Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  At the time that C Company were landing I still had no idea of the outcome of my decision to commit the helicopters to the LZ. I continued to press for information on the net, but the radios had gone dead. My own aircraft put down ten minutes later into a thick ground mist. The darkness had begun to lift with the coming of dawn and my own fog of war mixed with that swirling around me. We could see no reference points and I cursed as my Tac parry gathered together and I waited for my GPS to give me a satellite fix on our position. Through the thinning mist I made out the shape of one of the Canadian armoured vehicles that had raced to the contact point as the Chinooks landed. As I approached the vehicle the now peaceful scene was broken by the swearing of a large moustachioed paratrooper crammed unceremoniously into the back of the infantry carrier. RSM John Hardy was snapping about having to travel ingloriously into his first offensive operation in the back of an armoured vehicle instead of being part of the helicopter air-assault element. He always wanted to be at the thickest part of the action, which explained his bad humour about being assigned to the back of a ‘tin box’.

  I used C Company to push through several of the surrounding compounds and followed up behind them with Tac. The LAVs pushed out on to our flanks and engaged a number of fleeting targets with their 2omm automatic Bushmaster cannons. There were dug-in positions at the side of many of the compounds and piles of RPG rounds that had been left as the Taliban conducted a hasty withdrawal. C Company also found a vehicle with a number of I07mm rockets inside it, clearly for use against the district centre in Sangin. But the quarry had flown. The risk of bringing the helicopters back in to pick us up was too great and we tabbed out several kilometres to a pre-planned LZ in the desert to the east that had been secured by the Patrols Platoon and mortars. We moved out covered by the Canadians while the dull thud of explosions echoed behind us as the munitions we had found were blown up.

  It was oppressively hot as we made the long slog through the blazing heat of the day. The going was arduous; having been pumped up with adrenaline the assault troops were physically exhausted. I noted the fatigue on the faces of those I chatted to when we stopped bent double under heavy loads to catch our breath. But I also noted the buoyant mood and a sense of elation. Everyone had known that Augustus would be risky and the reception on the LZ had brought it home. But the men on those helicopters had conquered their fear; they had met a humbling burden of expectation and had not been found wanting.

  10

  Reckon and Risk

  The Battle Group returned to Bastion for one night, re-cocked and the next day flew straight into Sangin to conduct an operation to relieve the pressure on the district centre. David Fraser had wanted me to launch immediately from the LZ pick-up that we had tabbed to at the end of the Operation Augustus raid. His message was relayed to me via the pilot while I was still airborne and heading back to Bastion. However, my men were knackered and I insisted that we were allowed to fly back to base, re-brief for the next operation, grab a meal and get a few hours’ sleep before air-assaulting into Sangin at first light. Fraser deferred to me as the field commander on the ground and accepted that I was in the best position to judge the condition of my men. The blokes would have done it if I had asked them to, but they were dead tired, having had little to eat and drink since leaving Bastion sixteen hours previously. The morning’s excitement on the LZ and the long hot tab out to the pick-up point had also taken their toll. There was no pressing need to get to Sangin that could not wait for twelve hours, especially as B Company was now no longer hungry. The ration situation had been resolved. After the failure to drop supplies by parachute, four American CH-47s had managed to deliver an emergency resupply of food and water the day before the planned Battle Group operation into the town.

  Having conducted an AAR for Operation Augustus, I gave confirmatory orders for the next day’s Battle Group operation into Sangin. The mission was codenamed Operation Atal and was designed to push the Taliban away from the district centre, consolidate our defences there and secure the area so another shura could take place between the governor and the local elders. We would air-assault in two waves of three Chinooks. A Company would land close in to the compound and push north to secure the wadi leading into the town. Half of C Company would fly with them, but would have to wait for the rest of their platoons to fly in on the second wave. They would then push east to secure the portion of the town that dominated the wadi from the south. I would have liked to have flown everybody in one wave, but the Chinooks had taken a battering during Operation Augustus and only three were still serviceable. Flying troops in more than one wave was never ideal, as we would lose the element of surprise once the first helicopters had landed. Second, it prevented us from being able to concentrate our forces. However, once the companies were in place, the Canadians would drive up the wadi in their LAVs and link up in the district centre. We would then remain for two days to allow the shura to be held and secure the wadi again for the Canadian LAVs ta escort in a large logistics convoy.

  The convoy would bring in Engineer stores and earth-moving plant to turn the district centre into a proper fortress. It would also bring in sixty days of food and water to prevent the garrison from running out of supplies in the future. I wanted to bring in a similar supply of ammunition, but there were insufficient stockpiles available in Afghanistan. Consequently, we would have to continue to run the risk of flying in certain ammo types on an incremental basis.

  Satisfied that everything was set for the next day, I went to grab a few hours’ sleep. I passed Matt Taylor still working at his desk tying the last points of coordinating detail together. I told him he needed to make sure he got some sleep and he promised me that he would. However, driven by the desire to make sure everything was in order, Matt ignored my direction and worked on through the night.

  All too quickly my alarm clock peeped at me in the gloom of my tent as 0200 hours came around. I thought of Groundhog Day while I pulled on my kit and went to find Tac who were waiting for me to drive to the helicopter landing site. Matt pitched up straight from the JOC and I chastised him mildly for ignoring my orders about getting any sleep. He looked at me sheepishly and smiled; he knew I couldn’t fault him for his dedication. As we drove through the fading darkness of Bastion, John Hardy asked me if I had managed to get much sleep. ‘Not much,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither,’ he replied, then fell silent again. In a strange way, it was comforting to know that my redoubtable RSM, who never displayed even a trace of anxiety, might also just be feeling something. The normal emotions ran as we loaded up in the back of the Chinooks and lifted off I test-fired the port M60 gun and revisited the plan in my head to keep my mind occupied. This time I was convinced we would be taken on as we landed in Sangin, but I was wrong again. With B Company already in the district centre and another 300 paratroopers landing in their midst, the Taliban started to withdraw from their positions. I wondered whether Augustus had put the wind up them, as reports came in that large numbers of fighters were fleeing across the river crossing points to the north and south of the town. Our link up with B Company was unopposed and A and C companies moved through deserted streets, while Tac went into the district centre.

  Giles Timms was in chipper form when I saw him. Sporting a beard and wearing desert-issue shorts, he was clearly relishing field command. He took me round the position as we waited for the LAVs to arrive. The smell of soldiers living in the field pervaded the air as we walked and talked. Exhaust fumes of generators mixed with the stink of burnt cordite, while the caustic smell of rations cooking on hexamine burners blended with the odour of latrines and unwashed bodies. Living conditions remained austere, but the morale of his men was exceptionally high. Fighting off several attacks a day meant that sleep was still at a premium, but at one stage there had been a lull of two days in the fighting. Company Sergeant Major Willets told me how the men had become bored and frustrated because all they could do was watch and wait for the attacks to resume. When the next att
ack came, the men whooped and cheered as they ran up the steps of the FSG Tower to man their sangar positions.

  Although they were in high spirits, I apologized to the blokes that we hadn’t managed to get rations to them for a few days. I explained why to those I spoke to, but I also made the point that running out of supplies when surrounded was part of our history. When I talked of what conditions must have been like for the paratroopers who held the bridge at Arnhem for nine days against ferocious German assaults, having only planned to hold it for two, in 1944, people got the point that I was making. It didn’t make it all right, but, given that the Parachute Regiment’s past endeavours are ingrained deeply in today’s paratroopers, it helped.

  The night I spent in the district centre was warm and quiet. I felt the sweat trickle down my back as I lay on my body armour. Using my webbing for a pillow, I listened to the sounds around me. I could hear the low murmur of men talking in the darkness and the muffled chink of metal on metal as men prepared for a patrol and guard shifts changed over. A faint crackle of static could be heard coming over the radio nets, as if a chorus to the low rhymed chirping of the insects from the orchards and flowerbeds.

  Daud and his party turned up the next day for a shura with the local leaders after some arm-twisting from Charlie Knaggs to get him to come. The meeting was animated. The elders claimed that the fighting had closed down normal commercial life in the town and there was also some talk of the need for development. But there was no sense of accommodation on either side. Daud argued that the locals must reject the Taliban before development of the town could take place. The elders argued that we should withdraw and that the town was being badly damaged by the bombing.

  The lack of development in the town was plainly evident when I accompanied a patrol out on to the ground after the shura had finished. I had invited Daud to come with us, saying that with so many of my troops on the ground I was confident that I could assure his protection. However, he seemed uninterested and we went without him. I had no doubt that the fighting had impacted adversely on the local inhabitants, but there was little sign of any bomb damage beyond the immediate buildings around the district centre. Shops were open, some selling Honda motorbikes and others piles of discoloured offal spread on newspaper that attracted swarms of flies as it baked in the heat. We received cautious acknowledgements to our Pashtu greetings as we pressed deeper into the narrow mud streets, though the normal gaggle of barefoot Afghan children was absent. While any real physical evidence of the fighting was limited, the town was a slum. Discarded animal bones littered the alleyways between compounds where they had been thrown by their occupants. There was also an oppressive stench coming from rotting piles of rubbish which had been accumulating long before our first arrival.

  As I moved through the streets with Tac, I couldn’t help thinking about what we could achieve if we could base more than one company in Sangin on a permanent basis. We could push the Taliban out of the town for good and secure the place for development. But it would take more than 100-odd men to do it and Sangin was only one town and there were many more like it. I knew that once we had withdrawn and the district centre reverted to just one company, the Taliban would return and the fighting would resume.

  The effect of our mass arrival was not lost on the ITN journalist John Irvine who had accompanied the shura party to Sangin. He came up to me and said how impressed he was with the morale of my soldiers and the fact that we had managed to establish control over the town. He commented that it was in stark contrast to sensational reports that were circulating in the media that compared Sangin to Rorke’s Drift. I agreed that the historical analogy to a colonial outpost that was about to be overrun by hordes of Zulus was flawed. It also confirmed in my own mind the value of soldiers talking and the misguided policy of keeping the press away from us. Irvine departed with the shura party and the logistic supply convoy arrived the next day.

  It drove through Sangin from the east along the wadi secured by A and C companies and was escorted into the district centre by the Patrols Platoon. We had hoped to use the Canadians, but they had been tasked away to restore government control to the town of Garmsir, 100 kilometres to the south of Lashkar Gah. The ANP garrison had withdrawn from it in the face of Taliban attacks and Daud claimed that if it fell, the provincial capital would be next. I was sorry to see Captain Bill Fletcher and his company depart. We had got used to working with the Canadians and I had been impressed by their courage and professionalism.

  As we boarded a Chinook to fly back to Bastion the Engineers were already beginning to use the newly arrived plant equipment to fill the HESCO bastion with sand, which would form a solid perimeter around the district centre. I left A Company behind under the temporary command of Major Tris Halse who was standing in for Will Pike who had returned to the UK on an already scheduled posting. Having an additional company operating in support of the troops already stationed there would bolster the position and delay the Taliban’s return to Sangin. But it was a temporary measure as the second company would soon be needed elsewhere.

  While Sangin was quiet for the moment, the frequency and seriousness of attacks against Now Zad and Musa Qaleh was increasing. In Now Zad the initial attacks that had been directed against ANP Hill had begun to shift to the district centre held by the Gurkhas in the second week of July. The Taliban made their first concerted attack on 12 July. Having ambushed an ANP patrol in the centre of the town, they followed up with RPG and heavy machine-gun fire against the compound. The attack started in the early hours of the morning and went on late into the afternoon, before eventually being broken up by A-105 dropping 100-pound bombs and running in low to strafe the Taliban with cannon fire. Many insurgents were killed, but the attacks continued intermittently for the next few days as the Taliban revised their tactics and prepared to make another assault four days later. Unlike Sangin the district centre in Now Zad was located in a grid of streets in the western part of the town. It was surrounded by walled alleyways and compounds on three sides with the main street running past its front gate. The insurgents began digging through the walls of the surrounding buildings to create rat runs where they could move close to the sangars unobserved by the Gurkha sentries and circling aircraft.

  On 16 July the district centre came under attack from three sides. On the southern side they managed to get into a medical clinic next to the southern compound wall and brought the inside of the base under a withering fire of RPG and AK rounds. In the process Lance Corporal Cook of the Royal Signals was hit in the shoulder. He would survive the wound, but the bullet fragmented and ricocheted inside his body armour causing it to exit from his body in three different places. With only one platoon at his disposal and twenty ANA soldiers, the Gurkha company commander, Major Dan Rex, believed that his position was in danger of being overrun. His JTAC, Sergeant Charlie Aggrey, called in a danger close fire mission from one of the supporting Apaches. Aggrey talked the pilot on to the Taliban’s location in the clinic. The pilot trusted to the armour of his helicopter as he brought it into a low hover over the district centre. He lined up the sights of his 30mm nose cannon; it swivelled and then kicked into life. Brass cases spewed over the heads of the defenders below him as the pilot sprayed the clinic with cannon fire. Cannon rounds chopped through the concrete and the windows from left to right and the insurgent threat was neutralized in a hail of masonry and exploding 30mm shells. For good measure, the Gurkhas followed up by throwing hand grenades over the walls of the compound to catch any retreating Taliban.

  In fighting off the attack the Gurkhas used up 80 per cent of their ammunition and the attack also highlighted the vulnerability of holding the district centre with only the forty-odd men that Rex had at his disposal. Consequently, another platoon of Gurkhas were stripped out of the force protection company guarding Bastion and were sent up to reinforce the district centre. They were also sent mortar barrels and a machine-gun section from the A Company of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers that had just arriv
ed from Cyprus to bolster the Battle Group.

  The addition of the Fusilier FSG gave the Gurkhas their own dedicated mortar fire support, but the Taliban were also using mortars. At first the 82mm Chinese mortar bombs they fired were inaccurate, but their rounds started creeping closer to the district centre as their accuracy improved. On 18 July three rounds landed inside the compound and wounded an ANP policeman. The Taliban were also using their mortars to fire at resupply helicopters that flew into the LZ on the open strip of desert behind ANP Hill. On more than one occasion they landed dangerously close to the Chinooks as they flew in ammunition and lifted out casualties. The improved performance indicated that the insurgents’ mortar crews were better trained foreign Jihadi insurgents from Pakistan. The presence of these foreign fighters was also being reported in other areas, as the Taliban moved their men between Now Zad, Musa Qaleh and Sangin. On 22 July reports reached us that fifty fighters had moved into Now Zad. By mid-morning the district centre had started receiving incoming fire. Dan Rex believed the Taliban commanders were meeting in one of the buildings in the town and requested permission to bomb them with a precision-guided JDAM. He was confident that the threat of collateral damage would be minimal and I supported his request, but, despite being under NATO command, UKTF had to clear authority for the strike with PJHQ. By the time I left the JOC at 0200 hours the next morning, a decision on whether we could target the building had still not been made and the fleeting opportunity to destroy the enemy commanders had long gone.

  A staff officer in PJHQ was also questioning 3 PARA’s need to have a battery of artillery. I was staggered, given how many rounds we were firing to help keep our soldiers alive in Sangin. Perhaps he would like to come out here and get a little combat time in a sangar when it was breaking up an attack with danger close fire, I thought. Spending valuable time answering nugatory questions from a desk-bound officer in the UK was not the only frustrating event to occur that day.