Spoken from the Front (35 page)

A military life can be tough on families. Maybe that was
why my wife divorced me fifteen years ago – although we got
married again. It's hard on her. Being on operations is a bit
like having an illness. If you've got the illness you know
what's going on and how it feels and how you feel physically.
For the person who has got it, it's not so difficult. It's more
difficult for those you love. It's certainly the same for us.
When we're out here, we know how safe or unsafe we feel.
But at least we know. And we can feel it within our own being
and we can cope with it. For those at home who love you and
miss you, it's a much harder situation because they don't
know what's going on. It's difficult to try to explain how you
feel about things.

I only joined up for three years. And here I am ten times
that later. Anyone who decides on a military career has to
expect that the job is going to be different from that of somebody
who works in a pub, or on a newspaper or anywhere
else. With the job, you have some danger, which for some
people is the attraction, even why they joined up in the first
place. But for most of us, once you get in the system, the
greatest pull is the camaraderie, the friendships you make,
the work ethos that you come across and the like-minded
people you work with. It's a common enough saying – when
we're out there in an aircraft, or on the ground, or making an
assault or whatever, we're not really doing it for the Queen,
we're not really doing it for the country, but we're doing it for
our comrades: the bloke beside you, the guy who joined up,
the bloke who's been my mate for the last ten years, the guy
you met two minutes ago who seems like a really good bloke.
You're doing it for him, whether that involves you doing
something a little bit more dangerous than you would
normally do, or it goes to the point of some of the extraordinary
examples of courage from people out here. You've
had people out here storming Taliban positions to save
wounded comrades. And the reason they do it is because of
the extreme feeling of friendship, camaraderie, brotherhood,
whatever you want to call it, for somebody who has a similar
life to you.

Colour Sergeant Simon Panter, The Royal Anglian
Regiment

The initial incident happened back in the summer of 2007. I
was on an op and I lost my footing crossing a ditch and did
my ankle in. We had been out in the Green Zone for two
weeks. To start the op, we had to march from Sangin in the
dead of night, eighteen Ks into the Green Zone. There had
been quite a few fire-fights on the way with the Taliban. We
had taken over some compounds and we were watching the
area. Our supplies had run low. We were getting the odd
helicopter drop in but there was one time they did not drop
in because they got RPGed as they were coming in. So we had
to do a march to FOB Inkerman, which was about six Ks
away. We left at 1 a.m. We got there about 3 a.m. to do a
resupply of food, water and ammo. Then at 5 a.m. we
marched back into the Green Zone.

The remainder of the platoon had just got out of the gate
and I was the last man out. I crossed over the 611 [a
notoriously dangerous main road], then a ditch, lost my footing
and fell over in it. As I lost my footing I thought: Ow, that
bloody hurt. It really did. I felt my ankle click three times. I
actually thought I'd broken the bloody thing. I was lying on
my back wincing and one of the corporals was laughing at
me, as you do in the Army. I was like: 'Don't tell anybody. Just
give me two minutes and I'll get up.' I started to walk, but the
pain was getting worse and worse. At one point I almost
wanted to give myself morphine: we always have morphine
on us. I got back to the compound – having hobbled six Ks in
severe pain – at about 7 a.m.

Because the sergeant major was still in Inkerman, I was
acting sergeant major, being the senior platoon sergeant. I
was with the OC and he was taking the piss out of me for
being weak. But when I got back I took my boot off and got
the medic. It was a total mess: my left ankle was all black and
blue and swollen. The medic was saying: 'You need to go
back to Bastion.'

The helicopters wouldn't come out and get me because
they were worried about getting fired at in the Green Zone. I
was not an emergency case. And so the CO's rover group
came down to pick me up instead. I got the piss taken out of
me a hell of a lot because I came out on this makeshift crutch
and the RSM thought it would be funny to pick me up and
put me on his shoulders and carry me out of the Green Zone.
And people were taking photos too. So, of course, I didn't get
the piss taken much!

They took me back to Inkerman in a WMIK [armed Land
Rover] and then I was casevaced back to Bastion the same
day in a Chinook. I got there, had the ankle X-rayed. They said,
'You have got a severely sprained ankle,' and that was that.
Then I spent two or three weeks in Bastion trying to get myself
back out on the ground with my boys. I didn't want to miss
anything so I pleaded with them not to send me back
to Britain because I wanted to be at Sangin. The colonel in
charge of me in Bastion said: 'You can go back to Sangin as long
as you don't go out on the ground.' I went on a routine Chinook
flight. Over the next few weeks I sort of cracked on. My ankle
really never recovered. I went out on patrol and did it in again.

When I got back to the UK in October, I was still having a
lot of problems and I went to rehab. I had an MRI scan and
then I had an operation. It wasn't until I had the first operation
that I found out the bloody thing was fractured, after
all. It was not until they cut me open that they found the
fracture. So they repaired it by drilling sixty-two holes in
the bone and sorted bits of cartilage and ligaments. But I'm
still suffering from it now. I have my own bottle of morphine
on tap when I want it. I'm getting an ankle reconstruction
next. I hope I'll be able to continue to serve. My surgeon said
I might have to think about a career change if the ops don't
work. They talk about fusing it, but if that doesn't work,
they're even talking about having it lopped off. Hopefully it
won't get that far. But it hasn't helped walking around on
it for a year not knowing it was fractured.

McNab:
The Chief of the Defence Staff delivered a tough warning.
He said that Britain could not carry on fighting two wars, in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said that
military operations had left the forces 'stretched beyond the
capabilities we have' and that Britain could face decades' more
involvement in Afghanistan, which he described as a 'medieval
state', lacking even basic government structure. He added: 'We are
very stretched at the moment. Until we get down to one operation
at this scale, we are always going to be stretched.' His warning came
at a time when there were 4,000 British servicemen in Iraq and the
total of troops in Afghanistan was about to top 8,000. His
comments followed the announcement that another British serviceman
had been killed in Afghanistan.

Ranger Jordan Armstrong, The Royal Irish Regiment

We knew a couple of days in advance that we were taking
part in a big air assault on the Taliban in the Upper Sangin
Valley. It was a big compound with 200-plus enemy. It was a
stronghold. We were briefed about what we had to do. We
knew from the brief that something was going to kick off and
it was going to be really bad. None of us had done this sort of
op before. It was due to last for two days. We were up early –
at 0100 hours. We were up, fed and ready to go. The Chinook
picked us up at 0230 hours to be at our target at 0300. The
chopper arrived on time. I was a bit nervous as I knew it was
going to be hard. As you sit in the back of the chopper, from
the way you have been briefed, you think: There is a strong
chance I might not be coming back.

I couldn't see anything while we were in the air because I
was right at the back, sitting down. As soon as we landed – in
the dark – we started taking incoming and I thought: It's
going to be a long two days. Even as we were getting out of
the back of the chopper, they [the Taliban] fired a massive
Chinese rocket at us. It seemed really close because it landed
next to us and just went 'bang'. It was difficult to say exactly
how close because there was so much noise from the
Chinooks. But it seemed really close – landing perhaps fifty
or sixty metres away.

As soon as we landed, we were on this big, flat airfield.
There was no cover whatsoever. We tabbed away and then
we started running, taking rounds. I had twenty-four hours
of rations, five or six litres of water, an 800 minimi [small
machine-gun], med kit, body armour and a helmet. It must
have all weighed eighty to a hundred pounds. And we were
boiling because it was so hot – even at night it was hot – but
later that day it apparently reached 57°C. We kept going in
the darkness and then pushed up to the top of a hill, which
made things worse because we were sitting targets and they
were firing at us from the Green Zone.

Soon it was breaking into first light. Then we were told that
our platoon had to give protection for the Paras' FSG [fire
support group]. They had Javelins [anti-tank missiles]. But
we couldn't give support because we were being fired at. We
were pinned down and getting shot at. Then, as we pushed
up, the FSG section commander, from 2 Para, got hit in the
side. He [Warrant Officer Class 2 Michael Williams] was
killed. For a long time, we were just lying flat in the open
ground, in the star-shaped position, with bullets whizzing
over our heads and cracking with green tracer. After a bit, it
went quiet for a few minutes. Then I heard a shot whizzing
over my head but couldn't identify the firing point. Seconds
later another fired. I quickly got off the high ground. I was
snaking away. I went weak at the knees, as the shots were too
close. As soon as I got off the high ground, they stopped
firing.

At this point we had roughly over a K and a half until we
were where we were supposed to be. It was very slow
progress as every time we moved we were shot at. As we
moved, they [the Taliban] were able to engage us with RPGs.
There was a constant flow of these. We had an airburst right
over our heads, which was really close. This continued for at
least another two hours as we were still trying to get to our
compound. We couldn't really identify the Taliban because it
[fire] was just coming from everywhere. Because the Paras
were in the Green Zone, it was too dangerous for us to fire. I
never fired one round. We couldn't. As much as we got shot
at all day, we could not fire a round. That was frustrating.

We went 'firm' behind a compound up on the high
ground and we could see the Apache fire its Hellfire. It was
amazing and followed with a really loud explosion. The
Apache hadn't stopped firing since we landed. It was rattling
away with its 30mm cannon at the firing points. You would
hear it firing as we were taking rounds – it could identify the
firing points from the air. It was a great feeling to hear it opening
up.

At this stage, we were just a couple of hundred metres from
our compound so we did our best to keep moving forward.
We were having difficulty, as there was a sniper about and he
had us pinned for a while and made movement very hard
and dangerous. Every time we moved, we could see the
splashes of the rounds hitting the compounds and the mountains
to the left of us. But we moved one section at a time and
the FSG from 2 Para was still with us. We all got across [from
one compound to another], luckily without getting hit. All we
could hear were the crackles of the rounds going past and
hitting just beside us. The adrenalin just kept us going and we
didn't feel the weight on our back. We got to our [target] compound
around nine or ten in the morning. We stayed 'firm'
there for a couple of hours. RPGs were still firing overhead and
we could see where they were landing. The sniper was still
going and so were the small arms. What a sound it made.
Exactly as you hear it in the movies. But they [the Apache and
friendly forces] still couldn't get the sniper.

It was pushing on after twelve and things were starting to
die down bar the sniper. Near 1500 hours, one section had
to push on the high ground to secure an HLS. This was for a
replen [fresh ammunition and supplies] and to take the body
of the 2 Para section commander back. As soon as the
Chinook landed, it took a high rate of small arms but was still
flyable. We later found out all the aviation stuff had been
damaged and put it out for a month until repaired.

We got replenned with water and were told to hold firm in
the compound and wait it out. We had all wanted to head
back that night but knew we had another day ahead of us and
were to push through the Green Zone, which we knew was
very dangerous and we had never been there before. As the
hours went on and it was getting dark, we had still heard
nothing, until 2100. Then we got the news we wanted to hear:
we were bugging out.

Around midnight we prepared to move out. By this stage
there was no firing and the Taliban had fled. As we couldn't
get up the road to the high ground, we had to go on to the
611. The Green Zone was directly on the left. That is where we
were getting hit all day and the CO was taking a big risk by
bringing the whole battle group up the 611.

We tabbed as quick as we could but some boys were hanging
back. We made it safely to the desert and we just about
had a K to go to the HLS. The choppers were inbound for
about 2 or 3 a.m. We were never so glad to get back to Sangin
safe and alive as that was one mad op. We were lucky: none
of the [Royal Irish] boys got hit. That was my worst day but
it was also amazing. In a way, one of the best [days], one of
the scariest. Nearly every bit of fire-power was used: artillery,
fast air, Apache. It was amazing. And you could hear all the
sounds and the explosions. It was seventeen and a half hours
of battle. Just madness. We were met by our OC and CSM
[company sergeant major] to say 'well done' and 'welcome
back'. Joey [a comrade] had tins of cold Pepsi laid on, which
was great. We went to bed around 4 a.m. and lay in until the
afternoon, only to find out we were on guard from 1800 to
midnight. The boys weren't happy about that as they were
still tired from the op.