Spoken from the Front (33 page)

Ranger David McKee, The Royal Irish Regiment

My first contact was when we were out on foot patrol in
Musa Qa'leh. It was during an afternoon patrol – from 2 to 4
p.m. – with the ANA. We were six Brits and thirty ANA. We
went through this big piece of open ground, then past a
graveyard. I was carrying a 51mm mortar plus my LMG. We
got up to the graveyard and it came over the net that they [the
Taliban] had spotted us. 'Get your men ready, get your guns,'
they warned us. So the boss, on hearing this, decided to pull
us back and get back into the base, which was about three
miles away. We had noticed that on the way in there were
people about. There were shops open, kids running around.
But now we looked behind and everyone had gone. The place
was deserted. At this stage, we knew we were going to get
hit. As soon as we reached that open ground again, one single
round was fired, followed by this big burst of machine-gun
fire hurtling up beside us. We were in open ground, so there
was no cover. All you could see was the splashes everywhere.
All you could hear was 'Contact rear,' and the boys were just
running to find a decent bit of cover.

Before I knew it, most of the other boys were in cover. But
I was still running. There was me, my mate [Ranger] Simon
Wade, and the boss, Captain [Graham] Rainey. So I jumped
behind this small bit of dirt [mound] that was on the floor
and Simon and Captain Rainey were in a compound firing
out of a hole. At that time, I was shitting myself, proper
crapping myself. I could see the rounds bouncing, literally
beside my feet. And I could hear the cracks flying over our
heads. It was the first time I had ever come under contact. I
thought: Oh, fuck, here we go. I had to lie down flat on my
stomach because the mound wasn't that big at all. And I
knew that if I stuck my head up, I'd have exposed every part
of my body, pretty much. So I was down. I was hoping to fire
my LMG, but I didn't fire it once. Then the boss came over the
radio and said: 'Get the 51 out and start firing it.' I shouted
down to the GPMG gunner to give me fire support so I could
get the mortar up. He started firing up towards the hill
[where the enemy was firing from].

And what we could see was a [Taliban] PKM gunner on the
top of the hill plus and an AK. The PKM gunner was down
on his belly, firing the machine-gun. The other guy was standing
firing and moving about down the hill trying to get away
from us. So I got the 51 up and I asked Sergeant [Charlie]
McKinney what to do – because he is an MFC – a mortar fire
controller – and he knows all about this. He came up to give
me guidance on the target. First of all he said: 'Go for 250
metres.' So I dropped in the bomb first and fired. It came
down but it landed behind the hill. So I decided to drop fifty
metres and go for 200 this time. So I threw the mortar down
the barrel and I was waiting for the splash to come up, just
waiting, and it was bang on target. That PKM gunner would
have shot his mouth out after that bomb had landed on top of
him. And everyone said later: 'You got him. You definitely
hit him.' But because of the dust and all that, I don't know if
it landed right on him or slightly beside him. But it shut him
up and he didn't fire at us ever again. So he was gone. He was
out of the picture then.

The next thing for us to do was extract. There was no fire
coming from our front, but we had to worry about our flanks
– because we had just come under attack from the flanks. The
boys were exposed on the left. We – me, my mate Simon and
Captain Rainey – were right in front of the urban area. We
were the ones that were more protected. We decided to give
fire out in the flanks so the other boys could extract back
through us. But what I forgot to do was to pack the mortar
away. I was in a predicament where I had to get people to
come down and protect me so I could pack the mortar away,
get my weapon – my LMG – and extract. All I could do was
to get one of the lads to give me cover. He had a UGL [underslung
grenade launcher] and he was firing grenades at them.
He was firing away. He said: 'Right, leave your LMG where
it is and get the mortar into the hard cover.' I went down,
packed the mortar away, put all the bombs in the rucksack
and then got my LMG. But I couldn't move yet. I was standing
behind a wall with my weapons and the rounds were
coming in. But in the end I just grabbed my LMG and everything
and did a runner. And that was us [heading], all the
way back into base. We were power smoothing: you had two
[soldiers] moving down and then another two moving
through you and so forth, all the way down. Just to give protection.
That was really, really scary, so it was. You hear
people talking about it [a contact] and you see it in the
movies, when the rounds are landing beside people's feet.
But I didn't actually think it happened like that. I always
thought: If they're going to start shooting, they're going to hit
us. The rounds aren't going to start landing all over the place.
But that day, the rounds were landing all over the
place. I'd seen it, the fucking dust kicking up by your feet and
thinking: Oh, my God!

Lance Corporal Daniel Power, The Royal Welsh

I was with the Royal Welsh in a sniper role. We were up on
the hill above Now Zad that looks over the old town. We had
all the fire-support elements up on there – machine-guns, etc.,
Javelin anti-tank missiles, etc. We were all sleeping in these
man-made bunkers, which were only waist high. We had to
crawl in; at best you can sit in them. On a daily basis, we used
to get contacted there, mortared, we had rockets fired from
there. Now Zad is deserted; most of its residents have been
moved out of the town. We were over-watching the old town
and there was enemy known to be in that area. We identified
where they were hiding out in the Green Zone. We would
often push into the town, to draw the enemy out into
a contact, then hit them hard. We would normally have a
couple of contacts.

We were out on an op one day in May. We surged into the
Green Zone on a planned op. We had no reaction, really. A
couple of rounds, but there was nothing to sustain it – to fix
on the enemy. But on the route back one of the MFCs initiated
a victim-operated device – a pressure pad – which exploded
into his groin area and he ended up losing half his foot for
that. This was Corporal Dan Sheen, who is in his mid-twenties.
He was on a foot patrol and he stood on the device
and initiated it. This was just after midday, close to Now Zad.
I was nearby at the time. I saw him being carried on to the
Chinook. You can't really crowd the situation. As much as
you want to help you have to leave it to the trained medics.
They got on with that. But something like that is always disturbing.
We have been quite fortunate as a unit. We have been
in quite a few contacts during two tours in Afghanistan and –
not to lose anyone – we have been really lucky.

I would say I have been in five big ambushes in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I have been in a lot more contacts, but proper
ambushes? About five. I count myself quite lucky to be alive
from that. The thing with ambushes is that you [the target]
are not meant to survive. For the initial part in any contact,
you are on auto-pilot: you do what you have been trained to
do, like a racing-car driver does, or a boxer. You train that
much that your reaction becomes instinctive. With the
Taliban, you rarely get to spring ambushes on them; they
normally spring them on you for the simple fact that they can
blend quite easily into the civilian population – their biggest
weapon. And it's hard to keep track of them. The Taliban
were fighting long before I ever joined the Army. They have a
lot of skilled people, they are well organized. They are always
well concealed. If they were wearing uniform, this job [restoring
law and order to Helmand province] would be done and
dusted by now, I imagine. But the hardest part is identifying
your enemy. One thing is certain – when dealing with the
Taliban, I will never get complacent.

McNab:
Another tragic landmark. The number of British servicemen
who had died in Afghanistan reached 100 when three
paratroopers were killed by a suicide bomber. It happened when an
insurgent detonated a large explosive device strapped to his chest as
servicemen were on a routine patrol near their base in Helmand
province. The three privates who died, two aged nineteen and one
aged twenty-two, were from the 2nd Battalion The Parachute
Regiment. A fourth was injured. It was the deadliest attack on
British forces to date in 2008 and the biggest single loss of life by
troops in the country since August 2007. The 100 victims were
aged from eighteen to fifty-one. Of those who died, seventy-four
were killed in action from enemy fire or explosives and twenty-six
died as a result of non-combat-related injuries. Air Chief Marshal
Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said of the 100
servicemen: 'They laid down their lives for their country and their
comrades. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy.'

Ranger David McKee, The Royal Irish Regiment

As part of the OMLT, we worked with the ANA. But that
didn't mean we trusted them all. Me and my mates said the
only people we trusted in Afghanistan were the Taliban –
because we knew they were the ones that were trying to kill
us. Some of the ANA were a bit dodgy: we suspected that
some of them did support the Taliban or, even, that some of
them were members of the Taliban. There were some
situations where it got out of hand and weapons were
pointed.

I had first-hand experience of that in Musa Qa'leh. We had
gone out on a foot patrol in the Green Zone, just to get a bit of
ground orientation with the ANA. There were six British and
thirty ANA soldiers. It was daylight. It was an early-morning
patrol – when we would leave at about 7 a.m. and be back in
at 10 a.m. But we weren't back in for ten that day – trust me.

To start with, it all went well. Then, suddenly, bang on right
beside us, there were mortars being launched. They were
being launched at British forces and PBs [patrol bases]. It was
a co-ordinated attack. The mortars were being launched
beside us but they were hitting different PBs, including
Roshan Tower. When it kicked off, we had been out for about
an hour and it was eight o'clock. When you hear the first
bang, your initial reaction is to get on the ground, find cover
and find out where it is coming from. This was only our
second contact of the tour.

When it kicked off we had three different teams of ANA –
one with us [the British] and the other two off to the flanks.
The ANA commander got on his radio and tried to find out
what was going on. He discovered our right flank had come
under heavy contact – including RPGs. They were fighting
like fuck up there, so they were. And they needed reinforcements
to come up and help them. But as we went up to help
them, we came under contact from our left.

So we ran. It was a beast of a run: I'd say we were running
at least 800 metres in that heat on uneven ground with boys
falling all over the place. It was boiling hot. I was an LMG
gunner so I was carrying my LMG, full-scale ammo, a pack of
water, water bottle, rations just in case, body armour and
helmet. It must have all weighed about eighty pounds. It was
absolutely lethal, so it was.

Our first reaction was to get the boss, Captain Rainey: he
was the OMLT commander. At this point we got a few rounds
off. I managed to get some off. I could see clearly what I was
firing at. There were people running across the fields with
weapons and they were firing – they were taking pot-shots at
us as they were running. They were doing the team drills that
the British Army do because obviously they had been watching
us out on patrols. So there was one guy firing, there were
other guys peeling around him and getting down and firing
as well. I would say they were at least 500 metres away from
us. Light machine-guns can fire that far and pretty accurately.
But it was impossible to say whether I hit anyone.

I was firing at the ones running into the compounds, which
were all linked together. Me and the boss were going to go
around and flank the compound. But before we could get out
in the open, these boys [of the OMLT] had called us back [on
the radio] and they sounded pretty scared. Initially we
thought one of our boys had been injured. We had run down
and the compound door had been kicked in. And we went in
and the ANA were beating up a member of the Taliban whom
they'd caught as he was trying to run away. They were beating
him up with boots and fists. Around that one Taliban I
would say there were six or seven of them. So the boss, being
aware of the Geneva Convention, ordered the ANA to leave
him alone. All we wanted to do was to get the ANA off him,
treat the Taliban casualty and extract him so we could gain
information from him. He had not been shot but the boss
wanted me to patch him up. Through the interpreter, Captain
Rainey was shouting at the ANA, telling them to get off him.
Most of the ANA stopped and backed off, but our main concern
was the ANA sergeant major. He didn't take too kindly
to us pretty much offering our help to this Taliban. He – the
sergeant major – was the boss of that group we were with.

So I – the team medic – was patching up the Taliban
casualty. He had a gash on his head, blood running from his
nose. His one leg was badly swollen: I mean, the whole leg
was massive compared to his other leg. We felt around – he
was complaining about pains in his side – and there were a
couple of ribs knocked out of place. He had also taken a good
boot to the head, which had hurt his neck. He was young,
early twenties. He was in a bad way. But he wasn't frightened
– he was angry. He was slabbering [ranting] like mad, even
though he was in pain. When I was down patching him, he
was slabbering and spitting. But you have to take that, you
know what I mean?