Spoken from the Front (29 page)

To our right flank, the company were still having a bit of a
bun-fight with the Taliban. I think the Taliban we encountered
had been trying to sneak up on the main company
and ambush them from the flank but they got surprised by us
because they didn't know we were there. Then we had a quick
chat. Me and Casey went up towards the position where we
had first seen the Taliban. And there was another Taliban in
there. He may have been injured but he still had a weapon with
him so he was shot. I shot him. That was that for the time being.
We had a mini re-org to call the rest of the section in, covering
all our arcs, doing a head count and re-arming.

Whilst this was going on, a fourth member of the Taliban
opened up on us, again from the ditch. This was three or four
minutes after we thought the fire-fight had ended. He was
firing with AK: it was automatic gunfire from under a
hundred metres. So we now fired back at that Taliban position.
I said to one of the guys who had an ILAW [interim light
anti-tank weapon] rocket launcher: 'Fire at that position.' He
couldn't get the damn thing to work so I took it off him and
fired at the position, and all the other guys fired everything
we had for a couple of minutes. We didn't get any return fire
so we assumed he was killed in that initial volley, from less
than a hundred metres away. I thought: I'm not going to send
any guys up to confirm the death for safety reasons.

Then we searched for the [three] dead Taliban. Two of the
guys looked like they were foreign fighters. These were the
guys dressed in black. They were maybe Iranian or Pakistani.
We found grenades on their bodies and mobile phones. They
had two grenades and a mobile phone each. And we took notebooks
from them with phone numbers in. The third guy looked
like he was local Afghan. He was wearing brown traditional
Afghan dress. He had a red sash round his waist and a turban
that was off at the time. He was the guy with the RPG beside
him.

I had killed people in battle before but never as close as
this. You very rarely see the Taliban. They are usually at a
distance and well hidden. I sat down at the end and said:
'Fucking hell, lads. You only normally read about this shit but
we've actually done it.' Then we cleared things up and got
the Afghan National Army. They did a search and took the
weapons off them [the dead] and then it came over the radio
that the fire-fight had died out at the other end.

I had a face to face with the OC. It then came over the radio
that a Harrier was coming in to do a bombing run. So we had
to extract out of the area pretty quick and we went back to
Inkerman. A couple of times I have shot at Taliban and seen
them drop and said: 'That's a kill.' But I had never done anything
like this where you can say 100 per cent they were killed
at close range. We took no casualties. At least three Taliban
were confirmed dead, but there were probably four dead –
and there might have been others. There must have been at
least ten Taliban involved in the initial ambush because of the
amount of fire that was coming down.

Private Tom Dawkes, The Mercian Regiment

I flew to Kandahar on a Tristar. I just slept on the plane. I
wasn't thinking about what would happen when I got there.
Then after two days we went on to [Camp] Bastion. My first
impression was that it was hot – very hot! Temperatures were
in the forties [centigrade]. I was an infantry soldier in
C Company, which had already been posted to Lashkar Gah.
We did a few patrols here and there and then did a twelve-day
op in the Green Zone in Gereshk. Our role was to try to
take this area of high ground that had been controlled by the
Taliban.

I had my first contact on the first day of the op. It was eight
or nine o'clock in the morning and we were going along on
foot. I was armed with an LMG. Then we got ambushed by
RPG and small-arms fire at a place called the Fan. We were in
open ground and two people – I was one of them – had
dropped off their day sacks. Then we took a couple of steps
back just before an RPG came straight out of the cornfields. To
start with I heard the whoosh. Then it went straight through
our group – I was no more than six feet away from it. Straight
away they [the Taliban] opened up with small-arms fire. So
we just jumped into ditches where there was cover. I jumped
into some water. We were firing back in the general direction
from where they were. But then they fired another RPG,
which hit the wall on the opposite side to us. I managed to get
off almost 200 rounds. But we couldn't actually see what we
were firing at because the cornfields were about eight feet
tall. So I don't know whether we hit anyone. The contact must
have lasted about five minutes and then we bugged out back
to the compound. There were no casualties and everyone was
laughing saying: 'RPG! RPG!'

We found out that we had just about been surrounded by
the Taliban. Others [from C Company] had taken shots from
behind us. We stayed in the compound – an open building
with no roof – and for a couple of hours we used a small
bombardment of artillery and mortar fire. I was thinking: Am
I going to get through this? It's more mental than physical
once you're out there. I just wanted to do my duty to the best
of my ability. It was a real eye-opener ...

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

The last three weeks have passed in a blur. I returned to
Camp Bastion for a week before returning to the UK for two
weeks' (well-deserved) leave. And now I'm back in Camp
Bastion waiting to fly down to Garmsir again. I never
imagined all those months ago that I'd be back in Garmsir in
late August!

Needless to say, leave was awesome. I managed to see a lot
of friends and family and travelled all over the country. I saw
Martin [his injured comrade] a couple of times in hospital:
he's improving – he was very close to death – but he's strong
in both body and mind, and I'm sure he'll bounce back. It
wasn't very nice seeing him in treatment. There are lots of
injured soldiers there; it's quite depressing. Hospitals aren't
the best of places anyway, but there's something upsetting
about seeing so many young people in visibly bad conditions.
There was one soldier from my regiment who had lost both
legs.

The rest of the time was spent travelling, spending too
much money, getting drunk, going to weddings and, perhaps
most importantly, seeing Lisa and my family. It wasn't that
bad being back. I got into the swing of things pretty quickly,
but a lot of people were worried about the state I'd be in. I
suppose they watch the news back home and hear about
things – it's natural.

While I was away some of my troop had a very lucky
escape when an RPG exploded when it hit their room: only
minor shrapnel wounds, very fortunate not to have lost anyone.
And they also had some very big contacts.

The BRF [Brigade Recce Force] have also taken 5 men off
me because they are down on men, which is a bit of a sucker
punch. The positive thing is I've only got two months to do!

For some reason, despite having very little to do these last
few days, I've been very lazy in writing this journal. I don't
know if it's my state of mind after having been on leave or
what, but I need to be a bit more proactive.

Three soldiers died on Thursday when an American jet
dropped a bomb on them. They call it 'friendly fire'. I call it a
tragedy. It's not the first time it's happened, just usually it
happens to innocent Afghan women and children who were
in the wrong place at the wrong time: extremely saddening.
The soldiers were from the Royal Anglian Regiment who
have now lost 9 men on this tour. And I think it's over 20 in
total. That's just over one soldier dying every week. How
long can they keep this up? It's the same thing in Iraq: the
Army is undermanned as it is, but men won't be staying in
much longer at this rate. I know a lot of men are leaving after
going to Afghanistan. I suppose people want a taste of war
and then leave it at that. I don't blame them. Especially if
they're married with children.

I picked up a new beret and badge today. On 1 September
my regiment [the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters] is
amalgamating with the Staffords and Cheshires to become the
Mercian Regiment; a sad day, really. I'm quite proud of where I
come from and my regiment – it's part of my identity, and some
of that will be lost. But you have to move forward constantly
and I think it will be good in the long run. After all, my regiment
was formed from the merger of 2 others.

Private Tom Dawkes, The Mercian Regiment

We got to meet quite a lot of the local Afghan people. We
spoke to them through interpreters. Their culture is very
different from ours and in a way I felt ashamed to be there.
Although all the Taliban want to do is kill people, the
Afghans are essentially a friendly people. They just want to
get on with their lives. But we were – through collateral
damage – sometimes destroying their lives. It was a great
shame. Innocent people were having their lives messed up.
But most of the people were on our side – they told us where
the Taliban had been and locations of IEDs. Sometimes they
had even seen the Taliban plant them so they told us to go
this way rather than that way. Most Afghans know that we
are trying to push the Taliban out of their villages so they can
get on with their everyday lives. So I think they do trust us. I
don't respect the Taliban for what they do, but I do respect
them as fighters. They are strong fighters. They will fight to
the death, and because it is their terrain and their home
ground, it is very hard to beat them. They don't carry heavy
kit like us so they are able to manoeuvre quickly. Some of
them who have been trained have good soldier skills, but
others have just been handed a weapon and told to go out.
They can't shoot straight – fortunately!

Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, The Royal Anglian
Regiment

It was the last battle-group op of our tour: to clear the Green
Zone. We had cleared the Taliban out and they had crept back
in so we were going to clear them out again.

We were going to be out for one week. We marched from
Sangin – about eighteen Ks. We left at 1 a.m. to get there for
first light. Throughout the day, we had several skirmishes
with the Taliban all the way up and then at the end of the day
we had got to our limit of exploitation (LOE). We were not
paying a great deal of attention because we were fucked,
fighting the Taliban all day in the heat. We had been on our
feet for eighteen hours – the whole A Company group, about
120 men. We just settled down: the OC got in the three
platoon commanders so that we could organize an all-round
defence. We got briefed up and I was on my way back to brief
up the rest of our platoon when, suddenly, all hell broke
loose. It all kicked off.

It was an RPG-initiated contact from the Taliban. But I had
never heard so many RPGs coming our way. It was followed
by a hell of a lot of automatic gunfire. We were caught on the
hop. Luckily, we had a section pushed out to a compound at
the river's edge but it was pinned down. They couldn't move
in this compound, getting sprayed with everything the
Taliban had, and we were getting exactly the same. But I was
in the open: I was caught as I was going back over to my men.
My platoon was in a ditch at my left flank – about fifty metres
away. I was on my belt buckle – about 150 metres from the
enemy – and I saw tracer fire going past in the corner of my
eyes. I could hear the whizz of it. The lads were saying:
'Sarge, you want to get over here in cover.' And I was like:
'Fuck, I'm not moving. If I move I'll get shot. There's no
fucking way I'm moving.' It was about six o'clock at night. I
was caught in the middle of it. There must have been about
twenty Taliban. We, the Brits, were very fortunate that day,
but the ANA took three casualties from fragmentation –
RPGs. One was killed and two seriously injured.

The fire-fight lasted about twenty minutes. But I stayed on
my belt buckle the whole time. I daren't move and I didn't
even return a single round because I knew that if I moved I
was going to get it. Afterwards, I was laughing nervously
with the lads but I had several moments when I was thinking:
How the fuck did I get away with that?

Captain Adam Chapman, The Mercian Regiment

Since returning from the check-points, we've been back into
the same old routine. However, a few significant events have
occurred.

We're now definitely leaving Garmsir on 8 September.
Finally, after so long (it will be 4 months), we're going, our
future as yet uncertain. At the moment, we will be going back
to Bastion with A Company, before another large operation
up north, then on to FOB Arnhem. Arnhem is even worse
than here, by all accounts: lots of mortar attacks as well as
IED threat. So, I'm in two minds about leaving. In favour is
working with A Coy [Company] again, as well as doing
something new. Against is the more apparent danger and
learning the ground all over again. But overall I'm glad to be
leaving here, and risk is part of my job.

Prior to leaving, there is the little matter of a large op we're
doing down here first. We're doing a deliberate company
attack to clear a large area of enemy territory. It should be
good and a nice, positive way to finish our time here. At the
same time, the Gren Guards are taking over again so it will be
very busy.

Today started very well but ended badly, in that all-too
familiar way. We celebrated/commemorated our amalgamation
into the Mercian Regiment. We had a little parade, the
padre said a few words, we then had a volleyball
competition, followed by some hot dogs – a bonus. It was just
a nice day.