Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  I drew on Matt Maer’s words when I spoke to Alex Dick after his squadron had driven back into Bastion. He felt responsible for what had happened to his men in the ambush. I told him that it was not his fault and I meant it. He had been under pressure from UKTF to get to the outskirts of Musa Qaleh. He wasn’t given any infantry support and had had to take a calculated risk. I told him that it was the nature of war and as commanders we always felt a burden of guilt when bad things happened. I visited his troopers on the vehicle park the next day. Stripped to the waist, they laboured hard in the sun covered in sweat and grease to get their Scimitars and Spartans ready for the Battle Group operation to Musa Qaleh. I talked with them as they serviced their vehicles. They were a tight-knit squadron and every man felt the loss of their comrades. But I was impressed by their fortitude and determination to get back out into the field. Having spoken to them in small groups, I gathered them together and told them that they were doing an excellent job and the light armoured support they provided was making a real difference. I asked them to keep on doing just what they were doing.

  I saw them again that evening, the grime of a hard day’s toil washed away as they sat in rows for the memorial service for Second Lieutenant Ralph Johnson and Lance Corporal Ross Nicholls, who had died in the Spartan. As I listened to Alex Dick’s eulogy for Ralph Johnson I thought of his father in South Africa who would never go hunting on the veldt again with his son. We also commemorated Captain Alex Eida, the artillery forward observation officer, who was travelling in the back of the vehicle. His normal place would have been with the squadron command vehicle, but he had volunteered to go forward with the lead troops so that he could be on hand to call down artillery fire if it was needed. He was a popular officer who had worked with the companies and his loss was felt deeply across the Battle Group.

  I was concerned that we might be sending D Squadron back out into the field too soon. Their vehicles were taking a pounding in the harsh environment from driving many miles over difficult and sandy terrain. But we needed them for the next operation to get the Pathfinders out of Musa Qaleh and replace them with another platoon of infantry and a mortar section from the Royal Irish Regiment that had recently arrived from the UK. They weren’t additional reinforcements, as they were filling gaps that already existed in the Battle Group. But the Danish squadron had demanded extra troops as a precondition of staying in Musa Qaleh.

  Codenamed Operation Snakebite, it would be a complex mission involving a significant number of moving parts. The Patrols Platoon would secure an LZ for B and C companies. Supported by a troop of Canadian LAVs, they would then clear through two villages and a green zone of fields and trees that lay on the western bank of the Musa Qaleh wadi. The Engineers would then clear the track that led from the green zone to the wadi. It was a known ambush site and we anticipated that the route would have IEDs placed on it. The Household Cavalry would then secure a corridor across the large open wadi; simultaneously the Danes would move out of the district centre and secure the street down to the wadi from the eastern side. Once a secure corridor had been established, the Pathfinders would drive out and we would then send the Royal Irish reinforcements and a logistics convoy in to the Danes. The convoy would drive back out once it had dumped its stores and the troops securing the route would then collapse from their protective positions behind it. We would have air cover and a troop of 105mm guns and a mortar section would provide indirect fire support. But as with all the best-laid schemes, not everything went according to plan.

  As they moved a day ahead of us, the limited time given to the Household Cavalry to service their vehicles took its toll. Four of the five Scimitars broke down and had to be towed back to Bastion. It meant that the squadron would not be available to support the operation and the task of securing the wadi would have to fall to the Canadian LAVs. Intelligence then indicated that the LZ we had selected might be an old Soviet legacy minefield. There were few alternative landing zones and I decided that the Patrols Platoon would have to do their best to check it before we landed. But they could not do this in darkness and we would have to delay the operation to allow them to do it in daylight. Consequently, the element of surprise of launching before first light was lost. Captain Tom Fehley, who had taken over command of the Patrols Platoon, was concerned about being able to confirm whether the LZ would be clear of mines. I told him that I knew he would not be able to do it properly, as it would take hours and Engineers that we didn’t have. I asked him to give me his best assessment when he got there. I would then make the call about the risk of landing the rest of the Battle Group into the LZ.

  The possible existence of mines was on my mind as we flew into the LZ in two waves of Chinooks twenty-four hours later. It was a calculated risk and I suppressed the urge to wince as the wheels of my helicopter touched down. No doubt it was on every other man’s mind as they stepped off the tailgate and moved to their forming-up positions on the reverse slope of the high ground overlooking the green zone. B Company would move first, but as they married up with the LAVs on their line of departure they came under fire. As they took cover, the LAVs were already returning fire with their 30mm cannons and Matt Carter was calling in an airstrike. He looked at me for clearance to drop. We were under fire and I didn’t have time to mess about requesting permission from higher headquarters, so I nodded and told him to call it in. I told Giles Timms to be ready to move his company in a left-flanking attack as soon as the bomb landed.

  Ninety seconds later, I heard Matt Carter announce, ‘Here she comes!’ Released from the weapons rack of an aircraft several thousand feet above us, the small dark shape of the JDAM flashed briefly as it screamed down from the heavens. Earth and rubble heaved up at the sky as the bomb impacted into the target. It was followed by a billowing mushroom cloud of dense black smoke that smudged against the horizon. The noise of the blast wave reached us a split second later and B Company started moving as machine gunners fired them in. I watched B Company assault through a tight cluster of deserted compounds from the left and noticed how much faster they moved without being encumbered by restrictive combat body armour. In response to their rapid movement, I ordered C Company to begin their assault from the right. Paddy Blair was on R and R in the UK, so his company was under the command of Captain Rob Musetti. In anticipation of my order he already had his men ready and waiting to go. I yelled a reminder to watch out for civilians as he cleared through his compounds; unlike B Company’s objective we suspected that the compounds to the right were occupied. He yelled back an acknowledgement and then set off after his men. The air was soon filled by the dull thud of mouse-hole charges blasting entry points through walls. After Operation Augustus the charges had been enhanced to penetrate the hard thickness of the mud. But there was no firing or following up with grenades; Rob had briefed his men well about the need to watch out for civilians. They didn’t come across any and I marvelled at the locals’ uncanny ability to smell trouble and make themselves scarce when the fighting started.

  Both companies moved through the green zone with bayonets fixed. The Engineers then cleared the track of several roadside bombs they discovered. With our side of the wadi secure, I gave a radio order to the Danish commander to start securing the street from the district centre on his side of the wadi. He told me that it would take an hour and we fixed an agreed time when he would be in place and we would commence the wadi-crossing phase. As we waited for the Danes to move into position, the artillery rounds were taking time to adjust fire into the wadi to provide the smokescreen we needed to obscure our movement across it. I tasked Nick French to use his mortars to bridge the gap. Thick white smoke began to billow up from the impacting mortar rounds 200 metres to our front on the far side of the wadi and began to fog into a screen that would mask our activities from likely Taliban positions along the river line. The time on my watch approached the agreed H Hour and I ordered the Canadian LAVs to move out into the wadi and secure a movement corridor across it.

  Once
the Canadian armoured vehicles were in place I pressed the Danes clearing the street on the opposite side of the wadi. I wanted to know if they were still going to make H Hour. The response was non-committal, but it was clear they were not going to be in place on time. We couldn’t begin the next phase of the operation until the Danes were in position and their slow progress began to concern me. The Canadians were under armour and positioned outside the effective range of any Taliban armed with RPGs, but the more time we spent getting the unarmoured vehicles across the wadi, the more time the Taliban would have to move into positions from which they could bring the crossing operation under small-arms fire. Nick French’s mortars were also running low on rounds to keep the crossing site obscured with smoke.

  The Danes reported that they were finally in position. They had cost us forty-five minutes and we had lost the smokescreen and the proximity of troops in the wadi now precluded the use of artillery. The resupply convoy was already poised to move when the Pathfinders began driving out. I watched them break into the wadi and race across the dried riverbed towards the crossing control point. Each man wore a heavy-set beard that did little to hide the strain of the fifty-two days they had spent in Musa Qaleh. But their faces also showed the elation of finally being able to break free of it. The third vehicle contained their commander, Nick Wight-Boycott. He gave me a flashing grin as he stopped to thank us for getting his men out. He had a long drive ahead of him across the desert to Lashkar Gah, so we kept our conversation short and I wished him luck on his journey. I also wanted to press on with getting the resupply convoy in and out of the compound and ordered Captain Mark Eisler to lead his convoy vehicles across. He had already been briefed that he was to get there, offload his stores, deliver the reinforcements and get back out again as fast as possible. I watched Mark pass me driving the lead Pinzgauer, his face set in grim determination. The rest of the convoy’s vehicles disappeared after him into the wadi. There was little to do but sit and wait for him to complete his mission and return with the empty vehicles. I kept glancing at my watch as I contemplated their return and the fact that we had now run out of smoke rounds for the mortars.

  Less than an hour later I saw Mark’s vehicle break back into the wadi from the far bank. Mark stopped briefly to make his report to me at the crossing point: ‘In and out, Colonel, just as you said; all stores and reinforcements delivered.’ As Mark headed back up the track to the Battle Group’s assembly area I watched the rest of his vehicles cross back to our side. I was relieved to see the last of his vehicles enter the wadi and make its way back towards us. Suddenly there was an ominous crackle of automatic weapons fire. The last WMIK thundered back on to the track on the home bank. It was one of 13 Regiment’s vehicles that had driven from Kandahar as an escort for the convoy. The vehicle stopped briefly at the control point. The back of the WMIK was a scene of chaos. At least one man appeared to have been hit and lay on top of another who was screaming. ‘Get to the RAP!’ I shouted at the driver. Without hesitation, the vehicle took off at speed along the track. Shit, I thought as I yelled at Corporal ‘Gorgeous’ George Parsons, my signaller, to get on the net and tell Bastion and the RAP that we had inbound casualties. I ordered the Canadians to begin withdrawing and told Tac to start moving too. B and C companies would remain in place holding the home bank until the Canadians were back at the Battle Group assembly area. We set off on foot. It was a fast pace, as we had already spent long enough on the ground and I wanted to get back and find out about the casualties that had been taken in the wadi.

  I watched Tariq Ahmed zip up the body of Private Barrie Cutts in the RAP. He had been hit in the head and there was little that could have been done to save him. We carried his body back to the LZ. Mark Eisler was sitting on the sand with the two WMIK crew mates who were visibly shaken by the loss of their friend. Mark was a Late Entry officer, who joined 3 PARA as a Tom and had worked his way up through the ranks. He had fought with the battalion in the Falklands in 1982 and was one of only seven survivors of his platoon who were not hit fighting up the slopes of Mount Longdon. He knew what loss was about and I sat down and listened as he talked to the two young Logistics Corps soldiers. He spoke words of comfort and empathy in a fatherly tone. He brought them out of their shock; he even raised a laugh from them as they talked fondly of the friend they had lost and the sort of bloke he was. I smiled at the young soldiers, as the rhythmic beat of the three Chinooks’ rotor blades became louder as they approached the LZ. As they turned it into a blizzard of sand, we picked up Private Cutts and carried him towards the helicopters.

  It was another sombre flight back to Bastion with young Barrie Cutts lying at our feet. I watched the starboard gunner glance at his body. I could see in his face a trace of acknowledgement for the risks troops took on the ground once his aircraft had delivered them to an objective. I helped Tac carry Private Cutts to an ambulance that was waiting for us at Bastion. He died under my command following my orders and it was only right that as the commanding officer I should form part of the field bearer party.

  11

  The Home Front

  Even by the standards of the tour, the operational tempo from the middle of July to the beginning of August had been extreme. Including the mission to recover the dead from the Household Cavalry ambush, we had conducted five deliberate Battle Group operations. Each involved several hundred men and the detailed integration of helicopters, artillery, airpower and other multinational forces. At the same time we had defended four outstations against increasingly sophisticated insurgent attacks, contributed troops to the defence of Musa Qaleh and also sent the Patrols Platoon to help relieve the growing pressure on Garmsir. The necessary planning and constant adjustment to rapidly changing situations had been a 24/7 business. Getting a decent night’s sleep of more than four to five hours had become a long-forgotten luxury. To a large extent we had become used to it and more than once I noted that personal endurance was the key to sustaining the frenetic pace of activity. However, I could detect an accumulating weariness in the people around me and I also detected it in myself.

  After I had debriefed Ed Butler over a phone link to Kandahar following one of the operations, he asked me when I was taking my R and R. I was evasive and mentioned something about there being too much going on. Ed told me that the one direct order he was going to give me while in Afghanistan was that I was to take some leave. No doubt he had a suspicion that I would eschew the opportunity unless ordered to do so. He was probably right, but I also knew that I would benefit from having a break. I discussed when I should go with Huw Williams. As my second-in-command, he would act as the CO while I was away. Huw wanted to take his R and R to get back for his son’s first birthday at the end of August so I agreed to take some leave as soon as the operation to relieve Musa Qaleh had been completed. The fact that Andy Cash’s Apache squadron was handing over to a replacement squadron from the UK also meant that we anticipated a relative lull in Battle Group operations, as the new pilots need some time to work up to full combat readiness. It meant that I could afford to take ten days’ leave and get back in time for Huw to make it home for his son’s birthday.

  John Hardy knew what was on my mind as he drove me to the airstrip to catch a Hercules flight to Kabul. ‘They’ll be all right, sir. I know that you won’t stop thinking about the Battle Group, but try to and get some sleep.’ I handed over my pistol to him and we shook hands. I grabbed my helmet and day sack and walked to the tailgate. I strapped myself in as the aircraft began to taxi and caught a last glimpse of John Hardy before the aircraft’s ramp door closed shut. I told myself that they would be okay. My eyes were already drooping by the time the wheels lifted off from the rough desert strip. They opened again as the RAF loadmaster gently shook me awake and told me that we were in Kabul. Our RAF Tri-Star flight back to the UK wasn’t until the next day. We were due to spend the night in Camp Souter, the British base in Kabul which was located a short distance from the City’s airport. I followed the gaggle of people
to a prefab tent that doubled as an arrival lounge; I was in the hands of the Lungi Fungi, those responsible for administrating bully beef and the supply of bullets in the rear and who had little idea of what combat was like. I could sense the messing about was due to begin.

  There was no transport to take us to the UK military’s logistics base at Camp Souter and no one of any rank to sort it out, except for a poor lance corporal from the Royal Logistics Corps. It had just gone 6 p.m. and his superiors had all knocked it on the head for the night. I told him to get an officer to come and take an interest in finding some transport. Three hours later some vehicles eventually turned up, but by then I had decided to sleep on the floor. The prospect of more waiting around at Souter and having to sit through a health and safety-style camp attack brief was all too much. I was missing the opportunity to sleep between sheets in the officers’ mess and drink as many beers as I liked in the bar, but all I was interested in doing was getting home. I fashioned my body armour into a pillow and thought about the stark contrast in conditions and attitudes between the teeth and tail of an army on campaign.

  It took several hours to process everybody for the flight the next morning. It amazed me that civil airports could do it within an hour of passengers checking in and yet the RAF made such a hash of it even though they were processing disciplined military personnel. Once eventually on board the Tri-Star, the flight attendants appeared somewhat incongruous as they mimicked the standard civilian in-flight safety brief in their desert flying suits and then added in bits about body armour, helmets and the surface-to-air threat. They were a breed apart from the dust-covered Chinook air crewmen who fought and shared risk with us on a daily basis when they flew into places like Sangin and Now Zad.