Spoken from the Front

by Andy McNab

  We identified two positions in a field, about 150 metres to our front and engaged. At this point, I had two sections spread out along the ditch, suppressing the enemy. Not long into the fire-fight we were engaged from our rear. Fortunately everyone was in cover. Between ourselves, 6 Platoon and a Javelin [anti-tank] missile, we managed to silence that threat. It was really a case of winning the fire-fight and providing ourselves with security, guarding against Taliban trying to outflank us. We suppressed them and tried to call in an Apache [attack helicopter]. They were unable to identify the enemy positions, deep within the tree-lines. The Taliban had about a platoon [-sized force] and they were fairly spread about, using the cover well.

  The Taliban tried to push around our flanks and we then had RPGs fired at us. We had a lot of fire-power going down. It was my first proper contact and that of almost everyone there. Initially, it was a shock to the system. The compounds were constructed of compacted mud walls. The villages were a web of these compounds, often with a couple of alleyways weaving through. The walls were really hard, offering good protection from fire and blast. Every time we breached a compound, we had to use explosives and crowbars. During the day, I fired on a couple of occasions but for the most part I was trying to co-ordinate my sections. My mortar man, Private [Richie] Barke, used his 51mm [mortar] to pretty good effect, getting his bombs on target every first or second shot. We also used it to mark the enemy for CAS [close air support], firing a few smoke rounds on enemy positions and then air – I think it was a Harrier – came in and dropped 500-pounders [bombs].

  We had extracted back over the canal using the Vikings as cover and were sheltering, waist deep, in another irrigation ditch, in anticipation. The first bomb was a blind – the second on target. We stopped taking fire on that flank after that. 6 Platoon had been pushed into the village and ended up in danger of being isolated in a compound to the east, with the Taliban pushing forward and attempting to surround them. Effectively, they were taking some fairly accurate and concentrated fire, defending this compound. Ourselves [7 Platoon] and 5 Platoon then broke back into the compounds and cleared through to them. We were clearing buildings on red[aggressively, as distinct from on green: a softer approach], due to the proximity of the enemy from that point. We would breach a wall or door, possibly with an explosive charge, throw a grenade in, then clear the compound in an aggressive manner. We took one or two RPGs fired in airburst [exploding above the men], as we progressed towards 6 Platoon – fortunately they were ineffective. 2 Section were about to grenade one particular compound after creating an entry point, when the grenadier and Corporal Parker heard a noise. A family – mostly women and children and a couple of older men – had been sheltering within a room. They were shaken up and scared but uninjured. We spoke to them, reassured them, and they told us that the Taliban had extracted ahead of us and pointed us in the right direction. One of the men guided us a short distance along the route.

  We linked up with 6 Platoon, the Taliban fleeing ahead of us. 7 Platoon became point platoon again and we pushed up towards our LOE. By this stage, it was about 5 p.m. and we had fought through the hottest part of the day, almost nonstop. Spending so much time in the flooded ditches had been a relief – I think that prevented a few people going down with heat exhaustion. We continued to clear compounds. About 150 metres short of the LOE, my lead section commander, Corporal Mann, came back, reporting his lead scout had spotted something. We pushed through cautiously and discovered a wounded Taliban fighter trying to hide in the bushes. He was badly injured in the leg so we secured the area and gave him what first aid we could. We discovered a further three Taliban, whom we took prisoner, and there were a number of enemy dead in the area who had been engaged either by us or the AH [attack helicopter]. There were about seven dead in all. This was on the edge of the built-up area bordered with cornfields. Meanwhile 5 Platoon and Major Aston's tac [tactical] group discovered a number of enemy forces in depth and they killed a further five in that area.

  We had gone through the day with a couple of biscuits, travelling light on kit to provide more room for ammo. The guys were pretty tired and the adrenalin rush and exertions started to take their toll. It was seven o'clock when we reached our LOE. We didn't get dry clothes or food and water resupply until ten or eleven o'clock. Remarkably, there was only one casualty. One man, Private Sheppard, was slightly wounded in the face by an RPG fragment. Bearing in mind the intensity of the fighting, we were very lucky. I was massively proud of my men that day. It was a huge step forward for all of us.

  We had taken the Taliban off guard. It was quite rare for our guys to see the Taliban up close. They [the victims] were dressed in drab colours and Afghan traditional dress, with Soviet-style chest-rigs [load-carrying equipment]. We recovered a number of RPGs, AK-47s and a couple of PKMs from their position. Most of the dead were probably in their twenties or early thirties. 5 Platoon had to remove the corpses the next day and for some of the guys it was an unpleasant task. In the heat of the day, the bodies were in quite a state, in particular those that had been killed by AH fire. The bodies did not seem like they had been human beings. Their skin was quite waxy: they almost didn't seem real.

  April 2007

  Warrant Officer Class 2 Keith Nieves, The Royal Anglian Regiment

  Warrant Officer Class 2 Keith Nieves, 1 Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, is thirty-four. He was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, the son of a builder, with a sister, who has died. At sixteen he left school to go into the Army. He had intended to work as a thatcher but his sister bet him £20 that he couldn't join the Army and he took her up on it. He was a member of the junior Parachute Regiment based in Pirbright, Surrey, then progressed to the adult ranks. In 1993, having sustained stress fractures in his legs, he decided to transfer to his local infantry battalion, The Royal Anglians. He has completed tours of Northern Ireland, Croatia, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. His second tour of Afghanistan in 2007 was as a colour sergeant. Married with two sons, he lives in Pirbright, Surrey.

  I had done a tour of Afghanistan in 2002, in Kabul. My second tour of the country began on 2 April [2007]. This time we were in Helmand province. In the build-up, we knew it was going to be more kinetic than in Kabul. During the Kabul tour, we had a lot of interaction with the local community – there was a lot of PR stuff. But in Helmand province we soon realized we were going to have much less contact with the public and the locals.

  When we arrived, the temperature was already warming up – it was up in the thirties [centigrade]. As soon as we arrived, I went to [Camp] Bastion for a while – I was part of B Company. Soon after that we had new orders and we took over FOB Robinson with 5 Platoon and 7 Platoon. That was in a big and untamed valley. I was platoon sergeant of 5 Platoon at the time. FOB Robinson was the main fire support base for the Sangin valley – the artillery was already in. We were relieving the unit that was already there.

  The OC at the time was keen for us to get our first contact and he organized a three-day familiarization patrol where we got out of FOB Robinson. We had someone come into the base to man the sangars and provide protection. And we went out as a two-platoon group for three days. It was a case of having a look around the villages, doing an over-watch, seeing the women and kids move out. But nothing happened for three days. There was a seventy-strong patrol, all Brits with the ANA attached. I thought it was going to be another of those tours – all the hype but nothing happening. I had not been in any contacts in Kabul or Iraq. At this stage, I had been in the Army for fifteen years, but I had still never been in a contact.

  April 2007

  Lance Corporal Daniel Power, The Royal Welsh

  Lance Corporal Daniel Power, of Fire Support Company, 1 Battalion The Royal Welsh, is twenty-six. He was born and brought up in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales. The son of a builder and a 'full-time mum', he has four brothers and a sister. His grandfather was in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and he has a younger brother who serves with B Company, 1 Battal
ion The Royal Welsh. At school, Power wanted to join the police or the Fire Brigade. But then a group from the Royal Welsh came to his school, Peny y Dre High in Merthyr Tydfil, and he decided to go into the Army. Power is a fitness enthusiast, and is based at the Royal Welsh's barracks in Chester, Cheshire.

  When the Royal Welsh came to my school [on a careers day] I said: 'I want to be a sniper.' They said: 'That's not a problem but you'll have to join the Army first.' I was always focused on what I wanted to do, so as soon as I could after I left school I joined up. I was always quite robust as a kid – into the gym and fitness – and I used to play a little rugby and do boxing.

  The idea of being a sniper appealed to me. It was the idea of not being seen, being quite sneaky around the battlefield, being quite stealthy and picking off your enemy without them seeing you. There is also a fear factor with snipers on the battlefield. Whenever there's a sniper out there, it's always in the back of someone's mind. When I left school I was too young [to join up], so I was waiting around on a prep course to join the Army when I was aged sixteen years and nine months. That's the earliest they'll take you. I was first deployed to Northern Ireland a couple of days past my eighteenth birthday. At nineteen, I was deployed to Op Telic 1 in 2003 – the invasion of Iraq. I had just passed my snipers' course in Aldershot. I joined the Black Watch as part of 7 Armoured Brigade. From the Royal Welsh, there was a fourman sniper team to bolster their platoon.

  The standard weapon then [in 2003] was the L96 – a 7.62mm medium-range rifle. The rifle we have now is the L115 – that's a long-range rifle. The L96 has a range of up to 1,100 metres. The L115 rifle range has a range of up to 1,500 metres. When you're trained on the snipers' course, you're taught to shoot in various different positions: lying, standing, using shooting sticks. At first, there's quite a lot of maths involved with sniping. You work in a pair but also as part of a bigger organization. The firer will be looking down the sight adjusting it while the number two is basically doing the maths and the radio: working out distance to the target, your elevation, difference in incline, the heat, the wind speed. There is actually a little formula we use to acquire a range. It's all to get that one shot. If you have been given a window for that target, it's important to get it right first time. Normally, we move into position without being seen so we have enough time. But we're talking minutes to prepare – three or four minutes or less. We work as a pair, side by side. If I am looking down the sight, my number two is my protection.

  You're firing, judging distance, stalking. We do a cam [camouflage] and concealment training. You have to understand the ground quite well, get to your target area and move into position to take that shot without being seen. I have always enjoyed my work. I feel a pride and privilege doing the job.

  I had carried out my first kill in Iraq. It didn't really affect me in any way at the time. To me, it was just a target going down. Afterwards, when you come back to civilian life, you kind of think about it, you have certain dreams about it. But at the time [of the kill] you are happy, excited, anxious – all in one. Time kind of slowed down and then sped up. We had quite a few contacts in Iraq. I remember this guy's face, an Iraqi soldier. I remember looking down and he had been shot. A burst had gone up his body and he had a couple of rounds in the neck and one in the head, which had taken the top of his head off. There was no brain in there but his eyes were sunken and had rolled back. When I got home, it was that kind of image that I kept replaying. It didn't really affect me that day, but sometimes you remember it in your dreams – and that was the face that kept recurring.

  I first deployed to Afghanistan with Bravo Company [in March 2007]. We did build-up training in Cyprus. Then we flew to Kandahar airfield. We expected at that point to be in a secure location but with a lot of fighting all around us. It was quite well set up. Our role was as a regional manoeuvre unit, which meant we were going to be mounted up in vehicles and called all over southern Afghanistan to do specific ops.

  In Fire Support Company, you have a lot of assets. You have your mortars, your Javelin – an anti-tank weapon. You have your machine-guns, your recce and snipers. We were working with Bravo Company, a rifle company. FSP Company is normally the largest company in the battalion. At one time, it is between 100 and 120 strong.

  I remember our first contact in Afghanistan. We were going to move up to FOB Price to do some tasks up there. We were given a time we were to depart from Kandahar, but it had been brought forward. We were going to move by vehicles – for a journey of about six hours to FOB Price. We were travelling in light-skinned WMIKs [armed Land Rovers] and Snatches [lightly armoured Land Rovers]. I was commanding a Snatch. It was night time. We were travelling in the early hours because that was when the Taliban seemed to be at their rest. We'd come out of Kandahar and we were literally a K and a half out of camp when we got contacted. We had prepped our weapons, done everything. We were in convoy. At one point, we were having difficulty with the grenade machine-gun mount, so we stopped just outside the camp, sorted that out, got it mounted. Then we proceeded off – it was 2 or 3 a.m. There was a fire-support element so there were roughly ten vehicles and about sixty people in the convoy.

  We were driving down these streets, shops on either side. They were dead: it was quite suspicious-looking. In some parts, it was quite well lit and in others it was not. I was sitting there – and that was when it happened. When I least expected it. RPGs initiated the contact, three or four. The first thing I saw was a blue-green trail from this RPG that landed on the other side of the road. It came at an angle past the windscreen. It was in between the two vehicles: the spacing was short through the town centre, about fifteen metres. We were kind of in a vulnerable position and they [the Taliban] were in a high position on the left-hand side. They were no more than twenty metres away, firing down on to our vehicles. Some were in buildings, some were on rooftops. The buildings are quite odd in Afghanistan: they have rooftops that lead on to verandas. And they [the Taliban] were spread out down this street on the one side. You couldn't really see how many [enemy] there were.

  Our SOP – standard operating procedure – is to put fire down in the killing area, then push through it. So instantly we opened up. The two top cover [in the Snatch] were firing, they had a light machine-gun and an assault rifle with a UGL. We had WMIKs in there too. They have grenade machineguns, 50-cal; then they've got GMPGs, which are mounted on the vehicles. Everyone was giving it into likely enemy positions. It was at night and they were firing so they [the Taliban] were quite easily identified from their muzzle flashes. My platoon commander and platoon sergeant were in the lead vehicle and an RPG grounded about a metre away from their vehicle – it just fell short. And all the shrapnel from that tore through the vehicle – a WMIK. Hot metal tore through their kit. My platoon sergeant was driving. Shrapnel flew across the bonnet into his hands, into his face. My platoon commander was shot in the arm. There were volleys of RPGs, there were assault rifles. There was a lot of automatic fire coming down on the positions. A lot of the vehicles had bullet holes in them and stuff like that.

  I was in the fourth vehicle. My role was to command my vehicle while top cover got fire off – they put a lot of rounds down. It was hard because our platoon commander and platoon sergeant were out of action. But there was also excitement – like we gave these guys [the Taliban] a fucking hammering.

  The fire-fight was quick, less than two or three minutes. After our first vehicle was contacted, we put a heavy rate of fire down. Then we pushed through, out of the killing area, and that is when we came up with our plan: how to out-flank them, how to extract from the area. Because of the injuries that we sustained, we deemed it necessary to get them evacuated so we were given a grid. We withdrew to there, where we stayed for the night, and then we had a helicopter come in and lift out our casualties. But we had fought through and it was later reported that there were six or seven [Taliban] killed because the ANP [Afghan National Police] had to go and identify the bodies. This was our first patrol
– and all hell had broken loose. This was – welcome to Afghanistan.

  I had seen a lot in Iraq, which had prepared me for Afghanistan. But for a lot of the guys there, this was their first contact and it affected them. One or two were shell-shocked – we all knew 'This is what we're in for,' but they all reacted as they were trained. My platoon sergeant, Mark Moore, and platoon commander, Matt Hughes, were casevaced back to Kandahar, then shipped [flown] on to the UK. They both received shrapnel injuries to various parts of their body. My platoon commander needed an operation on the injuries to his arm.

  We left for FOB Price the next morning. I took over the vehicle that my platoon commander and platoon sergeant were in. I commanded that WMIK down there. We drove without incident. I was happy, really, because when I was in the Snatch I was in an enclosed vehicle. You cannot do anything except command and get the guys to do their job. But when you're in a WMIK, you have got your own machinegun on your commander's seat. So, eventually, I was more than happy to get out of the Snatch and into a WMIK – even though there was less protection in a way.