An ale would be gleaming.’
APPENDICES
Appendix One
FIRE SUPPORT TEAM AND AIR ASSETS IN AFGHANISTAN
Sergeant Grahame’s Fire Support Team (FST) during the siege of Alpha Xray was call sign Opal Five Eight. It consisted of himself, plus four other individuals. The concept behind the FST is that it forms a distinct unit attached to a battle group to direct airstrikes and supporting fire from artillery and mortar teams during intense combat.
Sergeant Grahame had the followin
g air assets at his disposal in Afghanistan:
• A-10 tank-buster ground attack aircraft — call sign Hog
• F-15 fighter jets — call sign Dude
• Apache attack helicopters — call signs Ugly and Arrow
• French Mirage fighter jets — call signs Mamba and Rage
• Dutch Air Force F-16 fighter jets — call sign Rammit
• B-1B supersonic heavy bombers — call sign Bone
• Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — call sign Overlord
• Harrier attack jets — call sign Recoil
• Lynx attack helicopters — call sign Veda
• F-18 fighter jets — call signs City Desk, Wicked, Devo, Voodoo and Uproar
• Chinook transport helicopters — call sign Morphine
• Classified US air assets — call sign Spooky and Dragon
Appendix Two
2 MERCIAN CITATIONS
One 2 MERCIAN soldier would be awarded the CGC for his actions at Rahim Kalay in attempting to rescue Corporal Paul ‘Sandy’ Sandford. For the entirety of 2 MERCIAN’s tour covered in this book, the lads rightfully earned a caseload of medals. The list of decorations includes:
Private PD Willmott — Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (CGC)
Private AS Holmes — Military Cross (MC)
Lieutenant ALC Browne — Mentioned In Dispatches
Sergeant DP Fitzgerald — Mentioned In Dispatches
Lance Corporal MA Joseph (RLC 23 Pioneer Regiment) — Mentioned In Dispatches
The OC for the majority of B Company’s tour, Major Simon Butt, received nothing. In light of the ferocity of the fighting that B Company experienced over their tour, their honours are far from overstated.
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