Commando

by Chris Terrill

  Bertie walks out to meet James and Mark. They salute and he salutes back and as he chats to them I consider the scene – the battle-weary young officer and two reinforcements straining at the leash to get the rounds down. After a brief chat he hands them over to Sergeant Pete McGinley who takes them in charge and directs them to their grots where they will meet the rest of 11 Troop.

  22 March

  I prepare to leave Camp Bastion with M Company. We are heading by road to Gareshk some fifty miles to the north where we will be based for the next month at a fortified encampment called Fort Price. It is a dangerous trip to take because the Taliban are increasingly targeting military convoys with roadside bombs and RPG attacks, but we're travelling in a large number of heavily armoured Viking personnel carriers accompanied by heavily armed Wimiks as outriders. Vikings are incredible vehicles – driven on tracks like tanks, they are highly manoeuvrable as well as being amphibious. I am interested to see they have all been personalised with appropriately uncompromising names like 'Thor', 'Boadicea', 'Viper'. I am allocated, along with James Williams, to one called 'Centaur'.

  A long snake of Vikings sets off in a massive cloud of dust as we head over the desert towards the Kandahar highway (the only major tarmac road in the province), which will take us virtually all the way to the district capital of Gareshk. It is the Muslim new year and the first day of the Taliban's threatened spring offensive, so vigilance is imperative. Each Viking carries a GPMG mounted on the roof and every gunner, called a 'top cover', keeps a sharp lookout. As soon as we reach the highway I move up alongside our top cover to film some of the countryside we are moving through. I'm quite excited at what I see because it reminds me of the Afghanistan I visited back in 1972. Against an epic backdrop of snow-capped mountains I see camels and donkeys grazing peacefully on wild grasses; small children waving and shouting delightedly from the roadside as we pass; and women in veils and long flowing robes drawing water from communal wells. This is the country I remember, so it is strange and upsetting to think that any moment a roadside bomb could be detonated which could kill or maim not only us but any of the local people as well.

  Eventually, we reach Fort Price which is really more of a frontier outpost than a fully-fledged fort. Much smaller than Camp Bastion, Fort Price is consequently more intimate. It consists of about thirty large tents – or accommodation pods – which enjoy intermittent air conditioning. It has a large galley tent and mess tent as well as a substantial gym tent with a surprisingly comprehensive array of weights and apparatus. The only solid-built building is the NAAFI – a permanently air-conditioned oasis where it is possible to buy as wide a range of sweets, chocolate and cold drinks as you could in any British high-street store. It also receives a TV feed by satellite from the British Forces Broadcasting Service which allows people to tune in to everything from Coronation Street to Top Gear and, most importantly, live sport and up-to-the-minute news.

  Outside of the NAAFI, however, Fort Price is a very dusty place and apparently getting hotter and hotter by the day. It is heavily defended with rubble-filled ramparts and has four lookout posts – called 'sangars' – that provide panoramic views of the surrounding desert. At the moment the Taliban seem to be keeping their distance from Fort Price, although there have been sporadic attacks on the Afghan Army and the Afghan National Police stationed on the strategically important Poshta Rud River that flows through the nearby town of Gareshk. Otherwise, the focus of current Taliban activity seems to be concentrated on Sangin some fifty miles further to the north where 11 Troop were stationed until two weeks ago. With the Taliban, however, it is never certain where they might strike next, so nobody at Fort Price is feeling complacent.

  The plan over the next few weeks is to work to a rota. Bertie's troop will alternate between standing guard at the fort one day and going out on patrol the next. It will share the rota with a combination of M Company's 10 Troop and a contingent of fusiliers. Major Marty Collins, who had masterminded Operation Sparrow Hawk in Kijaki at Christmas, is here to oversee M Company's last few weeks in Afghanistan.

  'Everybody's very tired,' he concedes, 'but we have to keep up the pressure to the last day. The Taliban are still out there and pose a continuing and very real threat. I think our main purpose here, though, is to show a constant strength in the town and villages and to continue to build bridges with the local people.'

  'Are they mostly pro-Taliban or pro-government?' I ask.

  'At the moment they seem to be pro-government but the truth of living and surviving in Afghanistan is that you are always ready to switch your allegiance according to the direction of the prevailing political or military wind. Just because the people in Gareshk, or anywhere else come to that, might nail their colours to the government or NATO mast one day does not necessarily mean they're going to do it the next day.'

  Marty is right of course. Afghanistan is still a medieval country driven by complex tribal dynamics and inter-factional rivalries. We in the West are quick to simplify the situation here, just as we do to situations in the wider Middle East and Africa. We are quick to cast blame onto Pakistan, for example, for fanning the flames of insurgency in Afghanistan. There might well be a basis for such accusations but it is also true that the Pashtuns are a massive tribal/ethnic group that bestride the Afghanistan–Pakistani border. Ethnicity and nationhood here in Helmand can be blurred and confused at the best of times but add to the mix the unstable influence of al-Qaeda, for instance, and you have a perpetually explosive mix.

  23 March

  06.00

  In a convoy of Vikings and Wimiks, 11 Troop head out to the town of Gareshk. I am riding in the fourth Viking in the line and our top cover is James Williams. This will be his first taste of frontline soldiering standing behind a deadly GPMG with real bullets. We move quickly across the desert strip to the Herat-Kandahar highway but then drive parallel to it along rough tracks. This is a precaution as it is thought best to avoid driving on the main road as much as possible in case explosives have been planted. As we get nearer to the town we move onto the main road with the fast-moving Wimiks accelerating ahead of the Vikings to cover all the side roads we pass. Eventually, we get to the Afghan Army headquarters where we park up and prepare to move out on foot to patrol the town itself.

  We form two parallel lines – each of about twenty men spaced some thirty yards apart. On Bertie's order we walk out of the compound and head down some backstreets towards the town centre. Although we are all carrying helmets we have them attached to our webbing because the policy is to wear less threatening soft hats when on patrol. I follow behind James and watch as he puts into practice all the training he received back at Lympstone. He walks with purpose, continually turning to gain 360-degree appreciation of his position and, of course, keeping his weapon constantly at the ready. As the patrol walks and watches for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, dozens of children come running down the road eager to shake hands with us. 'Salaam alaikum!' they squeal. 'Walaaikum salaam,' the smiling marines reply, as they hold out their hands in greeting.

  Half an hour later we reach a small tributary of the river and one by one we cross it via a fallen tree. But as we get to the other side we hear distant shots and then the whizzing sounds of bullets passing close overhead. The order comes through our earpieces to put on our helmets and he low. We crouch down and wait but minutes later are told to proceed.

  'Could have been a potshot from the bad guys,' says Bertie. 'But could just as well have been fired by the AA or the ANP, or some locals shooting their dinner.'

  'Difficult to know sometimes, is it?' I ask.

  'Yes. Bit like Dodge City around here sometimes.'

  After a while we reach the town centre – a bustling and colourful market area selling meat, fruit and cloth. Some people greet us but most look down and ignore us. The marines do their best to engage people with smiles and waves but it is impossible to know what influence the Taliban might have here and where the sympathies of the peo
ple really lie. We move through the market area and climb up to a huge mud-brick fortress built on a hill. This is an ANP position where they also have a jail. Bertie greets the police chief who offers him a cup of tea. Bertie knows by now that you never refuse a cup of tea, so he sits for a while to chat. James and I go and look over a wall into the jail compound where they have about a dozen Taliban prisoners who are sitting cross-legged and expressionless on the mud floor.

  'Just look like everybody else, don't they?' says James. 'Could be farmers or anybody, if you didn't know better.'

  The fact is they could be farmers as well as the Taliban, which is why it is so difficult to identify the enemy. In simple terms there seems to be three tiers of Taliban. Tier One are the hardcore fanatics – dedicated zealots who would happily die for the cause. Tier Two are those Afghanis who naturally support the cause but come and go according to outside contingencies – like having to work on the farm during the poppy harvest. Tier Three are called the ten-dollar Taliban, who are paid to fight by those in Tier One or Tier Two or else are made to fight by force. It is not unknown for Tier One Taliban to move in with a family, feed off them for a week and then leave with the eldest son.

  Bertie re-emerges and the patrol makes its way back to the Afghan Army compound without further event. The mission has been accomplished and the marines have made a show of strength – established a presence. It is important to show the enemy as well as the general population that there is nowhere the British forces will not go.

  We are back in Fort Price by mid afternoon.

  28 March

  Dave Nicholson has arrived from the North Pole and is getting his head down after a solid forty-eight hours of travelling. Meanwhile, I have gone for a stroll with Sergeant Pete McGinley around the perimeter of the helicopter landing site. He was the one, of course, who quite rightly gave me a hard time over the dangerously non-tactical lights on my infrared camera back in Kijaki at Christmas. Thankfully, all that is forgotten now and he is as cheerful as ever and still smoking his roll-ups almost as fast as he can manufacture them. Very interesting man, Pete – quick-witted with as many one-liners as Bob Monkhouse, but he also has a very serious side. As troop sergeant he has a huge responsibility – not only to his corporals and his troop commander, Bertie Kerr, but also the men themselves.

  'You must be ready for home, Pete?' I say.

  'Yes of course, we all are,' he says. 'But it's been an amazing experience. We've seen a lot of action and that, I think, has brought out the best in all of us.'

  'Must be difficult, though, being the stripey. Everyone is looking to you for guidance.'

  'Up to a point,' he says. 'I try and delegate as much as possible to the corporals, who've done an amazing job, and I just get involved when things go slightly wrong.'

  'Bertie Kerr came to you straight from training, didn't he? He must have been grateful to have you around.'

  'I did my best! I do think part of my job is to do a bit of mentoring of young troop commanders. But Lympstone are fantastic at putting recruits and young officers into commando units for brigade operations. Certainly when Lieutenant Kerr got here he was already very knowledgeable and quickly adapted to conditions, so I didn't have to do that much mentoring to be honest. We have a good relationship as well – bouncing off each other and having a bit of a laugh sometimes. But I have great respect for him because it's quite something to come straight out of training into the front line.'

  'He came under contact on his first patrol, didn't he?'

  'Yeah, that was pretty amazing! We came under contact from three separate sides at once but he didn't panic in any way. On that occasion it was actually my birthday so we sat in a shell scrape together, rounds bouncing off all over, and we had a bit of a chat and a laugh. Then we got on and did the business.'

  We wander on further round the perimeter defences and then stop to look over the ramparts at the desert plain dancing in the midday heat haze.

  'Bertie was telling me how tough it was when Vinders caught it in January,' I say.

  'It was terrible,' says Pete, shaking his head. 'We had to take this compound and Tom's section was first in. Typically, Tom was leading from the front but there was a Taliban waiting for him. He shot Tom at close range. The rest of the team dealt with the Taliban and then pulled Tom to a safe area. We were taking fire from all sides so everybody had to crack on but I stayed with Tom. He had been killed instantly and would have felt nothing but he had taken a head shot so looked a little untidy. I grabbed a scarf off the dead Taliban and wrapped it around Tom's face. I didn't want the guys to see Tom like this so they could remember him the way he was . . .'

  Pete pauses as he rolls himself a cigarette.

  'Anyway, I started speaking to Tom. Weird, I suppose, but I just wanted to talk to him. I said, "Tom, sorry, mate, going to have to wrap your head in this. Hope you don't mind but it's for the best, mate ..." We all really miss him. Strong as an ox and brave as a lion. I hope they give him a medal cos he deserves one

  As Pete and I walk back to the accommodation tent we bump into James Williams who is off to do two hours of sentry duty. I say goodbye to Pete and go with James to keep him company.

  'How are you enjoying it so far?' I ask as we climb the metal ladder to the watchout platform.

  'It was a bit difficult at first,' says James. 'Being new boys is always difficult, isn't it, but especially when all these lads have been through so much. We come out all fresh and new but we're like strangers to them. It was hard at first to feel part of the troop but it's getting better now as they're getting to know us.'

  'They've had a right old bashing.'

  'Yeah, I know. It's just that Mark and I really want to get the rounds down and shoot some bad guys but they've been doing that for months and are fucked. And having lost men as well – it can't be easy, can it?'

  'They were hit hard by losing Tom Curry,' I say.

  'Absolutely,' says James. 'By the sounds of him he was a hell of a guy. Some of the lads were talking about him last night. Sounds like he was a pretty special marine. The sort of Bootneck we would all like to be one day.'

  'Have you managed to speak to your mum?'

  'Yes. Got a call through to her last night. Good to talk to her but I could tell she was choked. I could hear something in her voice – cos she's really, really worried, you know. I said to her, "Don't be upset, I'm fine." She says, "No, I've just got this cold." Well, I know it's not a cold!'

  'She's just being a loving mum,' I say.

  'Oh yes, but I hate my mum suffering because of me being out here. I love what I'm doing – beats the hell out of being a plasterer – but I hate the thought of my mother sitting at home worrying all the time. She's such a special woman to me, but at the same time I can't give this up.'

  I stay with James for a while and watch the desert with him until the sun drops behind the horizon. In the far distance we can see the telltale streaks of tracer bullets against the deepening blue of an evening sky: a firefight between the Taliban and the Afghan Army maybe or just a random Afghani shooting at the stars. It's that sort of country.

  3 April

  J Company of the Royal Marines arrived overnight from Camp Bastion. They are preparing to head north on Operation Silver – a big, joint operation with the Americans in a strike against the Taliban in Sangin. But 11 Troop have to continue patrolling duties in and around Gareshk just in case the enemy decide to redirect their attacks. This is felt unlikely, however, as it is time for the poppy harvest and many of their fighters will now be engaged in bringing that harvest in. Nevertheless, we head for town in another long snake of Vikings and Wimiks.

  The patrol is routine and uneventful. We walk for miles through some of the outlying villages and pass hundreds of acres of poppy fields full of men and women busy reaping the valuable crop. We wonder just how many of the fieldworkers might be the enemy temporarily diverted by the needs of the local economy and indeed the means of their own financing as insurgents.
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  We return to our vehicles and then ride to our next destination – a local school where the plan is to spend a few hours on a 'hearts and minds' mission. It is some miles out and we are not even sure it will be open but we proceed anyway.

  When we arrive, however, we find the school is packed with excited young boys (apparently, it teaches girls and boys on alternate days). Bertie sends some of the troop to stand guard on some overlooking high ground but leads the rest of his men into the playground and, at the invitation of the teachers, into some of the classrooms. I follow Bertie into one class of young boys who look as if they are about ten or eleven. They shriek with excitement and rush forward to shake hands. Bertie speaks to them in his broken Pashtu, which only adds to their excitement and not inconsiderable amusement. Some of them offer their exercise books to Bertie for his approval. They are maths books and Bertie proceeds to leaf through them.

  'Look at this, Chris,' he says to me, showing me one of the books.

  I leaf through the pages of basic addition and subtraction exercises but see that in every margin and every space there are drawings of battles, explosions, dead people, helicopters and guns. I pick up another book and find exactly the same. And another. And another. All the books are full of the images that most impinge on these young boys' minds – those of death, war and destruction. Living in a state of war is just about all they have ever known.

  The troop is made very welcome – especially when one of the corporals produces half a dozen footballs as a present for the school. For the next hour the playground is a mass of small Afghani boys and rather larger Royal Marines playing soccer. Behind me, from one of the classrooms, I hear a familiar singsong sound and go to investigate. Sure enough, I find one of the marines, Corporal Anthony Brisley, standing in front of a packed class of fifteen-year-olds and conducting them in a chant he has clearly just taught them: 'Queen's Park Rangers!' they are shouting, followed by the customary handclap.

  This is a far cry from patrolling the streets with SA80s held at the ready and certainly a world away from Sangin where Operation Silver is, no doubt, being implemented as we speak, or indeed Kijaki last Christmas when 11 Troop led the assault on the Shrine. Yet in many ways this initiative is every bit as important as the overtly military tasks that the marines are trained to perform. One can only hope that these young boys, when they become men and are perhaps tempted to side with the insurgents, will recall the day the Royal Marines came to their school to play football with them. Maybe, by then, this afternoon will have been forgotten. Or maybe not. The battle for hearts and minds is, in many ways, the most difficult of all battles faced by a foreign force operating in a country like Afghanistan. It is a measure of the Royal Marines and their ethos that they would no more shy away from this than they would any conflict or campaign.