A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the British Army in Afghanistan (14 page)

There were times when the wider mission in Helmand – to help the Afghans help themselves against the Taliban – seemed futile. There was no clearer illustration of what the British were up against than the Fusiliers' relationship with their supposed allies, the ANP. There were generally three or four policemen on the hill, although the Fusiliers never quite knew how many or even who they were because they came and went as they pleased. They were friendly to the British, and taught them some Afghan survival tricks such as how to keep a water bottle cool by wrapping it top and bottom in an Army issue sock. But, as the Gurkhas had found, they were also friendly with the enemy. 'We knew from the way they talked to each other on the radios that they knew each other,' said Spensley. 'We heard one of them say, we'll have youse tonight. And one of the coppers said, all right, come on then . . . They were just having chit-chat with each other about who was going to die first. It was very weird.'

Despite the departure earlier in the summer of their corrupt chief, Hajji Muhammadzai, and the warning inherent in Dan Rex's arrest of his radio-clicking deputy, Nek Mohammed, it soon became obvious that at least some of the ANP were still working for both sides. 'None of them could be trusted,' said Fusilier Matt Seal. 'They used to go round and count the mortar bombs, and tell the Taliban how much we had up there. You could see the change in the attacks.'

The defenders put up with it at first. The ANP's duplicity could even be helpful. The sight, for instance, of a policeman scurrying down the hill served as what Martyn Gibbons called a 'useful combat indicator'. Not all of them were so treacherous. Nick Groves thought quite highly of one policeman who helped distribute ammunition and who spoke movingly of his hatred of the Taliban. This man was older than the others, an ex-Mujahidin who told good stories about fighting the Russians, and who owned a house in the town. He spoke quite openly about how he and his colleagues made a living by extorting money from travellers at illicit vehicle checkpoints. Like Dan Rex before him, Groves was not wholly unsympathetic. 'They're not being clothed or paid by the government,' he said. 'What else can they do?'

There seemed at least a chance that such men's loyalty, if not their morality, could be swayed. 'There was one ANP guy we were told was proper dodgy when we first got there,' said Seal, 'but towards the end I think he realized the Taliban were fighting a losing battle – that these foreigners are up for it, not going anywhere. He became one of the best sources we had. He completely turned.'

Others, however, seemed beyond redemption. One ANP man became so brazen that he was arrested and, the following day, frog-marched down to the compound. 'He was clearly marking our positions,' said Spensley. 'He came up in front of my gun first, stood up and down a few times – I was round the back of the hill at the time. Then he walked in front of Fish's gun and did exactly the same. Then he walked into the mud building on top of the hill, and as soon as he went in there we got attacked – dead accurate small-arms fire on both positions, smashing in front of the sangar.'

The tenuousness of the alliance with the local lawmen was exposed again when someone in the compound quietly replaced the tattered Afghan flag that flew there with the Fusilier's regimental one, which is based on the flag of St George. Swift quickly ordered the Afghan flag to be put back up again, but it was obvious to him who the Fusiliers thought they were fighting for, and that some of them at least didn't think the Afghans were worth it.

Swift had to put up with a lot from his Afghan allies. On one occasion a fight broke out in the compound between two ANA soldiers when one called the other 'gay'. The ANA sergeant who took it upon himself to break them up did so by firing his pistol over their heads. He did not fire very far over their heads, however, and succeeded in winging Hazmat, the senior NDS man. It was incidents like this that led Swift to write, in a situation report to a senior officer at regimental headquarters in London in late September, that 'the current strategy is following political rather than military imperatives'. ('Talk about the bleeding obvious,' he commented.)

Unfortunately for Swift, the officer at headquarters posted his report as a regimental newsletter on the Fusilier website. The description of life at Now Zad seemed uncontroversial to him, and the garrison's friends and family were clamouring for news. It was a bad mistake. Prime Minister Blair had repeatedly stated that strategy was the exclusive preserve of his generals; yet here was an officer in the field apparently insisting that it was politically driven. Swift's report, which also stated, truthfully, that 'casualty rates are very significant and show no signs of reducing', was leapt upon by the media. The newsletter was hurriedly removed from the website, but too late. 'The
Mail
went huge on it,' said Swift. 'Everyone did. There was even some talking head on CNN or Sky who said, "Whistle-blowers are normally forced out of the Army in a matter of weeks." I thought I was in serious trouble.'

He wasn't the only one. The following day one of 3 Para's commanders, Jamie Loden, was quoted as describing the RAF as 'utterly, utterly useless' after a 'female pilot' in a Harrier misidentified a target and narrowly missed the compound at Sangin with a pair of phosphorus rockets. Swift was full of sympathy for Loden, who like him had been pulled at short notice from Staff College for deployment in Helmand. It was hardly Loden's fault, for his remark was made in a private email that was multi-forwarded and eventually leaked to Sky News.

Taken together, the stories amounted to a powerful new stick with which to beat the politicians for a war that was clearly not going according to plan. Swift was quickly exonerated by his superiors. From their point of view, the potential damage to relations between the Army and the RAF was much more serious, so it was the unfortunate Loden who ended up taking most of the heat. 'Irresponsible comments, based on a snapshot, are regrettable,' the Chief of the General Staff said. The charge against the RAF was in any case untrue. Although bombs and rockets could and often did go astray, every one of the company commanders I talked to spoke highly of the RAF, the Harriers included. 'It was a lesson for me,' said Swift. 'It shows you've got to be bloody careful what you say to anyone when you're in theatre.'

For the NCOs and officers responsible for maintaining troop morale, the greatest challenge was the acute sense of isolation on the hill, and the uncertainty they all felt about when or indeed if they would ever get out of Now Zad. The Fire Support Group had packed for a two-day mission. After two days they were told they would have to stay for five. After four days they learned that they would be staying until the end of the month. When two weeks became five weeks the Fusiliers realized that they would be going nowhere else for the rest of their tour. Fisher began to mark off the days on a four-month 'chuff-chart' that he constructed out of a cardboard box, like a prisoner in a cell, although, as he commented, 'I've been in prison and at least you get electricity. And no one's shooting at you . . . There were times when you'd just be lying in your trench and you'd be thinking to yourself, "What am I doing here?"'

Several Fusiliers spoke of a suspicion that they had been abandoned to their fate. 'It seems to me like we were just left there, nobody really knowing what was going on,' said Spensley. He and the others still resented the fact that there was no relief, 'even if it was just for a couple of days or something . . . It would have been nice to be able to relax for a bit, because you're on edge all the time. You're like, when's it going to happen next? Sometimes you wouldn't even get up in the morning. All you'd hear is "Incoming!". You'd try and get out of your sleeping bag – if you had one – and get your body armour and helmet on in thirty seconds, morning after morning.'

They understood that the battle group commander, 3 Para's CO Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, had his hands full. Other units were 'fixed' in places just as dangerous as ANP Hill. By the beginning of August, British troops were dying in significant numbers at Sangin and elsewhere, and the Task Force was stretched to its limits. But that didn't stop the Fusiliers feeling that more should have been done to support them. Some of them even used the phrase 'left to rot'. And they tended to place the blame for that squarely on the Paras.

'I'm not too keen on 'em,' said Spensley. 'They seem to be more interested in looking after their blokes than anybody else. That's the view – well, it's my view. The Paras were in there for two weeks, then put the Gurkhas in for five weeks, then we were there for fifteen . . . They put us in, didn't they? And just left us there and didn't relieve us. All the Paras were getting switched round everywhere, getting time in Bastion and coming back out, and we just got left there until the end of our tour. It didn't seem quite right to me.'

It certainly did not help that, during the operation to insert the company at the end of July, a month's worth of fresh rations intended for the Fusiliers were apparently scoffed by the Paras in only two days.

'We hate them,' said Seal. 'It'll be quite something to see, the next time this battalion gets put anywhere with 3 Para. I don't think they ever will, to be honest.' He had bumped into some of them in Qatar in early 2007, in transit on another mission to Afghanistan. 'I met a Para sergeant major. He said, "Ah, Fusiliers – I worked with you last year. Yeah yeah, they came in to Now Zad under contact, it was really funny." I looked at him and said, "I weren't fucking laughing, mate." One of the platoon sergeants was stood there and thought I was going to have a go at the guy – which I wanted to. But I know better than that; I know better than to have a go at a sergeant major. And he said, "Oh, you was there, was yer?" I said, "Yeah, I was there for a hundred and seven days. Because you left us there." And I thought, I made me point. I walked off before he could come back with anything . . . I was in civvies; he didn't know what rank I was or anything.'

Not only the lower ranks felt disgruntled, nor even only the Fusiliers. A Household Cavalry officer later confided that they too felt they had sometimes been treated as 'ginger cousins' by the core of the battle group.

'The Paras have a different ethos,' said a Fusilier officer. 'We got two phone calls from them in all our time at Now Zad, and one of those was to say goodbye at the end of their tour. They were a manoeuvrist group, while we weren't allowed to leave the district centre. Our orders were to hold . . . we were having some intensive fire-fights and some big contacts, but they were saying it can't be that bad because we had no casualties. But there was a picket on the sangars riddled with 7.62 . . . half a metre to the right, and you're dead.'

No one from headquarters ever seemed to come and visit the Fusiliers. Each of the 149 contacts they experienced was dutifully reported back to Bastion, yet there never seemed to be anyone more senior than a second lieutenant on the other end of the radio, or else some sleepy watchman whose promises to pass the report up the chain were seldom convincing. And little information came the other way, which only increased their sense of isolation. 'We had no total picture,' said the officer, 'no situational awareness, no update on operations elsewhere in Helmand. In fact we often hadn't a clue what the rest of the battle group was doing.'

On 1 August when a Scimitar light tank was destroyed by an IED at Musa Qala, the Fusiliers found out about it only because someone in the Operations Room happened to be listening in on the net at the time. Yet the incident had potentially crucial tactical implications for the defenders of Now Zad, as well as devastating psychological consequences for those in the garrison who had known the three victims. In fact the deaths mattered so much to the Fusiliers that an impromptu memorial service was held in the compound.

'We posted every incident back,' the officer said. 'Why couldn't they?'

The lack of attention from the Paras was hurtful, but not as serious as the impact it appeared to have on the Fusiliers' requests for equipment and supplies that they repeatedly made in the 'assets required' box of their daily reports back to HQ. Even mortar ammunition ran low. For a four-day period Gibbons' crews were down to only forty shells between them – enough for two heavy contacts. For a while they were forced to fire smoke shells at their targets instead, as markers for close air support. The SF platoon also ran dangerously short of machine-gun ammunition. At one stage they had twenty-one minutes' worth left – enough for a single contact. 'In the end someone got on the radio and wouldn't take no for an answer,' said Seal.

Squaddies always grumble. All the outstations suffered logistical problems that summer, mainly because of the difficulty and danger of getting Chinooks into the district centre drop zones. Yet helicopter troubles did not quite explain the non-appearance of other essential items of equipment at Now Zad. The Fusiliers suspected that the Paras were either directing these items to where the fighting appeared fiercest and casualties were being taken, which was perhaps fair enough, or else they were simply keeping the good stuff for themselves, which felt less so.

The Fusilier wish list was long, and included MSTAR, the latest 'man-portable surveillance and target acquisition radar' system, which might have made a big difference to the men anxiously scanning for mortar dust plumes the old-fashioned way, through binoculars and out of the corners of their eyes. Some of the Paras were equipped with it, yet no MSTAR ever made it to Now Zad during Herrick 4.

There was an unexplained dearth, too, of the latest generation of Osprey body armour, which covered more of the body and offered greater bullet-stopping power than the ECBA system it replaced. Osprey was hotter and heavier to wear than ECBA, a serious drawback for troops involved in patrols and other mobile operations where moving fast was key to survival; for a garrison restricted to manning trenches and sangars, though, it was perfect. Yet there were never more than four sets for the whole of the Now Zad group, despite requests for more.