Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  ‘Sunray, this is Splinter Two Four. We’re visual over the engagement area,’ I call looking at my map. ‘Ugly Five Zero, Splinter Two Four. The enemy is in the vicinity of Blue Five, repeat Blue Five.’

  ‘Roger that, Splinter Two Four, Blue Five.’

  The Apaches now have a rough idea of the vicinity of the farmhouse, but Matt needs to be sure that they have a dead-on, accurate fix on the position of the target. He and the Paras involved in the firefight are so close that if the fire is remotely off target it will wipe them out instead of the Taliban.

  ‘Ugly Five Zero, Widow Seven Zero. Confirm, it is the compound south of my position. Distance 200 metres. Three enemy.’ As he keys the mike, I hear the ‘whoosh’ of an RPG followed by an explosion. Things are desperate down there. The Apaches still can’t identify the specific target that Matt wants taken out. ‘Ugly Five Zero, Widow Seven Zero, wait one,’ says Matt.

  He explains his predicament to Captain Mark Swann, the head of Patrols Platoon, and they come up with a rather unconventional idea: they’re going to mark the building with a Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW). A Para called Bashir Ali (‘Bash’) picks up the LAW and prepares to fire it at the enemy position. As he does so, he’s struck in the chest by several 7.62mm AK-47 rounds. They hit his body armour and ignite some tracer rounds in a magazine on his chest webbing, which catches fire.

  The impact knocks Bash off his feet and a quick-thinking buddy pulls him into cover and rolls him in the dirt to extinguish the flames. Incredibly, he is unhurt. He dusts himself off, picks up the LAW and positions himself once again in clear view of the enemy, the rocket launcher on his shoulder.

  Matt informs the Apache of his plans. ‘Ugly Five Zero, we’re going to mark the building with a LAW.’

  ‘Widow Seven Zero, Ugly. Confirm… with a LAW?’ asks the pilot, surprised.

  ‘Roger that, with a LAW,’ says Matt. ‘Standby.’

  Bash fires. His aim is dead on and the warhead explodes against the firehouse sending a huge pall of black smoke and flames skywards.

  ‘Widow Seven Zero, Ugly. We have the building.’

  ‘Ugly, look south from that building and thirty metres away you’ll see a wall with a load of Paras behind it; that’s us. You’re clear hot, initials Mike Charlie.’

  Whenever a JTAC calls in anything that’s Danger Close, he has to give the pilot his initials to indicate that he’s taking responsibility for it if it goes wrong. In effect, the ordnance he calls down is his but it’s fired by proxy.

  ‘Widow Seven Zero, Ugly Five Zero. Roger that commander’s initials are Mike Charlie. Visual with target, engaging now with 30mm. Keep your bloody heads down!’

  A hail of 30mm cannon shells rain down on the house, killing or injuring everyone inside it. Matt and the Paras then move forward and clear the house, but all they find are splashes and pools of blood on walls and in the dirt, some flip-flops and the detritus left by the enemy. No bodies. The Taliban try to take their casualties and dead with them, just as we do.

  From our vantage point above the town, we see everything happening below us; the radio calls colour in and add detail to the picture. I’m greatly impressed by Matt – by his coolness under pressure and his ability to think outside the box. Clearly others are too (partly for his actions in Operation Mutay, and his bravery in exposing himself to enemy fire to call in air support, he is awarded the Military Cross).

  By now, we’re low on fuel again. The ground units are still involved in firefights and pushing forward, so we return to Bastion to refuel. Several hours later we get the call that they’re ready for extraction so we return and, after a short time holding off station, we get a new grid reference. The guys are falling back under contact so they cross the wadi and dig in on the far side to put some open ground between them and the Taliban. I’m anxious as we make the approach. As always, we’re a big, slow target and rounds are flying.

  Andy goes in first again and kicks up the mother of all dust clouds. He lands next to a wall, which is protecting the waiting Paras from enemy fire. There’s no modern expertise, no complex engineering in the compounds and the walls that define them. It’s two-thousand-year-old technology – mud, straw and dung baked in the sun. It’s hard as concrete and utterly impenetrable to almost all of our weaponry. Small arms fire literally bounces off it, leaving barely a dent.

  Craig does an amazing piece of flying as, due to the brownout from Andy’s cab, we’re going in blind. He manoeuvres the aircraft gently using the Doppler (an instrument that tells you how you are drifting), the altimeter and the artificial horizon to descend, and gets us down perfectly. The troops board and we take fire but nothing hits us – the Taliban are at least 600 metres away and it’s a tough distance to hit anything unless you can work out angles, the effect of gravity on rounds and take it all into consideration. We get out without a scratch, as do all of the ground troops.

  When we get back, we’re invited to the debrief. It’s a first, and we all feel honoured to be included. We’re aircrew, they’re soldiers and it’s really all about them, but there is a huge amount of mutual respect. Listening to what the guys were involved in is humbling in the extreme. It’s an open and honest exchange with the ground units going over the events, the various contacts and asking what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they could improve upon. We hear some astonishing stories.

  One of the guys mentions that he was driving a Pinzgauer when he saw a man pop up out of a ditch running parallel to the track, level an RPG and fire at him. The warhead flew between his arms and legs as he was holding the steering wheel and exploded harmlessly against a wall several tens of metres away on the other side. What saved him was the fact that the doors had been removed from the Pinzgauer before the patrol to allow some ventilation and this allowed the RPG to pass straight through. Another Para was walking along and a Taliban gunman stepped out of a compound about twenty metres away and opened up on him with an AK-47. Twenty metres and nothing but empty space between them and the Taliban had the element of surprise. He emptied his magazine and every single round missed the Para, who raised his SA80 to his shoulder, sighted on the target and fired two double taps. Four rounds hit the attacker, who dropped to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut, dead.

  In another incident, Major Will Pike and his second in command exchanged fire with a Taliban fighter who ran off through a compound (as Colonel Tootal said, ‘You know it’s a bad day when the commanding officer and his 2i/c are firing their weapons!’). They chased him into a building and were peering around the compound entrance when some women and children came out. Suddenly, the Taliban popped up and started firing over their heads; Will and his 2i/c couldn’t fire back, so they waited until the civilians had all got out and went inside. At the end of the entrance, there was a door. They counted: ‘1-2-3-go!’ and burst through, levelling their weapons. One of them had a stoppage; the other heard the dreaded ‘Dead Man’s Click’ that signifies an empty magazine. They were back out quicker than they came in, just as the Taliban fighter unloaded a full AK-47 at them. In the meantime, the stoppage was cleared and a magazine changed. As soon as they heard the firing stop, they were back through the door where they unloaded on the gunman, killing him.

  Over twenty Taliban were killed during Op Mutay, a fact that was verified when Colonel Tootal received a report a day later that twenty-one Taliban fighters had been buried in a cemetery in the Sangin Valley. Not a single British soldier was killed or wounded, although luck clearly played a huge part as Bash, Matt Carter, Will Pike and the driver of the Pinzgauer, among others, can testify. It was supposed to have been a three-hour operation; it lasted over eight hours. In the event, nothing much came of the operation – we found some money, a quantity of opium resin, which the Paras left behind in line with UK policy at the time. A few weapons were recovered, but nothing to indicate the major cache that the intel had predicted, nor the High Value Target.

  Maybe the intel was wrong. Maybe the HVT melted
away before the Paras arrived, taking the weapons and ammo with him. Who knows? What was never in doubt was that everything changed that day and nothing has ever been the same since. However we were regarded up to that point, however much progress we might have made in terms of hearts and minds, we’d opened Pandora’s Box and we couldn’t un-know what we’d learned. Whatever our preconceptions of the Taliban were, here was the reality: they were brave to the point of foolhardiness, well-armed, ruthless and tactically aware.

  The genie was out of the bottle and we were confronted with an insurgency that would quickly develop into a major conflict. War, for our generation, isn’t always a conventional conflict fought between two armies. Ours is an asymmetric war; well-equipped and trained forces on one side, men in flip-flops and pyjamas on the other. We play fair and fight according to the rules of the Geneva Conventions. There are no rules for those we fight though. For them, anything goes. Nothing is off-limits. They don’t care if they kill or harm civilians to further their cause – they’ll even go out of their way to do so. Their desire to ‘down’ a Chinook extends to their planting IEDs in civilian markets because they know that the IRT will be scrambled to help.

  It’s a war where the Taliban masquerade as civilians; where they will place mortar tubes in crowds of women and children and launch attacks on coalition forces knowing that our moral and ethical code prevents us from returning fire. It’s a war where a man will take his five-year-old child along as cover while he plants an IED. The Rules of Engagement that dictate how and when we open fire on the Taliban prevent us from fighting on an equal footing. These are the things we have to bear in mind, the things our infantry have to be aware of, in the heat of battle.

  One thing was certain. After Op Mutay, things were very, very different.

  13

  WHITE LIGHT SPELLS DANGER

  The morning of June 11th dawned with Craig Wilson, Jonah, Rob Chambers and I down at Bastion on IRT/HRF for four days. It had been a quiet day with nothing much to mark it out as being different. Yet by the time I would next go to bed, I’d look back on a marathon sortie that saw us repeatedly taking fire, and some audacious flying which would eventually lead to Craig being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  It’s around 19:00 hrs when the phone breaks the silence: two long rings. I grab the receiver and listen: ‘You’ve got a shout. A T1, Kajaki. ANA, gunshot wound to the leg.’

  When ISAF troops are wounded or ill and the IRT is required, the radio call coming from the point of origin is known as a nine-liner; nine lines of text requesting the medevac, each line giving a vital piece of information starting with the grid reference and call sign of the requesting unit. The next piece of information is the number and condition of the casualties given using a T-code. A T1 means immediate threat to life; it means urgent evacuation and surgery required. T2 means surgical intervention required within four hours. T3s are less serious – evacuation within twenty-four hours. Nobody likes T4 – it means the casualty is already dead.

  We get to the cab and Craig gives me the details. We look at each other: ANA, Kajaki, T1? We share the same thought. Regardless, we still put everything we have into the call – we try not to be judgemental and work on the basis that if someone says we are needed, then we are. None of us wants anyone to die on our watch; certainly not through something we’ve done.

  The reasons that drive men to risk their lives in battle are many and varied but one of the most important covenants is the knowledge that, if they get hit, they’ll be looked after. Rapid, timely evacuation to immediate medical care and surgery and don’t spare the horses. We are the exponents of that covenant, picking the guys up from wherever they’ve been wounded and delivering them into the care of the world’s best trauma surgeons – within minutes, in some cases. If we are scrambled, we go. We put everything into it, whether the guy at the end is a British or ISAF soldier, an Afghan civilian wounded in battle or, in some cases, a member of the Taliban.

  We are there and back to Bastion again in an hour and five minutes, which is bloody quick, all things considered. We make the return flight on goggles as it is fully dark by then, and after shutting down, a debrief and some food, I decide on trying to get some sleep; you grab it where you can on the IRT. I grab a radio so I can stay in touch and have a quick shower, get dressed again and go to bed. I keep my boots on, but leave my pistol in its holster hooked over the end of the bed – it takes valuable minutes to put my boots on if we got a shout, but I can strap my firearm on as we run for the Land Rover.

  I lay my head on the pillow and shut my eyes. It feels like no more than five minutes have passed when the phone interrupts my dream. Two long rings. I swim up from the depths of sleep and snatch it up, only half awake.

  ‘British soldier at Sangin. He’s a T1, bleeding heavily, so make it quick.’

  I check my watch; it feels like five minutes’ sleep because that’s all it was. Oh well. I grab my holster from the bed and secure it to my right leg. The others know the drill and are ready to go as soon as they hear the phone ring. Make it quick? We are. We’re airborne and en route with our Apache escort within thirty minutes.

  This was probably the first time that a cab had been to Sangin which, at this stage of the war, was not under siege as it would become later in the month. However, a patrol had been sent out from nearby FOB Robinson to recover a Desert Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that had crashed near the Helmand River. The patrol had been dicked by the Taliban almost as soon as they left their base and, having failed to locate the UAV, were ambushed on a track as they returned. Lance Bombardier Mason of I Battery, 7 RHA was hit in the chest. The patrol medic alone got through six SA80 magazines defending the casualty while waiting for assistance.

  A relief force led by Capt Jim Philippson of 7RHA was put together and despatched to assist the patrol that had been bogged down in a firefight, but sadly Philippson was killed outright by Taliban fire as he manoeuvred across a field to get to the patrol’s location. He was just twenty-nine.

  Another relief force was raised to assist both patrols and it too came under contact. Sgt Maj Andy Stockton of 18 Battery was hit by an RPG round which took off the lower half of his arm. Despite this, he continued to return fire with his pistol.

  All this is going on while we are being despatched to pick up the first casualty, Lance Bombardier Mason. All we know at this stage is that the Taliban are still in the vicinity and the firefight is ongoing, so there is a bit of nervous tension in the cab as we fly towards the grid. Craig is captain of the aircraft and the handling pilot. I’m in the left-hand seat doing the nav. I feel tired, having been woken by the call just as I’d dropped off, so I guess my cognitive function is a little less than 100%. That’s my excuse anyway – how else can I explain my interpretation of what happens next?

  We are transiting to the HLS and I am looking at the Apache escorting us thinking how glad I am to have it along when, completely apropos of nothing, I see the most beautiful shooting star arcing between us; it’s absolutely awesome – I’ve never seen one last as long as this one. Then my cognitive function kicks in: a shooting star at 4,000ft, climbing up instead of descending? Get a fucking grip, Frenchie; it’s a rocket! And then I work it out. Someone has fired a Chinese 107mm rocket at us and missed. Those things are evil – they’re already breaking Mach 1 as they leave the firing tube. If they’re aimed in the right direction, you’re toast. That really wakes me up and refocuses my mind.

  The Apache goes on ahead to check out the HLS and comes over the radio to report that it is ‘cold’ – good to go in. Craig says, ‘I’m putting 100 on the light so bug the RadAlt to 80 on the noise. I’m going in fast and low, into the bottom of the wadi and we’ll look for the grid.’ As Craig flies the approach, I am talking him down on his height and speed so he can remain visual.

  We crest a hill and drop to low level. Craig makes a steep turn and, after a quick look at the grid, I see the marker held by one of the soldiers – it’s our signal
.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got it,’ Craig confirms and then greases us down in what has to be one of the most beautiful landings I’ve ever seen at night, particularly as I can see nothing whatsoever of the landing site in the last few seconds. It is a perfect zero speed landing and if ever a zero speed landing was required, it’s now. When the dust clears, both Craig and I have an ANA soldier literally five feet in front of us. And between them and the front wheels of the aircraft there is a one-metre deep ditch – literally three feet from the wheels. Directly behind us there are another three or four ANA just feet from the ramp. They’ve performed a perfect demonstration of ‘All Round Protection’, except they’ve fucked up their drills and made the landing site so small that only a perfect zero speed landing would prevent total disaster. And luckily for everyone that’s exactly what Craig delivered.

  In the cockpit, I am anxious for us to get airborne again. A bizarre thought comes into my head that I can’t chase away: ‘If an RPG hit us now, would it hurt?’ The troops on the ground run forward with Lance Bombardier Mason on a stretcher. He’s only eighteen – no more than a kid really – and is bleeding profusely. The entry wound is on his left shoulder. The bullet has hit the back plate of his armour, bounced off and come out through his chest, missing the main arteries to his heart by millimetres.

  The Apache comes over the radio. ‘Guys, you need to lift. Enemy have got the HLS zeroed and are setting up to launch.’ I can hear the sound of the AH’s 30mm chain gun raining fire down on enemy positions across the airwaves.

  ‘Ramp up,’ says Jonah, just in time.

  ‘Lifting,’ says Craig.

  ‘Clear above and behind.’ And with that, Craig pulls pitch and we lift into the sky. Seconds later an RPG slams into the ground exactly where our cab had been.