Bloody Heroes

by Damien Lewis

  ‘Imagine, brothers, the look on the faces of your mothers and sisters when they learn the glorious news – that their son or brother has made the ultimate sacrifice in the jihad,’ Ali announced. He was speaking softly to a group of brothers down in the basement. ‘Imagine the joy, brothers. Imagine a Muslim sister or wife back in Yemen, Somalia or Chechnya and the pride she will feel when she learns that her Muslim brother has become shaheed and has gone to join the Nineteen Lions in Paradise. Imagine how she will then long to join you, brothers, and bless you for smoothing her own path to Paradise. Imagine the fate that now awaits us, brothers.’

  Ali led the brothers in the first prayers of the morning. Despite the carnage of the previous day’s fighting, Qala-i-Janghi was quiet and almost peaceful in the pre-dawn stillness. Ali and the brothers turned east, to face the direction of the Holy Shrines, and started the Arabic incantation of the dawn prayers. From their standing position the brothers dropped to their knees and then bowed low, placing their foreheads upon the earthen floor of the basement in obeisance to their God, the All Merciful One. Then they rose to their feet again in unison. But as they did so the sonorous chanting of their prayers was drowned out by the scream of an incoming missile.

  Instinctively, the brothers flung themselves back down on to the basement floor. Suddenly there was a loud explosion up above them. Even though the impact sounded distant, the noise of the air strike echoed around the fort, striking fear into the hearts of the assembled men, and instantly bringing back the memories of the terror of yesterday’s bombing. Ali caught himself listening out for the screams of the wounded brothers – the first to be hit by this cowardly bombing on their second day of battle. But while he strained his ears for the cries of the dying, no such sounds reached him.

  ‘Calm yourselves, brothers, calm yourselves,’ Ali urged, as he glanced around at the fearful faces before him. ‘Brother Ahmed, how far was that air strike from us?’

  ‘When you compare it to those of yesterday, Brother Ali,’ Ahmed replied, ‘it must be five hundred yards away, at least.’

  ‘Listen, brothers!’ Ali cried, excitedly. ‘Listen! Perhaps this is the great miracle that we have been waiting for, to show that Allah’s help is near at hand. Come, brothers, follow me. Let us hope and pray that the kafir dogs have suffered a terrible blow.’

  The brothers rushed forth from the basement and gathered at the gate in the fort’s central wall. There they caught sight of a giant plume of smoke rising from the north-eastern tower of the fort.

  ‘Look, brothers! LOOK!’ Ali yelled, stretching his arm out in the direction of the bombed-out tower. ‘By the grace of Almighty Allah, the kafir dogs have been struck down with their own weapons. Look – they have bombed themselves. ALLAHU AKHBAR! ALLAHU AKHBAR!’

  ‘ALLAHU AKHBAR! ALLAHU AKHBAR!’ the brothers yelled, taking up Ali’s thunderous cry as they danced around the wrecked gateway.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, brothers?’ Ali cried. ‘Didn’t I promise that this morning you would witness the wondrous power of the All Mighty One? With all their weapons and technology, the kafir are no more than puny ants before the Almighty Allah. He has taken their bombs and thrown them back on themselves and now the kafir suffer like the infidel dogs they are. Come, brothers, now is the time to counter-attack. The kafir hate to see death, because they have no belief. No faith in the afterlife. But death does not touch us. Here we are, surrounded by the sights and the smell of death, by hundreds of the brothers who are shouhada’a, yet we carry on fighting. Come, brothers, after me, we will hit the infidel dogs hard while they are still reeling.’

  Quickly, Ali led a group of some thirty fighters in a scuttling, crouching run out of the gateway and into their attacking positions, in the shattered remnants of the buildings to either side of the gateway. Taking cover in the bombed-out ruins Ali instructed them to set up three of the Degtyarev 7.62mm machine guns, so they could pour a wall of concentrated fire on to the shattered tower.

  ‘Hurry, brothers!’ Ali urged. ‘I can see the infidels searching for their injured among the rubble. By the grace of Allah, put the guns to good use on them. And Ahmed, get your mortar zeroed in on them. Let’s massacre these kafir dogs before they have a chance to recover.’

  14

  TEN MEN DOWN

  MAT, JAMIE, RUFF, and Captain Lancer had all felt a surge of exhilaration as they’d heard the US FAC team doing the countdown to that first surprise air strike of the morning: ‘One minute to target, forty-five seconds, thirty seconds …’ As the fifteen-seconds-to-target mark had been reached, they’d thrown themselves flat on the tower roof to take cover. At the same time they were poised to leap to their feet as soon as the JDAM hit and open fire on the enemy positions. There had been the ear-splitting scream of the incoming missile to their rear, and the SBS soldiers had turned round – only to see the arrow-shaped projectile hurtling directly towards them. And in that split second they had known that the JDAM targeting had gone haywire, and that they were all dead.

  A millisecond later exhilaration had been transformed into a nightmare of pain and trauma, as the tower had been engulfed in a roaring firestorm of high explosives and fractured, razor-sharp steel. As the JDAM had slammed into their position and exploded, a massive blast wave plucked the soldiers off the tower roof, hurling them into the air and then smashing them into the ground at the base of the tower. Somehow, Mat had still been conscious as the battlements had disintegrated. He had flown in a slow-motion arc across the fort, his life flashing before his eyes. And then his body had hit the ground and the earthen brick wall had collapsed on top of him, the lights had gone out.

  The 2,000-pound JDAM had ‘scored’ a direct hit on the T-55 tank, blowing the turret clean off and vaporising the four Afghan soldiers who’d been sitting astride it. Twenty or so Afghan fighters had also been clustered around the tank, and as the missile exploded it had torn them limb from limb. The US 5th SOF FAC team had been positioned on the far side of the T-55, some thirty yards away, and while the sheer mass and armour of the tank had shielded them from the worst of the explosion, they had been among the first to be hit by the crushing blast wave that engulfed the tower. The SBS soldiers lying prone at the battlements had been the furthest from the epicentre of the explosion. They had been the last of the allied forces to be hurled into the air by the impact like so many rag dolls.

  Some three minutes after the errant JDAM strike, Tom and Sam came tearing around the outer wall of the fort and arrived at the point of the bomb blast. A terrible sight met their eyes. A vast pall of smoke and dust hung over the scene of the wrecked tower. To Tom and Sam it seemed impossible that anyone could have survived a direct hit by a JDAM. They could feel the anger and rage welling up inside them against whoever was responsible for this mother of all fuck-ups. Whether it was pilot error, a mistake by the FAC team, or some sort of confusion over the enemy versus friendly coordinates, neither Sam nor Tom could be certain. But they knew that some of their finest fellow soldiers and closest friends must have perished as a result of it.

  As they rushed towards the confusion of shattered walls, floors and stairways, they thought that they could just make out the faint cries of the wounded coming from somewhere within the devastated tower. But they couldn’t be certain. The first thing Tom noticed was the grisly remains of a severed arm, lying atop a pile of crushed masonry. But then, like a scene from some biblical parable, he caught sight of a lone figure stumbling out of the curtain of smoke and debris that hung before the ancient fortress. By a complete miracle someone at least had survived.

  Tom and Sam were staring straight into the rising sun and so the lone figure remained little more than a silhouette among the dust and the golden light. They could just make out that he was plastered in mud and sand, but they were unable to identify him. Was it one of the Afghan soldiers? A 5th SOF operative? Or one of their own, SBS men? As the two special forces soldiers rushed across to him Tom let out a cry of recognition. He grabbed the survivor and
gave him a massive bear hug. It was Jamie – cut and bruised and badly concussed, but still very much alive.

  ‘Who’s left … Loads of dead … Alive …’ Jamie started mumbling, incoherently, as Tom and Sam half carried him away from the immediate area of the bomb blast.

  ‘LISTEN, MATE, STAY PUT, ALL RIGHT?’ Tom yelled into Jamie’s ear, not knowing whether he could hear or not. ‘WE’RE GETTIN’ THE VEHICLES. JUST STAY HERE.’

  Tom stared into Jamie’s face and it was as if he was looking into the eyes of a sleepwalker. Then there was a faint flash of recognition, and Jamie seemed to acknowledge what had been said with a faint nod.

  Tom and Sam set off at a run to fetch the Land-Rovers, which were parked at a safe distance from the fort in open ground. As they did so, they realised there was unexploded ordnance (UXO), dud mortar rounds and mines littered all over the place. But they just closed their minds to the danger and hammered their way across towards the two vehicles. Without any transport in which to get the worst of the wounded back to Boxer Base and proper medical facilities, they would stand far less chance of saving any of them. They gunned the engines of the Land-Rovers and headed back at breakneck speed weaving a path towards the centre of the bomb strike.

  As the vehicles skidded to a halt Tom let out another whoop of joy. He’d just caught sight of their OC, Captain Lancer, crouched over a figure lying prone on the ground. The Captain looked like he was trying to give the injured soldier first aid. Tom rushed across to him. He could tell immediately that the SBS Captain was badly disorientated and suffering from shock. His speech was slurred, his movements sluggish and he was unsteady on his feet. Tom wasn’t sure if he had even recognised him. Captain Lancer just seemed to be acting on autopilot: he was kneeling down at the injured soldier’s side pressing a field dressing into his bloody wound.

  ‘Boss, let me take over, BOSS,’ Tom yelled into the Captain’s ear. He placed his hand over the field dressing and applied pressure, gently removing the OC’s hands as he did so. ‘Come on, boss, just take it easy.’

  The Captain looked across at Tom with a glazed expression, finally seemed to recognise the thrust of what he was saying if not the actual words, and relinquished his hold over the bloodied dressings. The injured man was one of the 5th SOF soldiers. Tom and Sam took over treating him and they could tell that the US soldier was in a bad way. As Tom turned to grab another field dressing, he caught sight of the SBS Captain and Jamie heading back in among the ruins of the tower. He could only presume they were going in to search for more of the wounded. They were some of the toughest, bravest soldiers that he’d ever had the honour to serve alongside. And he knew that there was no stopping them.

  ‘He’s pretty serious, ain’t he, bro?’ Sam remarked, as Tom turned back to the wounded American soldier.

  ‘He’s got internal injuries, and that’s what’s really worryin’ me,’ said Tom. ‘We got to get him to a fuckin’ hospital.’

  Like Mat, one of Tom’s specialist SBS skills was medic, and he could tell that the soldier had suffered organ damage. He wasn’t surprised: the JDAM’s shock wave would have ripped through anyone caught in the blast. The body is made up mainly of water, and the JDAM blast would have had a similar effect to a rock dropped in a pond. The shock waves would have rippled outwards from the point of impact, like waves in a pool of water. And while body armour could prevent damage from flying shrapnel, it did little to stop internal injuries from such a blast.

  The US soldier started coughing up blood, confirming that he was bleeding internally. Tom loosened the wounded operator’s body armour – which must have been acting like a straitjacket – and immediately the unconscious soldier let out an agonised groan. Tom passed his hands down along the man’s torso, and as he did so he could feel massive swelling and bruising on the right side. That must’ve been the side that had taken the brunt of the JDAM’s blast, and Tom hated to think what havoc it had wreaked on the soldier’s delicate organs.

  ‘We got to get him back to Boxer and get him air-evacuated,’ Tom said. ‘Fast as fuckin’ possible.’

  ‘Sure thing, bro,’ Sam replied. ‘I’ll just –’

  But Sam’s last words were drowned out by a long burst of heavy machine-gun fire. Suddenly, rounds started slamming into the ruined tower, as the enemy forces opened up on them – trying to pick off any survivors of the errant JDAM strike or those attempting to rescue them. But Tom and Sam hardly missed a beat, as they tried to get a drip into the wounded soldier’s veins. As they did so, Tom had images flashing through his head of his SBS mates lying beneath the rubble of the blasted tower with their skulls caved in. Where were Trenty, Ruff and Mat? he wondered. Had they survived the JDAM’s blast? And if they had done, how badly wounded were they?

  From having been poised to launch the mother of all wake-up calls on the enemy – a series of precision-guided air strikes on pre-programmed targets – the tables had now been completely turned on the British, US and Afghan forces. As Jamie and Captain Lancer stumbled about amid the debris of the collapsed tower searching for survivors, enemy rounds went ricocheting all around them. Scattered among the piles of shattered masonry were the grisly remains of the Afghans who’d been gathered around the tank and taken the brunt of the blast. Severed arms and legs were sticking out of the rubble at grotesque angles. Scorched bodies lay in the rubble, half obscured by the smoke and dust that hung like a dark pall over the wreckage of the tower.

  Having finally got the US soldier’s condition stabilised, Tom and Sam headed into the rubble to help with the search. It was like a nightmare in there. The stench of burned human flesh was sickening in their nostrils. With every rock that they overturned the two men expected to discover the worst: a face staring upwards, crushed, bloodied and broken amid the shattered masonry, but still clearly recognisable as one of their own. Miraculously, Tom, Sam, Jamie and Captain Lancer managed to locate all of the 5th SOF soldiers. And while four of them were in a very serious condition, the remaining six were walking wounded and not in need of urgent medical assistance.

  Jamie eventually spotted a civvy pair of boots, and pulled Ruff out from under a huge pile of rubble. The big SBS gunner had been all but buried alive, but he appeared largely unscathed. Ruff kept on mumbling on about losing his Gimpy, and Jamie told him to shut the fuck up, as they’d both lost their GPMGs. But as both men’s eardrums had been blown in the explosion, neither could make out much of what the other said. Ruff joined Jamie in the search of the ruined tower, and they pulled out six Afghan soldiers who’d survived. And then they discovered Trenty, covered in dust and unable to stand, but still very much alive.

  Quickly, the priority of the rescue moved from treatment at the scene of the attack to getting the wounded the hell out of there. They needed urgent casevac to the nearest military hospital, and the ruined tower was fast becoming a dangerous place to be. The enemy poured down fire on to their positions, but few of the SBS and 5th SOF soldiers had escaped the blast unscathed, and they were in no fit state to fight back. More importantly, they had no weapons with which to return fire. As the JDAM’s shock wave had engulfed the tower and the soldiers had been blasted into the air, their guns had been blown out of their hands. A dozen or more Diemacos were now buried beneath the rubble of the tower, along with the GPMGs.

  Fortunately, help was now on its way. Back at Boxer Base the previous day, the US 10th Mountain troops had formed an ad hoc QRF. Shortly after the JDAM had hit the friendly forces that morning, the 10th Mountain QRF had been called in. Thirty minutes after the errant air strike the troops roared up to the fort and, in the absence of any better instructions, headed for the main entranceway. Jamie was the first to spot them, and he knew that they needed those 10th Mountain boys over at the wrecked tower fast. At any moment now he was convinced the enemy were going to try and rush them. And if they did they’d surely overrun their positions – which meant they’d be able to finish off the American, British and Afghan wounded.

  Jamie set off a
t a run to intercept the 10th Mountain boys, accompanied by a still shell-shocked Ruff. As he did so, he was well aware that Mat was still unaccounted for. Jamie and Ruff arrived in the entranceway to the fort, battered and bloodied and covered from head to toe in dust and debris. As the two men tried to catch their breath, they coughed up thick clods of dirt from their lungs. To the newly arrived US troops it looked as if the two British special forces soldiers had just crawled out of the grave.

  ‘Where d’you need us … buddy?’ the 10th Mountain commander shouted over at them, trying to recover from the shock of their ghostly appearance.

  ‘WHAT D’YOU SAY, MATE?’ Jamie yelled at maximum volume, as he was still deafened from the bomb blast.

  ‘WHERE D’YOU NEED MY GUYS?’ the 10th Mountain commander yelled back, realising that the British soldiers must’ve lost their hearing.

  ‘DON’T PARK THERE,’ Jamie yelled, as he still couldn’t hear. ‘YOU’LL GET MORTARED. MOVE YOUR VEHICLES – THERE.’

  ‘OK, BUDDY,’ the commander yelled right into Jamie’s ear. ‘NOW WHERE D’YOU NEED MY MEN?’

  ‘NO NEED TO SHOUT,’ Jamie yelled back, his face breaking into a grin. ‘JUST FOLLOW US, MATE. BRING ALL THE FIREPOWER AND AMMO YOU’VE GOT. AND KEEP YOUR BLOODY HEADS DOWN.’

  Jamie and Ruff led the twenty-odd 10th Mountain boys in a crouching run along the parapet that ran from the entrance tower towards the northern end of the fort. It was the quickest route across to the bombsite. Within seconds they were spotted by the enemy and almost immediately started taking incoming rounds. They managed to reach their destination without anyone being hit, and Jamie instructed the troops to set up their heavy machine guns atop the wrecked remnants of the tower. From there they would be able to lay down a wall of covering fire on to the enemy positions at the gateway. At the same time they’d act as a protection force for the ongoing rescue operation that was taking place just outside the ruins of the fort walls.