A lot of the kit we were issued before deployment simply wasn’t up to the job, so that meant many of us investing in our own bespoke items either online or at army surplus stores. The holster I was given for my pistol is a good example – it looked like vintage 1960s issue with a lanyard that went through uniform epaulettes, thus rendering it useless when worn with body armour. I replaced that with a thigh holster that I bought myself. I bought a CamelBak – we were only issued with one. Ditto a liner for my green maggot (sleeping bag) and a thermal mattress – the ones we were issued with were absolute rubbish. Ali really went nuclear about all that; she couldn’t believe that we had to buy some of our equipment ourselves.
The body armour we’d been given before deployment wasn’t really fit for purpose. It was a twenty-year-old design and not of the same standard as a Kevlar soft vest, which can stop a 9mm bullet. The ceramic anti-ballistic plates that stop high-velocity rounds had one major issue: in a heavy landing, the chest plate had a tendency to come up and take your face off. Still, you can only play with the cards you’ve been dealt. The current vest issued to aircrew is called the Mk60 – although far from perfect, it’s definitely an improvement.
There’s a line in the Mamas and Papas song ‘Dedicated to the One I Love’ that goes ‘and the darkest hour is just before dawn’; it underlines how things were at home in the final days before my deployment. There comes a point where you’ve packed and checked everything twice, you’re mentally ready to go, and you just want the whole thing over with.
It’s always harder for Ali. I’m leaving to join a family – my Flight – and she’s losing a key part of hers. I’m experiencing things first-hand, and although there’s a risk, I know what I’m exposing myself to. Ali doesn’t. For her, life goes on, but it’s different. She has to cope alone, manage the house, work. Meanwhile, the fear is like an unwanted close companion. All she knows is that it’s dangerous out there – and for her, that means all of it. Subconsciously, we both start to become more remote, and an unwanted distance opens up between us. In the day or two before I go, both of us wish I was already gone so that the clock has begun to wind down to the day I come home again.
The goodbye is always the hardest part. That’s the time when the hold is greatest, when you’re trying to break away from a world that you’re an integral part of. When the goodbyes are done, you can focus on getting to grips with the job at hand, and each of us has our own coping mechanisms for that. The day or so before you leave is purgatory.
I leave early in the morning. Ali is still in bed. There’s a scene in the Mel Gibson film We Were Soldiers like that, where his screen wife, Madeleine Stowe, is still in bed and he slips quietly away to go to war. Was that life imitating art, or the other way around?
We’re flying from RAF Brize Norton to Kandahar via Kabul, so we meet as a Flight at 18 Squadron HQ, where a coach is waiting to transfer us to the RAF’s Oxfordshire-based hub. We’ve all had a week’s leave so it is the first time we’ve seen one another in seven days. Everyone is wearing their desert gear. The ground is awash with brown and beige, items of kit strewn hither and thither; everyone has been to the barber and a quick look round reveals a sea of heads sporting low-maintenance No.1 haircuts. The mood is subdued; the customary banter and piss-taking strangely absent. People are alone with their thoughts, the warmth of home and the scent of loved ones clinging to the folds of our uniforms.
We arrive at Brize Norton to learn that our aircraft has a technical fault and we’re delayed for twenty-four hours, so it’s back on the buses, back to Odiham and back home. It’s the worst thing possible: Groundhog Day. Another evening meal with Ali – what is there to say? We’ve said it all already. I shouldn’t be here. I feel strangely awkward. Darkness means another sleepless night spent watching Ali slumber and the clock count down. Sleep claims me just as the alarm shatters the silence, heralding another painful goodbye. The events of the previous twenty-four hours play out again. I feel like an actor treading the boards, playing out the same script, in the same place night after night. This one ends differently though; the TriStar is fixed and we depart on time just after lunch. England’s green and pleasant land falls rapidly away as the aircraft begins its journey eastwards.
The ageing TriStar that carries us and a couple of hundred assorted infantrymen and support staff is the only way into theatre for the countless servicemen and women deployed there. It’s stripped down, functional, bare. The faded decals in the toilets and galleys, all circa 1962, hint at the ageing airliner’s previous, rather more glamorous, life. Once people dressed up to fly; now its passengers wear desert combats, Kevlar helmets and body armour for a night-time descent made in total darkness. I’m sure each passenger deals with the darkened tactical approach differently, but there can’t be a man or woman aboard who doesn’t momentarily dwell on the fact that there is a better than even chance that one or more of their fellow passengers won’t be coming home the same way.
For those destined to increase the British casualty list, the route home is rather more high profile: a C-17 Globemaster into RAF Lyneham, preceded by a full military remembrance parade and followed by a procession through the centre of Royal Wooton Bassett, lined by locals who turn out to honour every fallen soldier repatriated back to Britain.
But that all lies ahead. For now, Afghanistan beckons.
PART TWO
BAPTISM OF FIRE
6
A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT
Those people we know generically as Afghanis or Afghans hail from at least five different ethnic groups and countless different tribes, many of which are spread across Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. More than thirty languages are spoken within the country’s borders, in addition to the three official tongues of Dari, Farsi and Pashto. Perhaps the only common thread to tie the country’s people together is their Muslim religion, which is practised by 99% of the population. The average Afghan feels little or no sense of loyalty to President Hamid Karzai; it is in the nature of many to support whoever looks likely to be the victor of any given argument, battle or confrontation. A deep-rooted system of tribal and ethnic loyalty overrides any sense of nationality, such as that possessed by the average British or American citizen.
Underpinning all of this is the illegal widespread cultivation and harvesting of opium poppies, which are the Taliban’s main source of income. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in the heroin that finds its way onto the streets of Britain and the US. Despite this, the country could be self-sufficient within a decade if the security situation was stabilised to allow the world’s mining companies to invest in Afghanistan’s significant mineral resources, which are believed to be worth in excess of three trillion dollars. These include vast reserves of oil, gas, copper, gold and lithium.
It was into that melting pot that we were headed as a component of 16 Air Assault Brigade. Our deployment was born in January 2006, following the then defence secretary Dr John Reid’s announcement that the UK would send a Provincial Reconstruction Team with several thousand personnel to Helmand Province for at least three years. The move was coordinated with other NATO countries to relieve the predominantly American presence in the south. Senior Taliban figures voiced opposition to the incoming force and pledged to resist. And resist they did.
Dr Reid expressed the hopelessly naïve view that: ‘We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot.’ Some hope. Within two and a half years, British soldiers had fired a total of 12.2 million bullets.
Our landing in Kabul was uneventful, but because of our late arrival time we had to wait until the following morning to take the short flight via Hercules to Kandahar. We landed at the main base for ISAF forces in Afghanistan around midday; even though it was only May, the first thing that struck me was the heat. Fuck me, it was oppressive! Acclimatising was going to be a bitch.
Kandahar and Helmand, where we would be operating from, is unforgiving territor
y. It can take over three weeks to acclimatise on arrival. The temperature in the summer months rarely drops below 48°C and reaches as high as 55°C, with humidity consistently around 9%. It’s arid, hot and dusty – the sand’s consistency is like talcum powder and it clings to everything. Heatstroke can be almost as much of a threat as the Taliban; so too is the dreaded D&V (Diarrhoea and Vomiting), which can strike down a whole patrol within days. You need to take in eleven litres of water a day just to stay hydrated, and there is almost no shelter from the sun.
Incidentally, the heat has other effects on your body’s physiology during the acclimatisation period. The heat is an appetite suppressant, but because of the amount of energy that you expend on ops, you need to take in more calories than you do at home. The soldiers at the FOBs, the guys who are engaging with the Taliban, take in around 5–6,000 calories a day. But the heat plays havoc with your digestive and urinary systems – there’s almost no desire to go to the toilet. Ten, eleven litres of water each day and you can’t remember the last time you went for a piss.
We were relieving ‘A’ Flight, 27 Sqn when we arrived. After picking up our weapons and other kit, we were met by Sqn Ldr Dan ‘Danno’ Startup, their OC.
‘Welcome to KAF, fellas,’ said Danno. Mike Woods, who was OC ‘A’ Flight for our tour shook his hand.
‘Cheers mate, although we’re not entirely pleased to be here!’ said Woodsy in his thick Geordie accent.
‘Sorry about the transport, it’s about par for the course round here,’ Danno apologised, as he led us out to a vintage 1960s bus that was coated inside and out in dust. All was well as he drove us towards our accommodation, and I took in the vast, sprawling base that is KAF, home to some 8,000 NATO troops. Suddenly, a fetid stench assailed my nostrils. ‘What the fuck is that?!’ I asked Danno.
‘Ah, that’ll be Poo Pond,’ he said as he rounded the corner to reveal an enormous circular lake about 100 yards across. Facing it on the opposite side of the road were several accommodation blocks.
‘Er… Poo Pond?’ asked Woodsy.
‘Yeah, it’s that lake there,’ said Danno, pointing. ‘It’s a liquid pit for all of KAF’s human waste.’
I stared at the lake’s still, brown water and shuddered involuntarily. Nothing stirred. Surely no insect would dare to brave its inky depths. Then I noticed the warning sign hanging from the single rope that cordoned the water off. ‘Biohazard: Do Not Enter,’ it read. In terms of stating the obvious, that sign was rivalled only by the warning on a bag of peanuts I’d been given on a flight a year or so before that said: ‘Warning. May Contain Nuts.’ What sort of fucking world do we inhabit now?
‘Which poor fuckers live in that accommodation block?’ asked Woodsy, as the bus slowed… and then turned.
‘Er, we did. Now it’s all yours. Welcome!’ said Danno, and a collective groan went up from everyone on the bus.
The accommodation itself was pretty good, considering: brick-built single-storey blocks with rooms either side of a central corridor. The rooms were air-conditioned and slept four – each berth had a cot and bedside cupboard. At the end of the corridor were the ablutions – a row of about eight showers, sixteen sinks, two urinals and four proper, porcelain flushing toilets. At least the waste wouldn’t have far to travel.
‘Do you get used to the smell?’ I asked Danno, screwing up my nose. I read somewhere that your sense of smell works by analysing molecular particles of whatever odour it detects. Sometimes I wished I didn’t read so much.
‘Honestly? No,’ said Danno. ‘But it’s not just yourselves. The Harrier Det are in the next block along, so they absorb the worst of the smell.’ I laughed – that wasn’t going to do the fast jet boys’ over-inflated egos any good. How do you know that the man you’re talking to is a Harrier pilot? Because he’ll tell you himself.
After being given an hour to dump our kit and straighten up, we met up with Danno at The Green Bean, a kind of low-rent coffee shop. In light of the fact that alcohol was banned at KAF, I could see The Green Bean becoming our de facto second home.
Danno did the handover. ‘Okay, the set-up is pretty simple. The Chinook Force in theatre is known as 1310 Flight, and we’ve got a total of six cabs here – nowhere near enough. Two cabs are at Bastion on IRT and HRF and there are two here for taskings, plus another two in various stages of maintenance. The rotation at Camp Bastion is two days on IRT followed by two on HRF (Helmand Reaction Force). On the fourth day, you handle the afternoon’s taskings and end up back here at KAF. The taskers will fly down to take over from you. The IRT and HRF cabs are permanent fixtures at Bastion and there will be three crews forward there at any one time, as well as a few engineers to handle routine maintenance and minor repairs.’
Simple as. I was looking forward to this.
First though, there was a mountain of admin to take care of. Our weapons all needed to be zeroed on the range, and we each needed to get Theatre Qualified (TQ) and signed off before we could fly ops. We also had to pick up our morphine. Everybody carries it in theatre, regardless of rank, corps, unit or trade. For those permanently at KAF, rocket attacks were a daily and nightly feature. For anyone forward – well, the risks were obvious. Your personal issue is two syringes of what is basically pure heroin. Get shot, hit by shrapnel or anything else nasty and so long as you don’t have a head injury, you slam the auto-injectors straight into your thigh and get eight hours of carefree happiness. That’s the theory, anyway.
Woodsy was a good mate and a cracking boss, whose innate confidence did a lot to quell the apprehension that many of us felt about the deployment. It wasn’t fear that I felt, more a kind of performance anxiety – the worry that somehow, when it came to the crunch, I might fail. We train hard and you expect the worst, but nobody has a frame of reference for combat if they haven’t experienced it, and you don’t know how you’re going to react when you come under fire. The worst thing in the world would be letting your mates down. But Woodsy made everyone feel better. He was a typical Geordie – straight-talking, and you wouldn’t want to cross him, but he was fair, likeable and, professionally, absolutely awesome.
One of the first things he did when we got to theatre was make sure we got our personal go kit sorted; here, the rule book went out the window. It was about what worked. ‘What you want is a baseline go bag that contains only stuff that you’re going to need,’ he said. ‘For most, that means first-aid kit, water, ammunition, smoke grenades and survival kit. There’s always some fuckwit who fills his go bag up with 100lbs of stuff that, when the wheel comes off, he can’t pick up. If you crash or get shot down, you aren’t going to have time to sit there planning it and ferreting around for what you need. It’s called a go bag for a reason. Grab it, and fuck off.’
He’s the only boss I’ve ever had that did that, and it’s one of the things that made him stand out because it was really good advice.
I added some warm kit to mine because the night-time temperature can drop to below 15°C, which is a big difference from the day-time high of 45–50°C. I also added in some boiled sweets for sugar – no point in adding chocolate! In the past, aircrew on ops would have promissory notes that promised a reward to whoever assisted the bearer. They don’t do that anymore because trust is a scarce commodity in today’s world. Money talks to the average Afghan, and gold in his hand is going to go down a lot better than a promissory note torn out of an Escape Manual!
Woodsy also had us practising egress from the aircraft after being shot down; escaping from the cab under contact, using your rifle to fire and manoeuvre and get into a shelter. We practised that non-stop until it became second nature. Woodsy instigated that, although it’s been taken up as SOP (standard operating practice) now. He knew what he was doing and that’s one of the reasons he was such a brilliant boss to work under.
I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy tour, but with nothing to act as a baseline, I had no idea just what ‘not an easy tour’ meant in practice. A briefing quite early on quickly p
ut me in the picture.
‘Dinger Bell’ was a Chinook crewman who had just been promoted and he was doing his operational staff tour in Afghanistan as a Squadron Leader at Joint Helicopter Force (Afghanistan) – HQ JHF (A) for short. He took us to the only place in KAF that was big enough to hold us all comfortably at that time – the church. He’d been in theatre for a while so he knew what he was talking about. And he didn’t mince his words.
‘Guys, be under no illusions: this is not going to be easy. People here want to kill you and they will try everything they can to achieve that. They hate the Chinooks and Apaches equally and it’s their stated aim to shoot one down.’
You could have heard a pin drop. Two days before we arrived, a patrol of French Special Forces operators working with the ANA were slaughtered and the area was apparently littered with dead bodies when 3 Para were sent in to try and rescue the survivors. One of the French guys was reportedly gutted alive. That got our attention. We’d expected things to be shit, but this was far beyond what we’d imagined. I think Dinger’s words carried even more weight because they were coming from a guy we all knew and trusted. You could see the worry etched on his face as he spoke to us.
‘You can’t be too careful, guys. You’ll need to apply all the tactics we’ve practised. You cannot give them an inch. They will try to kill you. And make no mistake; they are sophisticated in their tactics. They might wear pyjamas and flip-flops, but they know what they’re doing and are ready for you.’
All this happened on day one.
Welcome to Kandahar.
7
MINDING MY T’S AND Q’S
Sweating the Metal Page 5
