The report of the contact was the first we knew about the patrol’s activities. Following on from the ambush against the French, it was the second incident of coalition forces operating in our patch without our knowledge. But with the possibility that a man was missing in action (MIA) we had to act quickly. If he had been captured by the Taliban, or had gone to ground waiting for rescue, time was of the essence. B Company and the Chinooks had already been stood to. I spoke to the Chief of Staff at UKTF in Kandahar who had also been dragged out of bed. He had no prior knowledge about the patrol and was busily trying to find out more about them from RC-South. Although the picture was still confused, we both knew that we couldn’t delay by referring a decision to attempt a rescue operation to higher authority. If we were to have any chance of recovering the MIA we had to launch quickly.
I made the call that we would launch and thirty minutes later we were lifting off from Bastion. We air-assaulted on to an offset LZ on the banks of the Helmand River a kilometre away from the map grid of the ambush site. Daylight was breaking and the Apaches hovered overhead as we waded through a deep tributary stream to a cluster of small compounds on the eastern bank. Tac set up in all-round defence with an FSG and Giles Timms pushed his lead platoon forward to the contact site under the command of Lieutenant Martin Hewitt. I studied my map: the country was close and if we had arrived too late, looking for a missing man among the myriad of farm compounds and irrigation ditches would be an impossible task. Corporal Watt, my signaller, suddenly interrupted my thoughts. ‘Sir, 5 Platoon have found them; I’m afraid that they are both dead.’ Martin Hewitt’s grim discovery answered the question about the missing soldier. He had died fighting bravely alongside his fallen comrade whose own body lay close by. Next to the two men lay a number of Taliban dead which indicated the intensity of the firefight.
The two dead soldiers were placed in body bags and carried back to Tac’s location with Company Sergeant Major Willets. The rest of B Company pushed further south down the main road out of Sangin to ensure that sensitive equipment in the Gurkhas’ abandoned Snatch was destroyed. A Hellfire missile from one of the Apaches was then fired into the vehicle to complete the task of denying it to the insurgents. I noticed the sobering effect of carrying the dead on the young Toms who lifted the body bags. For most it would have been the first time they had seen British casualties. No doubt it reminded them of their own mortality and the seriousness of the business we were in. For me the incident was particularly poignant, as one of the dead soldiers was the charming Irishman I had met a few weeks before on the firing range in Gereshk.
There was a sombre mood in the helicopter as we flew back to Bastion with the two body bags placed at our feet on the floor of the cab. I looked across at the liaison officer who had survived the contact and had come with us to help us locate his fallen comrades. I felt for him. His face still betrayed the shock of his experiences; it was the same expression I had seen on the faces of the two French officers after they had been ambushed driving down from Kajaki. Again a patrol had been operating in our battle space without our knowledge. I wondered whether knowing about it in advance might have made a difference. Regardless of the background to the patrol it had brought fighting to Sangin and was to have a profound effect on the troops in the district centre. Later that day an elder came to the compound and told Pike that A Company would be attacked by the Taliban if they stayed in the town. The battle for the district centre was about to begin.
As Will Pike was receiving the elder’s warning, Major Paddy Blair was also engaged in dialogue with another local elder 100 kilometres to the south-east in the village of Zumbelay. C Company had set off earlier that morning to conduct a familiarization patrol to the village and gain information on its development needs. They left FOB Price in a convoy of Snatch Land-Rovers and Pinzgauer trucks carrying Blair’s company headquarters and 9 (Ranger) Platoon of Royal Irish Regiment that had reinforced 3 PARA at the beginning of the tour, and a section of two mortar barrels. Escorted by an FSG mounted in WMIKs under the command of Captain Alex McKenzie, the men of C Company were glad to be patrolling beyond the confines of Gereshk. They were accompanied by Christina Lamb from the Sunday Times and her photographer Justin Sutcliffe. Both journalists were enjoying the carefree company of the men they travelled with. It was a hearts and minds mission and there was no sense that they were going looking for trouble.
Arriving near the outskirts of the village, Blair dismounted and patrolled into its centre on foot with 9 Platoon, a section of snipers and the journalists. The FSG escorted the empty vehicles to a Zulu muster collection point and then moved to some adjacent high ground to the north to cover Blair’s move into Zumbelay. Patrolling through open fields criss-crossed by deep, irrigation ditches, Blair’s men entered the flat, mud-walled compounds of the village. It was unusually quiet. No children gathered to ask for sweets or gawk excitedly at the soldiers who moved through their dusty streets. Apart from a few goat herders who they had passed in the fields there was also a noticeable absence of menfolk. The one local elder they met explained people were away praying at the mosque and suggested that they came back for a shura the next day. He offered them no tea as they sat and talked. When Blair and his party got up to leave he recommended they take a short cut back to their vehicles. He indicated the other end of the village where he said they would find a bridge to take them over a wide irrigation channel.
The FSG had lost sight of the foot patrol in the myriad of compounds when they received a radio message to move to a rendezvous point to meet up with Blair’s men as they left the village. They had also received a report of a suspicious gathering of armed men in the vicinity. Suddenly there was a large explosion behind the vehicles as the first rocket-propelled grenade landed. It was followed by a swarm of bullets and other RPG warheads. The .50 Cal gunners on the WMIKs hammered back with return fire. Corporal Adams of the Mortar Platoon emptied the contents of his 9mm pistol in the direction of the enemy before scrambling for cover. McKenzie shouted frantic orders to start manoeuvring the vehicles out of the contact area. He had enough time to send a radio message to Blair before he heard another contact unfolding 300 metres away in the fields below him. McKenzie realized that the foot patrol was also being taken on as part of a coordinated attack against both elements of the company. But his immediate concern was to win the firefight against his own attackers and get the Snatches and Pinzgauer trucks to safer ground before he could go and help the foot patrol.
As the dismounted troops moved away from the village they heard the contact raging against the FSG on the high ground. Minutes later a burst of automatic fire cracked over their heads. Chaos reigned, as they rushed for the cover of the irrigation ditches. Blair fought to regain control of a confused situation. The cohesion of his patrol had been broken in the frantic scramble for the protection of the water channels. His men were split up among the ditches, his FSG were engaged in their own contact and he was being attacked from three different sides. They were in a tight spot. If they stayed where they were they were in danger of being rolled up by the Taliban or being hit by the mortar fire and RPGs that also began to thump down around his men as they sheltered in the ditches. If they moved in isolated groups they would expose themselves to being cut up piecemeal by an enemy who was now less than a few hundred metres from their positions. He needed to coordinate the actions of his disparate sections and get them moving, but the broken ground was preventing his radios from working properly.
His company sergeant major, Mick Bolton, barked orders and junior commanders popped coloured smoke grenades and fired flares to identify their locations. Plumes of the acrid-smelling red and green smoke began to build and swirl in the slight breeze. They attracted the attention of the Taliban, but provided the necessary reference points from which a coordinated response could be made. Commands of ‘Rapid fire!’ were followed by a crescendo of combined fire of GPMGs, SA80 rifles and Minimi light machine guns. As the heavy weight of fire poured back throug
h the reeds and high grass against the Taliban, the company started to move. Soldiers fired together, then pulled themselves out of the waterlogged ditches to charge across the open ground to the next piece of cover, one section covering the movement of the other, as the process was repeated across sun-baked furrows that threatened to turn ankles. Bolton continued to bark commands: ‘Keep moving, keep spread out, get into fucking cover!’
Having been pulled out of one ditch, Christina Lamb pressed herself into the bottom of another, her heart pounding. Every time they moved and sought new cover they seemed to be running into more Taliban intent on killing them. In the pandemonium she had become separated from Justin and feared for his safety. Experienced in covering many war zones, this was the most dangerous situation she had ever been in. She thought of her family safely at home in London and all the things in her life that had been left undone. The significance of the absence of children, the menfolk and the normal Afghan hospitality of offering tea dawned on her. The elder’s suggestion of a shorter route had been perfidious, there was no bridge: the men of C Company had been set up. AK rounds chopped into the reeds and the mud of the bank above her head as she prepared to make the next move with the soldiers who protected her.
Not far from where Lamb sheltered, Private Kyle Deerans steadied his breathing and levelled his .338 sniper rifle on a small mound. He settled the cross-hairs of the telescopic sight on a single Taliban fighter as he crested its top. He squeezed the trigger and the heavy-calibre round knocked the man backwards. Another Tom from the Ranger Platoon pushed himself up on his knees and brought his GPMG to bear over the reeds. The belt of 7.62mm bullets jerked violently in his hand as he fired a long burst back towards the Taliban. The company were moving and fighting together, but the Taliban were still closing. Blair had established intermittent radio communications with Bastion and was screaming for air support. The two A-10 aircraft he had been promised had been diverted to a contact in Sangin. He realized that he and his men were going to have to get out of the situation on their own. Blair pressed for fire support from his FSG and the mortar barrels.
Having broken contact and moved the more vulnerable Snatches and Pinzgauer vehicles to safety, Corporal Dennis Mitchell of the Machine Gun Platoon knew where the FSG WMIKs needed to go. To their left there was another ridge that overlooked the field that Blair’s men were fighting through. Let’s just fucking get there, he thought as the WMIKs were cautiously moved forward in pairs. As they reached the apex of the high ground they looked down to see between ten and fifteen fighters a few hundred metres to their front on the flat ground below the ridge. They were clearly getting ready to ambush the dismounted elements of C Company as they fought their way through the fields. Normal rates of fire went out of the window as the FSG opened up on the group of Taliban with everything they had. The devastating weight of fire from the four WMIKs’ 50 Cal heavy machine guns and GPMGs scythed into the insurgents who disappeared in a cloud of dust kicked up by the bullets. The effect of the fire was witnessed by the men of the Ranger Platoon who came across the dismembered remains of the Taliban who had been about to ambush them.
The FSG brought their dismounted comrades some breathing space, but their exposed position on the ridge line attracted fire from another group of Taliban to their left. Their vehicles were rocked by RPG explosions, wheel covers were shredded by shrapnel and one rocket-propelled grenade bounced off the front of McKenzie’s WIMK. They pulled back and formed another base line from which they continued to provide covering fire to those stranded in the fields. Corporal Mitchell took advantage of a brief lull in the enemy fire to relieve himself at the side of his vehicle. He glanced to his right and saw McKenzie gesticulating and waving at him to get his WMIK out of the way. He couldn’t hear what they were shouting, as he had been deafened by the roar of the .50 Cal that had been firing over his head. He looked to where they were indicating and saw two Taliban firing at him with their AKs. He dived back into his vehicle as their tracer rounds whipped over his head. With a clear line of sight the other WMIKs kicked into life and their heavy machine-gun bullets began flattening a small building the two insurgents had taken cover in.
The supporting fire from the FSG had begun to tip the desperate battle in the fields in Blair’s favour. As daylight began to fade two Apaches arrived on station and helped beat the attackers off. The addition of their 30mm cannons to the fire of the FSG allowed Blair to complete a final break clean and link up with his vehicles. A quick head check and hasty redistribution of ammunition was completed. Then the company mounted up and moved out to reorganize in the desert under the cover of darkness. The intervention of the attack helicopters had been timely, as the contact had lasted for three hours and ammunition was beginning to run low. Each of the WMIKs’ .50 Cal gunners was on his third or fourth box of ammunition. Thankfully, they had begged and borrowed a large quantity of the half-inch rounds from other NATO forces when they had moved through Gereshk. The experiences of firing the British-issued ammunition and subsequent test firing had proved that it was faulty. Due to poor machine work on the brass cases, the ammunition caused stoppages after one or two rounds had been fired. Had C Company’s FSGs been forced to use the standard issue .50 Cal ammunition, the outcome of the engagement might have been very different. But it was aggression, physical fitness combined with junior command grip and accurate shooting that won the day. When fear and danger came to call among the ditches and exposed ridge line, training kicked in and men under fire reacted to the drills that they had been taught. After their safe return to Gereshk in the early hours of the morning, I spoke to Paddy Blair on a secure telephone link to FOB Price. He calmly talked of what had happened, the lessons that had been learned and of how well his men had performed. Just before we finished the conversation he paused, and I could almost see him reflecting at the other end of the line. Then in his characteristic Irish brogue, he added phlegmatically, ‘It was a bit cheeky, Colonel; I am amazed that we didn’t lose anybody.’
A few days later, Christina Lamb’s account of the patrol into Zumbelay appeared as a five-page spread in the Sunday Times. Her vivid description of the fighting included dramatic images of the combat that Justin Sutcliffe managed to capture on his camera. The article majored on her personal experiences and the bravery of C Company. In one brief sentence she also raised questions about the nature and strategy of the UK’s mission in Helmand. It was not a critical tirade against official policy, but in bringing the fighting she had witnessed to the attention of the British public, she debunked any misconception that the UK was conducting a peace support operation in Afghanistan. I later read the article in Bastion and took no major issue with what she said. However, it provoked an angry response in certain government departments in Whitehall and led to what the press considered an official media blackout on reporters in Helmand. The press saw it as an attempt to prevent further coverage of the fighting from reaching the UK public. The blackout became a media issue in itself as journalists claimed that the government was deliberately trying to hide what was going on in Afghanistan. Officials claimed that restrictions on reporters were being imposed for their own safety. It was a poor argument to present to journalists who accepted the risk of war reporting as a professional occupational hazard. Regardless of the reason, and the fact that I was happy to have the media with us, we were to receive no more embedded reporters until September.
Without access to the front line, the press relied on unsolicited accounts of the fighting drawn from e-mails and the limited and biased testimony of a few individuals who were prepared to breach official regulations and talk to the media. This did little to help the remote and often speculative and sensational reporting. The government’s measures in the wake of Zumbelay were a classic example of how not to deal with the media. But the people who suffered most were the families of my soldiers. As reports of the fighting amplified, wives, girlfriends and parents sat at home and became increasingly worried about their loved ones. It was a situation tha
t was not helped by the often distorted versions of events that began to appear on their TV sets and newspapers, especially when the first reports of casualties filtered back to the UK.
8
Incoming
There was a roaring wush as the propellant ignited and blasted the rocket forward from its crude launcher. A little over 2 kilometres away Corporal James Shimmons of the Machine Gun Platoon had no idea that the high-explosive 107mm Chinese-made projectile was inbound to his location on top of the roof of the district centre. He was putting down a shovel he had been using to fill sandbags when it struck the wall of the sniper tower. The rocket passed in front of him and there was a blinding flash which blew him across the roof in a hail of blasted masonry, dust and shrapnel. Shimmons knew that whatever had suddenly shattered the peace of the warm night was big and serious. Amazed that he was still alive, he did an ‘immediate fingers and toes check’ to see if he had been injured. Then the screaming started.
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