Spoken from the Front (11 page)

Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal
Engineers

Corporal Fraser 'Frankie' Gasgarth, The Royal Engineers, is
thirty-two, He was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. The son of a sales
rep for an agricultural feed company, he has an older brother.
Both his grandfathers served in the Army during the Second
World War. Gasgarth left school at sixteen to start an
apprenticeship in mechanical engineering but, after completing
the five-year course, gave it up to travel around the world for
four months. On his return, he made award-winning cheese
while his application to join the Army was considered. He
eventually went into the Royal Engineers in 1999, aged twenty-two.
During his time in the Army, he went on tours to Northern
Ireland and Iraq, before being sent to Afghanistan in September
2006. Gasgarth, who is engaged, is based at RMB Chivenor in
Devon. He got his nickname from comrades and was named
after Mad 'Frankie' Fraser, the gangster – because he was
always volunteering to do crazy tasks.

My arrival in Afghanistan was relatively straightforward –
and was, without doubt, considerably less dramatic than an
incident shortly after I had first arrived in Iraq, just after the
start of the Second Gulf War in 2003. Now that was an
adventure: the day two of us accidentally took a wrong turn
and ended up being repeatedly shot at as we mistakenly
headed towards Basra, Iraq's second city.

In contrast to Iraq, my first few days in Afghanistan were a
piece of cake. We went out as a full squadron – as 59
Commando Squadron – and took over from the Paras out
there. Our role was to support 3 Commando Brigade. My job
was as a fitter section commander, responsible for maintaining
and fixing plant kit. I took over twenty-eight bits of kit
and, out of that, one bit was 'roadworthy' meaning – back in
the UK – you could take it on the road, one piece was
'taskworthy' – you couldn't drive it onto the road but could
take it onto site. The rest was 'U/S': unserviceable. Yet we
had to get it all up and running. The kit consisted of everything
from JCB diggers, medium-wheel tractors (which have
a massive bucket on the front), excavators and graders. A lot
of the kit gets sent to out-stations and is used for fortification.
All the kit would be used for things like putting up Hesco
[bastion] walls, building protections for the [Afghan
National] police and building new forward operating bases.

I was primarily based in [Camp] Bastion but we went
anywhere – on a road-move – where plant went with us.
Perhaps you would build a temporary FOB. From there, the
Royal Marines would disappear and do strike attacks but
they would have a base to come back to in the desert. As soon
as they had finished, we would collapse it all and take it with
us. In Bastion, we would have fitters in every out-station and
they would look after kit in each plant station. Kajaki was
where I spent most of my time – two months in all – and that
was where the 'hypothermia incident' happened. But that's
another story ...

Major Maria Holliday, QGM, Royal Military Police (RMP)

I'm a bit of an animal lover. There was a cat in Lashkar Gah
that we adopted. She became pregnant and had four kittens.
The rumour was that she'd had some during the last tour and
they'd all died. Anyway, she gave birth in a cardboard box in
the Brigade Headquarters but we had to move them out of
there. We moved them into an area where there was an
Afghan gardener and he kept an eye on them. She got really
bad flu symptoms and she was so weak she couldn't feed
them. I was trying to give the kittens some dried milk powder
made up. Of course, it wasn't the right thing but that was all
we had. I also used a bit of cod liver oil but kittens are
notoriously hard to hand rear. I was on the phone to the UK
vets to get some guidance on what to do with these kittens
but, unfortunately, despite all my best efforts, because I
couldn't get any proper stuff for them, they all died one
by one. The longest one lasted ten days. The gardener
buried them all in the little garden in Lashkar Gah. I felt
very sad. They had a harsh existence but that's just life in
Afghanistan.

The mother eventually pulled through. I managed to get
her some human antibiotics from a local who claimed to be a
vet, but I was having to guess on the dosages. She later
became pregnant again. She was a skinny little ginger cat. She
was quite feisty. She used to chase the search dogs. There was
a Labrador who was quite frightened of her and used to run
away from her. I called her Nagina: she was a wild cat but she
was getting fed. Lots of people's mums and sisters were sending
her cat food [in the post]. I managed to move her at the
end. I was in contact with a rescue society in Kabul that was
run by a female American journalist. They said that if I could
get her to Kabul, they would take care of her and try and
rehome her. Then the cat became pregnant again and it was
coming to the end of the tour so I thought: Nothing ventured,
nothing gained.

I managed to get her to Kabul at the same time as I was also
escorting some Afghan police. So I had a pregnant cat in a cat
box in a bag. I took her up to Kabul in September, close to the
end of the tour. She went on a helicopter from Lashkar Gah to
Camp Bastion; it was a really hot day and she was terrified by
the noise of the helicopter. Then she went on a Hercules from
Camp Bastion to Kandahar and another Hercules from
Kandahar to Kabul. I had some help from the RAF and she
went finally in a Saxon [armoured vehicle] from Kabul airport
to the British camp. Then I contacted the cat rescue place.
She almost escaped at the camp right at the end: she made a
bid for freedom up the wall and I just managed to catch her.
I contacted the rescue society and they came to the camp and
collected her. It was sad to say cheerio to her. Much later, I
contacted the American journalist lady: Nagina had had
another litter of kittens but, once again, they all died. So they
spayed her. I have always been an animal lover. The two dogs
I have, Alice and Bumper, are from Croatia and Bosnia.

Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army

Hello ... Still in Kandahar, but getting ready to leave, which
is a relief. I've run out of dollars and clean socks, and I can't
put my laundry in because it takes 24 hours to come back,
and I don't want to lose any of my clothes when I leave
because I don't have very many! Oh, the traumas of living in
a war zone. It's been okay here in the HQ, though seeing the
politics first hand, sitting in on planning meetings, witnessing
the absolute lack of joined-up working this Bde [Brigade]
has ... it's been pretty enlightening. My days have been
pretty dull too. Originally I was staying in a tent in Camp
Faraway, so called because it literally is very far away from
the rest of the camp. It has rows of tents called things like
'Albert Square'. The ablutions are in metal containers, with
three metal toilet cubicles with metal toilets, and three little
tiny showers with metal walls and floors, and three metal
sinks. All very functional. At least the water's been hot, when
it's working. Sometimes I've had to trudge to the massive
fridge and get bottles of water to wash in, which is freezing.
So I wake up at 0645, trudge to the metal washing container,
trudge back, pick up my rifle and go and wait at the bus
stop to get a lift to the HQ ... Honestly, I thought I'd said
goodbye to commuting for 6 months.

Once at work, I check my emails, then go to the morning
commanders' update briefing, or CUB. Everything military
has to be reduced to three-letter acronyms, or TLAs. This is
fairly interesting: every branch head stands up in turn and
briefs the commander on their bit of the war – operations,
intelligence, plans, info ops, joint effects, engineers, you get
the picture. It goes on a bit. Once that's over, we all go to
breakfast ... I've been stuffing myself here. I usually eat a
sausage, some tomato, a Danish pastry AND a yoghurt AND
toast. I think it's a case of if it's put in front of you, you eat it.

Then it's time for coffee, and the joint effects meeting –
they're trying (at the end of their tour and far too late) to join
up the kinetic ops with the non-kinetic, which includes things
like media, PsyOps and info ops. Then I spend the rest of the
day in meetings, and touching base with the guys back in
Lash to feed them information, and get info back from them.
We have secure phone lines to do that on, but there's a
massive delay so you end up talking over each other. I've also
been issued a work mobile, which is good to just phone them
up on for morale chats. My boss has had really bad D&V
[diarrhoea and vomiting], and was put in isolation for a few
days. They want me back there, for their morale, they say,
which is nice. At least I feel missed!

Then it's lunchtime (like zoo animals in a cage our days are
measured by mealtimes), and at 1730 we have another update
brief ... this time we link up by audio with Lash so the two
HQs know what the other has been doing. But the HQ in
Kandahar and the HQ in Lash don't really get on, so there's
often a few sarcastic comments going between the two.

Then, of course, it's dinner-time, and later everyone kind of
hangs around drinking coffee and pretending to work until
quite late. There's a ridiculous work culture here of see-how-late-you-can-stay,
even though you're not really achieving
anything and will be tired tomorrow.

The camp is odd too because there are two 24-hour Green
Bean cafés, and a Canadian, Tim Horton's, and people get
seriously obsessed about going for coffee ... I mean they
actually talk about coffee like it's an interesting topic. I cannot
wait to get back to Lash.

In October 2006, the Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade
relieved the Paras as part of Operation Herrick 5. The entire force
totalled about 4,500 servicemen and women. 3 Commando Brigade
had the advantage of coming forewarned and prepared for a fight.
They also had a better force package than the Paras, with more
troops on the ground and a whole regiment of Royal Engineers to
focus on reconstruction and development. The Marines hoped
to consolidate their positions in the various towns across the
province, reducing their presence where possible in exchange for
adopting a more mobile approach. There was also considerable international
pressure to make progress on the reconstruction effort.
Despite the brutal winter conditions, the Taliban maintained their
presence and, like the Paras before them, the men of 3 Commando
Brigade soon became engaged in some of the heaviest fighting of
modern times.

The main combat power was provided by 42 Commando with
45 Commando taking on the Afghan Army mentoring role. 29
Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, 59 Independent Commando
Squadron, 28 Engineer Regiment, C Squadron Light Dragoons
and the Commando Logistics Regiment all fulfilled vital supporting
roles. Close air support was provided by RAF Harriers, air-transport
support in RAF Chinooks and Hercules and
2 Squadron of the RAF Regiment undertook the RAF Force
Protection.

Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army

I'm now surrounded by Royal Marines. You've probably
heard that 3 Commando Brigade have taken over command
out here, so pretty much EVERYONE is a Royal Marine. That
took some getting used to. I even had to sew the 3
Commando 'flash' – like a Girl Guide badge, or maybe Scouts
is more fitting – onto the sleeves of all my shirts to denote the
fact that I am part of 3 Cdo [Commando] Brigade. It's an olive
green square with a dagger on it. It makes me feel quite hard.
Although of course I'm still not, and maintain pink nail
varnish on my toenails at all times. But that's slightly ruined
by the RSM [regimental sergeant major] who's just arrived
with the corps. He's ruled that we're not allowed to wear
civvy clothes at all any more – we used to get away with it in
the evenings, just sports kit and flip-flops, to give my feet a
break from heavy socks and boots (bearing in mind it's still
reaching 50°C most days). But now I have to wear my
uniform all the time, and my feet are actually starting to rot!
The skin on my heels is turning yellow. It's very attractive.

One of the Marines stabbed himself with his morphine the
other day, which was quite funny. At least, it will be until I do
the same thing ... I just carry it around in my trouser pocket
(we all do, seeing as you could be shot at any time), checking
every so often in a slightly paranoid way that the safety cap
hasn't come off ... They're designed to auto-inject a 4-inch
needle straight into your thigh.

McNab:
The first British troops returned home after a summer of
fighting in Afghanistan. The Army admitted that the period had
seen some of the toughest battles it had faced in fifty years: for more
than four months, the task force had been fighting in an intensity
not seen since the Korean War. The force in Helmand lost sixteen
men, killed, and forty-three were wounded. The amount of ammunition
expended told the story of the fighting's ferocity: 450,000
rounds of small-arms fire, 4,300 artillery rounds and 1,000 hand
grenades. One senior commander said: 'We went there to carry out
reconstruction and we ended up fighting a war.'

Lieutenant Rachel Morgan, Royal Naval Medical
Branch

Lieutenant Rachel Morgan, Royal Naval Medical Branch
attached to the Joint CIMIC (Civil Military Co-operation) group,
was born and brought up in the north of England. An only child,
she left school at seventeen and joined the Royal Navy in 1992
where she trained as a nurse. She was working in a military
medical centre before she was deployed to Afghanistan. She
completed a ten-month tour of the country from September
2006, working in the forward operating bases of Helmand and
the Civil Military Operations Cell, supporting the stabilization
effort. She is now based at the Naval Command Headquarters,
Portsmouth.

Random acts of heroism probably take place far more often
than are widely reported – and often can be treated as
normal. Sometimes offensive operations happen at night. On
one occasion a night-time operation was planned near one of
the main towns, Gereshk.

The op was to investigate how far the Taliban were coming
into town at night in the area. The plan was to go out and
watch what was going on. I was travelling in a Snatch [lightly
armoured Land Rover]. We had about ten vehicles and
between sixty and seventy soldiers. Unfortunately the
Taliban were waiting – or, if they weren't waiting, they got
their act together very quickly. It was midnight. We had been
out for about two hours and we started receiving small-arms
fire.

I was quite well to the rear [of the vehicle convoy] going in.
We were deployed outside the vehicle and I was in a position
on the far left of our location. There was an incident and we
were contacted from enemy forces to one side. Appropriate
call signs returned fire and after a while the Marines started
to push forward but quickly there was a change of plan. In
the confusion, one of the vehicles, a Pinzgauer, an open-top
vehicle, overturned. It was a hilly area and it got stuck in a
stream, or wadi. In the ensuing rescue one of the officers
became lodged under it. There was no panic and the Marines
were in constant radio contact with what was going on
around them.

The Afghan night was as black as you can imagine. Most of
the soldiers were operating with night-vision goggles which
I didn't have that night but I could hear what was going on
around me. In a very short space of time we could hear on our
radio that somebody was injured and being recovered.

It was a young Royal Marine officer, not long out of training,
who had been trapped, completely pinned down, under
the vehicle. It turned out that the driver – who was a Royal
Marines' sergeant – in the space of fifteen or thirty seconds
got a wheel jack underneath the vehicle to lift it off his chest.
The injured officer was so badly crushed he couldn't breathe.
They lifted the vehicle up enough for him to breathe and
squeezed him out from under it. They rescued their man even
though there were bullets flying all around them. They
managed to focus enough on getting the jack, making it work,
getting to this officer, dragging him out from under the
vehicle and bringing him back to the helicopter landing site.
Within forty minutes or so he was picked up by a MERT
[medical emergency response team]. He was taken back to
Camp Bastion, where he was treated in the hospital and lived
to tell the tale, and later made a full recovery. The quick thinking
of that sergeant, and those Marines around him,
undoubtedly saved that officer's life.

Captain Charlotte Cross, Territorial Army

We're in the middle of supporting a big operation, so I spent
a few hours this morning chatting to a local mayor – otherwise
known as 'Key Leader Engagement'. He came in to see
us in his full Afghan dress and silken grey turban, with the
long end draped stylishly over his shoulder ... He's a
Spingiri, which means 'white beard', a reference to his actual
white beard, which denotes him as a respected elder. We discussed
politics and security for a while, then put him in our
radio studio to record a message for local radio, and gave him
a can of Coke and some chocolate Hobnobs we bought in the
Naafi ... at which point he became very animated, eating
handfuls of them and saying he would take some home to
show his wife. He also said we should air-drop Hobnobs if
we want to win over the local people. We gave him some
ISAF freebies, and another packet of biscuits to take home. He
told us that his voice on the radio would put his life in
danger, and his two sons have to stay up all night with
AK-47s protecting him while he slept. But he was happy to do
it. He phoned us up later that day to invite us to his cousin's
wedding ... Unfortunately, due to the security situation, we
had to politely decline.

Other than that, we're really concerned about the schools at
the moment, especially the girls' school. Because we keep
going on about it, and sending up our reports highlighting
our concerns and the impact it would have if the TB [Taliban]
managed to blow up a school in supposedly safe Lashkar
Gah, finally they're starting to do something about it. They've
been doing threat assessments and plans for improving
security and teaching the staff what to do if there's an IED at
the school. Yesterday we conducted search training at the
women's centre, because even if they have ANP guards, men
cannot search women. Jen [a friend] put on a burka as part of
the demonstration, which made the women giggle. The headmistress
of the girls' school gave me a night letter she'd been
sent, threatening to kill her for (a) teaching girls, (b) teaching
girls infidel subjects, (c) allowing infidels into her school. It's
a nasty situation. These women just astound me: they're so
brave.

It's actually been pretty quiet, due to Ramadan, certain
'agreements' being dealt and done by elders, shuras [meetings]
and the governor. I'm sure you heard about the suicide
bombing and the death of one of the Marines on the camp.
That was a surreal experience. When the news came in from
the Ops Room, Sky had it flashed up on their screen within 10
minutes, before the family had been informed – the fools.
They were told to take it down pretty sharpish. I can't
imagine what my poor mother thinks when she hears things
like that. My role that day was to phone around locals to find
out what their perception of the bombing was, interview
people who were nearby at the time, write statements for the
press, get on the phone to the radio stations and push out the
ISAF angle (the TB reported they'd killed 8 soldiers) ...
through our interpreter; hardly anyone speaks English. And
through the 'minister for youth culture and information
affairs', a chap called Jan Gull, the Alastair Campbell of
Helmand province!

I got told later on by an unfeasibly tall and muscular RMP
bloke that he apologized if we got any complaints from the
Afghan reporters at the scene, whom he had personally
grabbed by the scruff of the neck and carried away because
they were trying to film it. I saw the footage on Sky, while I
was eating my dinner that night, of the burning Snatch. It
actually made me feel quite ill. Apparently the bomber was
chatting to a stallholder, lots of children were playing in the
street, he saw the convoy and just ran at it. One of our
interpreter's cousins was killed, a little 10-year-old girl, so he
took an hour off in the afternoon to go to her burial in the
cemetery just outside camp. He cried when he told me.

We held a memorial service for Mne [Marine] Wright on the
HLS [helicopter landing site]. The padre led the service and
the commanding officers gave readings and the colonel
made the most emotional speech ... The whole experience
was very powerful, and unreal, and sad.

Captain Dave Rigg, MC, The Royal Engineers

Captain Dave Rigg, MC, of The Royal Engineers, is thirty-three.
He was born in north Wales and grew up in Hong Kong. The son
of an RAF officer turned commercial airline pilot, he is one of
four children – three of whom joined the armed forces. After
attending Sherborne School in Dorset, Rigg obtained a master's
degree in engineering from Oxford University. He initially
worked for a venture capital bank but quickly realized it was not
for him. Seeking adventure and wanting to travel, he entered the
Army in 2001. After officer training at Sandhurst, he joined
the Royal Engineers. Rigg did one short tour of Iraq before
being deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. He left the Army in late
2008 for a career as a civil engineer. He lives in Winchester,
Hampshire.

The rolling surf, lazy chai rooms and wild exotic parties were
beginning to become a distraction and so the Big Boss has
moved us to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province.
We are now far better placed to direct activity, with a clearer
understanding of all the various dynamics. However, nothing
comes without a cost. The camp that we have moved to is in
the middle of a D&V outbreak, partly because it is already
crammed to capacity. Which means that the uplift of 160
people is having to be accommodated in a line of hastily
erected tents sited between the inner and outer wall – known
colloquially as 'Killing Area Lines' or 'Death Row'. We have
been assured that the site is perfectly safe because at either
end of Death Row there is a sangar with clear fields of view
over the potential danger area. What wasn't immediately
clear was that the sangars are manned by Afghans.
Apparently these guys have been vetted and are deemed to
be on the ball, many of them having been fighters for one side
or the other for most of their lives.

There has only been one incident that has caused us
concern and that was some time ago now. Early one morning
after a particularly peaceful night, one of the sentries must
have grown a little restless and decided to shoot a few dogs.
On hearing the gunfire, his fellow sentries assumed there was
some kind of attack going on, and so, regardless of the
obvious lack of targets, they followed suit. At the time the
gunfire started, Major Green had just got up and was bent
over pulling his trousers on when he was struck in the backside
with a stray bullet. From our perspective, the funniest
part of this story was that the injury was not deemed serious
enough to warrant him being sent home. Now that we live
within the firing arcs of our friendly Afghan sentries, we
awake each day with a strong sense of relief, then stay as low
as possible until within the safety of the galley.