by Ben Anderson
It was eight o’clock by the time we reached the other side of the village and nothing had happened. The sun wasn’t yet scorching and I was enjoying a ludicrously false sense of security. Suddenly, a single shot was fired, close by. An interpreter raised his radio in the air. ‘They are about to attack. They are getting ready for attack.’
‘To attack us, here?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘Do you know where they are?’
‘No, their location is not known.’
‘Are they close?’
‘Yes’, he said.
The ANA spotted some Taliban fighters and called for their rocket man; every Afghan unit has a rocket man. This one emerged from the trees and jogged towards us, his rocket launcher slung over his shoulder in a bright pink sheet. This meant most of the right side of his body was also bright pink. This seemed to strike no one but me as odd, even though he was about to step into the open and fire a rocket at Taliban fighters thought to be fewer than a hundred metres away.
I followed Captain Patrick Hennessey as one of the ANA led him to the end of a long wall, with piles of harvested poppies stacked against it. The ANA soldier pointed to two men he had spotted carrying weapons. The rocket man loaded his weapon and got down on one knee. Captain Hennessey told him to wait. From behind the wall, he spoke into his radio.
‘Possible positive identification of two times Taliban. Am preparing to engage with RPG. Can you confirm they are not the friendly forces mentioned earlier? Over.’ He listened. ‘Roger. We’re going to engage with RPG, see if it provokes a response and if so assault that enemy position, over.’
Rocket man walked forward, knelt, and fired. We looked for any signs of movement. A few ANA soldiers were ordered to run beyond the wall, into the trees, to provide cover for an assault on the Taliban position. The terp heard a Taliban commander telling his men to stay in position and wait for the advance. ‘Glea-ming’, said Captain Hennessey, as he was given permission to call an air strike on to the fighters. Rocket man reloaded his launcher, eager to fire again.
The Taliban were in a ditch, in front of a building about sixty metres to our right. Captain Hennessey struggled to identify the building on his map. ‘See this tree? Taliban is behind’, said Sergeant Syed Meeraj, a small, lean man with slightly oriental features, a moustache and a sparkling skullcap. Even when he smiled and joked he had an unmistakable seriousness; he was easily the most capable Afghan soldier I’d seen.
The ANA were brilliant at spotting anything slightly strange: an odd movement, a displaced piece of earth, or a suspicious piece of cloth hanging from a window. The Brits couldn’t see what he was pointing at and still weren’t sure which building they wanted to call the air strike on.
We heard two massive explosions on the far side of the field, nowhere near the Taliban position. Then a bullet crackled past. ‘OK, that’s us, that’s contact’, said Captain Hennessey. The explosions were RPGs, set to explode in the air above us. Soon, more bullets rattled towards us, in an accelerating rhythm, as if someone were winding a machine into life. The bullets weren’t coming from the men we’d spotted but from directly ahead, making the wall we’d ducked behind useless.
‘RPG fire?’ asked rocket man, pointing to the gap at the end of the wall. Someone nodded. He almost skipped forwards, knelt and fired. Straightaway, he got up and ran back, only to fall to his knees, holding his ears in pain.
Sergeant Syed knelt just beyond the wall, firing single shots at a ditch, almost ninety degrees to the left of where rocket man was aiming. Captain Hennessey spoke into his radio: ‘That’s us now being engaged by RPG and small arms. If you could put air on it that would be lovely. Over.’ He sounded as if he were about to invite the pilot over for tea and biscuits. The pilot said he could see four men in the building, identified on everyone’s maps as Kilo. Rocket man slapped his ears, shaking his head to show that he was now deaf, which seemed to make him very happy.
‘Five hundred pounder inbound now, everyone get their heads down’, shouted Captain Hennessey.
Beyond the wall, Sergeant Syed knelt and fired a few more shots, trying to keep the Taliban where they were until the bomb landed. But the bomb wasn’t dropped. ‘Some muppet has decided we’re too close’, said Captain Hennessey.
The muppet, it transpired, albeit for the wrong reasons, had actually made the best decision of the day. Everyone had forgotten that less than two weeks earlier, twenty-five civilians had been killed when a bomb had been dropped on a compound that the Taliban were firing from. They hadn’t checked then if civilians were inside the compound, because they couldn’t. Just as they couldn’t check now.
Sergeant Syed fired more shots, now aiming directly ahead. He stopped firing, saw movement; everyone pressed closer to the ground. The Taliban had moved into the building in front of us. We were totally exposed.
Rocket man was ordered to fire but, still deaf, didn’t skip forward until Sergeant Syed pointed to the next field and the building the Taliban had moved into. Rocket man knelt to fire, forgetting we were standing behind him and would be burnt by the back-blast. Luckily, the abuse screamed by the British soldiers was so loud even he could hear it; he moved a little further away.
The soldiers were ordered to use mortars. Then a helicopter was supposed to be doing a gun run. So they were told they couldn’t use mortars because they might hit the helicopter. Then they were told to use mortars first and the helicopter would follow. It seemed as though every request was denied or changed as more senior officers, further away and thinking of the bigger picture, intervened.
An explosion came from just beyond the trees in front of us. The soldiers thought it was an incoming grenade or rocket but it was actually their own mortars. Rocket man fired again, sideways. Another mortar landed uncomfortably close.
Over the terp’s radio, I could hear the Taliban commander screaming. Two of the Taliban fighters had been hurt. They seemed to be still in the ditch they’d been in when we first spotted them. The mortars, fired from four kilometres away, were adjusted. They started landing closer to the injured Taliban. ‘If it’s within fifty metres it will pretty much rip them to pieces’, someone said. They weren’t landing much further than fifty metres from us.
We were ordered to get low, as another air strike had been called. Again, there was nothing. Captain Hennessey spoke into his radio, saying there was a compound south-east of our position that wasn’t on his map; he thought the five Taliban were there. Four or five bullets whistled past. Sergeant Syed jerked his head backwards and to the side, like a boxer slipping a punch. ‘Whoooah, where the fuck are they coming from?’ said Hennessey. They certainly weren’t coming from anywhere the Taliban were supposed to be. Two soldiers fired at random into the trees.
Captain Hennessey wanted two squads to charge the tree line and another two to attack the compound to our right.
‘Lloydy, are you happy with the plan?’ Behind us, Ryan Lloyd had arrived with two squads of British and Afghan soldiers.
‘No’, said Lloyd, who hadn’t heard a word Captain Hennessey had said. The plan was explained again.
One group of Brits and Afghans ran forward. Another ran around the end of the wall and towards the compound on our right. There was a furious exchange of gunfire. Eventually, the sounds changed to regular bursts, coming only from the British. Then a few bullets zinged over our heads. The soldier manning the radio said there was now a third Taliban firing position, to the left of the trees.
We looked at the building from where a new group of Taliban fighters seemed to be firing. A series of rapid thuds came from the field directly to our left, nowhere near any of the suspected firing positions. ‘What the fucking hell was that?’ said one of the soldiers, as a large chunk of twisted metal hit a British soldier’s hand. An Apache helicopter had strafed the field next to us, nowhere near any of the possible Taliban positions. If anything, the Apache made me more nervous than the Taliban. The ANA in the trees ahead took it in turns to run out and fire. They seemed to be posing f
or each other as they fired, rather than actually aiming at anything.
The Taliban fire kept coming back.
I looked around the edge of the wall, to see what the Brits who had run to my right were doing. They were crouched against the outside wall of a compound, trying to call an air strike on to the Taliban position. The Apache came closer. I heard the whoosh and bang of a Hellfire missile. But nothing happened to any of the Taliban positions. I looked around the wall again. The British soldiers were staggering in different directions, almost completely obscured by dust. The compound they were leaning against had been hit, right where they were.
I heard shouting from up ahead, where the ANA were attacking the hedge. Angrily gesticulating towards the compound, they walked towards us. ‘Do you speak Farsi? Tell the pilots not to bomb here. The Taliban are over there. What are the fucking British doing? They are giving me a headache. They are killing my guys’, screamed Rocky, the ANA Captain, into his radio. He thought six of his men, those who had followed the Brits to the compound wall, had been killed.
I decided to join the soldiers who were about to run across the field and see what had happened.
I squatted in a ditch until there was enough covering fire to make me fairly confident the Taliban would be ducking, not shooting. But as soon as I climbed out and started running, I heard the fire-cracker sound of bullets breaking the sound barrier. Something chopped into the mud and grass around my feet. My leg disappeared into another ditch and I fell, face first, on the ground. I bounced back to my feet and ran, focusing on the compound walls ahead and the ANA soldiers behind them, waving me in, screaming: ‘Come, come, come. Fast, fast, fast.’ I ran as quickly as I could, imagining the impact of bullets hitting me, knocking me sideways.
I made it safely across the field. The entrance to the compound led into a small, walled garden, shaded by vines. The floor was carpeted with harvested opium poppies, in piles several feet high. Then I saw something that made my heart sink and my throat tighten. The compounds in Kakaran were supposed to be abandoned. Next to me, I saw a family of seven crouched up against the wall: an old man and six children. Three of the kids were toddlers and one was just a baby. The man seemed to be begging for mercy but no one paid him any attention. The kids were covered in dust, apart from wet patches around their mouths and eyes and tear tracks running down their cheeks. They must have been right next to the explosion when the Hellfire missile hit. It didn’t matter that it could have been worse; things could always be worse. One of the interpreters did his best to calm them and tell them they were now safe. They got no reassurance from the ANA soldiers, who helped themselves to the family’s grapes and lit up spliffs.
There were no ANA casualties. A single wall had separated them, and the British, from the missile strike. Close enough to make the ANA think that their colleagues had been killed.
‘The tendency the ANA have is ... it’s all a bit “white man magic”. They absolutely love it when it’s working well but when they see the other side, they get a bit shaky’, said Captain Hennessey. He thought that if the Hellfire had landed just outside the compound or slightly further inside, his section or the family would have been killed. He wrote later that he was haunted by the thought of what could have been. I imagined what would have happened if the 500lb bomb he’d requested hadn’t been denied.
The fighting continued for hours. Bullets bounced off the walls above our heads, seeming constantly to come from new directions. Nobody knew where to shoot, although that didn’t stop the ANA, who fired wild bursts into the air. The Brits screamed at them to stop, to conserve their ammunition. ‘Are they shooting at anything?’ was the frequent question. The answer was always no.
Rocket man fired a few more RPGs at something and walked back inside. ‘Taliban finish. One RPG, three Talib finished. Good’, he said, re-tying his bandana and giving me the thumbs-up. But the Taliban were far from finished, spraying the building with bullets from what felt like 360 degrees.
Some soldiers shouted, ‘Enemy mortars incoming’. We were ordered to spread out. But no mortars hit the compound. Most reports were wrong, or had passed through so many soldiers that they had lost all meaning. Major David asked the same question into his radio five times, seeking confirmation that the aircraft above us had been replaced and wouldn’t be disappearing to refuel. Eventually, he was told that new planes would be arriving in half an hour. The forward air controller, who was speaking to somebody else on his radio, said an F15 would arrive in ten minutes. The person on the Major’s radio said that was ‘Bollocks’. It was chaos.
Inside the compound, the ANA lay on the opium poppies, passing another spliff. ‘I don’t know how they smoke it in the middle of a battle’, said Lance Corporal Jack Mizon, ‘but as soon as they get a few minutes, they start passing it around, laughing and joking. Then a minute later they’re running towards bullets.’
‘I thought it might make them more cautious’, I said.
‘It would make me more cautious!’ he said, laughing. ‘They love it. Smoke a spliff and run at the bullets. The senior ones [British officers] try and stop it but you can’t. It’s their country; if they want to smoke, let them smoke. They’re never gonna be a British-style army; they’re their own army, so if they’re gonna smoke they’re gonna smoke. You just have to learn to work with them while they’re doing it.’ Jack was the Grenadiers’s bruiser, both in Helmand and in the pubs near their barracks back at home. He spoke in a strong North London accent and often described himself as thick and uneducated. But he understood exactly what was going on around him and often articulated it perfectly, in a few pithy sentences.
One of the ANA soldiers came outside and pointed his gun into the air, holding it almost above his head. It was struck by a Taliban bullet. A piece of metal, the top cover, went spinning into the air with a twang. When it landed, the Afghan soldier picked it and walked back inside, laughing.
The temperature had topped fifty degrees and we’d been on the move for almost nine hours. Six soldiers, including the medic, had collapsed with heat exhaustion. One had a temperature of forty-one degrees. Ammunition, water and radio batteries were all running low.
Major David ordered a 500lb bomb to be dropped into a compound beyond the trees, where he was ‘confident’ the largest group of Taliban was hiding. A helicopter would immediately follow the bomb, to evacuate the heatstroke casualties.
Bullets were still hitting the building. One came right through the door and disappeared into the wall above our heads. Before long, we heard an F16. ‘Thirty seconds until impact’, said Major David. ‘Charlie Charlie One (all stations) stay in hard cover ... the bomb has been dropped. Out.’
There was silence. Major David smiled for the first time that day. Then there was more silence. ‘Thirty seconds until impact’, said the forward air controller. ‘Please don’t land on here’, said Snazle, echoing my thoughts exactly. ‘Twice in one day would surely be too much’, said Captain Hennessey.
Through the terp’s radio, we heard the Taliban Commander shouting instructions to his men. Suddenly, the jet was on top of us and everyone curled forwards as the huge bomb exploded. The compound shook. What was left of the grapes fell to the floor. The terp’s radio went silent. ‘He’s not fucking talking now, is he?’ said Snazle, laughing again.
I looked out of the doorway. A mushroom of huge grey cloud billowed, not a hundred metres away but outside the compound it was aimed at.
Bullets sank into the walls around us again. Another air strike was called. As the plane circled, preparing to drop another bomb, the Brits and Afghans showered the compound with a horrendous rattle of constant fire to stop the Taliban escaping.
As ever, there was no way to check for the presence of civilians. ‘Heads down, twenty seconds’, said Major David. The explosion rocked our compound. This time, the silence lasted; it looked like the fight was finally over. ‘Hopefully that’s given them enough of a headache to stop’, said Major David. According to the pilots, th
e forward air controller reported, fifteen Taliban had been killed. But through the terp’s radio, we could still hear someone talking.
We were hit by more fire from more angles than any time that day. The pattern was depressingly familiar: millions of pounds’ worth of the latest weaponry was dropped, a silence of perhaps twenty seconds followed, and then the Taliban popped straight back up and started firing again.
Another soldier – the biggest in the squad – collapsed from heat exhaustion, slumping back against the wall and sliding down until he was in a deep crouch, trembling and mumbling deliriously. The sight of this huge man collapsing so completely made me think he must be suffering from some kind of shell shock. The soldiers around him were shocked too. For a few seconds they froze, watching him. Then they ran over, tore off his clothes and poured water down his back and into his mouth.
More bullets hit the compound, this time from a direction exactly opposite to where we thought most of the Taliban were. We were surrounded, with no way of escaping. Hedgerows they might have been behind were strafed from the air. Ditches were sprayed with heavy machine-gun fire from the roof. Mortars were fired. The soldiers tried anything that might discourage them.
I heard a strange but vicious chopping sound in front of us. It sounded like a thousand tiny zips being pulled closed all at once. ‘Flechettes’, said the soldier next to me. Also called ‘shipyard confetti’, flechettes are nail-filled rockets that shower thousands of small steel darts across a wide area. ‘You wouldn’t want to be the poor fucker under that’, said another soldier, in tones of pity, rather than glee.
Suddenly, and for no obvious reason, the attack stopped. Perhaps the Taliban, who’d probably only been three or four groups of four or five fighters each, had run out of ammunition.