Combat Camera (18 page)

Foot-Tapping went through some of the details with me. We’d now be going out in two days’ time, in the early hours of the morning, timing our departure to coincide with the 1 Rifles/42 Commando heli-insertion 5 km north of us. Russ, Ali and myself
would be attached to a mixed company
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consisting of eighteen British soldiers from the Brigade Advisory Group and sixty soldiers from the ANA. Our patrol would be moving very slowly, all of us in single file, following in each other’s footsteps. We’d lay up in a compound about 2 km outside Patrol Base 5 on the first night, then complete the rest of the move up to Salaang by the following evening.

“At Salaang you’ll get the chance to do a few interviews,” said Foot-Tapping. “And hopefully the Engineers will get the all-clear to build the bridge.”

For us, the bridge was the main event. Russ and Ali would get plenty of footage and stills of British soldiers out on patrol – framed wherever possible with Afghan soldiers in the same shot – but we still needed to show the British public what it was their boys were actually trying to achieve. We weren’t just out here looking for a fight – we were here to build bridges, in this case literally.

We stayed at Patrol Base 5 that night. I slept badly, kept awake by the nearby mortar line, firing illumination missions into the early hours. They stopped at around 2 a.m., allowing for a small window of calm, before waking us all with a rousing blast at 5 a.m.

I went for breakfast at 6.30 a.m., joining Russ and Ali at one of the tables in the dining tent. None of us had slept well.

“Did you hear the bang?” asked Russ.

“You mean the mortars?”

“No, a Husky hit an IED outside the base.”

“That’s why the Apaches are up there,” said Ali.

Two of them were circling the base, omniscient in the cloudless sky. They were scouring the ground for insurgents while the Engineers recovered the Husky. The driver and passengers had all
walked away from the blast, reinforcing the vehicle’s well-earned reputation for safety. Chunky and robust, it was designed for saving lives.

It turned into another stupidly hot day. Temperatures were now hitting 42°C. With nothing else to do, I spent the afternoon reading a book on my camp cot, wearing just a pair of sweat-soaked boxer shorts, staying out of the sun. We’d opened up both ends of our little tent, but it still felt like a sauna, the heavy canvas doing nothing to dissipate the heat. By dinner I’d drunk four litres of water and was still thirsty.

After dinner a vigil was held for Colour Sergeant Kevin Fortuna, the soldier from 1 Rifles who’d been killed by an IED two days earlier near CP Sarhad, barely a kilometre from where we were all standing. Everyone on the base – there were about a hundred of us – formed a hollow square by the two flagpoles near the dining tent. By now the sky had clouded over, and the wind had picked up. A number of officers and senior NCOs read out prayers and eulogies, struggling to make themselves heard over the noise of the Brigade flags, still flapping wildly at half-mast.

We had an early start the next morning, getting up at 02.30. Once again I got very little sleep, but I felt OK, waking up to the faint sound of distant helicopters. I put on my Bergen – it was heavier than I would’ve liked, but perfectly manageable – and walked with Russ and Ali to the meeting point by the back gate. We could see lots of other guys already there, getting their kit ready in the darkness, visible by their issued head torches. They looked just like miners preparing for a descent into the underworld.

“We’ve got a delay,” I heard one of them say. “Moving off at 0430 hours.”

That gave us another hour. I didn’t know if there was some sort of problem, but I was grateful for the slippage. It started to get light at 4.30 a.m., which meant it would be easier for the point men to spot any IED ground sign. We did have night-vision goggles, but they weren’t exactly high-definition.

That said, we were less likely to get shot in the dark.

I walked back to the dining tent to get some cold water, bumping into Foot-Tapping on the way.

“It’s still too windy for the heli-insertion,” he said, his silhouette looming over me. Dozens of illumination rounds had been fired into the night sky behind him. “They’re just waiting for it to calm down a bit.”

I could still hear helicopters in the distance, so someone was flying. In the dining tent I took out as much water from the wardrobe-sized fridge as I could carry, returning to Russ and Ali with my arms full of 500-ml bottles. They were sitting on their kit by one of the ISO containers near the back gate. I handed out the water, and we started drinking.

I was just opening my second bottle when a soldier came over and introduced himself. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but his voice told me everything I needed to know about him.

“I’m Colour Sergeant Fisher,” he growled. “You’ll have to give us a hand with some of our kit.”

He passed me one of the reserve Vallon metal detectors and a 66-mm rocket launcher. Russ and Ali had already declined my offer to carry some of their kit – they insisted they’d be OK – so I did have some spare capacity. I strapped both items onto my Bergen, hoping I wouldn’t be called upon to use them.

Eventually we got going, the wind dying down enough for the heli-insertion to get the all-clear. It was closer to 5 a.m. as we walked
out of the gate in single file, Russ, Ali and myself at the rear, with the stocky Colour Sergeant Fisher – looking as tough as he sounded – covering all our backs. Above us the murky clouds had formed a protective blanket, keeping out the sunshine. We knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long, but for now the weather was perfect.

The ANA were waiting for us along the track, spread out in single file. There must’ve been about a hundred of them, all out in the open. They shuffled forward after a few minutes, moving very slowly. The first kilometre of the route had already been cleared of IEDs, but they still took their time. The Afghan commander, a chubby man who refrained from wearing a helmet, kept moving up and down the line, muttering to himself. Every time the troops at the front stopped, we all got down on one knee. If we were stationary for more than a couple of minutes, we’d sink back onto our Bergens, giving our shoulders a break. I was carrying around 45 kg of kit, body armour included. Some of the men in our patrol were carrying in excess of 60 kg.

It took us two hours to reach CP Sarhad, just a kilometre north of Patrol Base 5. It was a holding area, giving us a chance for a break. We all rested up against Sarhad’s mud walls while Foot-Tapping went through the orders again with the Afghan commander. Some of us chatted, some of us smoked, and some of us ate snacks. All of us drank water.

We set off again about thirty minutes later. The clouds had yet to break, and we still had the breeze to keep us cool. A narrow track took us into a much greener landscape now, the thick grass coming up to our waists. It was still a disconcertingly obvious route, so we left nothing to chance, stopping constantly. The ANA had their own Vallon man up front, but we also carried out Vallon checks in their wake.

It took us three and a half hours to move from CP Sarhad to our next lay-up point at Compound 43. The distance was roughly one kilometre. Every man was now drenched in sweat. The midday sun was out and the breeze had disappeared.

Foot-Tapping had hired the compound from a local farmer, providing us with shelter for the rest of the afternoon and the night ahead. We carried out Vallon checks on the outer walls, then moved inside. There was a well, an orchard and a number of empty stables. We would be sleeping in relative comfort tonight, before leaving at first light.

We split the compound between the ANA and ourselves. Each stable measured about ten feet by twenty feet – big enough for a section of men. We cleared spaces for our roll mats on the crumbling mud floor, kicking aside all the straw and dried chicken shit. Dust billowed up towards the thatched ceiling just a few feet above our heads, where dozens of bees tended to their own comforts, seemingly oblivious to our presence. They’d built a network of little hives, each the size of a clenched fist.

We spent most of the afternoon inside, avoiding the sunlight. The walls were almost two feet thick, keeping out the worst of the heat. I was sharing my stable with ten other soldiers, Russ among them. They were mainly from 3 Mercian, although a few came from 1 Rifles. Two of them came in following a short patrol around the compound, their Dorset accents filling the stable.

“We’ve just been chatting to one of the elders,” said one of them. “There are two IEDs out there.”

The devices were dug into an alleyway alongside the compound. The elder had pointed them out to the soldiers, who’d marked them for the EOD team. It was troubling to think what could’ve happened if the elder had said nothing, but also reassuring to know that some of the locals were ready to help us out.

We all took turns on sentry duty. The lookout point was on the corner of our mud roof. To get there, you had to climb up a ladder and crawl over to the edge of the building. You couldn’t walk on the roof, in case it collapsed. Whenever the sentries changed over, dragging themselves into position, bits of mud and thatch sprinkled down from the ceiling onto our heads. After I’d stopped worrying about the two IEDs, I started worrying about the beehives, wondering whether they would fall down onto our heads as well.

I went on sentry at 3.30 p.m., crawling across the roof to get my handover from one of the young Mercians. He pointed out my “arcs” and then talked about the three “fighting-age males” wielding hand scythes in the field to my front, about a hundred metres away. They’d been cutting wheat for the last hour and weren’t deemed a threat, but I still had to watch them.

They did nothing of any interest. They just carried on cutting the wheat. I lay on the corner of the roof in the sun, feeling like a lizard. The temperature was still in the thirties, but the lack of exertion meant the whole experience was actually quite pleasant. Like being on holiday. It was nice to get outside, away from the bees and the crumbling ceiling. There was a gentle breeze blowing across the wheat, keeping me cool. Beyond the farmers were trees and green fields. It was like a postcard from Tuscany.

At just after 4 p.m., an IED detonated. It was to my right, but I could only guess at the distance. One kilometre? Two kilometres? Three kilometres? It was impossible to say. I certainly couldn’t see anything.

Colour Sergeant Fisher called up to me. He was manning the radio in a small pocket of shade in the main courtyard.

“You see anything, sir?”

“Nothing, Colour Sergeant.”

No information was forthcoming about the explosion. We kicked our heels in the compound for the rest of the afternoon, then gathered in one of the stables for a briefing after dark.

According to the elders, the Taliban had fixed our position and were planning to attack us the next day. “But they’re just rumours at this point,” said Foot-Tapping, studying his notes by torchlight. “Besides, we’re going to be leaving at 5 a.m.”

There was still no word on the afternoon IED, but overall the operation seemed to be going well. There had been only one minor casualty during the earlier heli-insertion, a soldier from 1 Rifles suffering a broken leg after a partial IED detonation. Otherwise it had been very quiet. An interpreter had been injured after a grenade had been fired into another compound, but that was about it.

Foot-Tapping rounded off the brief by once again reminding everyone to treat the compound with respect. “Make sure you pick up all your rubbish before you go,” he said. “We might have to come back here one day.”

“How much is this place costing us?” someone asked.

“We’ve given the owner 10,000 afghanis.”

“What’s that?”

“A couple of hundred dollars.”

“I want to see the management,” said one of the Dorset soldiers.

“Too right,” said another. “The roof is falling in.”

Those of us not on sentry went back to our kit and tried to get some sleep, but it was a lost cause. The sentries were doubled up after last light, crawling across the roof in pairs. The noisy changeovers, along with all the bits of crap falling from the ceiling, made for a restless night.

Reveille was at 4.30 a.m., just as it was starting to get light. Nobody bothered trying to cook any breakfast. We just packed our kit, cleared away the odd bit of rubbish and formed up in the courtyard. The ANA were up and about as well, and we all set off together at just after 5 a.m.

The plan was to get to Salaang by dusk. It was just under two kilometres away, but as before we were allowing ourselves plenty of time. The ANA led the way and we followed on behind, negotiating a stream and a couple of harvested poppy fields before stopping on a track about four hundred metres short of a compound at just after 7.30 a.m. We planned to lay up at the compound and finish the journey to Salaang in the afternoon.

We sat on the track for another three hours, warming up in the sun. There was no shade, and nothing to hide behind. Young men on motorcycles would occasionally drive by, making us all sit up, but otherwise it was quiet.

The owner of the compound eventually let us in at 11 a.m. It wasn’t as nice as Compound 43 – there was cow shit everywhere – but it did have a clean-looking stream running through it. I had run out of water by now, and was more than ready for a drink. The stream water itself was not to be trusted, but one of the Mercians lent me his Lifesaver,
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allowing me to refill all my empty bottles without fear of infection. I poured a sachet of blackcurrant powder into one of them and gave it a try.

It tasted fantastic. I emptied my bottle in two swigs, and did it all over again.

Once again, we took turns on sentry. One of the Mercians sat on the roof in the atrocious heat and gazed out across the fields, while the rest of us stayed in the shade. The compound had just one empty stable to protect us from the sun – many of us had to pin ourselves to the perimeter wall, sheltering in a band of shadow two feet wide.

I went on sentry later in the afternoon. Another IED went off. Again, I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but that didn’t matter. It came in over the radio.