Forward into Hell

by Vince Bramley

  The five of us started a very slow crawl. My mouth was dry. We all expected the ground, or even us, to be hit now, but nothing happened. Those twenty metres to the bank seemed like the longest tab I’d ever done. On reaching the bank, I flopped beside Johnny, half-lying across him in my relief. I could feel him vibrating beneath me. Looking up, I saw he had his hand across his mouth to muffle his laughter.

  ‘You bastard, Cook,’ I said. ‘Remind me not to give you a hand if you want it.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s your face, Vince. Talk about a look of shock or “what am I doing here?”’

  Glaring at him, I said, ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I don’t make a habit of being shot at every day.’

  The lads on the bank were a mixture of A Company, ACC bearers, our own fire-based team and some others I can’t remember. I sat back against the wall of the bank, between Johnny and Bob Geddis. Every now and then, an ACC lad would pop his head up, or put his helmet up on his rifle to test the sniper. All the officers sat to our right and were not watching this.

  I thought to myself, This doesn’t happen. This is a comic, or John Wayne stuff. But, there he was, happy as a pig in shit, testing for bullets. The trouble was the sniper was still firing at him, at all of us.

  The battle was raging on the hill. Artillery shells were landing there, adding to the ricochet of the bullets. If you slowly raised your head, you could watch the free firework display, because that’s what it looked like. The odd shout could be heard, and the odd scream, but it was the sound of rifle, machine-gun and artillery that dominated the night.

  After about an hour, we were all getting pissed off with this fucking sniper. Something had to be done, and quick. He was holding up a hundred and thirty men. The radio operator was busy listening to orders from battalion HQ and spelling out changes verbally to the PC and Captain Mason, changes that would affect us.

  While this was going on, I could smell cooking. I leaned my head round the corner of the bank, where the smell came from, and saw four guys crouched around a mess tin brewing a cup of tea. Johnny and I slid in beside them, smiling, as if they had suddenly become our best friends. They looked at us. ‘Yeah, yeah, “Can we have a sip?”’ they said.

  In a while, the brew was shared around. It tasted beautiful. My one and only sip seemed to revive me completely. However, once back in our positions, I was aware again of how cold my feet were. They seemed just like two blocks of ice stuck on the end of my legs.

  One and a half hours had gone by and the PC was sitting with us, when suddenly Captain Mason crawled over to us.

  ‘Right, I want the best gun for the job,’ he said.

  Lieutenant Oliver looked at me and Bob and said, ‘Get your gun ready.’

  I looked at Johnny, who was again grinning.

  ‘Fuck off, Johnny,’ I said, knowing that he thought it was funny.

  ‘What did you say to me?’ shouted Captain Mason.

  ‘Not you, sir – Corporal Cook, I meant. A private joke.’

  ‘Well, shut the joking. Come with me now.’

  ‘But, sir, I would like to know the size of the task, for ammo reasons,’ I said.

  ‘Look, don’t argue, just come now,’ he replied. I looked at the PC for support.

  ‘Mr Mason, he has a point. Where and how big is the task?’

  Captain Mason crawled back, showing his disgust. ‘Look, just grab, say, a thousand rounds and follow me.’

  He crawled away. I looked at the PC and Johnny, when both put their fingers to their lips as if to say, ‘Just shut up.’

  Bob Geddis, Sas and I got the kit together and followed Mason into the unknown. At the end of the bank, I met up with Ginge McCarthy, Westy and Pete H. Again, I looked at Ginge as if to say, ‘What’s happening?’

  He returned a look that told me he didn’t know either.

  ‘Right,’ said Captain Mason. ‘Look up to the objective.’

  We did this.

  ‘Now go one fist to your right of the highest height. You will see what looks like a shark’s fin. See?’

  Johnny and I placed our knuckles, clenched into fists, against the height, and found the fin.

  ‘Seen,’ we replied.

  ‘Good. Now just below that is a bunker, and possibly the sniper that is holding up the advance of B Company. When we get the order, we will eliminate him, OK?’

  We all looked at him.

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘Right. Crawl forward about twenty-five metres. You’ll find a small bank. Begin and set up.’

  All six of us got our kit together and started to crawl forward from the safety of the bank. The crawl forward wasn’t as slow this time, but then the thought of the sniper was always in my mind.

  When we reached the bank, Ginge and I split up. He was about ten metres to my right. Bob Geddis and I set up the gun on its tripod, loaded it and cocked it ready again. This time I hoped we would fire it. I laid the gun on to the target and waited. The Milan team had also set up their piece and were waiting. The idea was to fire the Milan at the bunker and for our gun to fire about the area, wiping out any survivors.

  The tension grew as the minutes passed. The battle had now taken a new turn. A point-fifty-calibre machine-gun was having a duel with one of the machine-guns on the hill. It was an amazing sight. First, you saw the stream of tracer rounds spill out from our gun on the hill, immediately followed by its rattling fire. The rounds would hit the area of the enemy gun, flying off in all directions. Some even seemed to be heading our way. The tracer rounds would only be ignited from one hundred metres. They would just fizzle out at eleven hundred metres, but would carry on unseen for at least another thousand.

  Once our team had fired, the enemy would answer back, causing the same effect with its tracer rounds. We sat watching this for some time, willing our lads on the hill to wipe out that deadly gun.

  Sometimes, when the tracer rounds seemed to make a direct hit, you would think, That’s got them, but then the enemy would return fire.

  As I sat there, I could only feel my knees – my feet had become frozen beyond help. All the same, I continued to bash them together, trying to bring life into them, but it was no use.

  I heard a noise to my rear. I couldn’t think what it was. Turning around and looking down, I saw that Sas had fallen asleep. I couldn’t believe it. There we were, ready to go on a fire mission, and this guy had fallen asleep. I picked up a rock and threw it at him, scoring a direct hit on his helmet, which brought him back to life.

  ‘What the fuck are you on, Sas?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, Vince, I just …’

  I stopped him dead. ‘You do that again and I’ll kill you.’

  Bob shook his head in disgust and I was fuming.

  Just then, Captain Mason called to us to get ready. I flicked off the safety-catch and Bob placed his finger on the trigger. I would elevate or traverse the gun if need be.

  ‘Stand by,’ shouted Captain Mason.

  My feet were forgotten, my mind emptied of any thoughts. But my eyes were completely alive, staring at the area of the fin and possible target.

  ‘Fire!’

  Ginge let off the Milan. The rocket whooshed off the small portable frame and picked up its deadly speed – after a hundred and twenty metres it was at its deadliest. We were only about ninety metres from the target.

  Ginge managed to guide the wired missile on to the target. The explosion ripped into the night, sending sparks everywhere. Bob pressed the trigger and our gun burst into life for a few seconds, then stopped.

  ‘Stoppage!’ screamed Bob.

  I tried to lift the cover off the top of the GPMG, but the night sight was in the way. I ripped the sight from the weapon and threw it into Sas’s hands. I cleared the gun and reloaded.

  Bob was just about to fire again when a zipping sound ripped into the ground right in front of our tripod. We both ducked behind the bank. The enemy’s bullets whizzed over our heads and around us. Ginge was laughing and sh
outed, ‘They’ve seen you all right!’

  ‘Fucking brilliant, isn’t it? My big night and the bloody gun’s packed up.’

  Captain Mason shouted over from behind us, ‘Reload, reload – CS9 wants another one up there.’

  When I looked up, the area was alive with ricocheting again. Bob turned to me and said, ‘Looks like we disturbed a bees’ nest, yeah?’

  Ginge reloaded and we waited again. One minute passed, two minutes. The area was bursting with gunfire. The snipers still fired at us but now we just looked up at the target area again and nothing seemed to bother us.

  ‘Fire!’ shouted Captain Mason again.

  The Milan ripped into life and scored on the target area. Our gun also burst into life and this time carried on.

  About four hundred rounds had gone through the gun when the order to stop came through. The barrel was smoking with its new energy. All went silent around us and the target area. Everyone watched and waited. Then the bloody sniper started again. The zips hit the ground more to our right this time. We threw ourselves behind the bank. I could see the Milan team doing the same. Captain Mason shouted for us to return and he crawled off back to the bigger bank. Bob and I pulled the whole gun and tripod up to the bank with us and dismantled it there. Ginge moved off first, followed by us. The sniper had finished with us, so it seemed, and was now concentrating on someone else, the rounds flying well above us.

  When we rejoined Johnny and our PC again, both asked us what had happened. I simply said what we had done and ‘That’s all I know.’

  The PC crawled off towards Captain Mason and the radio operator. We sat there for about fifteen minutes, before getting the order to move. We were told that the move would come in another fifteen minutes’ time. But then Captain Mason said we were now needed for another task on the summit. With all our kit packed ready to go we sat back and waited again. A lad from A Company crawled past us and said to an officer near by, ‘Corporal Hope is still out there and the medic’s with him. Sir, he’s got to get him out of there.’

  The officer whispered back, ‘No problem.’

  Now it seemed we’d wiped out the bunker and the worst sniper. As we waited for orders to move out, my mind flashed back to the body wrapped in a sleeping bag that I had seen while I was struggling to keep up, while I was being sniped at. Many weeks later, I found out that Corporal Hope had been hit in the forehead by the sniper while walking behind the OC of A Company. The sniper had picked his target well: Steve Hope was the company radio operator. He died many hours later, having struggled to the very last. The medic who treated him, Lance-Corporal Chris Lovett, was later also killed by mortar fire. As I write, I recall how close I had been to death, how close all the support team that walked through the sniper fire had been.

  13

  ON LONGDON

  We waited and, as always when waiting, the cold crept in. I was banging my feet together to bring some life back into them when a sudden racking explosion erupted about fifty metres away. At nearly the same time, Bob Geddis and an ACC lad sitting with him leaped up and jumped about shouting. Both had been hit by molten shrapnel, but luckily it was ending its deadly flight when it struck them and lacked enough force to penetrate their skin. After about four seconds, we grabbed them and made them sit down, in case of a sniper. They got really niggardly, cursing and moaning. About a minute later, three or four more explosions occurred and this time we all threw ourselves on to the damp ground. Captain Mason got up first and shouted a quick order for us to dig in. This caused some reluctance because we were waiting to move, but orders were orders, so we started to dig in.

  A corporal from the Mortars started giving orders for some lad to move over, saying he was in his space. Next thing, the two guys were holding each other’s collars, ready to fight, all over a piece of ground. Johnny and I giggled.

  I whispered, ‘Can you imagine this on exercise at home? Two guys fighting to dig in the same place – it’s just not heard of.’ (Every soldier hates digging in.) The brief friction ended with a joint effort, but it was unreal to watch them digging together.

  We had hardly started when Captain Mason gave the order to hitch kit and follow him. We all quickly packed our kit on our backs and followed him out from the bank, in the order we were, in a well-spaced line. We left behind about fifteen guys, sitting in shallow holes, grinning at us and waving. A Company stayed put.

  We walked first in the direction of the westerly slope of Mount Longdon, then in the direction of where the mortars or artillery had tried to hit us and lastly into the open for the sniper again. Captain Mason had no choice in this route. At this point, he had a difficult task: to get us to the summit as quickly as possible.

  We had walked for about five minutes when a round whizzed past my nose. I flopped to the ground, like everybody else. A sniper had spotted us again. Minutes later, Captain Mason shouted for us to move on. I thought to myself, Fuck this for a laugh, why not go shopping as well? But we simply had no choice.

  The sniper took spasmodic shots at us, but never scored – why not, we will never know. One thing I am 100 per cent sure of to this day is that he, or they, were brilliant shots, and deadly.

  We reached the bottom of the hill at about 0030 hours. The battle had been going for some three and a half hours. We came up to the FAP and walked past a line of guys lying there, moaning in half-silence. The medics were busy with all the wounded. There seemed to be about twenty-five guys, working and wounded, in the group.

  We were sitting some twenty metres from them in the darkness and we could only just see the scene by the light of the moon. A sergeant from battalion HQ came over to us and Lieutenant Oliver and Captain Mason stood up to meet him.

  ‘We have three confirmed dead at this moment,’ he said, ‘Murdoch, Scott and Greenwood. We know there are more but we can’t get to them as yet.’

  Their conversation continued around our coming task and that the RSM was coming to meet us. I sat in a trance; I couldn’t believe that we had lost guys. Today, it seems crazy that I should think like this. Why? I can only put it down to the fact that I was still in my own little world of make-believe: we would win the war without anyone getting killed! The death of those three guys hit me like a brick, total shock. Murdoch, or simply Doc. Doc, who I’d been chatting with on the way to our start line after we bumped into B Company, now dead; Scotty, from the MT Platoon, like Greenwood, recently nicknamed ‘Fester’ because of his sleeping habits. My mind was a blank to the conversation around me.

  Johnny nudged me. ‘Vince, we’re moving, mate.’

  This woke me to the reality of it all. I was now fully alert, for surely there was more to come.

  Standing on my wet, cold feet, with all my ammo over my shoulders, I followed the line of troops past the wounded towards the summit. What was going to happen? I didn’t know, but I was bloody nervous walking up the slope.

  After about fifty metres, we stopped, and everybody sat down, looking and listening. The crags in the mountain jutted out and looked sharp. We seemed to have hit a path of sorts. The sounds of gunfire were only about fifty metres away.

  I could hear someone shouting, something like, ‘Get the fuck back here, you twat, there’s two Argies hidden that way!’

  The atmosphere on the path leading up to the hill was eerie. The battle had cooled and there was much less fighting, but it was more than evident that it would continue throughout the night.

  My personal feelings at this time were mixed. I knew that I had to get in there and ‘do my bit’, but half of me was saying, ‘Get the fuck out of this madness.’ This doesn’t mean I would have got out, or even thought seriously about it – basically, it was just the same old doubt: What the fucking hell am I doing here?

  Captain Mason came to a halt as I was thinking this and the whole fire-based team sat down for what we thought would be another wait. He then decided to see what was at the end of the path. He climbed on to a large boulder and stood there looking in the direction of
the gunfire. Suddenly, a bullet whacked into the rock beside him. Amazingly, he carried on gazing – he hadn’t even noticed, very like me earlier on. Corporal McCarthy, sitting below him, looked up at Captain Mason and shouted, ‘Sir, you’re being shot at!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Jesus, I just heard the bloody round!’

  As Corporal McCarthy finished shouting, another bullet thumped into the rock again.

  ‘Oh, yes. Looks like you’re right, Corporal. Thank you.’

  His thanks and answer were said as he leaped down. I must hand it to Captain Mason: either he was very cool or he just did not click. Everyone giggled. He had replied in such a typically relaxed manner, as if it was a daily event to be shot at.

  Our RSM came out of a crag to our side. I always admired Larry Ashbridge as an RSM: he was totally dedicated to the lads, and in my eyes the best RSM I’d ever been under. This also goes for my OC, Major Dennison, and CSM Caithness – all very professional men. The RSM called Captain Mason over and a quick brief was held. We could hear the new orders clearly, as all of us were straining for every word.

  ‘The OC and CSM are on the summit, waiting for your new mission. If you go with Craig Jones here, he’ll lead you up there. Be warned, though, the Argies are still everywhere,’ announced the RSM. He then disappeared down the hill at a half-trot, with his followers.

  ‘Well,’ said Johnny, ‘this looks like fun.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘better not get too comfy up there; I can’t see us sitting around any longer.’

  We picked up our kit and slowly climbed through the crag to follow the line of troops. There were about fifteen or twenty of us at this stage.

  Johnny was in front of me, when his foot slipped and released a deadly smell.

  ‘Cooky, you dirty bastard,’ I said.

  ‘What? I haven’t done nothing.’

  ‘Liar, you just shat in my face.’

  Private Jones stood helping us through the gap, laughing at Johnny and me.

  ‘You’re now going through the Argies’ shithouse area. It seems this is where they came.’