Strange as it seems, Bruce and I had a chat about making a strongpoint in an abandoned compound on the edge of the green belt, but we agreed that the Americans would want to push for home, even with the casualties we were taking and the risk of more.
Meanwhile, the medics stabilised Barry and Eric as the cars began to push off. They said they wanted to move Barry into our car. I ran around to help transfer him, but just as I got him into our car it took off. I felt extremely exposed, running along in the open with rounds pattering in the ground around me. Nobody could have been more relieved than I was when I reached the relative safety of the next vehicle and pushed around to the northern side with Bruce and Taylor. I felt safer there for a few moments. But the car in front was copping a barrage of RPG rounds. I don’t know how we avoided a mobility kill on that vehicle. I said to Bruce, ‘They’ve got this spot dialled in,’ and we ran off to the side to a coffee-table-sized rock to create a diversion. The rounds followed us and it didn’t seem like such a great idea after that. It was pretty hairy, but it did give the car enough time to move through that zone.
During that phase, Rob, Carl – the PC from the other Australian team – and another American were all wounded. Carl was actually under the car in front of us after the first RPG went off; he had already been hit in the ankle. More rounds were coming in, and he could see the bullets ricocheting up into the undercarriage, inches away from him. The car took off, and he held on to the axle. It dragged him along faster than he could hang on, and when he let go and found himself in the open he was showered with gunfire. He was racing to catch up to the car when he was hit in the hip. The car slowed down, but he couldn’t get back on, because he couldn’t lift his leg. He limped around to the side of the vehicle. He saw some enemy fighters up in the hills and took a few shots up there, but then another round came and slammed into the breech of his weapon. The momentum smashed it into his face. His gun saved his life – he would have been hit in the neck or face – but it was ineffective now. Moving to the front of the vehicle, he jumped on to the bullbar and found a suit of armour of sorts, wrapping his face up in the tow chain for protection. He’d been shot in the ankle and the hip, and if he got shot in the head he’d be done.
What followed was the most intense phase of the battle, for me anyway. Bruce, Taylor and I ran in circles around the slowly moving Hummer, trying to drake-shoot the enemy positions, but we were draining our ammo and taking more fire than we were dishing out. Some others were trying to do the same around the other vehicles, but I didn’t know exactly how many, and who was doing what. An hour and a half into the ambush, we were now getting hammered relentlessly. I took that round that went through my pants without realising how close I’d come to being wounded. But a miss is a miss, whether it’s an inch or a mile. Then I had that period of deafness when the .50-calibre machine gun above my head overwhelmed my hearing. Taylor got shot in the head, receiving a gash that came extremely close to taking his life. He was and still is the luckiest man I have seen in combat. As Napoleon said of his generals, better to be lucky than good.
We were tantalisingly close to the exit-point of the valley when that RPG went off in airburst above the car in front, separating Sarbi from her handler, David, and sending the Afghan terp flying into the dust. Bruce and I had that brief discussion about what to do, and I took off.
TWENTY-TWO
As I ran out towards him, I didn’t realise how far away he was. Would I have acted differently if I’d known he was 80 metres away, and not 20 or 30? I hope not. There were a lot of rounds following me, kicking up around my feet and chasing my legs. When I got to him, he was lying face-down. A pool of blood was already staining the earth around his head. I started hitting him on the shoulder to see if he was conscious. He didn’t say or do anything, but he was alive.
I stood up and did some more drake-shooting back at where the enemy was firing from. I bent down, grabbed him by his webbing and started to drag him. The incoming fire was so heavy the rounds created an effect like when you’re in a thunderstorm and the drops are falling into a puddle, kicking up everything around them. I’ve never experienced anything like it. After I’d dragged the terp for another 20 metres or so, my legs began to really burn. The car was getting further and further away and I thought, I’m not going to be able to drag him to the car. I got him up onto his feet. He started to come to a bit. His face was covered in blood with bits of flesh hanging everywhere. His lip was split; his entire jaw was a gaping wound from where it had been hit by shrapnel. His whole face was a big, bloody, jelly-like mess.
I got my arm underneath him enough to half-carry, half-drag him. I didn’t quite get him into a fireman’s carry. He was kind of walking, kind of dragging his feet. He was trying to talk, his voice coming out in a gurgly sound. All I could make out was the word ‘eyes.’
We kept moving, overtaking Sarbi’s handler, David, who was also covered in blood. I said, ‘Keep fucken running, mate.’
‘Okay.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yep.’
I don’t remember being scared, exactly. For the most part I was just thinking, I’ve got to get to that car in front. I can’t fall behind. My mind was constantly processing my options and making rough calculations of the odds. I saw holes in the dirt – just divots, basically, not even big enough to lay an overnight bag in – and thought, Should we try to get down in there for cover? I did wonder if we were going to make it. There was a moment when I thought, If I get hit here, we’re totally screwed. We’ll be such an easy target if we stop moving.
Luck was on our side. We got to the cars, finally, but I couldn’t get my bloke in. There was a big metal plate at the back, with a small gap through which you could get onto the tray. It was hard enough getting yourself up there, let alone someone who’s wounded. I sort of leant him against the car and tried to lever him up. The car was still moving and taking rounds. Another RPG whooshed over the top of us.
It was hopeless trying to get him onto the back. I dragged him around to the left-hand side of the vehicle, but could not get the door open. I shifted back around to the right-hand side and had a few goes of the door. After a couple of attempts I got it open. I got the car to slow down so I could push him in there. I got a bandage for his head, stuck a first-aid dressing into his facial wounds, wrapped the bandage around his head as the car was moving along, and then shut the door and jumped out to the side.
By now I was pretty fingered. Bruce had dropped back somewhere in all that and it was now just Taylor and me. The road passed through a shallow cutting, and I ran along leaning against the car for support and protection. As it sped up, Taylor and I had to sprint again to keep up. I shouted, ‘Come on, mate, we’ve got to get on this car!’
I managed to grab a piece of the antenna on the back. I chucked my rifle on and dragged myself up. I looked back and saw Taylor still running. I grabbed his gun and he was able to climb up, with blood all over his face from his head wound.
There was carnage in the tray of this Hummer. The American, Joe, was lying there with his arm bent unnaturally. The Australian engineer, Dinger, was there. He’d been shot in the leg and the hand.
I said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, I’m all right.’
I asked if he had any ammo, and he started passing me some mags. The small machine gun on the back wasn’t going. Up above, one of the Aussies was in the turret on the .50-calibre. I lay down on top of the guys in the tray, my legs overlapping with Taylor’s, and started firing my rifle.
Down at my feet, an Afghan who’d been shot in the face was trying to sit up and tell me he’d been shot. I kept telling him, ‘I can see that, but if you sit up you’ll get shot again.’ In the end I got the shits and put my foot down on his head to keep him from standing up. ‘I know you’ve been shot in the face, mate,’ I shouted, ‘but there’s nothing I can do about it!’
The fight had be
en going on for a constant three hours. The enemy fire we received was relentless. We seemed so close to the clearer ground where we could take off for the FOB, but we were right out in the open and copping a last blast of very heavy fire. Taylor and I decided we had to get some helmets on. He started rummaging around. There was an American dog handler, Gregory ‘Rod’ Rodriguez, who’d been shot in the head and killed early in the contact. He was lying in the back of the tray.
Rod had a helmet on, and I started to try to get it off his head, which was difficult. Finally I did, and there were bits of his skull, his hair, his brain matter and quite a lot of blood in it. I grabbed handfuls of it, scooping bits of his brain and tipping it out. I don’t have the world’s strongest stomach – I’ve had a lifelong problem with motion sickness, and I’ll never forget how revolted I was when Dad butchered that lamb in front of me – but the solemnity of the situation, the recognition of what I was doing, overrode all of that. I had to detach myself. To Joe, I said, ‘I’m really sorry I’m doing this to your friend.’
In his Californian accent and cool as a cucumber, he replied, ‘It’s all right. Do what you’ve gotta do.’ I was grateful for his attitude. It was a terrible moment that I’ve thought about a lot since. I’ve never mentioned it when telling this story previously.
I scooped out as much as I could and put Rod’s helmet on. I could feel his blood rolling down all over my face. I was flicking bits of his brain from the end of my nose. The smell was pungent, almost like pure alcohol.
Taylor looked at me and said, ‘You lucky bastard, you’ve got a helmet.’
I jumped up onto the machine gun at the rear and drake-shot through the green belt to likely enemy positions. The engineer was passing Taylor and me all the mags he could find. After being outnumbered, firepower-wise, with the rifle, I felt a surge of strength to be using the machine gun, but after several dozen rounds it had a stoppage. I went through the drill to fix it – cock the weapon to see if any link or brass ejects from the gun, then refire. It failed to fire again, so I checked the gas setting at the front . . . the gas system had been shot right off and it was peeled apart where the round had struck. I swung the gun, on its swing arm, off the back of the vehicle in frustration and lay down next to Taylor. Because we were on top of the others, we were quite exposed. Rounds were still flying in and hitting the sides of the vehicle and the ground around us.
Picking up my rifle again, I started shooting left-handed across Taylor’s back. I didn’t realise his shirt had come up, and my gun was getting very hot as it lay across his exposed skin.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’ he shouted.
I thought he’d been shot, but realised my weapon had burnt him.
‘Sorry, mate. Sorry! You’re not shot, you’re just burnt.’
It’s no exaggeration to say that we only just made it. The car had been going in the wrong direction for a while, and had needed to do a U-turn, putting us in the way of even more fire. The guy on the .50-calibre, our biggest weapon, was down to his last hundred rounds.
The sun was setting. When we’d turned around at three o’clock that afternoon, we’d been about four kilometres from the FOB. It had taken three and a half hours to get the 3.5 kilometres before we stopped taking fire. In other contacts I’ve been in, there have been bursts of fire interspersed with lulls. This one felt constant, throughout all those hours, with very minor breaks. There was always someone, from one of the three points, shooting at us.
It had been radioed through that we were pretty fucked up and had casualties. We cruised into the entrance of the base, through the gates and inside. At the medical aid post, Taylor and I jumped off. They had stretchers laid out ready for the casualties. We had to get everyone off the vehicles and look after them, grab more ammo and get the vehicles up on the ramps and defend the walls. The FOB was pretty undermanned, and if the enemy had known how light-on we were, they might have kept attacking.
We had a drink of water, for the first time since the beginning of the ambush. I nearly vomited, from the dryness in my throat and the sudden flush of water in my stomach. We got our body armour off and went back to the car. The tray was full of blood. We got all the wounded out, laid them down and got a triage going.
Barry had been shot through his legs and had tourniquets on. His wounds were really quite bad and he was in a lot of pain. Basically the round that hit his lower right leg tore a large part of his calf off, smashing the tibia and severing a lot of the nerve that runs to his foot, essentially disabling the amount his foot could be moved or felt. He was told that he would lose a lot of the use of his foot and have a permanent limp. His left leg was hit through the thigh and blew a large chunk of meat out of there as well. Strangely, the left leg turned out to have a more difficult road to recovery. The scar tissue that was built up in his leg bruised the sciatica nerve. Even though it was further from the foot it took a lot longer for that to heal as opposed to the nerve in the right leg that had to grow back. Miraculously he would eventually get the majority of movement in his legs back and return to fight with us again after three years of rehabilitation. He is truly remarkable.
Eric was in a bad way as well. He had many internal injuries and also had a long road to recovery. Now he is a dad and also recovered enough to pass all the tests and serve with the Regiment once more.
There were thirteen wounded, including US and Afghan soldiers, but amazingly, Rod was the only fatality. Carl, who’d been shot in the legs and hip, was filling out some paperwork to help the medics at the hospital in TK when they got there. I said, ‘Are you okay? Do you need anything?’ and gave him a hand. I came across Rob, the Australian sniper, looked at his holes and got some first-aid dressings out to help patch him up. I asked him if he needed any morphine.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m okay.’
As a bit of black humour, I said, ‘I’m no good at this, Rob, but I’ll do the best I can patching you up.’ He didn’t say too much.
David, the dog handler who’d lost Sarbi, was lying there on the smooth river stones that covered the ground in the FOB. We had to cut his pants off to see if there were any more entry or exit wounds. He had quite a lot of shrapnel wounds that looked severe. Lucky he had his sunglasses on because they protected his eyes: surrounding them, he had a sort of facial tattoo of minor shrapnel wounds.
The first AME helicopter came in. We dragged some ammunition off and slung it to one side. The Black Hawks were fitted out for medical treatment, and we squeezed the worst-hurt Americans and Australians across the deck on their stretchers.
In the FOB, the medics were still working on the Afghan interpreter on the table. I went in and had a look. They’d lost him once and brought him back. They were holding him down, trying to get a breathing tube into his throat. He regained consciousness and started crying out, so they had to tell him to calm down. He was grabbing at his face and their arms. They got him stable enough to get the tube in. He was on the third AME flight out, alongside David the dog handler, who had an IV line in his arm just in case. The terp lost consciousness again on the helicopter. They stabilised him, brought him back, and got him to TK and then to the hospital in Kandahar.
I haven’t heard anything of him or seen him since. I assume he’s living in America now. I heard a rumour that he’d gone back out as an interpreter and got shot in the face again, and survived. But I don’t know how true that is. It may sound strange that I’ve never followed him up, or him me, but these things are not generally personalised in your head. I helped out a US Afghan who was bravely working alongside us to improve and defend his country; from his point of view, his life was saved by the Australian Army. And there’s every chance he didn’t even know who we were or where we were from. It’s our roles and actions in that larger picture, and not our names, that carry the weight.
*
Darkness had fallen and we were sorting out all the wounded guys’ weapons. Taylor’s head was still bl
eeding, so I sat down with him and washed his wound. Funnily enough, he’d started to have a bit of a headache. It had gone that close I could see his skull in the graze. Still blows me away how close he came to not making it home. We had a bit of a laugh, and a nurse stuck some staples in his head.
People kept asking me if I was injured. I wasn’t, but they kept asking. Someone asked if I’d been shot in the head, and I kept saying, ‘No, I’m all right.’ Eventually one of the Americans said, ‘You might want to go and clean your face up.’
I went into a bathroom where there was a mirror. I took a big sigh, and fell forward, leaning on the sink. It was the first pause I’d taken since the whole thing had started. All the adrenaline drained out of me. I could rest. Then I looked up at the mirror and saw all the blood and gore stuck to my hair and face. It was Rod’s, from his helmet. Now I understood why people had been asking me if I’d been shot. I just felt completely drained, as if my insides had been scrubbed out by steel wool. I washed my face and went back out.
Bruce had managed to make it back on one of the other vehicles. Now he and the other guys who were not wounded were calmly running things for us, redistributing more ammunition. The cars with their machine guns were up the ramps, guarding the walls. SAS patrols were yet to come in through the gates after extracting themselves from the mountains. The plan had been for us to go back out and pick them up, but after it was derailed these patrols had had a tough walk across a lot of open area. They didn’t get back until one or two in the morning.
When we finally got to sit down, an American came out with a bottle of bourbon. We were sucking on that and going over what had happened in the day. Someone said, ‘Check your pants out.’ That’s when I realised they had a few holes.
Some of the late-arriving patrols came in and sat with us. They’d heard our contact through the afternoon, but the terrain had stopped them getting there. One of them said, ‘Shit, that was a long walk!’
The Crossroad Page 25