Danger Close

by Colonel Stuart Tootal

  Hammond pulled violently back on his joystick and the engines screamed for power as he went into the emergency abort procedures and fought to lift the 15 tonne airframe out of the storm of incoming rounds. Jowett watched the aircraft gain altitude and limp away towards the east. He was convinced he saw smoke coming from the stricken aircraft and feared that it might go down over the town before it managed to reach the relative safety of the open desert. He shouted into his radio and told Sergeant Major Scrivener to stand to the QRF ready to drive out to the crash site if it fell out of the sky. It would be a desperate measure, as the QRF consisted of fewer than twenty men crammed into two unarmoured light Pinzgauer trucks. He willed it to make it across the rooftops while Ranger Moniasagwa lay on his stretcher still waiting for rescue. Hammond nursed his damaged aircraft back to Bastion, twenty-five minutes’ flying time to the south. It was covered with strike marks and had taken rounds in one of its main head rotor assemblies which risked catastrophic mechanical failure. The Chinook wouldn’t be going back out again that night, but Hammond, his crew and Peter Davis’s MERT would.

  Hammond and Davis reported to the JOC while another Chinook was made ready for them. They had already flown two missions under fire. The aircrew were well over their regulation crew-duty hours, but Hammond was adamant that he would try to make another attempt to get the wounded. I spoke to Adam Jowett on the net. He reconfirmed Mike Stacey’s assessment that he could keep Moniasagwa stable for a few more hours; after that he would die from his wounds. He had already been lying wounded for over two hours.

  Part of the moral component of what makes men fight is that they expect rapid evacuation to immediate medical care and timely surgery if they become wounded. To most soldiers the medical extraction plan is the most important part of the orders they receive for battle. If they get hit, they expect to be looked after. How we would get a casualty from the point of wounding to the surgeon’s table was part of the operational planning process that we scrubbed in detail. Consequently, it was not lost on anyone that we were breaching the principle that if a casualty is to stand the best chance of survival he must be lifted to surgery from the point of wounding within two hours. Once again, I was having to balance the lives of the aircrew and the MERT against the life of one of the soldiers who would die if we did not lift him out of Musa Qaleh. The troops in Easy Company were also taking a risk every time they had to push out from the district centre to secure the evacuation LZ.

  I told Jowett that I intended to take the time that Stacey’s assessment had given us to put the necessary threat-reduction measures in place to minimize the risk of having the helicopter shot down when Hammond went back in. Jowett calmly accepted my decision. I asked him to get round his soldiers and explain my decision; I had no doubt that the grunts in the front line would be cursing those of us ensconced in the safety of the JOC while their comrades suffered and patiently waited to be evacuated. I talked Jowett through the supporting fire package of an AC-130 gunship, A-105, artillery and Apaches that we were coordinating with the oncoming cover of darkness. I told him that once the package was in place he was to secure the LZ at the last safe moment and then use all the available assets to suppress the Taliban’s firing positions. Before I signed off on the radio I said, ‘Adam, do what you need to get the helicopter in safely and get the wounded out. If necessary cane the place.’

  Three hours later the fire package was set as A-105, surveillance aircraft and an AC-130 Hercules gunship circled unseen in the night skies over Musa Qaleh. The 105mm gun battery in the desert 12 kilometres to the east of the district centre laid its artillery pieces on to the areas around the LZ and waited for the order to fire. As Hammond once again steered his Chinook towards the town, two Apaches flew thirty seconds ahead of him. To preserve the element of surprise, they would arrive over the compound just as Jowett’s men went out to secure the LZ. The Apaches would then provide close-in protective fire to the Chinook as it ran in behind them and dropped down to make its approach into the LZ. The signal came through to the JOC that Hammond was two minutes out. I glanced at my watch as the aircraft began its descent into the danger zone. The atmosphere in the JOC was thick with tension as we waited for reports to come over the radio. I tried to avoid staring at the signaller on the air desk as the seconds ticked by.

  Over Musa Qaleh the 105mm rear cannon from the AC-130 boomed in the darkness as it pumped shells down on to the Taliban and artillery fired from the desert. A-105 flew strafing missions, the strike of their 30mm cannon rounds rippling in lines of sparks and metal splinters and 500 pound bombs dropped off their weapon racks. The JTAC in Easy Company was calling down a storm of steel to protect the inserting Chinook, and Hammond dropped from the sky as an inferno raged in a circle around the LZ. The fire was danger close, JDAMs landing within 100 metres of the compound walls and LZ. Jowett’s men had been warned to take cover and keep their mouths open as the bombs came in, to reduce the effects of overpressure on their lungs. The blast waves of exploding ordnance were visible to the naked eye as metal fragments travelled out behind them at moo metres per second. One unfortunate soldier was blown out of the makeshift latrine as he was forced to make an emergency call of nature. Two 2,000 pound bombs were dropped on a known Taliban forming-up position and debris rained down on the compound for minutes after. The attack helicopters kept a vigil of protective fire with cannons and missiles over the Chinook as they saw it come nose up into the LZ.

  ‘Wheels down,’ came the call from the air desk at my right-hand side from where I stood at the bird table. My eyes were fixated on the face of my watch, as the digital seconds started the nerve-racking countdown. Spare mortar ammunition was kicked off the tailgate as the wounded were rushed on to the Chinook. One minute passed by and nothing. Come on, come on, I thought, as I willed the helicopter to lift and get the hell out of there. Nobody spoke and another minute passed. ‘Colonel, wheels up from Musa Qaleh,’ the air ops officer announced. But the tension wasn’t over: it would take another two minutes for the helicopter to climb to a safe altitude out of the threat zone. I was mesmerized by my watch again, as others glanced at the face of the clock mounted over the bank of radios in the JOC. I looked at the air staff; they knew the words I wanted to hear and then they came: ‘She’s clear, sir.’ The wounded had been lifted safely after waiting for seven hours to be evacuated, and the Taliban had been unable to bring their weapons to bear against the Chinook. Easy Company collapsed back into the district centre while small-arms fire and RPG rockets began to strike the compound as the insurgents battered out their frustrations at having missed their prey.

  Yet the day wasn’t over and the RSM and I turned from the bird table and headed down to the LZ to meet the incoming wounded. Peter Davis gave me the thumbs up as he came off the ramp with Moniasagwa’s stretcher; we had got to him in time. Having met them off the tailgate we followed the ambulances to the field hospital. All the operating theatres had been working at full tilt since mid-afternoon. Their trade had not stopped since the first wounded from the minefield had been brought in. Behind the canvas screens of the outer corridor it was like a scene from a butcher’s shop. The senior surgeon would pause in his grisly work to update me on how the wounded were doing; three had lost legs and most had undergone surgery to remove shrapnel. Corporal Wright and Lance Corporal Luke McCulloch had died before they arrived at the hospital. Wright’s limbs were uninjured and the wounds he sustained indicated that he could not have set of the mine that killed him. We had also received bad news from Oman. Lance Corporal Paul Muirhead had finally lost the battle against the serious head wound he had sustained when an insurgent mortar round landed on the Alamo in Musa Qaleh five days previously.

  I spoke to a nurse and walked into the post-op recovery ward, having washed my hands and donned a plastic apron at the entrance. A procedure I had not encountered when visiting Selly Oak. Corporals Pearson and Hale were still sedated; Stu Pearson was coming to, but was still out of it. I moved from his bedside to see
Fusilier Andy Barlow lying naked apart from a bloodstained sheet that protected his modesty. I knew it was a stupid question, and I said so when I asked him how he was doing. ‘I’m all right, sir; it’s the first time I’ve been legless on the tour since you banned alcohol!’ Andy was nineteen and had just had his left leg amputated above the knee. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Young Barlow’s retort had done much to reinvigorate my flagging spirits as I moved among my horribly wounded soldiers. But I was still in a sombre mood as I walked through the tented corridor towards the hospital’s entrance. It was late and I needed to get back to the JOC. As I reached the end of the corridor, there in the gloom I came across some of the remaining less seriously wounded. They were waiting patiently for their turn to be attended to while the more pressing cases were being treated.

  At the back of the line sat Private Hook. Hook was a new recruit who had recently completed his recruit training. His arrival in Afghanistan the day before had been delayed until he had reached his eighteenth birthday, which qualified him for active service. He stood up as I approached and I asked him what was wrong with him. ‘It’s my arm, sir. I took a bit of shrapnel from that mortar that landed in Sangin, but look, sir, it’s okay and I can get back on the next helicopter and re-join C Company,’ he said, as he waved his wounded arm vigorously above his head. I told him not to worry too much about that for the time being and to concentrate on getting his wound looked after. A little later he went under the surgeon’s knife to remove a jagged mortar splinter from his upper arm.

  My penultimate act that night was to attend the last rites given to Mark Wright. Hours previously, John Hardy and I had lifted his lifeless body into a body bag on the back of the CH-47’s tailgate. Afterwards I had found a moment to talk with Mark’s best friend, Corporal Lee Parker. For a soldier, the hardest thing is the loss of a friend. Lee Parker spoke of his fallen comrade, a man he had gone through training with and had served with side by side for the last ten years. He told me about Mark’s family and how he had been due to marry his fiancée the month after we got back from Afghanistan; people I didn’t yet know but would soon be writing to later that morning. I asked Lee if he wanted to come with me to say goodbye to Mark.

  We drove down to the field hospital with John Hardy and made our way to the small tented chapel. Mark’s body lay before us, the body bag exposed to show his face and blood-matted blond hair. I can’t remember the words the padre used, I know they were appropriate, but I was focused on looking at Mark. He seemed at peace and I thought about what he had done so others might live in that mine-infested gully below the ridge at Kajaki. I thought of his family going about their usual daily routine of a late summer’s evening in Edinburgh, not yet aware that their beloved only son was dead and that the planned wedding would never be. I thought of the letters I would have to write and reflected bitterly on the day’s bloody events: three men dead and another eighteen wounded.

  As we filed out of the makeshift chapel, Corporal Parker stopped to ruffle his dead friend’s hair; it was the ultimate act of compassion, love and loss. Witnessing it at the end of that fucking awful day, it very nearly broke me.

  16

  Last Acts

  The bloody events of 6 September had brought the risks of holding the district centres into sharp relief. It was not something that had been lost on Ed Butler. As the senior commander responsible for the lives of British soldiers, the inability to guarantee the evacuation of casualties from Musa Qaleh and the high threat of losing a helicopter caused him deep concern. He began to question the ethical and military practicalities of continuing to hold the district centre and presented his view to PJHQ that Easy Company should be withdrawn. He had already discussed the matter of giving up Musa Qaleh with the ISAF commander, General David Richards. Richards had never liked the strategy of holding the district centres, but it was something that he had been forced to inherit when he took over command of NATO’s operation in Afghanistan. He was also a British officer and was keenly aware of the risks which both Butler and I had spelled out to him. However, he saw any withdrawal as being tantamount to a strategic defeat to the British mission in Helmand and was not prepared to authorize giving up Musa Qaleh. Giving up a district centre would also undermine the authority of the Kabul government that NATO had been sent to support. It was a difficult situation for all concerned, not least the men of Easy Company who were bearing the brunt of political necessity. I knew that David Richards cared passionately about the plight of my soldiers and was working hard to find an alternative Afghan solution to provide security for the district centre. But previous experiences of broken Afghan promises to reinforce Sangin and Now Zad gave me little cause for optimism. I resigned myself to the fact that my men would have to hold out.

  The risks associated with the platoon house strategy and the mounting casualty rate had not gone unnoticed in either the corridors of Whitehall or the British press. Since the beginning of August, 3 PARA Battle Group had suffered another eleven men killed in action and another thirty-one had sustained combat injuries. The loss of fourteen servicemen on an RAF Nimrod surveillance aircraft, which crashed near KAF after a refuelling accident on 2 September, compounded the growing realization of the human cost of conducting operations in Afghanistan. The implications of losing a helicopter were being debated at the highest levels in the MOD. Ministers were also appearing on TV to explain why a mission billed as a peace support operation was costing the lives of so many men. The newspapers talked of Afghanistan being a ‘death-trap’ and used other sensational headlines, such as ‘Soldiers who went to build bridges fight for their lives’. The flawed historical analogy of Rorke’s Drift was also being bandied about in the media again. The mistaken policy of imposing a news blackout was coming home to roost, as the British public was fed a daily diet of hand-wringing commentary and government officials struggled to explain the true nature of the mission in Afghanistan.

  Lacking access to the front line, the media seized on soldiers’ personal accounts of the fighting and the conditions they faced which had managed to find their way into the public domain via YouTube and leaked e-mails. Concerned mothers appeared on TV to talk about their fears for their sons as a result of letters and telephone calls they had received. Home video footage of the fighting taken from ‘head-cams’ strapped to soldiers’ helmets received prime-time viewing when they were aired on news channels. They showed exploding JDAMs, troops clearing compounds with bayonets fixed and heavily tattooed muscle-bound Paras returning fire from the district centres. The unofficial exposure of some of the realities of the operation in Helmand caused consternation in PJHQ. The growing concern in public quarters was hardly surprising, as officials had done little to try to influence the information campaign.

  However, I was surprised by the attitude of some senior serving and retired officers who criticized the scruffy appearance of the soldiers. They failed to appreciate that the heavily bearded Paras who were filmed slugging it out with the Taliban dressed only in T-shirts and flip-flops had just rolled from their sleeping space on the floor to race to a nearby sangar to fight off another attack. Consequently, they did not have the luxury of time to put on anything more than their helmets and combat body armour. The men in 3 PARA always wore full desert battledress on patrols and deliberate operations. But those who criticized from the safety of their armchairs had either never known intensive sustained combat, or had forgotten their experiences. How my men dressed in such circumstances did not concern me; the fact that they could fight was what mattered.

  What did concern me, however, was that the material reaching the home front was one-sided and lacked analysis. It was also alarming the families of my soldiers who were glued to their TV screens and becoming desperately worried about their loved ones. We were not being given the chance to tell our own side of the story and put it into perspective. It was an issue that concerned Ed Butler too and he supported my efforts to get a media news team embedded with the Battle Group. Eventually, we o
vercame the nervousness of many in Whitehall and convinced them that we were in danger of losing the media war.

  Bill Neely and Eugene Campbell arrived from ITN on 8 September. Courteous and charming, the two Irishmen immediately struck up a good rapport with the Battle Group. They wanted to get up to Sangin and I was prepared to get them there, but they accepted that the risks of getting a helicopter into the district centre meant that I would not lay on an aircraft just for them. They were prepared to wait for places on the next available flight and were content to film other Battle Group activities in less risk areas during the two weeks that they waited to get in. They spent a day with the Patrols Platoon out in the desert and accompanied A Company on patrol into Gereshk. Getting the ITN crew to Gereshk was central, as it would add some balance to the media coverage by demonstrating that there was at least one place where 3 PARA wasn’t fighting.

  A Company moved to FOB Price after being relieved in Sangin at the end of August. Patrolling into the town to try to kick-start the thirty-plus quick-impact projects we proposed was an important part of the effort to do some reconstruction and development before the Battle Group left Helmand. Lashkar Gah was the one other area where British troops operated and there was no fighting. There had been the odd suicide bomb and one RPG attack against the PRT headquarters, but these isolated incidents were nothing compared to the fighting in the district centres. But it had not stopped DFID from withdrawing its staff. Little on the development front had been achieved outside Lashkar Gah, but Ed Butler and I were determined that we would try to accomplish something. With DFID’s departure it was clear that it would have to be with a military lead. Additional military Engineers had been sent out to bolster UKTF’s efforts and the first task was to get them into Gereshk to look at potential security development projects to support the ANP. However, moving to an area where there was no fighting was a stark contrast to being in Sangin where A Company had experienced continuous contact. Some of Jamie Loden’s company found it difficult to adjust to an environment where their focus suddenly changed from intensive contact to patrolling in the streets of Gereshk in soft hats, protecting the Engineers and shaking hands with the locals. Some were relieved to be out of Sangin. But some felt guilty that they no longer faced the same level of danger that others members of the Battle Group were experiencing. As far as I was concerned A Company had done their bit.