Spoken from the Front (28 page)

RIP Sean Dolan.

Private Tom Dawkes, The Mercian Regiment

Private Tom Dawkes, 2 Battalion The Mercian Regiment, is
twenty-three. He was born in Bromsgrove, south Birmingham.
His father worked for an air-conditioning company, but was
forced to retire after a serious accident. His mother works as a
power-press supervisor and he has one brother and two sisters.
Dawkes left school at sixteen and worked for a production
company, then later as a tool-maker and as a fork-lift-truck
driver in a warehouse. He entered the Army in January 2007,
shortly before his twenty-first birthday. He had wanted to join at
sixteen, but had to wait for an operation that could only take
place when he was fully grown. Dawkes, who is engaged to be
married in 2010, is based at the Mercians' barracks just outside
Belfast, where he has earned a reputation for writing poetry.

I was still training at Catterick when my section commander
came in and told us which companies we would all be going
to. He said there was a good chance that I would be going to
Afghanistan to catch the end of the tour [with the Mercians].
Some were still under eighteen so they couldn't go. It was
confirmed I would be going to Afghanistan shortly afterwards.
I was scared. It was going to be the first time that I had
left the United Kingdom. It was also going to be the first time
I had ever flown.

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

Things were looking up for a short while. A large operation
was planned for the end of the month down here. They
planned to attack a village known as Madrassa, an objective
known to be full of Taliban. Prior to this, they wanted a
detailed recce of crossing points over the river Helmand and
routes into Madrassa. The best thing is we got tasked to do
this, a very important and high-profile job. I spent a few days
planning for an MOG [manoeuvre outreach group: it
deploys, self-sustained, into the desert for a period].
I planned to go out for four days and see some good stuff: it
looked like being a very good op.

It seemed destined for trouble from the start. The medic I
was taking out fell ill with diarrhoea and vomiting, so we
were delayed until he got better. We eventually deployed a
little late. Under my command, I had 10 vehicles, 21 Marines,
a field-support team, interpreter, anti-tank team and my own
troop: in total 51 men and one woman. Quite a big command
for a junior captain. All was going well. We recced the river
and were looking at a suspected Taliban village – then we
were suddenly told to come back.

The whole operation was being cancelled. All the resources
were being sucked up north for an even bigger op as things
seem to be going wrong there. I was utterly disappointed,
especially after all that's happened previously. It looked
like we had finally got a decent job and it was pulled
away at the last moment. Nobody's fault, just the way
things happen. One never knows what's going to happen
next.

Anyway, we're back in [Camp] Delhi now and back in the
same old routine. Groundhog day! Worse still, I spoke to
the battle group second-in-command and he still doesn't
know when we will leave here. The only thing I've got to look
forward to now is going home on leave in 3 weeks. It seems
such a long time and I know it's going to drag. I've got a lot
planned: can't wait to see everyone and do everything I've
missed these last few months. It seems to be all I can think of
recently – all I can do is wait.

Another soldier was killed a few days ago – a Grenadier
Guard attached to my battalion in Gereshk – and things seem
to be going from bad to worse in Iraq, where several more
have been killed. And I bet they got nothing more than a tiny
bit of media coverage. Pathetic.

McNab:
It was revealed that the rate at which British soldiers were
being seriously injured or killed on the front-line in Afghanistan
had reached that suffered by our troops during the Second World
War. The casualty rate in the most dangerous regions of the country
was approaching 10 per cent. Senior officers feared it would ultimately
pass the 11 per cent experienced by British soldiers at the
height of the conflict sixty years ago. The rise was partly driven by a
ten-fold increase in the number of wounded in action – those injured,
but not killed – over the past six months as fighting in Afghanistan
intensified. In November 2006, only three British soldiers were
wounded in Afghanistan by the Taliban, compared with thirty-eight in
May 2007. The official injury rate given by the Ministry of Defence
among the 7,000 British troops in Afghanistan was about three per
cent. But when the figures were applied only to the three infantry
battalions on the front-line, it rose to almost 10 per cent.

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

The camp was mortared this morning. I didn't imagine they
would get this close so soon. Fortunately nobody got hurt.
The round landed just outside the perimeter (about 25 metres
from my room) and the majority of people were asleep under
hard cover anyway. If it had landed another 5 metres in [to
the] camp during the day, it would have been a different
story.

I was awake on duty at the time and heard the whistle, then
the loud explosion. I've heard hundreds of mortar rounds go
out, but it was a strange feeling hearing one going the other
way – pretty helpless, really. Cpl Green saw the explosion on
his way back to the block – his heart rate upped a little!

We had jets in the air pretty soon and it's believed they
destroyed the mortar. However, it's thought they [the
Taliban] have several others in the area. I just hope they
don't get any more accurate. We are pretty defenceless if they
do.

McNab:
It was announced that two Distinguished Flying Crosses
(DFC) had been awarded for bravery in Afghanistan. They were to
Captain Nick Barton and Captain Tom O'Malley, of the Army Air
Corps. Barton was given his award for his bravery when his Apache
helicopter was struck by a heavy machine gun round on Christmas
Eve while he was supporting troops in a contact at Now Zad and
for his part in supporting the Jugroom Fort rescue mission. He
calmly kept control of the helicopter – even though it was severely
damaged – and even completed his attack on the target. O'Malley
received his award for his courage when, under a hail of enemy fire,
he flew, with another Apache, to retrieve the body of Lance Corporal
Mathew Ford at Jugroom Fort in January 2007. Warrant Officer
Class 1 Ed Macy (a pseudonym) and Staff Sergeant Keith Armatage
were awarded the Military Cross (MC) for their part in the rescue
mission. Captain Dave Rigg's MC was also announced for his
bravery during the same incident.

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

As I count down the days to leaving here, more bad news. I
received a message on the Internet from a friend's girlfriend
that raised more questions than it answered. But I could
guess that he'd been hurt: Martin is a close friend of mine that
I've had since uni and we went through our Army training
together. He's a Para and now out in Afghanistan.

I had an agonizing couple of hours before finding out what
happened. I called her back in the UK. Basically Martin was
shot in the shoulder and badly wounded; he's now back
home in hospital. He's safe and that's a positive, but the
shoulder is in a bad way. I was quite shaken. I've known
people who have died out here, but never a close friend. It's
quite shocking.

Anyway, I'll be in the UK in about 10 days so, hopefully, I'll
be able to visit him. I just hope he makes a full recovery now.

Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, The Royal Anglian
Regiment

Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, 1 Battalion The Royal Anglian
Regiment, is thirty-eight. He was born in Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk, and was brought up on the Suffolk/Norfolk border,
attending Stradbroke High School. His father is a peat salesman
and his mother runs her own beauty business. Panter, who has
one younger sister, left school at sixteen. After working as a
chef for four years, he got fed up with having to work nights at
weekends when his friends were having fun so in 1991 he joined
the Royal Anglians as a private, aged twenty. He has completed
tours of Croatia, Iraq and Northern Ireland, as well as two tours
of Afghanistan. He is married, with two boys, and is based at
Pirbright barracks in Surrey. His military career is currently
threatened by a serious ankle injury he received on his second
tour of Afghanistan.

On my second tour of Afghanistan, I was based in Sangin. I
was a 3 Corunna platoon sergeant with A Company in
1 Royal Anglian. Our general role was reassurance of the
Afghan national population and deterring the Taliban. I was
based at Sangin DC. It was relatively quiet because the CO of
the battle group had built a ring of steel around Sangin by
using the PBs [patrol bases] to take the pressure off Sangin. It
had worked: people had come back to Sangin and it was a
thriving market town again, just as it had been before.

On this particular day, our battalion CO [Lt Col Stuart
Carver, DSO] was on R&R. Major Charlie Calder, the second
in command of the battalion, was at Sangin DC for a couple
of weeks while the CO was on leave. Inkerman patrol base,
which is three or four miles north of Sangin, was under heavy
attack, day in day out. Anyway Major Calder wanted to go to
Inkerman to check on the morale and see how the troops
were. I was tasked with getting a group of men in four
WMIKs to take him up there. We left at 0100 and got there at
0145. We had the route picketed – almost completely lined by
the Afghan and British troops – because the 611 was a
notoriously dangerous road.

We then got our heads down and were awoken by the
sound of gunfire and RPG fire early in the morning when
the base was attacked. It was seven or eight in the morning
and we had been sleeping beside the vehicles in the open. It
all kicked off and we stood to and tried to identify Taliban
positions and engage them with mortar. We used all the
weapon systems available at the base because it overlooked
the Green Zone. They [the Taliban] were probably 200 metres
away, 300 max. It was heavy and sustained fire.

It lasted for fifteen or twenty minutes and that was pretty
much it. And then we found out that C Company were going
out on patrol later that day and so I went and spoke to the OC
designate at the time, Captain David Hicks, MC [since killed
in battle]. He was in charge while C Company OC was on his
R&R. I went and spoke to him and said: 'Do you mind if
I get eight men and tag along and help you out on this
patrol?' I knew they were undermanned because of the
R&R.

He gave orders to go out at 1600. The plan was to reassure
one of the local hamlets just out to the front of Inkerman.
Within forty-five minutes, we'd got to the outskirts of the
hamlet and then the forward platoon saw the Taliban in a
position with RPGs and AKs so they opened fire on them. We
had in the region of eighty men: twenty to thirty ANA and the
rest Brits.

I was with 11 Platoon and I was in their third section. I was
at the back and there was a lot of RPG and AK fire coming our
way. It was getting quite close and I could hear a lot of firing
and RPG fire on our left flank. I was speaking to the platoon
sergeant at the time, saying we were not sure whether that
was ANA or enemy. So I was trying to get in comms with the
platoon commander to let him know that we had got some
firing on our left flank. Because I was reserve, I thought I
would go over there and check and keep an eye on the left
flank. In the end I spoke to the platoon sergeant, who thought
it was a good idea, so I took the section of eight men and off
we went.

We got in this ditch, no more than fifty to a hundred metres
away from the main body of the company. I could still hear a
lot of gunfire and RPG rounds – coming not directly at us but
across our flanks. I was trying to still get comms to find out
whether it was friend or foe. There was a lot going on.
I couldn't get in comms with the OC or the platoon
commander so in the end I took it on myself to go up there
with the section. The main reason I did this was that I didn't
want a blue on blue [friendly fire] situation to happen. I
thought we had best make our positions known to each other
with a face to face.

We got the section and started going up along the ditch and
I was thinking: This is a bit noisy. Just in case it was Taliban,
I was worried they could hear us coming. So I decided to get
out of the ditch and go along the bank. After no more than
twenty or thirty metres, I heard some more RPG fire and a
few rounds getting fired. It was not at us, but to our front, and
then after another few metres I actually saw four Taliban in
this ditch. They were no more than 100 to 150 metres away
from me. We positively identified the Taliban, fired straight at
them.

We may have got one on the first burst. We were firing
SA80 [assault rifles] and LMG [light machine-gun]. They had
AKs and RPGs. We had surprised them. A little bit of a firefight
ensued and then I thought: We have to take the bull by
the horns here and dispatch these Taliban. So we concocted a
quick plan. With the remainder of the section giving fire
support, me and another lad, Private Patrick Casey, pepper-potted
along the ditch and encountered a Taliban just fifteen
to twenty metres in front of us. We hadn't seen him initially. I
killed him: I shot him with my rifle. At this point I thought:
Bloody hell, they're getting a bit close. So I put the bayonet
and a fresh mag on, and as I was doing that I saw some movement
in front. I chucked a grenade towards the initial area
where the Taliban were and after that we didn't really get any
incoming fire back from them. Then one of the lads spotted a
Taliban running to our left. He fired and I fired and the
Taliban dropped. But I didn't know whether he had gone to
ground or not. Then I spotted him again in the ditch about
twenty metres away. I fired some more rounds and he was
down. I jumped into the ditch towards him. He still had his
weapon – an AK variant – in his hand and he was still breathing.
I had my bayonet fixed and I bayoneted him, straight
into the chest. Several times. We were taught in training: once
you shoot, then bayonet them because they have been known
in the past to jump up behind you after feigning death or
injury. So it's always good to make sure they're dead. He was
probably in his late twenties, no more than thirty. He was in
black with a black tie around his middle and he had chest
webbing on as well. The first guy was dressed exactly the
same.