Painting the Sand

by Kim Hughes GC

She nodded and turned away, bringing to an end possibly the worst R & R anyone could ever wish for. I was both physically and mentally exhausted, exactly the opposite of what I was meant to be. Slowly, on the last day, I began to feel the full impact of what a failed marriage meant. Was I going to be able to see my son regularly? How was I going to be able to pay maintenance? Only the prospect of returning to Afghan and reuniting with my team seemed to lighten the mood.

  I spent the last few hours playing with my son, squeezing as much time as I could out of what was left and knowing there was the very real prospect that as I left the house I might never see him again. I gave him one final hug, kissed his head one last time before turning to my wife.

  ‘Right, I’m off.’

  ‘Yeah fine,’ she said with a half smile. There were no hugs or kisses, no warmth, not even a ‘Look after yourself.’

  I walked out of the door and turned back to wave looking at them for one last time before climbing into Stu’s car and heading off to RAF Brize Norton for the flight back to Afghan. Stu and Lee tried to chat but my monosyllabic responses ultimately stymied their well-intentioned efforts and the majority of the journey was completed in a tense silence.

  I said goodbye to the guys and walked into the departure lounge and immediately clocked Dave and Lewis – both of them were smiling and looked well rested.

  ‘How did you get on?’ I asked Lewis.

  ‘Fucking mega. I was on the piss for most of it and can’t really remember what happened. Brilliant time.’

  Dave was also full of it. Both had ripped the arse out of R & R, exactly what young soldiers should do.

  ‘How was yours?’ Lewis asked, with a knowing smile, expecting a detailed account of a married man’s two weeks of endless sex and home-cooked meals.

  ‘Yeah, fair to middling, mate.’ I had no intention of dropping a massive downer on either of them. The last thing they needed was to think that my head wasn’t in the right place.

  The RAF Tristar climbed into a glorious English summer sky and for the first time in two weeks I began to relax. I plugged myself into my iPod, closed my eyes and smiled to myself. Afghan was just fourteen hours away and I couldn’t wait.

  14

  Sangin – Death in the Wadi

  If there was one place in Helmand feared and loathed by soldiers in equal measure it was Sangin, a scruffy, lawless, violent town in the north of the province. Sangin was the nexus of the drugs trade in Helmand and until the British arrived in 2006, it was largely in the hands of warlords, who had a vested interest in keeping the British out.

  By 2009, the town had become a graveyard for British troops. Its streets, narrow alleyways and bombed-out houses had become soaked in the blood of British soldiers and the more soldiers that were sent the harder the Taliban fought back. The Sangin Taliban were rumoured to be the fiercest in Helmand – rather like the South Armagh IRA in Northern Ireland. They showed no fear and were not intimidated either by the modern Western soldier or his formidable weaponry. It was rumoured that Sangin was used as a testing ground to ‘blood’ Taliban volunteers in battle. Those who survived progressed up the ranks or were sent to other parts of the province in the belief that if they could survive Sangin, anywhere else would be a breeze.

  The three years of war that followed the arrival of the British Paras in 2006 had left its scars on the town. Most of the homes close to the main British base had been abandoned or turned to rubble. The rest of the town was a sprawling maze of archetypal Afghan compounds with sixteen-foot-high, mud-baked walls channelling soldiers into killing zones carefully constructed by the Taliban.

  In the centre was a bustling bazaar selling just about everything from Chinese motorbikes to electric fans. Shopkeepers would offer beguiling smiles to the British soldiers and their Afghan colleagues. But the handshakes and the friendly waves couldn’t hide the town’s true nature. Sangin was evil, there’s no other way to describe it. You might argue that a town can’t have a human character trait but I assure you it can. For the British squaddie, there was nothing good in Sangin, nothing redeemable. It was hate, pure hate and it was all directed at us.

  I returned from R & R on 12 August 2009. Stepping off the Hercules, I was immediately greeted by the unforgiving furnace-like heat of Bastion in high summer. By the time I got to the EOD Task Force Ops Room I was soaked in sweat and feeling dehydrated. Dust coated the back of my throat and clogged my nostrils. It was only a matter of time before my snot turned black.

  ‘Kim, welcome back,’ Jim announced as I entered the Ops Room. A few unfamiliar faces turned and looked at me.

  ‘You’re going to Sangin,’ he announced matter-of-factly. ‘Oz is down with chronic shits and we need to send another team in ASAP.’ Oz must have been seriously unwell if another team was being sent in. For some reason Oz regarded Sangin as his patch and had become something of a legend among the unit based there.

  ‘Sangin, of all the fucking places,’ I thought to myself. Everyone was getting smashed in Sangin, the infantry, the IEDD teams, even choppers were coming under fire. Officers, noncommissioned officers, rookies and experienced soldiers on their second Afghan tour were being killed or losing their legs every day.

  ‘When?’ I fired back, my mind racing.

  ‘Tomorrow morning. You leave on a 5 a.m. flight. Make sure your team’s shit is squared away. The area’s been a bitch the last couple of weeks.’

  The UK already seemed a world away and now I was going into Sangin – it was more of a mind fuck than culture shock.

  Malley was the only one in the tent and he greeted me with a smile that didn’t last long.

  ‘Go and round up the rest of the guys – we’re back out tomorrow. I want everyone here in thirty mins.’

  The team hadn’t seen each other for almost two weeks and I suppose we had all gone a bit soft – R & R does that. It tricks soldiers into believing that they will be rejuvenated and ready for another three months in the arsehole of the world but in reality it’s just a reminder of what’s being missed.

  As soon as the word ‘Sangin’ was announced the room fell silent. There were no complaints, no whinging. But their faces told another story. They were wondering whether we’d make it, whether in a week’s time we’d still be together and that was anybody’s guess. I wanted the guys to be kept busy so I ordered a thorough check of everything.

  ‘I don’t want to get there and find we’ve left something behind. Bring everything you think we’ll need plus any goodies you want.’

  We were ready and waiting at the Bastion HLS at 4.00 a.m. for a 5.00 a.m. flight. Those who smoked sucked on their cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Others chatted and a few loud laughs split the early morning silence.

  Over in the east night began to give way to day and then one by one we climbed on board an empty Chinook along with several young ashen-faced battle-casualty replacements, whose first test of war in Afghan would be Sangin. The chopper’s wheels lifted and Bastion fell away, disappearing into the pre-dawn gloom and I wondered whether I would ever see it again. It would take around forty minutes to fly from Bastion but it would be like entering another world. Sangin boasted a 360-degree front line and firefights with the Taliban were so routine that only the most serious were acknowledged. It was often said that the only good thing about Sangin was leaving.

  One of the RAF aircrew on board the Chinook was manning a mini-gun, an electric multi-barrelled machine gun capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute. He frantically scanned the ground below searching for the Taliban. The Chinook banked left and right as it swung towards the town. The RAF loadmaster, chewing nervously, indicated by lifting a finger that it was one minute to landing before the chopper dropped out of the sky onto the HLS. Above two Apaches gunship helicopters bristling with weaponry provided over-watch.

  The British base was called FOB Jackson and it sat astride the cool, green waters of the Helmand river. On one side of the river was a large concrete-grey building called the Fire Support Tower,
which bore the heavy scars of months of battle. Bullet-riddled sandbag-filled holes where windows had once been and soldiers’ graffiti provided a commentary of who had served, fought and died in the base. On the other side of the river was the battalion headquarters, effectively a mortar-proof hut where the commanding officer and his operation team lived, planned and plotted.

  A large concert building, also pock-marked with the signs of recent battle, housed the stabilisation team, whose official job description was to bring security and normality to the area. The irony wasn’t lost on the soldiers serving in Sangin – who had dubbed it a ‘Town Called Malice’. The building was rumoured to have once been owned by a drugs lord and its garish mirrored walls and ceilings suggested as much.

  Across from the HQ was a small memorial dedicated to those who had died fighting in the town. There was also a large sand-coloured tented dining area, soldiers’ accommodation, showers, makeshift gym and vast HLS, about the size of a football pitch. Long-drop toilets, contained within wooden cubicles and best avoided in the heat of the day because of the overpowering stench, were dotted around the area ensuring that the smell of human shit was ever-present. The entire complex was surrounded by a huge Hesco wall.

  In summer the temperatures easily topped 37°C during the day and dropped to a slightly less stifling 26°C once the sun had set. The one, possibly the only, benefit of Sangin was the Helmand river. The soldiers called the river ‘morale’ on the basis that their morale soared every time they went for a swim. The river had become a meeting place where the guys could relax, wash their clothes and forget about the war and the constant threat of death for a few short minutes. It was the only thing that made Sangin bearable.

  Fresh rations were a rarity and the dreaded diarrhoea and vomiting sickness or D & V, which had afflicted soldiers in Afghanistan since the days of Kipling, remained the soldiers’ curse. The problem had become so bad that a separate quarantine area had been created where those disabled by illness were under orders to remain until they were disease free.

  The streets close to the base were deserted due to the nonstop fighting but the design and layout meant that they were almost impossible to secure. The Taliban routinely sneaked in under the cover of darkness and laid bomb after bomb, some just yards away from the base, almost every day. Every road, every street, every step had to be cleared by soldiers whose only defence against the IED was the metal detector. Bombs were hidden in walls and trees, in rubbish dumps, abandoned buildings, dead animals; it was one big minefield.

  The base was now home to the 2nd Battalion, the Rifles, an infantry regiment, reinforced by small sub-units of troops from across the Army. The Rifles were recruited from across Britain and had been formed from the amalgamation of the Light Infantry, the Royal Green Jackets, the Devon and Dorset Regiment, Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Infantry. The battalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Rob Thomson and roughly two companies of soldiers, around two hundred men, were based at FOB Jackson, along with a platoon of soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who had been drafted in as reinforcements. The rest of the unit was split among numerous other patrol bases in and around the town.

  From the HLS my team was taken to our home for the next week – an airless, mortar-proof bunker, composed of Hesco blocks and a reinforced roof, known as a ‘Hesco House’. The air inside was fetid and smelt of someone else’s sweat. Each bed-space contained a cot enclosed within a mozzie net and a few hanging shelves. It wasn’t much but it was enough and none of us intended on spending much time inside. The buildings were oven-hot during the day and only mildly cooler at night. Sleep was often impossible, unless you were utterly exhausted, which most of the time we were.

  After dumping my kit, I made my way to the D & V quarantine tent to find Oz and get as much of a brief as possible on what Sangin was likely to have in store. Serving in Sangin was hard enough but trying to do it while throwing your ring up was something else. Just outside the tent, which was Army green and about twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet, was a long-drop latrine, and nearby pallets of water and rations being baked in the sun. It was as if those inside were being punished for being sick.

  Inside the tent was the nauseating stench of human shit and vomit. There were six beds, occupied by three, waxy-white, sweating soldiers, wearing shorts and T-shirts and looking as though death would be a welcome outcome.

  Oz had spent the last few days shitting water and looked terrible. He was hollow-cheeked and had acquired a grey complexion. He looked as though he had lost at least half a stone in weight. A medic who seemed to be reluctantly attending to the needs of the sick told me not to shake his hand, get too close or touch anything and my time was limited to just a few minutes.

  ‘Hello, mate.’

  Oz pushed himself up onto his elbows. ‘Kim, welcome to the gayest town in Helmand. You’ll have fun here,’ he said, swotting away flies buzzing around his mouth.

  Although ill, Oz was still on good form. The conversation lasted for just a few minutes, before the smile slipped from his face and his eyes hardened.

  ‘You can’t afford to fuck up here, mate. You’ve got to make sure your guys are switched on. Terry watches everything. Do the same thing twice and he’ll have you.’

  Oz had become a legend in the Rifles and everyone from the commanding officer down seemed to worship him. For most of that day, everywhere I went I was told how Oz did this or Oz did that. How there was no job he would refuse and how his work had saved dozens of lives. No pressure then, I said to myself, wondering quite how I was going to fill his very big boots. I wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Later that evening I attended a briefing for an operation due to take place before first light the next day. The briefing took place in the airless Ops Room where electric fans were working overtime but made little difference to the stifling heat.

  The operation was called Ghartse Khers. Every mission had a Pashto as well as an English name to demonstrate that all operations were ‘joint’ and run in conjunction with the Afghan National Army. The operation was a search and clearance mission along one of the main roads into the town centre, called Route Carrot. Not surprisingly the brief from the intelligence officer indicated that the chance of attack was high, with the main threat coming from IEDs.

  Over the course of an hour, the company commander leading the operation explained how all routes would be led by experienced soldiers clearing paths with metal detectors and any IEDs were to be confirmed and cleared by Brimstone 42. Once the company had reached Route Carrot, my team would take over and conduct the clearance. At one end of the route were two compounds called Eagle 12 and Eagle 13, which would also have to be cleared. On paper it was a fairly routine, no-dramas mission and a good opportunity for the team to get a feel for the area. The Rifles were being supported by a platoon of soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers partly because so many of their own had been killed and injured in the last few months and it was their men who would lead the operation and face the most risk.

  Reveille was 3.30 a.m. and after a quick brew those taking part in the operation wearily made their way to the assembly point, the base’s rear gate, by 4.00 a.m. The last few minutes before departure were spent checking weapons and radios. The glow of cigarettes in the predawn darkness illuminated the youthful faces of soldiers prematurely aged by the stress of war. There was little if any banter. Everyone knew that the likelihood of taking casualties was high. They had all seen friends suffer appalling injuries and die. And for most of them the odds of getting out of Sangin unscathed were shortening by the day.

  At 4.30 a.m. we set off, in single file, out into the night, following the footsteps of Lance Corporal James ‘Fully’ Fullarton, a tough, super-fit soldier from Coventry. Fully was call sign Hades One Zero, the lead search man and his job was to search a clear safe path from the base, through a wadi to Route Carrot.

  The first part of the patrol followed one of the tributaries to the Helmand river and wi
thin about ten minutes of leaving Jackson we were shin-deep in water. Although wet, I was pleased with Fully’s route choice because, as far as anyone knew, the Taliban hadn’t found a way of placing IEDs in a river. Silently snaking its way along the river, the column of troops stopped, started, stopped. Clouds of mosquitoes buzzed into my mouth and dined on my face and arms. Every now and then I turned around and checked on my team, making sure we were still together.

  After several hundred metres Fully led the patrol out of the water and into the wide, dry riverbed, known as a wadi, which served as a road for locals and British alike. The Rifles had used the wadi on numerous occasions but were cautious enough to vary the route whenever possible. It was still dark but the first signs of a new dawn could be seen over in the east where the sky was lightening. I instinctively became more cautious and felt my grip tighten on my rifle. The Taliban didn’t have any night vision equipment so their attacks were largely confined to daylight hours. I turned again to check on the guys behind me when the earth shook beneath my feet. In that fraction of a second before I heard the explosion I knew what had happened. The sound of the blast pierced the silence and everyone stopped as if suddenly frozen. It was 4.56 a.m. The operation had been active for just twenty-six minutes.

  The now-familiar sound of home-made explosives detonating was unmistakable, like thunder reverberating around the valley. The first word that entered my consciousness was IED. Everyone instinctively dropped to the ground and took cover, while Dave listened into the net for any reports of casualties. I expected a call at any moment but I didn’t want to act until I was needed. There was probably enough chaos and confusion without me throwing my oar in.

  A few minutes later news rippled back that there had been a casualty and an HLS needed to be cleared and marked. Straight away the search team led by Chidders, who was now the commander, went into action, slick and fast, clearing an area large enough for the MERT to land.