by Rob Maylor
I knew that whatever the Apache shot at with its canon wouldn’t be around for too much longer. SG wheeled and dealed the aircraft and then gave, ‘Clear hot!’ to neutralise the spotter location, which then disappeared in dust.
Once Sean’s body was on his way to Kandahar we organised the recovery of the damaged car. Again, we used the heavily protected Dutch recovery team to collect it, and once again they took forever to get to us. When we reached FOB Locke–name after Matt (Lockie) Locke MG (killed in action in Afghanistan in October 2007)–we licked our wounds and re-cocked for the rest of the task ahead. Driving anywhere after that made us extra nervous, almost expecting to be hit again at any time, so after the patrol we pretty much locked the LRPVs away to gather dust.
We eventually got the use of the Australian CH47s (Chinook helicopters) to insert us into jobs and then pick us up at the conclusion. On one of the first jobs using the Chinooks we inserted as a troop but at different locations around a small village in a narrow valley. The task was to complete a search of a suspected compound and apprehend any suspected Taliban fighters. As the patrol’s scout I led the way into the village under cover of darkness and we began to explore it. My PC decided that he wanted to go static for a short time to conduct a listening stop. It wasn’t long before I noticed a local man through my NVGs acting a bit suspiciously. I had a look into his small compound over a wall, but couldn’t make out what he was doing. Just as I tried to check this guy out we got the call to continue so I had to leave him to it. What I didn’t realise was that he was uncovering a rifle and 200 rounds.
We patrolled around a small feature 30 metres away and along an aqueduct. The patrol had become split in that short distance due to some thick foliage we had to pass through so we stopped for the other three to catch up. I scanned the high ground and then focused my attention to the front and the track we were travelling on towards our objective. I could sense something wasn’t quite right and then I suddenly heard a faint noise above us. I quickly turned with my rifle in my shoulder pointing where I was looking with laser on. I immediately saw a bloke pointing a rifle at us and as soon as my laser illuminated a small dot on his forehead I released a shot from my M4 and he dropped instantly. He was the same bloke I was curious about earlier, but this time he was brandishing a .303 Winchester P14 bolt action rifle.
Because he was only 10 metres away the round was only just starting its trajectory and entered the corner of his left eye, just a little lower than where my laser touched him. We searched him and removed his weapon and rounds. We initially thought the shot would have alerted the Taliban in the village, but no-one seemed interested, so we continued on task to our objective. There was a lot of male activity at the compound, which made us a little nervous as we didn’t know what to expect or how they would react to our presence. It was all a bit of an anticlimax, as we found very little in this compound and were picked up by Chinook shortly after daybreak.
A few days later we walked 16 kilometres to a job from an Australian FOB to target an IED facilitator. 3RAR were good enough to supply us with a section who were heavily tooled-up. A couple of their blokes carried the 7.62 mm MAG 58, an FN general-purpose machine gun identical to the British L7 GPMG. We dropped them off with our squadron sergeant-major at the 12-kilometre mark to act as cut off for any squirters trying to flee the area.
Our patrol led in the troop and upon reaching the objective we took up a cut-off position at the north-western end of the village. When the clearance began by the rest of the troop we noticed a few Taliban heading for the high ground, two of whom were openly carrying firearms. SG dropped a hellfire rocket onto one by a circling aircraft before he got away, and four of us followed up the others on foot, shooting one as he shouldered his AK. Although we didn’t get the guy we were after, we killed a couple of his fighters and destroyed some IED-making equipment and weapons.
The threat of being involved in an IED incident was increasing. The whole task force, including the Dutch, who had recently lost a few lads, were running out of ideas on how to combat this hidden danger. We put a plan forward that would hopefully expose some of these IED facilitators, which got the green light. It involved driving down one of the most notorious roads in our AO and dropping off patrols at varying intervals to observe certain stretches of road. We were hoping to draw out the Taliban who would hear the vehicles drive by and then approach their previously laid IEDs to arm them. We would then engage them.
As darkness fell we occupied several Bushmasters and quietly slipped out of Camp Russell. My position in the Bushmaster was to man the front 7.62 mm machine gun; JB had the rear. The night temperature was warm and local activity was non-existent. All seemed to be going according to plan as we zigzagged our way through the dirt roads, stopping to clear suspected areas using the engineers and their metal detectors. Our patrol was dropped off first and when the Bushmasters disappeared from earshot we started to have a snoop around. A couple of local men who were sleeping in a field had been woken by our vehicle movement, and were desperately trying to see into the darkness to figure out what was going on. We went static and observed them through our NVGs for a while until they got their heads down again. Patrolling east we could make out movement of the second patrol that was dropped off and gave them a heads up of our location by radio. We continued to drift in the same direction when suddenly a radio message came through: ‘Tango Oscar, this is T4, we’ve just been hit by an IED.’
Boom!
‘Arr for fucks sake!’ I said under my breath.
The lead patrol had driven onto an IED. The PC of that vehicle had started to give a quick situation report (sitrep) to the troop boss over the radio when the sound of the explosion reached us. We were approximately 5 kilometres away from the incident site. The PC then started a count-off of his guys over the radio and we were relieved to hear everyone answer. Our PC got on the net and advised the troop boss that we would remain static until needed. A US AME was organised without delay as Mark ‘Donno’ Donaldson and one other were blown from their positions behind the machine guns and were injured on impact with the road. No-one else was injured.
The road was being cleared by engineers at the time but this one was just missed. The Taliban sometimes do try to confuse road clearances by scattering metallic objects like washers or nuts onto the road. The Bushmaster rolled straight onto 20 kilos of HME, which tore the right rear wheel off, taking half its suspension with it, and vaporised the steel storage bins on the side.
‘Tango three, this is Tango Oscar. Move to our location.’
‘Tango three roger.’
The troop boss had just asked us to move to the incident site. We knew the AME was on its way and we would have to provide security for it. We made best speed to the area without dropping security, as by now every bad guy for kilometres had a pretty good idea of what had just occurred. About 1,500 metres out from the rest of the troop we heard the Blackhawk making its approach. The troop signaller made contact and one of the patrols marked the LS. As the helicopter flared to make its final descent the rotor wash disturbed a massive amount of very fine dust–a brownout–which clouded the pilot’s and loadies’ vision, causing them to lose sight of the ground and marker. They made a decision to get airborne again and make another attempt. We could hear what was going on as we patrolled to the noise, and initially we thought that the wounded were on board.
The Blackhawk circled above and then had another go at landing. Whomp! Zing, zing, zing, then silence.
‘What the fuck was that?’
‘The fuckin’ aircraft has spudded in mate,’ I answered. We all felt terrible. The Blackhawk crash of 2006 that I was involved in ran through my mind and I expected the worst. I couldn’t help but think, ‘Poor fellas, I hope they’re okay.’
On arrival to the area we were given a heads up and the good news–everyone was okay but the Blackhawk had suffered a very heavy landing and was now irreparable. The frame was bent and all the rotor blades had sheared off, some
of the debris narrowly missing some of our lads.
Another AME was organised, as was the recovery of the Blackhawk and Bushmaster. It was now starting to get light and we could make out the faint glow of fire from within the walls of nearby compounds caused by human activity. We were now looking at a situation that could go from bad to very much worse. Not only did we have the injured and two downed vehicles to look after, we also had the Blackhawk crew to protect. The Dutch recovery convoy had been alerted (they were probably thinking ‘our favourite customers’), but we knew they would take at least eight hours to reach us. It was going to be a long day.
Obviously the scene attracted a lot of local attention from a distance, and we couldn’t help but feel the culprits were amongst them checking out their handiwork. We did notice small pockets of middle-aged men taking a keen interest in us, which kept us awake in the baking 45-degree heat. The area around the IED was explored further by the engineers, who uncovered a secondary device buried in a wall just metres away from the first. This was also 20 kilos of HME, placed to hit the recovery team.
The sky became abuzz with several Apache helicopters as a Chinook secured the recovery of the Blackhawk, lifting it back to Tarin Kowt. The Chinook had a couple of goes at it before getting it right, but all the time it was manoeuvring into position it was covering a large area in dust. This would have created an excellent screen for the Taliban before attacking us. But fortunately this didn’t happen. The Dutch recovery convoy turned up shortly after and proceeded to winch the busted Bushmaster onto a large truck. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ we said. ‘Now we can get out of here!’ Donno’s injuries weren’t serious and he stayed on; the other lad fractured a bone in his lower back and returned to Australia.
Another job that made the news back in Australia was when we apprehended a prominent Taliban leader. No shots were fired; the job just ran nice and smoothly. It was well planned and executed. The basic plan behind our activities was to get the Taliban leader, objective ‘Spear’. We developed a heap of intelligence from several sources and in time we knew his routines and habits. We could almost pinpoint where he was going to be on a certain night. We would try to anticipate his moves and when credible intelligence arrived we’d be poised to react. It was similar to a police investigation tracking an offender’s movements. We’d gather evidence and possible locations and then we had to figure out bit by bit how to track him down. We had to have locals working on our side and that was never easy. We were dealing with people who were at least 70 per cent against us. We were in a hostile environment the whole time, and wouldn’t get any information out of anybody without greasing their palms.
Sometimes they would come forward with information to other agencies that would come back to us. This helped put the pieces of the puzzle together. We could see that he was known to frequent several compounds, and that his family lived elsewhere. The locals were saying, ‘He sleeps there but goes back to his family in the morning.’ Many times we just missed him.
Local hostility also prevented us getting a clear idea of the enemy’s strength on the ground. Numerous times we talked to locals and asked them how many bad guys were in the area. But still got that old chestnut: ‘Taliban haven’t been here for 12 months.’ That had been their standard reply since 2005. But when we got the call to react to Spear there was a feeling we might be successful. We drove out of Tarin Kowt and within a short time we had reached our DOP. From there we patrolled the 3.5 kilometres to the target. The temperature was about 30 degrees at 2200 hours and quite humid. Each man carried at least 2 litres of water, a minimum of four magazines of 5.56 mm, one HE grenade, a pistol and other specialist equipment. As we reached the objective we saw a couple of local farmers diverting water from a creek onto their crops. We avoided them and the recce team married up with us and guided us onto the target.
Our patrol was the roof team, which meant I was always first to gain entry to the compound to start providing security and awareness for the rest of the troop. There was no-one sleeping on the roof this time, but we could see people sleeping outside within the compound walls. The boys then stealthily made their way into the compound and quietly woke the males. The Taliban leader, objective Spear, was one of them. We explored the compound and uncovered weapons and IED components and once the troop boss was happy the job was done he got us to patrol back to the vehicles taking Spear and a couple of others with us, who came quietly.
Shortly after this job those of our targets who were in close proximity to Tarin Kowt moved out to neighbouring Pakistan. We didn’t know how long they’d be there so we began to focus our attention further afield. We learned that there was a target of ours not too far out of FOB Anaconda. We got in touch with the Americans who were having a few dramas of their own because they were down to almost a skeleton crew.
You could almost liken it to house arrest because they could barely leave their base. They were regularly getting fired upon by mortars, RPGs and heavy machine guns. They had the ANA working with them and they tried to develop a patrolling program but there were so many bad guys around that they could only leave their base for short periods for fear of being overrun.
So we thought we could try to kill two birds with one stone: we would primarily target our objective but if successful early, or if he disappeared, we would help the Americans out and try to give them a bit of freedom of movement. We’d see if we could push off the entrenched Taliban and perhaps neutralise some of their commanders.
In fact, the commanders were the key. I likened the situation to the organisational structure of a supermarket. I figured if we neutralised a shelf stacker they could easily get a new one in, but if we took out the general manager it would be much harder to find a replacement. And if he were taken out in really unpleasant circumstances they might find that no-one wanted the job. We found from experience that this tactic disrupted their activities.
We were also looking forward to the change of scenery and to say g’day to old acquaintances. The troop boss gave his orders and ‘actions on’ for the move, but we encountered problems with getting the two Chinooks to pick us up, which resulted in us gearing up and then being let down several times over a four-day period. The aircraft crews are subject to many restrictions and generally it took a little while for all the planets to align. This never really sat comfortably with us, and now and then we had to adjust insertion and extraction timings to daylight hours just to fit in with these restrictions. This was not a good idea to be alerting every Taliban member in the area to the massive signature dust cloud that the Chinooks leave. Darkness is our friend!
So, early afternoon on the fourth day we got word that the Army Chinooks were on a routine admin run and would pick up and deliver us to the US FOB.
It didn’t take us long to organise our kit as it had already been packed and placed for a quick departure four days earlier; all we really had to do was blow the dust off. Unfortunately our patrol was down a member as one of the boys had rolled his ankle and couldn’t walk. We were now five and JB picked up the extra responsibility of being the patrol medic along with his normal 2IC tasks.
Not long after arriving at Anaconda we conducted a few patrols trying to get this target of ours, and then found out through American intelligence sources that he was in Pakistan. Plan B: let’s do some combined operations with the Americans to sort out some of these bad guys.
Our first combined operation was to try to create a bit of a stir and flush out the bad guys. The troop was split, half leaving just after dark, as we had a long way to walk to be in position by first light; the other half left very early in the morning but still under cover of darkness. The night sky as usual was very clear, there was no moon and the air was cool, almost perfect conditions for the walk. There was enough ambient light from the stars for our NVGs to capture and magnify, so we could see. Light pollution in Afghanistan isn’t a problem, which means you can see thousands more stars than you’ve ever seen before.
It took some time but final
ly we started to climb a very steep and treacherous feature. We all had heavy packs as usual so the going was slow. It was a relief to reach the top and we went into all-round defence, then the two patrol commanders decided where each patrol would be positioned. From where we were we had very good OBs onto a very wide wadi, and a prominent vehicle track running from left to right.
Our patrol was responsible for the northern and the southern arcs; the other patrol, which had moved behind a feature to our flank, was responsible for the western arc but they still had observation down towards the south as well. Our other two patrols got into position on the high ground on the other side of the wadi, which was over 2 kilometres wide at the mouth. It was the end of August and the night air was freezing up in the mountains. We started observing long before daybreak with the hand-held TI, looking to pick up human movement.
That morning the Americans drove out in a different direction in their Humvees and came up behind us but on the other side of the green–about 2.5 kilometres from our position. On the way in they questioned a few local leaders to get a feel for the situation. Their presence was sure to be noted and this would help stir up the hornet’s nest. However, by 11 a.m. we were still sitting in our position in the hot sun with nothing much happening. I was starting to think it might be a dud. As we sat there baking, JB suddenly said, ‘Look at that!’
Three Taliban fighters were heading down the road in the direction of Americans. They were on our side of the wadi travelling east to west. Immediately we took up position behind our sniping rifles. Hoady and I had .338s, and SG had the 7.62 mm SR 25. There were two Taliban up front who looked like a protection party for the guy in the rear, about 10 metres behind them. This guy was on a mobile phone, possibly organising his fighters to hit the Americans. They were wearing chest rigs partially hidden under waistcoats but openly carrying AKs. They had no idea we were there.
