by Kemp Ross
‘First,’ he told me, ‘our neighbours should stop meddling in our affairs. Second, once our military is developed and has weapons and strength, then the enemy will disappear.’
Who did he mean by this?
‘My friend, I suspect Iran and Pakistan. We have captured people here. They have left behind bodies, their injured ones and their prisoners.’ He explained to me that the Taliban in his village had foreigners with them from Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Iran. ‘There are even people from Chechnya! In the last thirty years, Afghanistan has been smashed into pieces because of these people.’
Did he think the Taliban would be defeated in this area?
‘God willing, yes. Now that people know they are the enemy of the government, not friends. They burn schools, they burn the bazaar, they kill people. Eighty out of a hundred Afghans have turned away from them.’
I had heard British soldiers speaking in terms bordering on respect for the Taliban's fighting spirit. I wonder if my ANP friend felt the same.
‘No, they are not good warriors. They are just creating disorder.’ But then he proceeded to roll up his shirt and show me some wounds that these warriors had inflicted upon him. He had been shot thirteen times by the Taliban. His abdomen was a horrific mess of scars and healed wounds; he looked as if he had half his guts missing. I couldn't help the shock registering on my face. ‘My arm has also been shot,’ he told me with a faint smile. ‘I cannot lift it up.’ He showed me the injury – it looked as though the whole shoulder had been taken out. He laughed at my reaction; once more I was reminded what tough people these were.
‘The Taliban are very brutal,’ he told me.
I think you can say that again, my friend.
I had never come to Afghanistan to moralize about the rights and wrongs of the conflict; moreover, I was very aware that the Afghans accompanying British troops were likely to be those on the side of ISAF and that not everybody in this country thought the same way. But the conversation had been an honest and enlightening one. It made me realize that, if the efforts of our troops could help this man be reunited with his family, then the hardships they were undergoing at least had a real, tangible aim. Was it worth the deaths of so many young British lives? That was a more complicated question; but at least I came away from that meal of sweet bread and tea thinking that what was happening here was not entirely in vain.
By now, the heat of the day was at its most intense. Along with some of the others I took myself away to get some sleep, but was suddenly woken by the sound of a bang in the air. In my half-awake state I suppose I thought it was night-time. ‘Lume,’ I muttered.
From near by, I heard Stevie Rae's voice. ‘Lumes don't go up in the day,’ he stated. ‘RPG!’
It was an effective alarm call. Word went around the compound that the enemy were about to launch another grenade, so I put my helmet back on and waited to see how the game would be played out.
More news: the Taliban commanders were instructing that no more RPGs be fired until we left the compound. That suggested to Nick Calder that they didn't have many at their disposal. There was a suspicion that the RPG attack came from a Taliban dicker. My ANP friend told me that this had happened ‘thousands of times’. It was decided that the ANP, who had powers of arrest, should wait by the entrance to the compound and if the dicker passed by again, they would run out and arrest him. ‘OK, fine,’ the ANP man told the translator. ‘Tell him I won't let them go past.’ He looked as though he meant it.
We waited for several hours. No more attacks. No movement. Then, from nowhere, a motorcycle, right outside the compound. The ANP were as good as their word. They stopped the motorcyclist, tied his hands behind his back and arrested him. The captive wore dark garb and had a swagger about him. The ANP removed his mobile phone and discovered on it some pretty incriminating evidence: phone numbers of people who were believed to be leading Taliban commanders, and video footage of dead bodies, killed in battle. Not the sort of stuff I'd want on my mobile, but maybe that's just me…
The ANP man wrapped a black scarf round the captive's eyes. He was led into the compound and put against a wall, all the while flatly denying the allegations that were levelled against him: that he was a dicker, about to report back to the Taliban commanders the ISAF force's position.
‘Take me to anyone you want!’ he babbled.
The ANP man was unmoved and unfooled. ‘Yes, I will,’ he replied, his voice calm. ‘I will take you to Koka.’
Koka was the head of the ANP in Musa Qala. He was, by all accounts, one of the toughest men in this part of Helmand Province. It made sense. You don't get that kind of job with a degree from Harvard; you get it by being able to throw your weight around. I wondered if Koka would be any less impervious to the prisoner's claims than the ANP on the ground; I also wondered if the corruption that I knew to be so prevalent among people of authority in this part of the world would lead to our man being let off.
As it turned out, after further investigations by the ANP he was released without charge.
The remainder of the day passed quietly. We spent another night in Compound 69 and on day three of the operation Delta Company called for the Mastiffs to move up to an RV point on the northern wadi to pick us up and take us back to base.
I was happy to get back to the DC. Along with the rest of the guys, the first thing on my mind was to get some food down me: nothing special, but hunger is the best sauce and it was good to eat something that wasn't straight out of a ration pack. And it wouldn't be long before I was able to cook some food in my own kitchen, as this was my last night with Delta Company before going home. I took the opportunity to sit with Nick Calder, Axel, Goody and Danny, to thank them for keeping me and the camera team safe over the past weeks and to see how they felt about their imminent return home. Nick seemed wary of becoming too blasé about it. Delta Company had been very lucky during this tour: he'd expected to have perhaps ten wounded and at least a couple of deaths; in fact, so far, there had been only five injuries and no fatalities. Nick knew that luck had been on his side; he also knew that he couldn't relax until all his men were on a Tristar out of Afghanistan, and that was a good fifty days away. I hoped that in the future I would be able to congratulate him on bringing all of Delta Company safely back home again.
As I prepared to leave, I contemplated what I had learned in my time with 5 Scots. The soldiers seemed more settled on the ground than they had done the previous year, and I had seen at first hand that they had a better working relationship with the ANA and ANP. That said, the fighting in Musa Qala had been intense – more intense, probably, than when I had been with the Anglians. The Taliban were fighting smarter, perhaps because their ranks were being swelled by professionals from Pakistan, Iran and, yes, even Chechnya. The strain on the British troops whose role it was to keep them at bay was immeasurable. I wondered how they would deal with being back at home; what would happen when they were in the supermarket and someone bumped into them without saying sorry. Can you really go from two contacts a day with advanced weapons systems to being just an ordinary Joe? Colour Sergeant Joseph Connelly maintained that you could. ‘Because you've been here, getting shot at,’ he told me, ‘wee things like that don't bother you. It's insignificant.’ I hoped that was true of every soldier who had fought in Helmand Province.
I caught up with Lance Corporal Gordon Pollock and he showed me the wound on his arm – three great gashes sewn together with black stitches. A fly rested on the moisture of the wound. Gordon himself, however, bore the relieved expression of a man who knew how lucky he was. I asked him what was the first thing he'd do when he got home. ‘Hug my girlfriend, hug my mum,’ he replied. I bet you will, mate, I remember thinking. And rightly so.
Before we left, Delta Company came out in force for a company photograph and I was afforded the honour of being part of that picture. And it was an honour. This was a group of very brave men. They were as tightly knit as any family and during the time I had been with them I felt th
at they'd allowed me to become part of that family.
The camera team and I left the DC for the last time by Mastiff. We travelled up the wadi, and then west towards FOB Edinburgh, where we were to catch a Chinook back to Bastion. Unfortunately, Chinooks don't run to a regular timetable. We were stuck at FOB Edinburgh for four long, boring days. We didn't complain: we knew that the Chinooks weren't being delayed because of leaves on the line or the wrong kind of snow and that they were being utilized for more important missions than taking a guy off the telly back home. And we were reminded that in a war zone, boring is better than the alternative.
During the day, the pilot of an Apache needed to refuel before returning to FOB Edinburgh. We were all sitting in the mess tent having some scoff when he took off. Suddenly there was a dreadful noise from outside and everyone ran to see what was happening.
Taking off in a dusty desert is a difficult business because you can suffer from a ‘brown out’, where the dust cloud completely surrounds the aircraft and the pilot can't see what he's doing. This can be particularly dangerous when your Apache is laden with two Hellfire missiles. I don't know exactly what had happened when the pilot of this Apache had tried to take off in the brown out; all I know was that the tail of the chopper had broken off and was lying about 50 metres away from the main body. The crew were astonishingly lucky to walk away from it alive. Moreover, had the Hellfires exploded, they would probably have taken half the FOB with them.
Now that would have made an interesting end to our stay…
As always, coming back home was bittersweet. I'd been out in Musa Qala for only a small fraction of Delta Company's tour, but you don't just slip back into civilian life that easily. I started having dreams. In one, I was playing football against the Taliban in the dark, and the ball was an explosive. They were wearing dishdash; I was wearing body armour. No one knew when the explosive was going to go off, so we had to keep passing it back and forth across the halfway line. I always awoke before the explosion, safely in my comfortable bed at home, a very long way from where the boys of Delta Company were still enduring the hardships of Musa Qala. It would be flippant of me to say I counted the days until their return as enthusiastically as them or their families; but I did look forward to them coming back, and so it was that I was pleased to be present at Howe Barracks in Canterbury when they were delivered back into the arms of their loved ones.
There was palpable excitement as the white coach carrying Nick Calder and his men turned into the parade ground. The bagpipes started playing; everyone waved Union Jacks. A full complement of men: exhausted, battle weary, but alive. Having been at Pirbright Barracks when the Anglians returned minus their fallen colleagues, I knew how different it could have been.
And so, it has to be said, did the families of the soldiers. They must have enacted the worst-case scenario in their minds countless times. Whether they fully comprehended what it was that the men of Delta Company had been through during their six months in Helmand Province, I didn't know.
But I knew this: the looks on the faces of the relieved wives and excited children said it all.
PART THREE
Herrick 9
18. Adapt and Overcome
Deep in the Surrey Hills, about an hour out of London in the genteel village of Headley, there is a place called Headley Court. It looks like a large country house, nestled in the tranquil surroundings of the North Downs. In fact it couldn't be more different, because this is a military rehab centre. In 2007, local residents objected fiercely – and ultimately unsuccessfully – to proposals to allow a nearby house to be used as a residence for visiting families. The feelings that this attitude raises in me are, to be honest, not suitable for print. I'd like to take any remaining protestors on a quick tour of the place, because if anybody has any doubts about the amazing work that goes on at the Defence Military Rehabilitation Centre Headley Court, one look inside would soon put them right.
In Helmand Province I had learned about the constant threat of mines and improvised explosive devices. Eighty per cent of casualties are caused by these explosions. Many are deadly; but there is an additional human cost that rarely makes the headlines. Headley Court houses, among others, those soldiers who have lost limbs in the Afghan conflict and are being repaired and rehabilitated. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, psychological therapy: all these are dealt with at Headley Court. I wanted to visit this place, to speak to the soldiers who were being treated there. I expected it to be a traumatic experience. In the end, it was an inspiring one.
One of the first men I met at Headley Court, whose name I won't reveal, had suffered a head injury. His mental faculties were fully intact, but he was almost completely paralysed. He was locked in a body that no longer worked and his only method of communicating was with a spelling pad and a pencil. He wanted to speak to me, and I sat by his bedside as he painstakingly spelled out a question for me.
‘What… was… it… like…’
I felt pretty sure I knew how the question would end. ‘To be in Afghanistan’, right? Wrong.
‘What… was… it… like… to… hit… Ian… Beale?’
We both had a good laugh, but then he started to get cramp in the arm he was using to ‘write’. Can you imagine what it's like, having cramp and not being able to move the limb sufficiently to get rid of it? The nurse who was attending him began to cry; I felt myself welling up. The only sound he could make was one of frustration and pain.
Despite all this, he'd managed to have a joke with me and I couldn't help marvelling at this man's ability to keep his sense of humour up in such circumstances. And that remarkable uplifted morale was a feature of almost everybody I met.
Derek, a member of the Mercians, was a double leg amputee above the knee. As far as amputations go, that's about as bad as it gets. It means you don't have the benefit of the knee joint, so when your false leg is attached all the movements have to come from the hip. This makes it very difficult to learn to walk again, not least because it takes three times more energy to walk in this way; but Derek – whose legs were little more than stumps – was determined to do so. More than that, he lived for rugby and was determined to get back on to the pitch again, and even to compete at the Paralympics. We chatted as he was being fitted for a new set of legs and he explained what had happened. He was with an interpreter on the way to a meeting when the vehicle he was in – a WMIK – reversed over an IED. The device was constructed out of a 40-gallon oil drum, cut in half and filled with two anti-tank mines and 6-inch nails. The vehicle went up in the air and Derek was thrown 20 metres from the blast point. ‘I can't say the amount of pain I suffered that day,’ Derek told me. ‘I couldn't compare it with anything. Before they came to rescue me, I looked up into the sky and I said a prayer. “Lord, I know that I won't make it today. But if you have a plan for me to be an inspiration to others, give me back life again.”’ Now Derek thanks God every day that he's still alive.
Watching Derek jog down the corridor with his space-age metal running legs was indeed an inspiration, as was his attitude. I was also impressed to learn that some of the people who work on the legs making carbon-fibre casts – a delicate, hi-tech procedure involving laser measurements and computers – are RAF personnel also capable of working on aircraft in a war zone.
Royal Marine Peter Dunning, another double amputee, was also injured when his Viking hit an IED. He had no memory at all of the day of the explosion, but he showed me pictures of the vehicle. All four doors had been blown off and bits of the Viking were later found on the other side of the river, 200–300 metres away. The sharp, angular chunks of metal are not the only things that hit you when a vehicle like that goes up. Think about the oil, the gasoline, the acid in the battery, the hydraulics and the steel armour. The vehicles are pretty uncomfortable places to be at the best of times; blow them up and they turn into a poisonous hell.
Peter wasn't the only casualty that day. His driver, Dale Gosthic, took the full force of the blast and lost
his life. ‘Every day,’ Peter told me, ‘I count my blessings. With the driving, we'd just swap round each day. That day he was driving and I was commanding.’ At the time of the incident, everyone around him was asking: how are you still alive? Peter told me he can't stop asking himself the same question.
Colonel David Richmond was the highest-ranking officer to have been injured in Afghanistan. He was also the Commanding Officer of 5 Scots. He had been shot near the town of Qats, north of Musa Qala. I sat down with him and we talked about how our paths had never crossed in Musa Qala and also about his overview of the conflict, which I totally sympathized with: that you have to have more troops on the ground if you're going to control the situation in Afghanistan and allow Afghans to lead a better life. He was also very much aware during his time in Musa Qala just how much political corruption there was. His overview of the future of Afghanistan enlightened me immensely; I didn't know it at the time but it was to be reinforced by other honest and perceptive people.
He described to me the moment he was shot. He was having a small debrief with a group of his men. Some Taliban had followed an American vehicle back to David's position. They'd opened up. Miraculously David was the only one hit. A round went into his leg. I asked him what was the first thing that went through his mind. He replied: ‘That was close!’ All the other rounds had gone past his head. If one of them had found its mark, he would never have seen his wife or daughters again. Put into that kind of context, being shot in the leg isn't so bad. For the first ten minutes he was in shock and felt no pain, and he couldn't understand why. But once the adrenaline wears off, that's when it starts to hurt. Really hurt. I bet it did, David.
The process of repairing his leg had been long and complicated. The round had created dirty shards of bone, so the medics had had to cut open the leg and remove the shards. As a result of the loss of what had been cut away, one leg was 10 centimetres shorter than the other. David was given three options: reduce the length of the good leg, or undergo difficult, painful treatment to lengthen the bad one. Or wear a glam-rock-style high heel on one foot for the rest of his life. David, not being the Elton John type, opted for the leg-lengthening treatment. This involved wearing a metal brace around the top of his leg, which he had to lengthen on a daily basis. The broken bone inside his leg would eventually knit together, but it was important that this shouldn't happen until the leg itself had grown. Unfortunately it did – a testament to his fitness levels – so the injured bone had to be cracked again to allow the treatment to be successful. Ouch.
