Spoken from the Front (38 page)

Sergeant Hughie Benson, The Royal Irish Regiment

We were at Musa Qa'leh – Satellite Station North – when the
base was attacked. The base was all Hesco bastion: metal
crates that have a cloth on the inside and you just fill them
with mud and whatever you want. The ANA had a small
compound to live in inside our PB. We had two huge sangars,
which were up on the high ground to the north: the northeast
sangar and the north-west sangar. And, from there, you
could see the whole of the north to the edge of the Green
Zone and the urban desert as well.

The base was regularly attacked: depending on how they
[the Taliban] were feeling, they would throw different things
at you. In the space of about eight weeks, if you went two
days without the base getting hit you were lucky. Some
[incidents] were just some hero trying to make a name for
himself, coming down on his own with an RPG. And then
you had more co-ordinated ones where they were firing SPG9
– like an 82mm rocket that they fire at you. You get the odd
mortar round – not very accurate. The closest they got was,
after about three days of being mortared every day, a
hundred metres away from the PB. That was not very good.

But on one day in August, it got lively. There were only ten
Brits in the patrol base at this stage because we took two
people back who were being extracted – they had finished
their tour. The next day we were getting two more people
coming up to us. So there were ten of us in the PB and about
a hundred ANA. It must have been about last light. The
British sangar, which we manned, was engaged with small
arms. The top two big sangars were engaged with RPG. One
actually hit the front of the sangar but didn't injure anybody.
And then that was followed by a full-bore attack. They
wanted to have a go – they wanted to take the PB. One
minute we were standing around chatting, and then we had
to stand-to beside the sangar and start to engage the firing
points. We all stood-to. And then everything slipped into
place perfectly.

Due to previous attacks, all firing points and approach
routes were marked and recorded for the 81mm mortars to
engage. Everyone, including the ANA, was well practised at
defending the PB. We are talking easily sixty Taliban attacking
us – probably more. They came through the urban desert
and the closest they got that day was sixty to seventy metres
away. There was no chance of them overrunning us, but they
were definitely trying to take the base. Later on, the
ANA were telling us that they had heard through their local
sources that they wanted to get in [to the base].

I was the PB commander in charge of the base, so I was coordinating
the defence. But everyone knew what they were
doing. In there, we had four GPMGs, a 50-cal machine-gun, a
GMG [grenade machine-gun], a 51mm mortar, with 81mm
mortar on call, which was used effectively, rifles, UGLs and
LMGs. Everything was being fired. We had air [support] as
well: an A10 American bomber.

This contact lasted three and a bit hours. The engagement
finished just after half past ten [at night] – when our last
round was fired. We didn't take any casualties. Unbelievable.
They did, though. We got reports that they were collecting
casualties. We could see them extracting their casualties
through [our] night-vision. All the night-vision gets put on
just before last light. We don't know exactly how many
Taliban casualties they took. But I know for a fact that we
finished fighting at half past ten and at three in the morning
they were still trying to get casualties out of the canal. And
whenever they were collecting the casualties, the ANA were
engaging them.

Captain Kate Philp, 17 Corunna Battery, 26 Regiment The
Royal Artillery

I see myself as a front-line fighting soldier out here. I am two
and a half weeks into a six-month tour. My parents [Donald
and Susan] are extremely proud of me. They think it is a
worthwhile career. They think the people they have met
through us [their three children] are fantastic, sociable,
loyal, hard-working, and have a big emphasis on teamwork.

Nothing has woken me up in a sweat [since arriving in
Afghanistan]. I'm a lot happier now that I'm out here. I think
the waiting to go and all the pre-deployment training is
worse because, by the end of it, you just want to get on and
do it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about going
out and doing the job. No matter how well trained you are
and how well your team works, going out and doing it for
real for the first time is obviously something you can't fully
prepare for.

We are all keen to do as good a job as possible. We have
been training with the company for the last few months and
obviously we want to be able to support them as best we can.
And so I hope that we can do what we're trained to do [even]
when we're under the ultimate pressure of being in contact and,
perhaps, being tired and, perhaps, having taken casualties.

A move [from Camp Bastion to a front-line position] can
take from between twelve hours to two and a half days
for various reasons. On one occasion [on our move to the
front-line], we had several vehicles break down but we also
had a rocket come in and a sniper have a go at us, so we
experienced quite a few things just on the move up here. But
it was probably a really good thing that happened because
you get here in one piece knowing that you got through that.
You have to face it again but you've done it now for real and
you've got through it.

We hope to push down the Musa Qa'leh valley and drive
back the Taliban. Whether we stay in this area or move elsewhere,
we're here for now, continuing the job the previous
company did before us, trying to dominate the ground, providing
that intimate support, certainly to the dismounted
troops. The protection and fire-power that these vehicles
[Warriors] give us is phenomenal, so we want to make the
best use of that. If the call comes to deploy us elsewhere, then
we'll do so. It's still a relatively new capability out here. We're
only the third company to come out in the Warrior role and
obviously we'll be going into a winter tour so we would
expect our first couple of months to be busy, and then
potentially quieten down again. But who knows? We've got
to provide stability here for the country to be able to rebuild
itself and get back on its feet. At the end of the day, we've got
to help these people lead a better life.

The way we do business is to take every measure possible
to minimize collateral damage and any civilian casualties.
But, at the end of the day, we work under [rules of] selfdefence
here. If we're being engaged from a building and
we're being pinned down and the only way we can get out of
that fire-fight and save our lives is to drop a bomb on it, then
we'll do it. Then again, we'll look at dropping the most
suitable bomb possible to minimize that collateral damage.
Sadly, collateral damage is a fact of war and, unfortunately
sometimes an acceptable risk that has to be taken.

I'm in a company of 130 men. When we go out on the
ground on patrol, I'll be the only female. It's very simple, in
terms of showering here, for example. On the first night we
had shelters strung up with solar showers hanging off them.
I went last, when it was dark. I said to the boys next door:
'You might not want to climb up on your Warrior because I'm
about to have a shower.' And it's as simple as that. I'm not
particularly uneasy about it myself, but I also don't want
the guys to be uneasy about it, so I'll forewarn them. Also the
guys in the gun troop over there have been very good and
said I can go and use theirs [shower], if need be. It's being
terribly practical and not making a big issue out of it and just
saying: 'Look, we need to do this. How are we going to solve
it?' It's a very easy thing to do.

To be perfectly honest, I never think of myself as a female
captain in the Royal Artillery – I'm a captain in the Royal
Artillery. Physical fitness is obviously pretty important and I
aim to keep myself as fit as possible. And there's a good few
of them [men] who I can beat, which is not me being competitive,
although I am a little bit, but it's just one of those
things that you will always [as a woman] be deemed to be
less physically capable. So that [a physical challenge] is a big
way to prove yourself, if you like.

I honestly don't try and prove myself as a female. I just try
and prove myself as an officer alongside my peers and, hopefully,
here, working for my guys as much as possible. I expect
exactly the same from them as any other officer would. In the
first exercise I did with these guys – in pre-deployment training
– there was a reference made to: 'A normal FOO [forward
observation officer] would do this.' I suppressed a small
smile, and a wee bit later on I said: 'Look, I am a normal FOO.
I may be female. I may need a bit of privacy every once in a
while, to wash for example, purely out of practicality.
Everything else is exactly the same. If a FOO normally sleeps
out here, that's exactly where I will sleep.'

Being an officer is probably the most daunting and most
difficult thing you do. That first appointment as troop
commander is a challenge. You can be taught all the technical
stuff but you can't really teach anyone how to react when you
meet the guys for the first time and you're the boss. Yes, you're
the boss, but you have to earn respect at the same time. That just
comes with time. I remember being told during training that it's
a process of hand-over really – from your troop sergeant who,
in that interim period between the two officers, has been in
charge of the troop and has obviously been with them for a long
time anyway. Officers come and go, but soldiers stay, so it's a
question of you gradually taking the reins. So even though
you're the boss from the beginning, I don't think you actually
earn that [respect] until you've been with the guys for a bit and
shown them that you can do the job, that they can trust you
and you've got their interests at heart. I was extremely lucky
with mine [troop sergeant], that he was extremely good from
day one. He would discuss everything with me and he would
give me a lot of guidance as well, as and when I needed it. But
he let me make decisions for myself, which was what I needed
to do. So I couldn't have asked for better support.

It's important to listen to other people's advice but have the
courage and confidence to make your own decisions at
the same time. And it's interesting seeing other young officers
who have come in just a wee bit before you and see how well
they have been accepted. I saw with a couple that those who
had been accepted very readily were humble enough to
accept advice from their soldiers and not come in with the
attitude of 'Right, I'm the officer, I'm the boss,' because that's
rubbish. These are the guys with the experience. You've got to
be humble enough to take the advice and ask for the advice
as well. But at the same time you've got to have the courage
of your convictions. It's a difficult one, but it's not rocket
science, and I think it's just something that unfortunately
comes with experience. You really can't teach it to anybody.
You've just got to let people get on with it and make their
own mistakes – and not be afraid to make mistakes.

We have to learn from our mistakes. We're good at writing
post-operational reports and I know we're all very busy, but
a lot of value could be gained from applying those lessons
[already] learnt. We all know that the Army is very busy and
we ask an awful lot of our people – and we keep delivering
because it's what we're trained to do – but we need to be careful
not to take advantage of this and recognize that people
need a break.

McNab:
I was in Afghanistan when a force of 5,000 British and
Allied troops fought its way across a hundred miles of Taliban
territory to deliver a huge turbine that would provide significantly
more electricity for up to two million Afghans. The secret mission
took almost a week to complete and was described as the most vital
route-clearance operation since the Second World War. British
commanders estimated that more than twenty Taliban were killed as
they tried to prevent a convoy of more than a hundred vehicles
transporting the machinery from Kandahar to Kajaki. For five days,
the force battled its way through as the convoy crawled at just two
m.p.h. as it carried the 220-ton turbine, 300 tons of cement, a
90-ton crane and other heavy equipment. I witnessed parts of the
fighting. The project was aimed at improving the lives of many
people living in Helmand province and winning the hearts and
minds of the local Afghans. The task was attempted at the climax of
the Taliban's fighting season and in the knowledge that a single
enemy bullet could have crippled the delicate machinery and
delayed the project by a year. Quite rightly, the mission drew comparisons
with the 1944 battle of Arnhem and the relief in 1900 of the
siege of Mafeking. I was impressed and relieved that our boys had
pulled off their objective.

Ranger David McKee, The Royal Irish Regiment

The mission to move the Kajaki turbine involved a convoy of
more than a hundred vehicles and there were over 4,000
troops on the ground. It was pretty cool. The ANA were leading
it this time. We [the British] were just there as support. We
were seeing how well they would do out on the ground for
once. And they were amazing. I would say at this stage they
were ready to do anything. As part of the OMLT [Operational
Mentor Liaison Team], we had helped train some of them up
and it was very rewarding to see just how far they had come
in less than six months. We [the Royal Irish] were given two
objectives to clear. One was Big Top, which was a mountain.
The second was Sentry Compound, a village filled with
Taliban. Pretty much anyone who was inside that village
was Taliban. We knew the mission was going to take a week.