18 Hours

by Sandra Lee

  To Jock and the blokes at the SAS Regiment in Swanbourne, Howard’s words were music to their ears. The regiment has some of the best and brightest soldiers in the Australian Army and, while the troops are a tightly bonded band of brothers, they are also highly competitive. They are trained to be able to handle any situation — combat, counter-terrorism, rescue and emergencies — and when the opportunity arises, they want to put their training to the test. Being a member of the SAS is as much about the mental side of soldiering as it is the physical side.

  The regimental commanding officer, Gus Gilmore, and the regiment’s 1 Squadron, led by Major Daniel McDaniel, got the job. As the CO, Gilmore took his own close personal protection team and Jock, being the CO’s signaller, was along for the ride. They shipped out with little fanfare in late November 2001.

  ‘I thought I was kissed. It was good, everyone was very envious and jealous just because I got a guernsey,’ Jock says. ‘It’s highly competitive — people will send their mum to jail to get these jobs.

  ‘My work ethic is, when I work, I work till I drop, and Gilmore knows that.’

  The commanding officer had seen Jock and his fellow chooks in action in the centre of Darwin weeks earlier, busting a gut to get the comms system up and running after hitting the ground for the counter-terrorism Olympics exercise.

  ‘We have to set up the link back to Australia for the higher command, and you’ve got to be ready for anything,’ Jock says, explaining the chooks’ role.

  ‘We just bust a move, trunks go flying and trucks are all waiting, and you just hook into it and throw in all the equipment that you need, and you whack your system up. When Gus Gilmore hit the building, he came in and said to my squadron commander for 152, “Col, am I ready to go?” And Col had the greatest pleasure in saying, “Yeah, sit down and start,” because we had been so proficient at setting up. And that staggered the CO. It was a great surprise to Gus Gilmore to find that it was already actually set up. Although we were lathered in sweat and huffing and puffing, at the time he was asking this we were actually sitting on our arses having a rest because it was already done.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The SAS troopers were adaptable, beyond capable, resourceful and innovative, and their ability to live off the land had earned them the nickname of ‘chicken stranglers’, much to their amusement.

  ONE OF THE SAS REGIMENT’S most highly trained sniper-scouts was sitting in the Shahi Kot Valley south of where Jock was under ambush. Johnny and his six-man patrol had infilled into the area after leaving Bagram Air Base the previous Monday. Their job was to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance in the region.

  Johnny had been in the SAS since 1996. He and Jock were great mates, as tight as could be, and had worked together in the same squadron at Swanbourne. They had a shared philosophy when it came to soldiering. Loyalty — watch out for your mates. Ability — do whatever it takes. And honour — do it to the best of your capability and do not let your fellow soldiers down. They also had a shared philosophy when it came to socialising — party hard.

  They were separated in age by three years and, though Jock was older, they were equals. Both began their careers at Kapooka, named after an Aboriginal word for ‘place of wind’, and after basic training Johnny joined the infantry, ending up in the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR) in Townsville, where he excelled in the reconnaissance sniper unit.

  In January of 1993, he was dispatched to Somalia in Operation Solace, under the auspices of the United Nations humanitarian mission to the war-torn country. Somalia was in the throes of anarchy. Thousands of citizens were starving to death as warlords reigned through a campaign of fear and terror. The 1 RAR was charged with undertaking security operations while aid was delivered to the needy.

  In 1996, Johnny was selected to undergo the SAS Regiment’s gruelling, almost unbearable cadre course, which he passed with flying colours. It was a major accomplishment. About 300 soldiers start the selection course each year and only a handful of them go on to become a ‘beret-qualified’ operator, allowing them to wear the sand-coloured beret and ‘Who Dares Wins’ insignia on their uniform. Johnny was then 24 years old. After surviving the regiment’s rigorous eighteen months’ training, he was designated as a scout — the man who goes up front to ensure safe passage for the rest of his squad. Danger work.

  ‘More or less, I was the scout tracker, the guy up front I suppose, the eyes and ears,’ Johnny says. ‘You wouldn’t know that now, though; I’ve lost quite a bit of hearing in my left ear — that was through Iraq.’

  By March of 2002, Johnny was a water operator in B Troop — aka the infamous Beagle Boys — in 1 Squadron. He had two tours of duty under his belt in the thick, almost impassable jungles of East Timor, and had seen active service in Bougainville. He had also been involved in other action in other parts of the world. At the age of 30, Trooper Johnny had seen a lot more in his thirteen years of Army life than a man twice his age would anywhere else.

  Johnny was in Bravo Two Patrol, which had arrived at Bagram late on a Sunday in February, flying in with the rest of the 1 Squadron soldiers on a blacked-out US aircraft. The Aussie soldiers, known as Task Force 64 in Afghanistan, bedded down for a few hours’ sleep, then rose for a hot breakfast before pushing out into the wilds of the Shahi Kot Valley. It would be the last hot meal they’d get for days.

  The patrols exited in the Aussies’ famous and fearsome looking six-wheel long-range patrol vehicles (LRPVs). Ostensibly, the truck was a Land Rover cut down and gunned up to each patrol’s needs, and was the envy of other Special Forces groups in Afghanistan. Johnny’s had two machine guns attached to the front and back and the resourceful soldiers had custom-built long-range fuel tanks for extended patrols. Pack racks held vital radio, medical and war-making equipment, as well as ammunition, water and fuel carriers. The LRPV, with the 50-calibre ring-mounted machine-gun, was a deadly mobile fighting and supply unit but it could only go so far. When the terrain became less accommodating for the converted Land Rover, the patrol camouflaged the vehicle and went in by hard foot slog.

  The trekking was tough enough, but being a native Queenslander, Johnny had never felt cold like Afghanistan cold. It had even frozen the diesel in their vehicles, providing the men with yet another challenge.

  Major General Hagenbeck was at the hangar when the SAS men began to roll out of Bagram in a convoy of LRPVs. Lieutenant Colonel Tink had wanted the two-star general to meet the Australians face to face, to see the men who were putting their lives on the line for the US-led mission in the clearly defined AO Down Under in the valley.

  ‘It was important that he could identify with what their capabilities were and what their vehicles were and how they were armed,’ says Tink now. ‘But the second thing I wanted was to make sure that he could identify with them as individuals.’

  It was an impressive moment. The snow-covered mountains provided a picturesque backdrop for the Aussie SAS Regiment, a wild and woolly looking bunch bundled up in cold-weather gear and sporting two months’ growth after recent patrols in other parts of Afghanistan. Weapons bristled off the mud-splattered vehicles. An Australian flag flapped in the breeze on the Aussie accommodation tents attached to the hangar.

  Hagenbeck understood Tink’s motive for the meet-and-greet. He had run into a few of the SAS troops in the region, maybe in the chow line or while grabbing a cup of joe to keep him going in the long, cold hours in the TOC or the terrain-model tent, which had the battle terrain laid out on the ground. But he had never met them formally as a unit.

  ‘This was the first time I could really look them in the eye and just talk to them, very briefly, about what they were getting into. And they exuded an air of confidence,’ Hagenbeck recalls. ‘That’s what sometimes can make it tough on a commander — you realise when you are making decisions that these are not faceless people and you’ve already seen this person.’

  Hagenbeck walked through the ranks and gave each man a firm soldier’s ha
ndshake.

  ‘Good luck and good hunting,’ he told them.

  The Australians’ roles were clearly mapped out. The patrols were to provide special reconnaissance of the area in the days ahead of H-Hour, when Operation Anaconda would commence. Tink was worried about getting his surveillance and recon elements into position on the rim of the valley without their cover being blown. Locals, most of whom were either sympathetic to the Taliban and al Qaeda or too frightened to fight them, would see all movement through Gardez and the Shahi Kot Valley.

  Several reconnaissance and surveillance patrols inserted themselves by road and foot under the cover of darkness. Tink had clandestine observation posts on high ground and the patrols would be the eyes and ears in the valley, reporting on what they could see in the AO from the rim of the mountain. The SAS troopers had been trained to stay out for as long as needed and could cope with the sub-zero conditions, the rain and sleet, and the jagged mountains.

  The SAS troopers were adaptable, beyond capable, resourceful and innovative, and their ability to live off the land had earned them the nickname of ‘chicken stranglers’, much to their amusement.

  ‘It was a good plan as it worked, but the valley was a hornet’s nest, that was the problem,’ says Tink now. ‘And we didn’t have tanks and we didn’t have artillery.’

  There was also another problem. Weather.

  On Monday, bad weather delayed the helo insertion of the SAS and on Tuesday, a patrol in another target area was hampered by rain and sleet, with cloud at ground level and visibility between 800 metres and two clicks. Johnny and his 1 Squadron brethren were now operating in temperatures that plummeted to minus 10 degrees Celsius at an altitude of 2100 metres. Snow was eight centimetres deep on the ground. But the patrols pushed on, edging closer to AO Down Under.

  Another problem for the US command was the shifting sands of intelligence.

  A CIA report cited a Taliban informer in Gardez who revealed to Task Force Dagger operators that the number of enemy fighters in the valley ranged between 580 and 700 and worked in squads of twelve to fifteen men. They were hidden in well-fortified positions in the mountains, not in the villages on the valley floor. They were well armed, and some of the squads had Stingers, the surface-to-air missiles that the CIA had secretly armed the mujahideen with in its war against the Soviets. But, as Sean Naylor writes in his authoritative book on Anaconda, Not a Good Day to Die, the CIA intel from the informer never formally made it to Hagenbeck’s or the Rakkasans’ intelligence planners.

  ‘There was nothing to tell us they were there [in the high ground],’ one of Hagenbeck’s intelligence planners, Major Francesca Ziemba, would say later.

  According to a report in The Christian Science Monitor, intel, including photographs, listening devices and old-fashioned spying, had turned up no sign of AQ in the mountains, and some analysts wrongly believed the hideouts would be too cold for the enemy.

  Another factor was bothering Tink. He had been informed that the American Special Forces had put patrols in his area of operation. The secrecy under which the US Special Forces work could have jeopardised the Aussies in their AO. A real potential for blue-on-blue conflict existed. Tink earlier had said that no forces other than Australians could operate in AO Down Under unless he had given the all clear and knew where they were in relation to his own men.

  He was a hard-arse on the point. Deconfliction equalled safety; ergo, deconfliction was non-negotiable. He had liaison officers embedded with the American Special Forces command in Gardez who were operating with Afghan commander General Zia Lodin, as the Hammer. Tink had also deployed Jock Wallace and Warrant Officer Clint to the 10th Mountain.

  ‘Deconfliction negotiations continue with the US SF,’ Tink noted in his diary in late February — two days after the SAS patrols had set out. ‘This centres on the layered control measures we develop and implement to avoid fratricide between forces working in the vicinity of each other. Working on this for a while.’

  The deconfliction issue was the cause of some argy-bargy between the top US brass, but Tink was running Task Force 64 — the Aussies — and he would run it his way. ‘Confronting and unfortunate as our stance is, I am not negotiating away safety,’ he wrote later that same day. ‘I believe the US commanders see our measures as largely excessive and perhaps the Australians being difficult.’

  Three years later, Tink says wryly: ‘I think that was a very astute observation.’

  One of Major General Hagenbeck’s intelligence planners later told author Sean Naylor that Tink ‘was a pain in the butt sometimes’. But he added that Task Force 64 was ‘very cooperative and extremely effective’.

  ‘Extremely effective’ turned out to be an understatement.

  One patrol was inserted and Tink recorded that it had ‘eyes on target’. Another unit went in soon after and took the high ground. An ambush patrol was in yet another location, as were a handful more scattered throughout the valley. All were working in horrendous conditions, weather included. The snowline began about 30 metres above the valley floor and the rugged peaks of the mountains were blanketed white. But the Aussies were in play and perfectly located when Anaconda started constricting its prey in the early hours of Saturday, 2 March.

  Johnny’s SAS patrol reached its designated observation point in good time, and had become acclimatised to the surroundings. The patrol was on top of a steep mountain, and had breathtaking views down into deep valleys. The mountain was cocooned in a silence so haunting that they could hear themselves breathe. The soldiers spoke in low whispers to maintain their covert position. His small team of men were joined by an American soldier and, subsequently, they could hear what the Yanks were up to over their comms nets. Johnny’s patrol was lying in wait for the Hammer and Anvil action to push the enemy down to its cut-off position. Then they would do what they had been trained to do: capture or kill any fleeing enemy.

  The Aussie blokes were ready for war in one of the most dangerous places on earth at the time, but instead of engaging the enemy, they were watching a herd of goats grazing on the rare scrubby tufts of grass that dotted the rocky mountainside. They pissed themselves laughing. You know you’re in Afghanistan when a herd of goats gets in the way of war. They only hoped that the local goatherd wouldn’t stumble across the SAS patrol while trying to move his woolly investment to a safer spot. There would be no glory in a herd of goats blowing their covert operation.

  The amusing cultural juxtaposition was rudely interrupted by a squall of war bouncing off the mountains across the valley a few kilometres north in the Shahi Kot. Johnny could hear the incoming thwomp, thwomp, thwomp of the Chinooks and knew the 10th Mountain and Rakkasans were inbound.

  His ears had already become finely attuned to the sound of combat that began in the dark earlier that morning with the bombing raid.

  ‘You could hear it echoing down the valley and being only that far away [a few kilometres], you could see the aircraft coming in and bombing,’ Johnny says now.

  It was lighter now and Johnny waited and watched. The choppers took off, then silence filled the crisp morning air. Noises were trapped and voices travelled along the valley floor and up the ravines.

  Minutes later, staccato bursts of machine-gun fire delivered the unwelcome message that the landing zone was hot. Johnny waited some more. Maybe five minutes had passed, could’ve been ten. No one really counts when the fire is raining down.

  Suddenly, their radio burst into life.

  ‘One Oscar, this is Niner Charlie,’ said a calm and coolly detached voice over the radio. ‘We are in a bit of a shit fight here. Over.’

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Johnny said as he huddled around the radio with some of his mates, instantly recognising Jock’s voice.

  Hearing Jock was a shock. His call sign — Niner Charlie — was not one that the SAS patrols would expect to hear on the battlefield because it was the regimental commanding officer’s call sign, and the Regimental HQ was not in the area being used by American troops
in conventional warfare.

  Johnny also recognised how controlled his mate sounded. Professional. Clinical. Calm. Telling it straight.

  Yeah, that’d be Jock, he thought.

  ‘We all kind of crowded around the radio, apart from the guys who were out on sentry,’ says Johnny. ‘We just didn’t expect Anaconda to turn the way it did; I suppose no one did. The initial brief we got for Anaconda was that we were mopping up the ragtag of the Taliban. I think the old Taliban gave us a bit of a surprise there.

  ‘You could hear it all, it was amplified over the radio handset. You could hear the battle from where we were, but when Jock pressed the presser switch to [let us] hear his voice, it did bring home how close he was to the bad guys.

  ‘There was a lot of fire, heavy fire; a lot of yelling. The Americans were yelling and you could hear them in the background — it sounded like a lot of confusion over the handset, but old Jock remained calm the whole time.

  ‘You would not have thought that he was in that much trouble.

  ‘I thought to myself, the poor bastard. I didn’t know the full story of why he was out there. But I can remember thinking, “I’ve got to go and get him, I’ve got to go and get my mate.” In a real world he shouldn’t have been anywhere near there.

  ‘He said they’d been put into a hot LZ, and they’re in the shit and they need some air support.’

  Johnny also felt the irony of the moment and experienced a twinge of what he would later describe as ‘professional jealousy’. His mate was a signaller in the SAS, whereas he, Johnny, had trained his whole life for combat and close fighting roles. ‘I’m thinking, “Why am I watching this herd of goats?”’ Johnny says now, laughing at the twist of fate. ‘That was my original thought.’

  Johnny was frustrated. He wanted to hoist his pack on his back and start marching to Jock’s position. He could hear the bullets and machine-gun fire ricocheting in the valley and hissing through the static of the radio. That was what the beret-qualified SAS operators were trained to handle, and yet it was Jock who was under fire in a full-scale ambush. It was one of war’s volatile ambiguities.