Warrior Brothers (18 page)

I edged forward, determined not to let the distinct flip-flop of my inappropriate footwear make any noise. We painted the dark entrance with our lasers and got to within a metre of the doorway when the 2iC decided that enough was enough. He ordered a retreat. I still wonder if those two men were in that building, but he made a decision and that was that. He
probably saved two men's lives that night. Whether they were our lives or theirs, we'll never know.

We retreated to the other patrol members and then, as a group, patrolled back to the squadron perimeter. The boys on the roof, aided by numerous thermal imagers, watched over us, providing support for our return trip. As we neared the compound, Thommo leaned in and whispered to me that we had ‘the two squadron HQ minesweepers' out the front. We both chuckled to ourselves before dropping back and covering the rear of the patrol.

It had been an interesting night. When we returned to the compound we were debriefed and, once that was done, we headed back to bed – my shift had finished some 30 minutes earlier.
If only all evening piquet duties were like that one
, I reflected. The next morning we went to the range and I test fired my light machine gun with two 25-round belts of ammunition. The weapon fired the first belt and then the second without so much as a stutter.

That'd be right
, I thought, shaking my head. Some would nod in the direction of Murphy's Law – after all, my weapon's stoppage had only occurred at a time of need. But I don't believe in Murphy's pessimistic worldview. Weapon stoppages aren't personal and can occur just as easily in battle as in training.

That afternoon, I learned that three children had been playing about 150 metres up the track that we had patrolled the night before. A six-year-old girl tripped a mine and had one of her legs blown off. The two boys with her fled and the young girl spent her final moments alone, no doubt scared and in agony before she died.

The squadron sentry observed the tragedy and reported the incident immediately. The little girl died before her distraught family could reach her. The American military carried out an assessment of the site and ascertained that the mine had been laid the night before. The two men we had
observed lying on the track – the two men we had spent a couple of hours pursuing – had planted that mine. They had then patrolled towards the perimeter, possibly in an attempt to lure a clearance team out onto the track. It is a miracle that our five-man team patrolled along a path (twice) that was no more than seven feet wide and missed the mine.

At that time I already had two young daughters – Tahlie, aged two, and Sian, who was fast approaching 12 months old. As hard as it was, I tried not to let myself think about them too often, as I couldn't afford to lose my focus. I was physically present in Afghanistan and it was imperative that my mind was also. But the thought of that little girl writhing in pain sickened us all to the very pits of our stomachs. A mixture of emotions, including guilt, affected us as we tried to face our regular routine that evening. We had been the mine's targets, not a small child who was just trying to have some fun. Those of us with young children will carry this image for a very long time. Perhaps forever.

It was a relief when, not long afterwards, squadron HQ issued the Boss with another ‘warning order' outlining our patrol's next task. We were to leave Bagram Airbase and head back to Eastern Afghanistan.

The Boss, Grant and I felt like Russian dolls, strapped into our seats inside our vehicle, which was inside a C130 Hercules aircraft. We were en route to FOB Khost and the ride had been relatively uneventful. But suddenly, things changed.

The aircraft banked hard to the left, then to the right, then appeared to fall through the sky. Through our NVGs the green haze was sharply disturbed by a series of brilliant white flashes from the cabin windows. We were under fire. My stomach felt as though a thousand butterflies had begun to flutter their wings simultaneously. The bird roared towards the ground, and we braced ourselves and instinctively sucked in a gulp of air.

It was like a fireworks display, but there was no sense of awe or innocent wonder. Everyone was aware that tracer fire generally has a visibility ratio of 5:1 – for each little glow of light there were possibly four more large chunks of lead heading our way.

The plan had been for the aircraft to touch the runway at Khost, where we'd roll off the rear ramp in our vehicles as quickly as possible. Someone was obviously attempting to make this a little more challenging. The flashes of light were streams of tracer fire that were being hurled towards the aircraft from two positions, creating an interlocking arc of criss-cross fire. The SAS operators who were already located
at FOB Khost watched the show as the British Special Ops pilots rapidly lowered the aircraft in an attempt to prevent their baby from being punctured by the large-calibre bullets flying towards us.

The aircraft hit the runway hard, violently throwing our heads back and forth. The ramp was lowered, the chains were removed and we began to move our vehicle off under the cover of darkness. No sooner were we off than the aircraft taxied into position, the engines screamed to life and the C130 was once again thrust into the sky.

Only half of our patrol was inserted; the other vehicle, carrying K-man and Kane, was due to arrive in 30 minutes. After our somewhat fiery greeting we were informed that no fixed-wing aircraft would be granted permission to land until the situation improved. The three of us moved quickly towards the vehicle-mounted troop, who ran us through what they had seen.

After we were briefed we found ourselves some stretchers, where we sat and chatted with our mates for a couple of hours before calling it a day and drifting off to sleep. In the early hours of the morning we were woken by an explosion. Then we heard a rocket zinging directly overhead. Someone yelled out: ‘Incoming!'

Even amongst the tension, the high-pitched scream was met with a flurry of imitations; mocking cries of ‘Incoming!' and laughter filling the air. What a time to take the piss out of someone! The zinging motors could be heard propelling the 107-millimetre rocket through the blackened sky.

When something like this occurs it takes a couple of moments to gather your bearings. One minute we were sound asleep, the next we were scrambling out of our sleeping bags, grabbing our weapons and helmets (with NVGs attached), pulling on our boots and making our way to the bunker that we had been allocated during the evening briefing only hours earlier. The enemy fired a total of five
rockets and, although they were straight, they all either fell short or overshot our position.

We were not responsible for the security of the airfield, so just chatted for half an hour before we were stood down and allowed to return to the relative comfort of our stretchers. We slept well, excited by the fact that Khost appeared to be hotting up.

On a subsequent mobility patrol, our alarm clock, once again, was a 107-millimetre rocket. I had not been asleep long when I heard a
crump
sound burst out of the darkness. I opened my eyes to see a bright flash, which was accompanied by the
zing
of a rocket directly overhead. It continued before detonating further up the hill with a tremendous explosion.

I had rehearsed this over and over in my mind. In a state of disorientation, you react quicker if you have established a routine. I always positioned my weapon on my right side with my helmet draped over my sight. I grabbed my helmet, fastened my chinstrap and rotated my NVGs down over my eyes. They switched on automatically. I scanned the night while throwing on my web vest and lying down behind my weapon, and then disengaged my safety catch. The other 10 SAS soldiers did the same. Were we about to be attacked? By how many? Or was this just a random rocket attack? Either way, for 20 minutes we remained silent and composed, staring into the darkness, waiting for the unknown.

A US Delta Force operator was killed the following day when his team went to investigate reports that a Yemeni al-Qaeda member was in a compound just outside Khost. These reports are common. More often than not, a village dispute led to the incident being reported to coalition forces – with the extra spark of a hollow accusation of terrorism. Regardless, each report had to be taken seriously.

The Delta operators, with regular US army personnel in support, cordoned off the compound while the Afghani
interpreter attempted to coax those inside to allow entry into the compound. The interpreter was instructed to correspond with those inside by verbal communication only and not to attempt to scale the wall. The two Delta operators who were with him moved back to their vehicle, and as they turned around they saw that the interpreter had failed to follow their instructions and had foolishly climbed the wall. Before they could yell at him to get down, he was met with a burst of 7.62-millimetre gunfire that ripped into his upper torso, flinging him back to the ground. The Delta operators didn't hesitate – they withdrew their pistols and ran to the man's aid, dragging him away from the door while they unloaded full clips from their pistols into the metal gate.

We found out later that the interpreter was dead. His body had ceased living before he hit the dusty earth.

The cordon then retreated and targetted the compound with an air-strike. Two 500-pound bombs were dropped, while two Apache gunships raked the compound with 40-millimetre cannon fire. The latter had very little effect but the bombs would have sent percussion waves so severe that anyone inside would surely have had their insides turned to jelly.

The Delta operators prepared themselves to assault the compound. Prior to entering, one man removed his helmet, since it was unlikely that anyone inside would be left alive. The team had just breached the compound via an area of wall that had been destroyed when a ‘pineapple' grenade landed behind them. A chunk of metal fragged the operator in the rear of the head, and he fell as his mates detained the man responsible. The Yemeni al-Qaeda man had been killed, and so too had several other combatants, but the young man who'd managed to throw the grenade had a fist-sized hole in his chest. He was detained but, although severely injured, he remained defiant and refused to talk. I don't know if he survived. Sadly, the Delta operator did not.

During that same period, another US soldier was killed when the vehicle he was travelling in was ambushed. The men were riding in a convoy of six unarmoured four-wheel drives, when an Afghani male on the side of the road waved to them with a broad and seemingly genuine smile. The soldiers waved back and exchanged friendly expressions. The temperature was close to 50 degrees Celsius so the team had draped their body armour over the doors of the vehicles and the car's windows remained open.

The Afghani man, still smiling, approached the last vehicle, unslung his rifle and jammed its barrel through the open window. He forced it into the lap of an American, who had been waving at him just moments earlier, and fired half a clip of AK-47 ammunition into his stomach and chest. The man then fled into the crowd.

In the confusion of the ambush that followed, several vehicles were lost. Needless to say, military tactics soon changed. The smiling assassin had been able to carry out such a brazen attack because none of the vehicles had mounted machine guns or men positioned where they could immediately return fire. Bouncing around in the back of a four-wheel drive means it is extremely difficult to return fire with any real degree of effectiveness. Many private security operators in Iraq would later experience similar problems.

The three troops that comprised the squadron on the Khost operation – the water, freefall and vehicle-mounted troops – were already remarkably tight: a kin of extended brothers, a second family. Despite the ever-present jovial banter, we in the water troop shared a conviction that we were the hardest, comfortably atop the food chain. We delighted in dismissing the freefall troop, of which one of my mates, Craig, was a patrol 2iC, as nothing more than a pride of weak ‘gaylords'.
Our two troops came together, however, in dismissing the vehicle-mounted troop, whom we stereotyped as a bunch of cake-eating, beer-swilling, doughnut-munching, McDonald's, KFC and pizza-loving fat boys.

Our claim to superiority lay in our having passed two exhilarating and strenuous selection courses – for the SAS and as assault divers. In reality, these provided us with nothing more than swollen ankles and a lower level of hearing. But we wouldn't admit this to the other troops! Over the following weeks, the majority of the squadron (including squadron HQ) deployed to FOB Khost to carry out operations in the volatile Paktia, Paktika and Nangarhar provinces. As an upside, HQ brought with them mail from home.

This is something that is a great morale-booster. Some soldiers receive heaps, while others receive nothing. Soldiers often share their letters from home with mates who are repeatedly missed at mail-call. With the deployment now well into its third month, one soldier had not received a single email or letter from his family or girlfriend. His mates eventually got together and wrote him a couple of letters and stuck them in the mailbag. He was quite surprised when his name was called out not once, but twice. There was no shortage of smart-arse one-liners to brighten up his day.

It is always nice to hear what is going on at home and men are sent magazines, old papers and articles about significant events. Some men are sent enormous food parcels, which are always shared with their mates. Army rations are not that exciting, so a bit of variety is always greatly appreciated.

My family were incredibly generous, even a little overzealous in regards to sending food. My wife, mother, sisters and nan obviously didn't want me coming home malnourished. Being the only son and grandson has its advantages. Furthermore, my family were all enthusiastic and interesting writers, so the letters arrived thick and fast. During basic training I sometimes received up to five letters per day.

One of my ‘top-shelf' brothers, Mick, who was from another patrol, had a father who knew what it was like to be deployed on operations. He was a former Vietnam veteran and knew how to bypass inspections by sending a few cans of beer hidden in a tube. Mick ensured that all his mates got at least one sip of VB. Besides being generous with his beer, Mick had a tremendous work ethic. There were times when he would spend hours helping us to prepare our patrol vehicles until well after midnight.

More recently, I gave Mick a call to see if he could fly to Sydney to give me a hand on a motivational seminar. His answer was immediate and unquestioning: ‘Yeah, I have heaps on but tell me what day you need me and I'll be there.' That was it. For a mate, Mick would drop everything at a moment's notice. On a poignant note, Mick's father passed away recently. Like so many Vietnam vets, he made it home but had his life cut short some 30 years later, one of many victims of the cancerous Agent Orange.

If mail was important, then sleep, or the lack of it, was similarly so. Intelligence suggested that FOB Khost would be attacked by rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire during the evening, so the Canadians, who were responsible for base security, decided they would send up 60-millimetre mortar illumination throughout the night. And luckily for us, the base plate (the mortar firing position) was only 50 metres from where we were sleeping. Just when we began to settle we would be startled by the
doonk
sound of an illum round being punched into the sky. The burning flare would then turn night into day.