Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  I was in the JOC when the report of the mine strike came over the net at midday. Mark Wright had already sent in a request for an evacuation helicopter. He had considered carrying Hale back up the ridge, but it was a long way and precariously steep. Every time Hale’s leg dropped below the horizontal, blood would spurt from the bandaged stump. Getting him back up the goat track would not only take time, but it was also highly likely that any violent movement would lead to him bleeding to death. Wright needed a helicopter to come to where Hale had been hit, but where there was one mine, there were likely to be others. I quickly talked through the options with the headquarters staff who had gathered round the bird table. Bringing a 15 tonne Chinook into the minefield entailed the risk that it would land on a mine or the powerful downwash of its rotor blades would detonate others. The Explosive Ordnance Disposal Engineer adviser in the JOC said it would take several hours to clear a path into the minefield and guarantee that a landing site was free of mines.

  We didn’t have hours to play with and the obvious solution was to winch Hale directly out of the minefield. The UK didn’t have any winch-equipped helicopters in Afghanistan, but we knew that the Americans did. We put in an immediate and urgent request to UKTF for a US HH-60 Black Hawk, but word came back from our higher headquarters that there was likely to be a delay of several hours in getting the necessary NATO release authority. The information was passed to the troops on the ground that a winch helicopter was unlikely to arrive any time soon. We waited for the response, as the message was relayed down to the rescue party from the top of the ridge. The reply came back that they thought there was a chance that a Chinook could get the ramp of its tailgate on to an outcrop of rock close to Hale. If the rescue party could clear a path to the ledge, they believed that they could get Hale out without the helicopter having to land. I knew it was a risky option, but it had to be balanced against the delay in waiting for the Black Hawk and the risk of Hale bleeding to death. I made the decision to send the Chinook. The pilots were briefed on the situation and risks involved and were directed to fly up to Kajaki and react to the signal of the men on the ground.

  Soldiers have a deep-rooted pathological hatred of mines. Their use is considered iniquitous, impersonal and indiscriminatory. They could be anywhere, lurking hidden just beneath the surface, waiting for the unwary to tread on them. However, Mark Wright and his party had entered into the mine-strewn ground with complete disregard for their own safety. Now they began an emergency drill of trying to prod the rocky sand around them in an attempt to clear a safe route to where the inbound Chinook might be able to put down. They tried to place their feet on solid rocks as they prodded the earth with anything that came to hand. Stu Pearson was using the metal rod from his rifle cleaning kit. It was difficult to tell whether the resistance a probe encountered was a buried stone or something more deadly. Pearson turned back to walk across the path that he thought he had cleared. Suddenly, he was thrown up and spun round by a violent explosion. Like Hale, he initially felt no pain, but he knew instantly what had happened. Fusilier Andy Barlow rushed over to him and went through the procedure of squeezing off the main artery in the smashed remains of Pearson’s left leg with a tourniquet. His right leg was intact, but it looked pretty bad. He injected Pearson with morphine and began treating his other wounds.

  The pilot of the Chinook saw green signal smoke rising up from the rescue party’s location and lined up his aircraft to land into an offset position. However, the second explosion confirmed in everybody’s mind that there were mines everywhere. Additionally, it proved that probing for the mines had not been effective and the route to any LZ was unsafe. Just after the second explosion the heavy clatter of the Chinook rotor blades thumped low over the rescue party. Mark Wright sought to wave it off on the hand-held radio he had with him. The last thing he wanted now was a heavy-lift helicopter trying to land next to them. But his messages had to be relayed to a larger radio set on the ridge and the pilot remained unaware of his desperate message telling him not to come in.

  The pilot placed his rear wheels down on the deck but kept his front wheels off the ground to minimize the threat of striking a mine. His rear crewman signalled to the party to bring the casualties to them, but so metres of mine-strewn ground still lay between them and safety. The emergency prodding technique had proved ineffective and there was no way that the troops on the ground were going to take the chance of setting off more mines: they waved the helicopter away. The aircraft lifted off, creating a brown storm of dust and debris. Mark Wright was seen to crouch down to shield himself from the blizzard of sand that came towards him; as he did so there was another explosion, most likely caused by rocks or equipment being shifted by the down-draught of the rotors as the Chinook lifted clear of the area. The left-hind side of Mark’s chest caught the main force of the blast and shrapnel hit him in the face. In an act of desperate courage, Tugg Hartley threw his medical pack on to the ground in front of him to clear a path of any more mines to get to where Mark Wright lay.

  A third man was down; in a matter of minutes another man fell. Andy Barlow moved his foot a few inches backwards as he bent down to pick up a water bottle next to where Pearson lay. The slight movement triggered another explosion that took off one of his legs and hit four other men with steel fragments. Tugg Hartley, Private Dave Prosser and Corporal Craig now all had shrapnel wounds and Mark Wright also sustained further injuries from the fourth blast. Craig struggled back up the goat track, clutching his side where shrapnel had punctured his lung. He managed to make the climb unaided before collapsing at the top of the ridge. Less than an hour had passed since Lance Corporal Hale had stood on the first mine. Six other men were now down and the prospect of rescue was anything but certain.

  The messages reporting the additional injuries came across the net one by one in quick succession and Matt Taylor repeated them as they came in: ‘Three times T1… one times T2,’ and then: `One times T3’ T1 was immediately life-threatening and required priority surgery, T2 meant surgery was required within hours and the T3 was a less serious injury. My blood froze. The dread of hearing that men were down was now coming across the net in spades; they were falling like ninepins. I got back on to the radio and demanded to know when I was going to get my Black Hawk helicopter. I followed it up with a phone call to UKTF. The staff in KAF understood the urgency of the situation and were doing their best to get it released, but I impressed upon them that people were going to die unless someone in the NATO chain of command pulled their finger out.

  As I spoke, Matt Taylor was already beginning to decode the Zap numbers that had been sent over the net from Kajaki. They would identify who the men were who had been hit and their blood types, a vital piece of information that the field hospital would require. There was a hushed silence as Taylor began to call them out. People were desperately hoping that it would not be one of their mates. The fact that the identifying numbers had come in so fast was due to Mark Wright. Despite the serious nature of his wounds he remained in command of the rescue party to the end. He made the wounded around him yell them out so that he could pass them on over the radio. Stu Hale could also hear him calmly shouting encouragement to the wounded. There was even an element of humour to lessen the horrors of the situation they were in. Mark Wright joined in the banter as the wounded and those treating them took the piss out of each other. But Mark Wright was fading. He mentioned that he felt cold and that he knew he was going to die. He talked of his parents, his fiancée and their dog. Before losing consciousness he spoke of his uncle who had been a former member of 3 PARA and a major influence in his decision to become a paratrooper himself. He asked someone to tell his uncle that he had been ‘a good soldier’.

  Three and half hours after the first mine strike two Black Hawks appeared overhead. Each winched down its ‘Para Jumper’ medic. The men in the minefield screamed at them that there were mines everywhere; they acknowledged the warning with a thumbs up and dropped on to the ground. Moving among the
injured, they winched out the most serious casualties first and flew them up to the LZ at the dam where they were transferred to a CH-47 and flown straight to Bastion. Then they went back for the less seriously injured and the five other members of the rescue party who had not been hit. Lance Corporal Hale was still waiting for the pain in his leg to kick in as he watched someone being given emergency resuscitation on the back of the Chinook. He thought it was Dave Prosser, but the medics treating him wouldn’t let him look up.

  The RSM and I were on the LZ by the field hospital waiting for the Chinook to come in; we went on board as soon as the ramp came down. I stepped over a motionless figure whose upper body was shrouded from view; a discarded oxygen mask and surgical airway lay next to him. We focused on the living as Hale, Pearson and Barlow were carried off with missing limbs and rushed to surgery in the back of the waiting ambulances. John Hardy and I looked at each other before stooping to pull back the shroud. We then lifted the lifeless soldier into a body bag and carried him to an ambulance. The man receiving resuscitation had been Mark Wright, but for him the rescue had come too late.

  I drove back from the hospital in the front of the open-top Pinzgauer truck with John Hardy; neither of us spoke as I looked down and felt Mark Wright’s blood drying on my hands. At one stage I thought that we were not going to get the men out of the minefield. But any relief I felt was overridden by the sense of loss of one of my soldiers and the grievous wounding of three others whom the surgeons were now working on. It was after 1730 hours, darkness was little less than two hours away and the day was already beginning to cool by the time we got back to the JOC.

  Matt Taylor was waiting to meet me and his face said it all before he spoke. ‘Colonel, you are not going to believe this, but we have got multiple casualty situations in both Sangin and Musa Qaleh.’ Sangin had been engaged by Taliban mortars firing from three different positions and had caused one T1, two T2 and three T3 casualties. Less than five minutes later the district centre in Musa Qaleh had also come under fire and an exploding mortar round caused one T1, three T2 and six T3 casualties among both Easy Company and the ASP. Corporal Graham Groves was on the top of the ANP house when the mortars started to come in against the men of C Company in Sangin. The attack started with small-arms fire and then two mortar bombs landed in the river as others began to creep closer. He felt a sinking lurch in his stomach when he heard the cry for a medic. One of the rounds had landed in the orchard where the bunkers provided the soldiers with a degree of subterranean sanctuary. But the men of 9 (Ranger) Platoon were attending an orders group given by Colour Sergeant Spence. The round caught them in the open, cutting down most of his command team including Lance Corporal Luke McCulloch, who was seriously wounded by a piece of shrapnel that struck him in the back of the head.

  We were entering the equation of the mincing machine again. It was exacerbated by the fact that there were now two dangerous locations requiring the launch of casualty evacuation missions. We had only one MERT and one aircraft on short-notice standby to fly it. I picked up the phone that had linked me to the field dressing station. I knew that they were flat out dealing with the mine strike casualties, but I needed a clinical medical assessment to guide my decision as to which district centre to fly to first. The engines of the Chinook were already turning as Lieutenant Colonel Peter Davis arrived in the JOC; as a qualified anaesthetist, he would fly with the MERT. He spoke to each of the doctors over the net and said, `Sangin first.’ Shrapnel from the mortar round that had landed in the compound in Musa Qaleh had ripped into the front part of Ranger Moniasagwa’s throat. But Mike Stacey assessed that he was stable and could hang on, so it was decided to attempt to get Corporal McCulloch out first, as his head wound was judged to be more serious.

  I looked at Mark Hammond, who was the epitome of a rugged Royal Marines officer and was the pilot who would fly the mission. Shaven-headed and thickset, he was nicknamed ‘the School Bully’, but the seriousness of what he was about to do was not lost on him. We gathered round the bird table for a last-minute confirmation of the critical mission criteria. Routes and timings were read out and the information was passed on to C Company in Sangin. Ground-and air-fire-support measures to reduce the risk of the helicopter being shot down were hastily rechecked. I looked at my watch as Davis and Hammond left the JOC and headed out to the Chinook; time was of the essence and the clock was ticking. The MERT headed for Sangin and we set about planning the casevac mission to Musa Qaleh.

  The nose of the Chinook dropped into the Sangin Valley as Hammond pushed forward on his joystick with his right hand. He gripped the collective with his left and kicked the aircraft’s rudder pedals with his feet to bring the Chinook into position to make the final approach into the LZ. Two Apaches had already arrived on station before Hammond began his descent. They hovered above him and searched the ground around the HESCO bastion perimeter for the tell-tale signs of any heat sources that would betray the presence of Taliban fighters moving into firing positions. The fingers of men of C Company rested on the triggers of their GPMGs and .5o Cal machine guns as they scanned the area from their sangars. They heard the clatter of the rotor blades of the approaching Chinook as an armoured Spartan waited at the side of the LZ with the casualties, ready to drive them out to the helicopter as soon as it landed. The area was quiet and Hammond bled altitude and headed in.

  Suddenly, green tracer slashed up towards the aircraft forcing him to bank violently away from the fire that came up from the ground to meet him. He slewed the aircraft and pulled for altitude in a desperate attempt to get away from the bullets that chased after him through the sky. Artillery and mortar rounds began to thump through the air on the way to where the Taliban fired from positions in the fields and compounds to the south of the district centre. Machine guns hammered away at them from the sangars and the circling Apaches raked the insurgents’ locations with fire. A second attempt was made and Hammond managed to get the Chinook into the LZ under the cover of the heavy weight of supporting fire that suppressed every likely Taliban firing position. The casualties were loaded into the helicopter and Hammond was already lifting as the Spartan pulled away from the back of the aircraft’s tailgate.

  With the report that they were ‘wheels up’ and heading back to Bastion, I left the JOC with the RSM and we headed down to the LZ by the field hospital for the second time that day. Corporal McCulloch looked pretty bad as we carried him off the Chinook that landed twenty minutes later. We placed him carefully into the back of a waiting ambulance. The other injured men were `walking wounded’ and were helped to a second ambulance. John Hardy and I followed them up in the Pinzgauer to the tented entrance of the hospital. Corporal McCulloch had already been taken to the emergency treatment area as I chatted to the less seriously injured while they were being checked out by the nursing staff before being readied for surgery. Peter Davis appeared at my side and told me that despite his best efforts Corporal McCulloch hadn’t made it. I thanked him for all he had tried to do and the risks his MERT had faced in flying out to get Corporal McCulloch and the other wounded. Peter Davis had not changed out of his combat webbing. We still had ten wounded men waiting to be evacuated from Musa Qaleh and we both knew that it would not be long before he and Mark Hammond would be flying out again in an attempt to pick them up. Corporal McCulloch was the second of my soldiers to succumb to his wounds, but he would not be the last before the day was out.

  Adam Jowett watched the sky over Musa Qaleh for the approach of Mark Hammond’s aircraft from the LZ that he had secured with Easy Company outside the district centre. It was a small field sandwiched on three sides by compounds, bushes and trees. His men formed a perimeter around its edges and were already fighting off a number of insurgents who were attempting to work their way towards the open space where they knew the helicopter would try to land. It was just before last light when he saw the dark shape of the Chinook against the fading blue heavens as it flew towards them. As it got closer he heard the boom of RPGs be
ing fired up into the air to meet it and watched the dance of smoke trails which appeared to chase the helicopter across the sky. It banked and turned to avoid them in a desperate attempt to find air space free of the lethal projectiles. The Chinook would turn, pull up and then start to run in again as a relentless stream of rounds and rockets climbed into the sky. Hammond pressed home his attempt as the escorting Apaches pumped rounds from their 30mm cannons at the numerous Taliban positions around the LZ. Jowett saw the Chinook shudder and slow as it came in to the LZ nose up on its final approach. He saw bullets striking into the spinning rotor discs and heard them ping and whine as they were deflected off the turning blades. They thumped into the side of the cab as Jowett yelled into his radio, ‘Hot LZ! Hot LZ! Abort! Abort!’