Then we moved on to map-reading, and how to plot targets. My dad was big into hill walking, so my compass and orienteering skills weren’t all bad. I’d pretty much mastered them in the Army. But working to latitude and longitude grid references was all new to me, and a real mind game. We were tested every week, on the dreaded Friday afternoons. Fail those Friday tests, and the instructors would bin you.
You could pass all the exams, but that still didn’t mean you’d make it as a JTAC. It was the instructors’ role to ensure we trainees had those certain, intangible qualities that were required of a fully combat-ready JTAC: you had to have the gift of the gab, and to be able to think on your feet, whilst splitting your mind into many different dimensions all at once.
This was how the instructors put it: imagine you’re doing a lowlevel attack at fifty feet, and you have sixty seconds to get the pilot’s eyes on target and let him have time to arm his weapons systems and release. You’re doing the talk-on, and at low level like this there’s no second chance; he’ll not do a re-attack, for the risk of being shot down is too great. If you can’t think and talk that fast you won’t hack it as a JTAC.
They taught us big, medium and small — as the priority of features to talk the pilot on to. You’d start big, choosing a distinctive woodstrip, white building or a yellow field between two green ones. Once you’d got the pilot visual with that, you’d go smaller, and finally to pinpoint detail. With each talk-on you had to ‘see’ it all from the pilot’s perspective. You had to put yourself in the cockpit, and imagine his view of the battlefield over the nose cone of the aircraft. From there you’d use the clock-distance-object method for the talk-on. For example: three o’clock from the parked vehicle, at one hundred metres’ distance, bunker position.
That aspect — doing the talk-on from the pilot’s perspective — was what most of the trainees failed on. JFACTSU is purely an intellectual course, with no physical aspect to it. With most of the lads having come from elite units, it was taken as read that we were up for the physical side of things.
There were twelve on my course, and at the end I passed out ‘limited combat-ready’. I was given a certificate, a team photograph of the lads on the course, plus a black leather-bound logbook, for entering my controls. Months of dry-run training and exercises would follow before I could take my new skills to war.
Cuff coached me over the months ahead, becoming my Sub-FAC, or mentor. He watched over me in the UK as I did dummy runs on the ranges, using aircraft dropping concrete bombs. Then in Canada and the US he ‘daddied’ me, as I did my first controls using jets dropping live ordnance and firing live rounds. By the time I was done, Cuff had become a true mate. I was his creation, his JTAC, and he’d moulded me in his image. When I passed out, there were 178 combat-ready JTACs in the entire British military. There were precious few of us to go round.
With JTACs being in such short supply, I’d been immediately posted to 2 MERCIAN for the six months of their Afghan tour. 2 MERCIAN were a tough infantry regiment, whose soldiering ethos relied on taking the fight to the enemy on foot and at close quarters. I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of lads to be fighting with.
And we’d need to be at the absolute top our game for the next mission. We’d be going deep into the Green Zone, where we’d not only be taking enemy territory, but holding it.
Few if any British soldiers had occupied territory this deep in the Green Zone. We were going into the unknown.
Eight
BUM LOVE TUESDAY
A couple of days after my low-level stunt with the B-1B at FOB Price, Chris returned from a briefing with the OC, and told me the good news. Intel reports had the enemy reoccupying their positions at Adin Zai. They’d reinforced the place with hundreds of fighters from their base further east, at Siurakay. They were making a stand at Adin Zai, and we were going back in to take them on.
This time round, the OC’s plan of attack was markedly different. At first his orders were to take the company back into the Green Zone on a full-frontal assault, but he had refused to do that. The enemy had learnt well the lessons of our first battle. Butsy was convinced they would allow us to advance, then surround us at close quarters so we couldn’t use the air.
Instead, he planned to strike first at the village of Rahim Kalay, to the east of Adin Zai. From there we’d hook back round, taking Adin Zai from the opposite direction and by surprise. He demanded and was given full air cover for the entire duration of the mission.
He also had an elite Czech Army unit placed under his command. Butsy was well pleased: we’d worked with the Czechs before; they were crack soldiers and they’d never let us down. They were a force multiplier par excellence. He’d used the Czechs to harass the enemy from the flanks, as the company went in to attack.
There was one other crucial difference in the coming battle: once we’d taken the ground, we were to hold it. There would be no pulling out. We were to take enemy territory deep in the Green Zone, and make it our own. Adin Zai — and Rahim Kalay with it — was going to be B Company’s stalking ground for the remainder of our tour.
We began the mission to retake Adin Zai by throwing out probing patrols, to test the enemy’s forward lines. We were returning in convoy from one such patrol, when we got a radio message: I was to be dropped at Patrol Base North (PB North).
Two fortified patrol bases (PBs) had been constructed a kilometre back from Adin Zai, on the desert high ground. Intel reports had the enemy massing for an attack on one of those bases.
It had been a bad day already. Earlier I’d got news that we’d lost a Danish JTAC. I’d never met Norseman Two Two. He was working further up the valley, towards Sangin. But we’d chatted over the air, and I felt like we were good mates. His vehicle had gone over a mine whilst he was doing a live drop, and he’d been killed outright.
The news that I was to be left that night at PB North made it a total shit of a day. PB North was occupied by eight Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English. Some British Army lads were supposed to be joining us, but it was 1300 and there was no sign of them. I wasn’t the slightest bit happy.
There was no sense in leaving a JTAC alone in a base occupied by soldiers with whom he couldn’t communicate. Orders were that I had to stay to coordinate the air, but if that was the case why didn’t I have a couple of lads with me? Why didn’t Sticky or Throp get to stay? I’d feel a whole lot better that way.
It was a load of bollocks dumping a lone British squaddie in a base populated solely by Afghan soldiers, for there were also plenty of tales about how bastard bent they could be. But the order that I was to stay had come direct from the top, for the patrol bases needed a JTAC. As our convoy pulled away from the base leaving me behind, I felt pissed as hell.
I glanced around PB North — the place where the lads had abandoned me. It was a triangular structure build from massive HESCO Bastion walling — rectangular, wire-framed cages filled with rock and earth. On each corner of the base was a sangar, a fortified firing point. Just one, gated entrance led into the base.
It wasn’t so much the fortifications I mistrusted, it was the guys that I’d been left here with. No one was saying a great deal, for we didn’t have the words to communicate, but the Afghan soldiers did offer me some local unleavened bread. As I took a token nibble, they asked me what I did as a soldier. I pointed at the bread and mimed kneading a loaf. They were staring at me like I was totally cracked.
‘Chef,’ I told them. ‘Army chef. Cooking. I bake bread and make scoff for the lads.’
I reckoned if I told them I was a JTAC, that would only give them a bigger incentive to sell me out to the enemy. I was paranoid I was going to end up with a new uniform — an orange boiler suit, like those poor bloody hostages in Iraq.
I’d noticed that there were two Toyota four-wheel drives parked up in the base. I wondered whether I should nick one and do a Mad Max and drive the half-mile down to PB South, for I knew there was
a British Army contingent down there.
Before I could make a decision either way, the Afghan soldiers mounted up, two to each truck, and without a word they roared out of the gates. That was that, then. I wouldn’t be stealing a Toyota any time soon. Maybe they were heading off to have a chat with their Taliban mates, to ask how much a fat British chef was worth.
It was a sticky, sweaty, burning hot afternoon and I was in a foul temper. I’d spotted a well in a deserted compound to one side of the base. I decided to go and have a wash and a cool down. I grabbed my rifle, my spare mags and my JTAC kit, and wandered over.
I was stripped naked and tipping the cool water over my head, when I felt a presence behind me. I didn’t give a fuck that I had my three-card trick out: I spun around, making an instinctive lunge for my SA80. Standing there were two soldiers from the base. They’d obviously been having a good look at me stark bollock naked, and lathered in soap.
I noticed that they were holding hands. I also noticed that they were both wearing bright red nail varnish. No British soldier who’d spent more than a few days in Helmand could fail to have heard rumours about our Afghan colleagues’ reputation for manlove. Apparently some of them were about as straight as a bloody roundabout.
We’d all of us been told about ‘Bum Love Tuesday’ — or was it Thursday? — the day of the week when they’d get it on with each other. With my rifle levelled and a few choice gestures, I made it clear that wasn’t my bag. They were to fuck off and leave me alone.
They turned and left for the main base. But I was boiling now. I was fuming. As I rinsed off I just kept thinking: How the fuck can they leave me in the middle of bandit country alone with a load of ANA I can’t even communicate with! And what’s the point in bloody washing myself? I’m only getting clean so I can put on my orange boiler suit when the kidnap team return.
I finished washing, returned to the base and got on my TACSAT — the only means I had of communicating with FOB Price. I dialled up Damo Martin, the captain who ran Fire Control Planning (FCP) cell — the JTAC’s ops room back at FOB Price. Damo was a fellow JTAC and a down-to-earth kind of bloke. I’d never been one to mince my words, and I gave it to him straight.
‘Widow Eight Two, this is Widow Seven Nine: I want to know what the fuck is going on!’ I fumed. ‘What the fuck’re you lot doing, leaving me up here? On my own? What a totally fucking twatful situation to leave me in…’
No one could explain why I’d been dumped at the base on my own, without even an interpreter. It was all a mix-up of communications and planning. Butsy was massively pissed off that I’d been left here, and that he’d lost his JTAC. The bad news was that no one was able to come and fetch me today, so I’d have to man it out. A patrol would come to relieve me first thing in the morning.
I bedded down under a sheet of cam-netting that I’d rigged up against one wall. I positioned myself to one side of the main gate, where I could keep good watch on it. I had my TACSAT ready and I did a weapons check.
I had six full mags on my chest-webbing, and one in the SA80 — so that made 210 rounds in all. That should keep me going for a while. I carried a Browning 9mm pistol as back-up weapon, with three, thirteen-round mags. Plus I had two fragmentation grenades, one in a chest pouch and one in my backpack.
I kept an eye on the sangars, and the Afghans did have a sentry in each. Trouble was they kept strolling between the towers, to have a natter. Whenever they did so it left one side of the triangular fort unguarded. I resigned myself to a long and restless night, for no way was I going to sleep in this place.
At last light the Toyotas returned. It seemed they’d been on a bread-run, and not selling me out to the Taliban. The fresh bread actually smelled gorgeous, so I went and got some scoff. But there was about as much crack as a one-inch whip, for we couldn’t talk.
Once I’d stuffed myself I got under my cam-net with my loaded rifle, and resumed my position and state of watchfulness. The attack came at 2100.
From out of nowhere a barrage of fire hit the sangar on the southeast corner. I was on my feet and up to the top like a rat up a drainpipe. Two of the ANA soldiers came pelting after me, so we were three Afghans and me in the sangar, facing however many were hitting us.
‘Taliban try break in!’ one of the ANA lads yelled.
I flipped my night-vision monocle down over my right eye, pulled my rifle into the aim, and got on the TACSAT. I’d managed to scrounge a TACSAT headset from the Danish contingent at FOB Price. It clipped on to my helmet, and I could speak into it handsfree, so I could talk and shoot at the same time.
‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine, d’you copy?’ I yelled, as I squeezed off my first round.
Two of the attackers were in the bush fifty metres below, and one of them was hefting an RPG. Muzzle flashes sparked eerily in the green fuzz of the night-vision, the tracer rounds smudging limecoloured slugs across the distance between us. I watched my own tracer chew into the dirt just short of the RPG-gunner’s head, and ratcheted up my aim.
‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC, you’re loud and clear.’
‘Sitrep: TIC PB North,’ I yelled. ‘Need immediate CAS.’
‘Roger that. Rammit Six One inbound your position six minutes.’
I had a Dutch F-16 six minutes out. In the meantime I was going to have to try to stay alive and kill some of the bastard enemy. Rounds were slamming into the sangar thick and fast. An RPG hammered through the darkness just above our heads.
I adjusted my aim on the RPG-gunner who was darting about like a madman, but as I went to fire one of the ANA lads tried to shove me out the way.
‘No one shoot you today!’ he yelled. ‘I die! I die!’
He tried to get between me and the enemy bullets, as he loosed off what seemed like an entire AK-47 mag with barely an attempt to aim. Nine out of ten for showmanship, but nowt for killing the enemy.
‘This is how it’s done, you nugget,’ I growled. ‘Watch my tracer!’
I steadied my aim, got the needle sight on the RPG-gunner’s head, and fired. I saw a round plough into the guy’s face, and an instant later he was laid out flat and unmoving. All the ANA lads were blatting away, so any one of us could have dropped the RPG-gunner. But in my head I claimed the kill, for their sense of aim was haywire.
As the enemy’s gunner’s mucker tried to drag the bloodied body away, another leapt forwards to claim the RPG. I readjusted my aim, and fired again and again. The noise on the sangar was deafening, but mostly it was the ANA boys loosing off wild bursts. They had no night-vision, but that didn’t prevent them from aiming at the enemy muzzle flashes. Generally, if you aimed just below and to the right of the flash, you’d hit the gunman in the chest or even the heart.
‘Listen, fucking calm down!’ I yelled at the ANA lads. ‘Do as I do. Nice, aimed single shots, that’s the way to nail ’em.’
I had a horrible feeling it was going to be a long night’s fighting. As we traded fire with the enemy, I gave the ANA boys an impromptu lesson on fire discipline, and how to conserve their ammo.
We hadn’t killed that many when the contact died down. I didn’t know if the enemy had called it off, or if they were regrouping to try another line of attack. I didn’t like the situation one little bit. There were nine of ‘us’ and god only knows how many of them.
Had I been with eight 2 MERCIAN lads, I’d have happily defended that base all night long. As it was, this was the worst moment of my entire tour. I had dark visions of the enemy battering down the gates — or being let in by some traitorous ANA bastard — and of capture and torture or worse. Well, no way was that going to happen. I vowed to keep a last bullet for myself. If it came to it, I’d put the last round in my head and blow my brains all to hell.
I got Rammit Six One flying recces all around the base. For forty-five minutes the pilot didn’t spot a thing. Finally, I got a call from Widow TOC that the jet was coming off station, as nothing was happening. I persuaded the pilot to do a final low-level show of force ri
ght over the top of us.
By now the ANA were staring at me, wondering who the hell I was talking to on the TACSAT. I guess they suspected I wasn’t your average chef. They could hear the jet whizzing about overhead, but I had no idea if they’d connected it to me or not. I hoped they hadn’t. I’d much rather remain a cook in their eyes. I asked the pilot to make his run from east to west, so he came in right across the Green Zone. And I asked him to achieve sonic boom as he passed over us, just to wake the ANA up a little.
They were gabbling away nineteen-to-the-dozen about the attack, when the jet appeared over the eastern sangar, almost kissing the top of the HESCO. It loomed out of the pitch black like some monster alien spacecraft, and pulled up into a screaming climb, spitting cartwheels of fire.
The ANA lads were in a right flap. The three sentries abandoned their sangars, and I watched in utter amazement as one of the lads sprinted out of the gate, haring off into the Green Zone.
So there I was in PB North with no sentries, seven Afghan soldiers cowering in the centre of the fort, and one AWOL somewhere in the Green Zone. Smart. I sat up straight, back to the wall, and cradled my gun. I was in my position beneath the camo-net, and I wasn’t moving or sleeping. If anyone came through the gate with hostile intent, I’d kill them. I laid out some tabs before me, and sparked up the first. I inhaled deeply, and settled down for a long night.
I had a lot of time to think. I reflected upon the guy that I’d just killed. It was unusual for a JTAC to see your round tearing into the face of the enemy. Normally, you’d be dropping the big munitions at a distance, not killing up close and personal. The death of that RPG-gunner had been graphic, and the image was burned into my mind.
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