Ross Kemp on Afghanistan

by Kemp Ross

  We edged through the maize fields towards the compounds. There had been fighting here recently, so the area was deserted, the civilians having left; but there was still a risk that the Taliban were present, or that they had booby-trapped the compounds in this vicinity, so we moved gingerly. Along with two-zero platoon, we reached Compound 69 safely. One-zero and three-zero took up positions in Compounds 66 and 67 about 100 metres to the south.

  Compound 69 was seemingly deserted, but locked; the guys just kicked the door in and then entered to secure the location. When a compound is damaged in this way, the occupants can claim compensation. Some locals are too scared to do this, as it makes it look as if they're cooperating with the occupying force; others show the typical Afghan flair for negotiation and demand outrageous amounts of money before working their way lower.

  Once inside the compound, the soldiers systematically checked each room for occupants or booby traps. They then satisfied themselves that there was a good arc of fire from the top of the compound walls. If the enemy fire came – or rather, when it came – it was essential that the Scots were able to counter-attack the surrounding positions. The guys had brought about twenty empty sandbags with them, which they filled from the dusty compound floor and placed on top of the roofs to give them some cover, as apart from some decorative nipple-shaped domes there was none.

  And then we waited.

  The company's intention was to draw fire from the Taliban so that the enemy would give away their positions and reveal how many of them there were. Members of one-zero platoon were sent out on the ground so that if the Taliban were to approach our compounds, the men on the ground could ambush them. After laying up in Compound 69 for two hours, however, there was nothing. Delta Company were joined by a group of intelligence officers whose role was to try a tactic that I had not encountered before. Lieutenant Bolin set up a loudspeaker on the top of the compound wall while Corporal Edwards explained what was to happen. They intended to send messages over the loudspeaker in an attempt to goad the Taliban into action. I was in two minds about the wisdom of this. There seemed to be no doubt that the enemy knew where we were; it was, to my mind, likely that they would attack sooner or later. Why make things worse? In addition, it was the time of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day. It struck me as culturally insensitive at the very least to start disturbing the locals in this way; but I guess you sometimes have to look at the bigger picture, and Lieutenant Bolin explained that the locals were unlikely to become inflamed provided we didn't disturb the call to prayer. The Taliban, though, were a different matter.

  The goading started. A member of the ANA spoke over the loudspeaker: ‘In this month of Ramadan stay in with your families. Do not fight! Stay where you are, stay with your families.’ The words sounded peaceful, but the subtext was quite different. Though at the time, I was pretty dubious about this technique, about the wisdom of drawing more attention to ourselves, with hindsight I can see how effective it is. There was an immediate response. Within thirty seconds small-arms fire and RPGs flew over Compound 69. The ‘Do you think you're hard enough?’ approach had earned Delta Company a reaction – and given them a clue as to where the Taliban were firing from.

  Intelligence gave us an insight into what was going on among the enemy. The airwaves were buzzing with instructions: ‘Don't be tricked into giving away your positions. Don't fire any more RPGs because we don't have enough.’ Clearly the Taliban commanders knew what we were up to, but the grunts on the ground couldn't resist responding to the wind-up. Delta Company used their maps to work out the RPG firing point; in the meantime Nick Calder ordered the sound commander to continue his job of goading the enemy. Just one problem: the equipment broke. While they tried to replace a broken cable, they told me that the backup plan was to use an iPod to broadcast bagpipe music. I'm not sure if the ‘Highland Fling’ ranks highly in the Taliban top ten, but we didn't find out: a replacement lead was found and the machinery was up and running again. It had been a chaotic little incident and not, as I said to camera at the time, the British Army's finest hour.

  While the sound commander was getting his DJ equipment up to scratch, Nick and his men believed they had identified Taliban firing points in compounds to the north. To the west of us, on the other side of the wadi, British troops were occupying the high ground at a location called Roshan Tower, home to a mobile phone mast. From here, Nick decided to call in an attack of 81mm mortars into Compounds 94 and 95, where he believed the enemy were holed up. However, one-zero platoon were lying in ambush, so he had to establish that they were not in the way before the mortars could be launched. The last thing anyone wanted was a blue on blue.

  While the patrol's position was being determined, the loudspeaker goading started up again. ‘Stop annoying the Afghan people. Do not fight. Try to stay at home with your families during the month of Ramadan.’

  More small-arms fire. Then I heard the sound of gunfire much closer: our own men engaging with the enemy. I scrambled up on to the northern roof of the compound to see what was happening. At the north-east corner were two soldiers, Hammy and Gordon Pollock. Pollock – too cool for school, with a laconic turn of phrase – was installed behind the somewhat ineffectual protection of some sandbags with a Minimi light machine gun. The FOO, Axel, was up on the wall about 12 metres away from him so that he could direct the artillery. To the north-east of us were the demolished remains of Compound 71. On the outskirts of the demolished compound, about 100 metres away, was a collapsed wall with an overhanging tree. This, as we were soon to find out, was a Taliban firing point.

  We started taking incoming from the west. A burst of rounds went over my head. ‘Fuck!’ I shouted as I got my head down. That had been very, very close. At this point Pollock, directed by Axel, opened up on enemy that he had seen in Compound 71. Everyone knew what a good shot he was. A to-and-fro battle went on for five minutes, then stopped.

  A brief lull. Then, out of nowhere, a burst of fire hit Pollock's position and struck the edge of the roof in front of us. Pollock dropped. He got up again. Then dropped once more. Hammy took his place, and at that very moment I heard Axel's voice shouting the words you never want to hear.

  ‘Man down!’ he barked. ‘Man down!’

  The air turned into a riot of rounds and shouting. Chaos. Axel's was a voice of calm among it all as he spoke into his comms. ‘We need a medic up on the roof and we need more firepower. We need another gunner!’

  For some reason Axel's request over comms for a medic up on the roof hadn't been heard, so I crawled across the roof leaving him and the cameraman as Hammy banged away at the enemy who were breaking through the tree line. I bellowed down to the others in the compound. ‘Man down! Boys, we need a medic up here!’

  Everyone sprang into action. It was no surprise to me that Stevie Rae was the first up on the roof: ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ I had my head firmly buried into the roof. All I could do was raise my hand and point as the soldiers took over. They bravely shuffled towards the firing position despite the incoming fire. Hammy fired the Minimi to give them cover as they clambered towards Pollock and escorted him down to relative safety inside the compound, but just then I heard Axel's voice. ‘Enemy!’ he screamed. ‘Enemy! Enemy! Two hundred metres in that direction!’

  They were coming through the trees, approaching from the north. Delta Company engaged them with their SA80s while the Minimi was reloaded so that their advance could be suppressed. I took advantage of the covering fire to get the hell off that roof and back down into the compound. Down on the ground, I saw Pollock. His face was smeared in blood; so was his hand. True to type, however, he was still wearing his shades and when I asked him how he was, he told me simply that his arm was a bit sore.

  As I say, too cool for school.

  In fact he'd had a very lucky escape. It transpired that the rounds – three of them – had hit the bipod of Pollock's Minimi. The metal jackets of the rounds had splintered and sheared his left forearm in several plac
es. He'd been unbelievably lucky. When you're lying prone in a firing position, your body armour is no good to you. Had the rounds not hit his bipod they could well have gone down his throat and he would have been beyond anyone's help. Along the top of his wounded arm he had a tattoo. ‘Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death,’ it read, ‘I will fear no evil.’ Gordon Pollock had been inches away from taking that very walk.

  The medic administered morphine to his right arm, and inserted an IV access so that he could get fluids into him should anything go wrong. But he was triaged as walking wounded. Everything was going to be fine. In the time that I had known him, Gordon Pollock had racked up two confirmed enemy kills and now he'd narrowly missed death with severe wounds to his arm.

  A few of the guys from three-zero platoon escorted him down to the wadi so that he could be evacuated back to base by Mastiff. Meanwhile, it was only 17.30. If we were the jam in the jar, we were still attracting a lot of wasps. It wouldn't get dark for another two hours, so we knew that the contact was likely to continue.

  Delta Company had established that the bulk of the Taliban forces were situated in and around the remains of Compound 71, about 200 metres directly to our north-east. While Pollock was being evacuated to the wadi, two-zero platoon increased their rate of fire towards the enemy in order to give them cover. I climbed back up on to the roof as the rounds of the Minimi zipped across the green zone. Then Axel called on Hammy to hold his fire: the time had come for the 81mm mortar rounds to be called in from Roshan Tower. Axel had a position on one-zero platoon and he passed the information down to Nick Calder that the mortars were being directed 500 metres from their position and 300 metres from ours. It didn't leave much margin for error.

  The mortars hit their target. Just as they did, the loudspeaker started up again. ‘Taliban, Taliban, Taliban! You are the enemy of Afghanistan.’ ‘Fuck,’ I muttered to myself. Up on the wall of Compound 69, I didn't much fancy the thought of the enemy being goaded even more. ‘Taliban, Taliban, Taliban…’

  Despite the mortar attack, there was still a lot of movement around Compound 71. In order to suppress the enemy further, the OC called in a strafing run. Compound 71 was very close by, which meant the strafing run had to be carried out with pinpoint accuracy. A phosphorus grenade was launched from an underslung grenade launcher into the enemy compound to give the aircraft an extra marker of where he should be aiming. But as we waited, I couldn't help remembering the scenes of devastation at Mazdurak when Foster, Thrumble and Maclure lost their lives in the friendly fire incident. I knew perfectly well as I lay on that wall that if the strafing run missed by a whisker, we wouldn't be going home.

  In the distance, the sound of an F-16.

  We waited.

  A voice behind me. Tense. Bruce the JTAC, whose job was to liaise over the radio and coordinate the strike. ‘He's taking his time about it for some reason.’

  I wasn't filled with confidence. These aircraft carry the latest imaging technology; the pilot should have been able to see exactly what he was aiming for. Truth to tell, he should have been able to see the sweat on my brow. But for some reason he was holding back.

  We continued to wait.

  ‘I think he might be looking in the wrong place.’

  Great. Fantastically reassuring. Up above, we got a visual on the F-16. He was circling, but didn't seem to know where he was headed. You could almost taste the tension among the soldiers.

  ‘I'm thinking of calling it off, to be honest.’

  I turned to him. ‘Call it off, mate,’ I said. Quite where I thought my authority came from to make such an order, I don't know. I guess I was as nervous as everyone else.

  Nick Calder gave his orders. The strafing run was cancelled. Instead, the F-16 was to complete the same trajectory, but simply give a show of force. Moments later, the pilot zoomed in, the engines roaring in our ears. He passed over Compound 71, dropping flares as he went that indicated where his line of fire would have been. Had he been strafing, he would have hit the enemy, not us. Reassuring, but in a situation like that you definitely want to be safe, not sorry.

  The show of force supplied us with an extra piece of information. From the skies, the F-16 had spotted two dead bodies in the area of Compound 71. It looked as though the battle was over for the day.

  Nobody could completely relax, of course. The soldiers went about the crucial business of cleaning their weapons systems ready for their next use; then they lit fires to boil water and heat through some hot ration packs. Everyone was tired, dirty and in need of food: it had been one hell of a day and tomorrow promised more of the same.

  After sundown I took the opportunity to chat to Nick Calder and ask him how he felt the operation had gone so far. He seemed pretty pleased. We'd set out to gain entry into a compound and engage the enemy so that we could establish their positions and strength. We'd done all that, and we'd notched up two kills into the bargain. I suppose, though, that he was just as aware as I was that had one AK-47 round been diverted just a couple of millimetres, Gordon Pollock would have been dead and we'd all have been feeling very different.

  Throughout the night, fluorescent lumes were pushed up from Roshan Tower to light up the green zone and any enemy movement there might be. I managed to grab some sleep, but was woken up in the small hours by the sound of something in the sky. I sat bolt upright and shouted: ‘RPG!’

  Stevie Rae was next to me. ‘No,’ he replied, in a ‘Calm down, Kempy’ kind of voice. ‘Lume. Go back to sleep.’ I did as I was told; at least I tried to. It's difficult to sleep with explosions going on around you, no matter how innocent they are…

  Morning came. We prepared to go out on patrol along with the Afghan National Police. The plan was to head east from Compound 69, loop up north into enemy territory and then head west to the rubble of Compound 71 to see if the two bodies that had been spotted by the F-16 had been taken away. Estimated journey time an hour and a half, but I knew from experience that it could well be longer, depending on what we came across.

  The compounds around us were largely deserted, and we knew what that meant. It wasn't much after 06.00 and already the sweat was pouring from me. We saw a handful of locals farming in the fields – Taliban or farmers, who could say? The ANP stopped a man of fighting age and asked if the Taliban were in the vicinity. Apparently he didn't know, but what else was he going to say? As we passed along the side of one compound, I was given a taste of the Afghan's fighting spirit. A child stood by the path. Unbeknown to me, an interpreter up ahead playfully tapped the kid on the head with the antenna of his radio; in return the kid slapped me on the arm, clearly unperturbed by my body armour or the heavily armed men surrounding me. We did another circuit of the compound and passed him again. This time he whacked me across the chops with a big stick and a bigger smile. Kids today, huh?

  We passed a compound that had people living in it and Delta Company decided to check it out. The old man who lived there was told to get any women out of the way because we were coming in; then he stood by, smiling, as the soldiers checked the rooms of his compound for hidden enemy. There was nothing. The interpreter thanked him and apologized for the disturbance. ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘God be with you.’ I hoped he was.

  We continued our patrol, through the green zone and along compound walls. After the bedlam of the previous day, it was eerily quiet. And it was eerie, too, to arrive at Compound 71. It was hard to believe that this was once a place where people lived. The compound was flattened. Sure enough, the bodies that the F-16 had spotted were no longer there. No doubt they had been taken to be buried before sunset the previous day, in accordance with Muslim tradition.

  The dead Taliban were no longer there; nor were the living. We returned to Compound 69 to rest up in preparation for any further hostilities that day.

  Back at the compound, everyone took the opportunity to get some food inside them and this included the members of the ANP. During Ramadan, Muslims are supposed to fast during th
e day; but these guys had received special dispensation from the local mullah since they were out on the ground fighting. I watched as one of them – a serious-looking man with a long black beard – took some flour from his bag. He gave it to a younger man who, with the skill of a professional baker, kneaded it with water before flattening it so that it resembled a big pizza. Our policeman-turned-chef cooked the bread on both sides over a fire and then cut it into triangles and sprinkled sugar over it. Despite having been told not to, one of the ANP men rifled through the stores in the compound and found some chai. I was invited to sit down with them and eat.

  The bread was as tasty as it smelled; the tea was delicious, but thick with sugar. We sat on a rug on the ground and, with the help of an interpreter, started to chat. No doubt some of what I'd heard about the ANP was true – that being selected from the local community some of them were pro-Taliban, or at the very least hedged their bets by passing information on to the enemy. But talking to my new bearded friend, I learned that there was another side to this story. He was from Musa Qala and he told me that his family lived in a Taliban-controlled region. Was he able to get in to see them?

  He replied quite calmly. ‘No, I can't. Only when that area is free. Then we'll be able to come and go. Not now.’

  I wondered how long it had been since he had seen them.

  ‘My friend, it has been around seven or eight months. God willing, when the Taliban are not there, I will go to see them.’

  He had been with the ANP for four years. I asked him if he envisaged a time when it would be just the ANA and the ANP in charge of the security of Helmand Province.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘ISAF won't go from here. They are our friends until the nation is built.’

  Did he not want the Afghan people to control the Afghan state?