Sniper one (25 page)

They'd got the contact they said they really wanted all right. After all their banter, they hadn't even fired a single shot.

We set off for the rendezvous point with Captain Doyle just under a mile away, putting rounds down at flash targets on rooftops or around street corners that tried to open up on us. As we ran, I told Major Tait to take out the street lights to obscure our movement from the enemy fire. With another Benson and Hedges smouldering away through his schoolboy grin, he took to the task with relish and barely missed a single one. The irony that his day job in Al Amarah was to supervise its rebuilding wasn't lost on him.

An OMS bullet passed through H's trouser leg opening up a small cut. Other than that, we reached Captain Doyle unscathed. Both patrols then tracked the rest of the way down Nasiriyah Street together to meet two Warriors sent out to pick us up waiting at a prearranged junction.

Unfortunately, the Warriors were parked up under some street lights. Major Tait frightened the hell out of their crews by dashing straight up to the vehicles and hosing down the street lights with an extra long burst of automatic SA80. His blood was still up and he was loving it.

'OK, Mr Tait, no more street lights, thanks. I think we've done enough now.'

'Nae fuckin' bother, Danny. Wha'er you say.'

As we mounted up, we could already hear the whine of ambulance sirens coming from the direction of the cemetery. At least we'd done them a bit of damage too.

Back at Cimic, Captain Doyle and I went up to the Ops Room to check in. Among other things, I had to report that my twelve-man patrol had fired 512 rounds from SA80s, 330 Minimi rounds, and five UGLs. When we walked in, Redders was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, we asked one of the company signallers reclining on a swing chair for his whereabouts. He just smiled.

'I'm under here, chaps,' Redders himself replied. And there he was, with helmet and full body armour on, crouching under his desk with the radio handset in his hand. The odd mortar had fallen outside, but he was rigged up for a full-on nuclear strike. The poor sod was stuck in that room with nowhere else to go all day long; it was obviously beginning to get to him.

I took off my body armour and shirt to show Dale the bruise where I'd been shot. The golf ball bit had gone down, but it was now the size of a grapefruit and full of deep pinks and purple.

Dale and I inspected my kit to work out the mystery of what had happened. The round had torn up the strap of my brand new day sack I'd got from the Triple Canopy mail order catalogues. It had only just arrived, and at the cost of $70 too. I forgot all that once I realized it could also have saved my life. The thick rubber strap had slowed down the bullet considerably, before it then passed through the thin cotton cover of my body armour, its rubber interior, out again, and then through my shirt. Then, as Dale discovered, that's where it had lodged, in the inside of my body armour with just its sharp lead nose poking through.

I was dumbstruck.

'Faarkin' 'ell, Danny. How did you escape that one, eh?'

He worked the round out with his thumb and finger tip. 'You want to keep that, Danny. Show it to the grandchildren one day.'

I popped it in my pocket as a good luck charm, chuffed to bits with the best tour souvenir out of everyone so far.

'Anyone got a camera?'

The next day, Ken Tait was summoned to see Major Featherstone. The OC had heard about his street light antics and wasn't hugely impressed. Poor old Ken got a major bollocking and was banned from going out on any more foot patrols. He was heartbroken.

Pinky and Perky were strangely quiet. Nor did they ask to come out on any more patrols with Sniper Platoon. They left a couple of days later with a pair of badly damaged egos, but some very full notebooks.

After most large contacts, the boys and I would always be keen for a battle damage assessment to see how well we'd faired against the OMS. The run-in with the Dshkes was no exception, so we did our normal trick of skirting by the city's main hospital on our next daylight patrol.

The Victoria Hospital (more of our colonial heritage) was just before Yugoslav Bridge on the south side of the Tigris. It was where all the OMS casualties were taken, dead or alive. Whenever they had a few men in there, the OMS leadership would post an armed guard on the hospital gate. They were sure we'd try to pop over to finish them off. We never went inside the hospital, because we could always get what we needed off the guard. It was also terrific fun winding him up.

'Hello, knobhead,' Pikey announced, after we crept up on him. Terrified, he tried to unsling his AK from his shoulder
but just ended up dropping it. He was a scrawny looking little scumbag in his early twenties. A nobody foot soldier.

'Don't worry, we're not going to shoot you. Just come for a chat. How many OMS men in today?'

The guard scowled at us from behind the bars of the metal gate. We'd seen this one before here and we knew he spoke just enough crappy English to understand us. Pikey gave it another go.

'Sadr men. Britani jundi shoot how many?'

Conspiratorially, he looked over his shoulder to make sure nobody was watching, before replying in hushed tones, 'Seventeen. Eleven wounded, six dead.'

Excellent. It had been a good night's work after all. A look behind the guard at the hospital's emergency entrance confirmed what he told us. The ground was littered with fresh blood-soaked dressings and discarded IV drips that none of the staff had had a chance to clear up yet.

'Ooh. Oh dear, knobhead. Looks like we smacked your arse again,' Pikey continued.

'But we kill Britani jundi commander.'

'No, you didn't. He's right here,' pointing to me.

That really confused him. The OMS guy had obviously seen me talking on the radio or giving orders, and then when I went down. Obviously he hadn't seen me get back up again though.

'Bad luck, knobhead. See you tonight then, hopefully, eh? We'll look forward to it.'

He managed a nervous smile.

Going out on fighting foot patrols was a real adrenalin rush, and every sniper in the platoon relished the challenge. But there was also nothing quite like the few chances we got on the tour to get out in the field and set up a proper desert observation post.

Not knowing we'd be based in a town then, we'd done masses of training for desert OPs back in Tidworth, and we'd brought all our proper kit out with us too. They only came up when we got pinged for Operation Bayswater, a permanent and rolling task to catch out mortar teams having a go at Camp Abu Naji.

Not that we liked to admit it, but Slipper City got a fair few mortar rounds and rockets chucked at it too. On the few occasions Y Company could spare us, we went down to the marshland between the camp and the city and put in a reactive OP. The most popular site for base plates was at the very southern end of the Kadeem al Muallimin estate. After Aj Dayya, it was the city's most pro-OMS estate and several of their mortar crews were known to live within it. A reactive OP meant we'd just sit and wait for them to turn up. If they did, we'd kill them.

We'd tab for three kilometres to our chosen location as a team of eight. A rear protection force of four was left about a klick behind us to watch our arses. Then the final four would creep up on our bellies for the last couple of hundred metres so we weren't seen. It was a pretty exposed area, and the only place for a hide was the dried-up river beds. We
dug ourselves covertly into the dried shale and slate, and that was us for the night.

One night in mid-June, we inserted at 7 p.m. just as the sun was setting. The plan was to extract at 3 a.m. after any mortar crews who fancied some action would have gone to bed.

On our maps, we were set back around 500 metres from Purple 8, a road junction at the south-west corner of the estate not far from the town prison. Ever since the NGOs left in a hurry, the prison had been heavily fortified and then occupied by the Royal Welch Fusiliers company.

It was very much enemy territory, so it was exciting work. The challenge of not being compromised coupled with the thrill of the hunt. We were good at this, and they weren't going to spot us in a hurry. We wore our sniper smocks as camouflage. They are big baggy canvas tops with a hood and plenty of pockets. You spray them the colour of the terrain you're going to be in before you go out. Elsewhere we'd use our head-to-toe Ghillie suits, but Iraq was too hot for that. The smocks' pockets and pouches are in its sides, arms or at the back. That way when you're on your belly in the prone position, you can just reach round with a hand and grab what you want. They'd be stuffed with food, a camouflage net, secateurs, a calculator, trowels, our sling set-ups, maps and water.

Our drag bags were also laid up beside us, with the heavier stuff such as scopes and ammunition. We never went out with less than six mags for each rifle. Then of course there were our longs, set up on bipod legs.

Keeping body movement in an OP to a minimum is absolutely crucial. Movement just attracts the eye to you. If you're a fidgeter, you're no good to a sniper platoon. If you've got a problem with insects, tough shit. You learn to
live with all sorts of things crawling over you. Luckily, it's too hot in Iraq at that time of year for mosquitoes. They've all been killed off by the start of May.

Lying up means controlling your bodily functions too. Sooner or later, they are going to be issues if you're in an OP for any length of time. If it's a piss you need, then you slowly roll onto your side and piss in an empty water bottle. Otherwise you or your spotter will have to lie in it for the rest of the night. If it's something else you need to do, then you reach for your clingfilm, turn over, trousers down, and off you go. It's not the most enjoyable experience for your oppo, but needs must. Once you're done, you wrap it up and pop it in your Bergen so your hide isn't detected when you leave it. A regular snipers' wind-up is to put your poo in someone else's Bergen. When they're back in camp unpacking, you can normally hear the shout for miles.

'Wharr, who's shit is this?'

If you didn't like the platoon commander, you'd shove it in his Bergen instead.

On my sniping course, I put my Number Two through even worse. We'd been in a hide on the edge of a wood in Salisbury Plain for two days waiting for a target to turn up. I'd managed to suppress the urge for the whole time, right up to the moment the target's car turned up. I couldn't believe it, it was coming and he was coming, and there was nothing either of us could do about it.

There was only one option available, so I slung a quick tree hook and got into a squat. While still marking the target through the sight, I pulled my trousers down. My Number Two got out the clingfilm and held it under my arse. While semi-retching from the pong, he still managed to catch all my warm faeces, and ten seconds later I got the kill. I had
to buy him a fair few pints that night just to get him to stop whinging.

Sometimes we would have to wait in the river beds until pretty late for any action. It wasn't until just before 2 a.m. that things began to stir that night.

Without any warning, the whoosh of two RPGs fired almost simultaneously about a kilometre away from us broke the night's perfect silence. They impacted with big bangs and flashes on the prison's walls. The firing point was out of our sight on the other side of the long low building so we couldn't return fire. I got on the radio to Abu Naji's Ops Room to report the contact.

'Zero, Alpha One Zero. RPG contact on Broadmoor. Firing point from around Red 8, judging by their nine-second flight time. Do you want me to collapse my current task and pursue the enemy?'

We could have a good fight on here.

'Alpha One Zero, roger your last. No, hold your current position. Two Whiskies being dispatched as QRF to Red 8.'

Bugger. Whiskies was radio code for Warriors. Five minutes later, we heard the two Warriors trundle by past us to our east up the main road into Al Amarah towards Red 8. Then the inevitable and the Warriors were engaged too. More sounds of whooshing RPGs, then a long burst of SA80, followed by the clatter of Warrior chain guns. It was a big old exchange, but, infuriatingly for us, totally out of our view so we couldn't help them out.

Then, the all too frequent message over the net.

'Contact casualty. Wait out. Two men down.'

More Warriors turned up and extracted the injured men, finally ending the battle. Later, we found out exactly what had happened.

As the leading Warrior approached Red 8, the same team that had hit Broadmoor put a well-aimed RPG warhead right on to its driver's hatch. Just inside that hatch was none other than Private Johnson Beharry again, the very same poor sod who had undergone all the heroics on May Day.

The grenade exploded on impact six inches away from his head. It did appalling damage to him, blowing dozens of tiny shrapnel fragments into his face and brain.

The vehicle's commander, a lieutenant, then slotted all three RPG men with a fine bit of firing from his SA80 out of the turret. Without having any idea of Beharry's injuries, the lieutenant ordered him to get them the fuck out of there. In another show of superhuman endurance, Beharry fought through immense pain and bleeding to regain control of the fucked Warrior and reverse it 200 metres out of the kill zone. It smacked into a wall after he finally passed out.

That looked like good night for Beharry. He went into a coma, was listed as VSI (very seriously ill) and flown back to the UK for extensive brain surgery. The doctors said he didn't have much of a chance. They told the CO to pray.

We were well pissed off when we heard exactly how bad he was. It was just sod's law. If only the RPG team had come out for their fun and games 200 metres closer to us, we would have had them in our sights and done them. By total chance, they didn't; so they did Beharry instead.

Unlike the bullet in my pocket, that RPG warhead had Beharry's name written all over it. Sometimes, that's just the way it goes.

We heard the first whisperings of a ceasefire a week later in an intelligence report passed down from Division.
Moqtada al-Sadr was going to do a deal with the Americans, said the Int boys. He was going to call a halt to all the violence across the south.