Lethal Shot

by Robert Driscoll

  I think I’m going mad.

  Come D-Day, however, and I was settled. I knew what I needed – what I wanted – to do. I had to get back to Daqhiqh. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t ashamed, I was a marine. And I had a job to do.

  My dad drove me to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. I wish it could have been a more pleasurable experience for him. I remember trying to articulate what was going through my head – with him a chief inspector in the Met, there was a good chance he would understand. The thoughts I managed to spit out were honest, but I’m not sure they were coherent.

  I just needed to get back … home.

  * * *

  Camp Bastion never looked so appealing. I picked up the box containing my uniform, grenades, ammo, etc. and nearly threw up at the stench of some of it. To say it had seen better days was an understatement. The fella in the store – doing the job I used to do – asked me if I wanted new supplies of anything. I looked at the desert camouflage rags, the well-worn gloves, the dented helmet and distressed boots, and thought, They’ve got me this far – they’ll do me all right. I can’t explain it with any logic. I was operating on pure instinct. Every bit of kit with my name on had played its part in keeping me alive when plenty of my mates hadn’t been so lucky. Who was to say it was a coincidence? Stench or no stench, I couldn’t risk changing even a pair of socks.

  Buoyed by superstition, I went next to the shop and loaded up on enough cigarettes for the next few months, then went for a mini debrief. They showed me into their ops room. It was like something out of Star Trek. Huge screens, data flying everywhere, maps alight with dots and moving icons.

  They showed me Daqhiqh. It was red with action.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘The same as every day you’ve been gone. The same as every day you’ve been there.’

  August, it seemed, was going to be as kinetic as July.

  But I was soon given bigger things to worry about. Green 13 had been the most active district in the region and there were no signs of anything changing soon. In the short time I’d been away there had been several nine-liners sent from my boys’ patrol or M’lord’s or Al Blackman’s or Tom Phillips’s near by. More worryingly, we had proof from locals that every compound in the vicinity had been receiving letters by post saying, ‘Co-operate with the Americans and you will die.’

  There was no doubt: the whole area was under Taliban control.

  Not just Daqhiqh, either. I arrived back at my CP to learn that one of Taalander’s men – Marine James Wright, whom I’d met and liked – had lost his life. It was just his misfortune. He’d been out on patrol, they’d seen a firefight and made it back to camp. The lads were either repairing their kit or resting. Jim had been in his tent when a grenade came over the compound wall and landed square on him.

  UGLs –underslung grenade launchers – are serious weapons in the right hands. They can be fired from up to 200 metres away and hit with the ferocity of an IED. The truth is, we’d suffered attacks from them more times than anyone. But Daqhiqh was the size of two football pitches. The odds of landing a grenade on anything of note from a distance was remote, and so it proved. We lost bits of tree, bits of wall, bits of storage room. Our biggest casualty was the HLS – hence the engineers having to come back to fix it. Had the Taliban gained an inkling of our layout it would have been worse. But they were in the dark, and that was how I intended to keep it.

  Jim wasn’t the only casualty. Shortly after my return we received notification of a ‘man-away’ from a Scottish section of L Company. There had been a couple of incidents over the years of men going missing during a battle or an evacuation. But Marine policy is always to go back. As soon as HQ realised there was a problem we were all called into action.

  Canals and waterways had to be searched, road blocks established. Since we were situated on one of the major routes we stepped out and set up a block. We searched cars, trucks, even tractors. No bale of hay went by unscrutinised. This lasted a couple of days. Then we got word that a body had been found.

  Crucified.

  It was reported in the international media, but the full truth was held back. Only those of us on the ground got wind of the true horror of that young Scot’s death. I can’t say it filled me with anything other than a desire – no, a passion – to see the bastards responsible die. Perhaps I’d have sought justice once. But in August 2011, after everything I’d seen, justice and death had become one and the same to me.

  I wasn’t alone. For the next few days every patrol in the region had an added spice to it. If a moped went by that we didn’t like the look of, instead of flagging it down and tutting if it didn’t stop, my guys were rifle-butting the driver’s helmets the second they were in reach. If you think that’s wrong, consider this: nine out of ten drivers we did it to flagged up red on the biometric scanners. I put it to you that had we been able to roll out that kind of initiative to our firefights then certain incidents, certain casualties, even certain fatalities could have been avoided.

  I wish I could say the arrests gave us any pleasure. The reality is that each man in Daqhiqh knew that for every insurgent we arrested, processed and despatched back to Camp Bastion, most of them would reappear on the streets a few weeks later. What was the point of risking our lives apprehending Mohamed Mohamed one day, to watch him blow up a convoy a fortnight later?

  The lads were beginning to whisper. Once that happens in a camp, then you’re on the slippery slope. Authority in war is key. But what could I say? I knew that authorities above our new Sunray weren’t on the same page as us. I knew because of the constant questioning of the reports I filed. I knew because of the constant denial of the assistance I requested. I knew because it didn’t matter what we did to the Taliban, they were confident that they’d stay one step ahead of us because they had no rules. And we did. Rules for everything. As commander of the multiple it was my job to head off any such grumblings among my lads. But what if I believed them myself?

  I’m not sure how long I can keep doing this …

  * * *

  During my R&R, our new Sunray at Shazaad, had been liaising with the captain of the Afghan National Army (ANA) contingent based to the north of us. Now, the army could loosely – and I mean loosely – be described as professional. Compared with the Afghan National Police, however, they were gods (the police were mercenaries, scum – pick an insult and if they hadn’t earned it already they soon would). Since Ollie had gone, the remains of his OMLT (operational mentoring and liaison team) had been mentoring the shit out of the military, while the SFSG’s work with the Afghan forces was having results. But there was still a morality gap between us all. What we considered out of bounds they considered normal. The temptation was, of course, to dismiss their views as those of the primitive state. But as time went on …

  By the time I returned the main parties had agreed for us jointly to host a shura – which seemed sensible enough. They’d also agreed that we would march north and conduct joint patrols with the ANA – which was not so well received by me or the lads. It felt bad tarring them all with the same brush, but the ANA guys we’d met didn’t exactly fill us with confidence. They were of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later school. And they didn’t particularly mind who they shot.

  The shura went surprisingly well. The locals listened to us, and when we invited suggestions for co-operative operations they had a list. Their biggest bugbear was water supply. Any problem up towards the north of Helmand had a knock-on effect, often resulting in the water being turned off. Without a regular flow the irrigation to their non-opium crops would be affected.

  So we said, ‘We’ve got all these engineers, maybe we could help.’

  The engineers came up with a plan to enlarge culverts under the road, to improve the flow of water. At the same time they worked to educate the locals – and engage them in the graft. For three weeks specialists from Bastion and dozens of young men from the area worked together to unblock streams and create a new, m
ore effective network. The plan was twofold: one, to engender goodwill among the locals; and, two, to decrease the danger towards us. If all the young men in the area were working, they couldn’t be shooting at us.

  Even in the darkest situations you find the humour. 42 Commando had been posted to Afghan to ‘build bridges’, and there we were, quite literally, doing that. All we needed next was to win some genuine hearts and minds …

  Whatever our intentions, the threat was never far away. The shura itself had been packed with many of these young men, stationed there to intimidate the locals, I’m sure. Our biggest worry, however, was the Afghan Army. A lot of the infrastructure being plumbed in needed equipment to be shipped up to us. Much of it had to be stored overnight at Daqhiqh. That meant a ton of Afghan military and Afghan police staying with us. Not a thought to give you a good night’s sleep – not that we ever had that luxury. We didn’t know them, we didn’t trust them, we didn’t even speak the lingo. And they outnumbered us two or three to one. There were reports buzzing around of the insurgency infiltrating the armed forces. What if these strangers were a Trojan Horse? We could all be killed in our beds. It was a security nightmare.

  In a weird way, the only proof we had that there weren’t moles in the camp was when the military escorting the supplies up from Shazaad were attacked. We knew from Mohamed Mohamed that the Taliban wouldn’t usually target their own. But we also knew their respect for human life was markedly different from our own Western ideals.

  On the day of the final supply delivery the convoy was between Omar and us when it struck an IED and immediately came under fire from watching insurgents hidden in the tree line. We were the closest CP. I scrambled a QRF (quick reaction force) together and we hightailed it down Cornwall as fast as the Vallon man could clear a route. We were within sight of the convoy when the shooting started coming in our direction.

  ‘I need eyes on the shooters,’ I screamed at the men ahead of me.

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’ Matt came back. ‘I think it’s the army shooting.’

  Fergie knew my doubts about the ANA. He was straight in my ear.

  ‘You think they’ve turned?’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I think they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.’

  We were on the radio for what seemed like minutes trying to get the message across that we were there to help. Then the Afghan police started taking pot shots at us as well. It was ridiculous, and was only going to get worse. For them, at least.

  We managed to secure the area. In pure numbers we dwarfed whatever force the Taliban had mustered in the trees. While my lads provided cover and basic medical aid, our new medic launched herself on one of the seriously injured ANA guys – ‘herself’ being the operative word.

  The man, who had a hole in his side, immediately started spasming. Another soldier blocked the medic’s way and shouted something.

  ‘Max,’ I said, ‘get over here.’

  It turned out the Afghan victim was refusing care from a female.

  ‘But he’s going to die without her,’ Max explained, to no avail. The soldiers pointed to my men and said, ‘We’ll only be treated by them.’

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d trust my multiple to patch me up any day of the week. Tourniquets, emergency care, it’s all in the training. But anything beyond – anything like extensive trauma injuries – requires specialist surgical skills. For that, if you’ve got any sense, you get the professionals. In the end two of us had to administer the medical care with our medic pulling all the strings like a puppet master.

  Somehow it worked, and we stabilised the casualty. But any satisfaction I got from watching our team pull lives back from the brink was overwhelmed by the feeling – not for the first time – that these people didn’t want to be saved.

  You’d rather die than be mended by a woman? Someone explain to me how that helps anyone. Or any god.

  You might think that trust is a universal concept. I beg to differ. Even though we’d risked our own lives to save theirs, I never thought it would count for anything with the Afghan soldiers. Back at the CP I still couldn’t relax with our visitors. In the end, nothing happened. Not directly, anyway. But after the convoys stopped lodging with us, the grenades that were lobbed our way on an almost daily basis suddenly became a lot more targeted. Whereas they had used to hit the walls fairly harmlessly or cascade down from the trees in the orchard, now they were all landing within spitting distance of the ops room, my tent, the canteen, the ammo hut. It was almost as if the Taliban had acquired inside information about Daqhiqh.

  ‘That’s it,’ I instructed everyone. ‘Not one more Afghan sets foot inside these walls.’

  I looked at our interpreters.

  ‘No offence, Max, John.’

  Max laughed. ‘You’ll get no complaint from us. You should have made that call ages ago.’

  * * *

  For as long as I live, the whole ‘I’d rather die than be touched by a woman’ thing will never make sense to me. At least in the case of the wounded Afghan soldier he had been making the decision for himself. That I could just about accept. When it was someone deciding the fate of a person in their care I wanted to do unspeakable things to them.

  There was a kerfuffle at the gate one day which turned out to be the arrival of a man with a wheelbarrow. He got the full weapons-on-standby welcome until we realised that the cargo he was pushing was a young boy. Very young and very, very sick. I actually thought he was dead. The smell of rotting flesh was nauseating from metres away. The boy had been caught up in some kind of explosion. The man said from one of our mortars; I felt it looked more like shrapnel from an IED. For that reason I couldn’t get the kid out by casevac. But we had the next best thing.

  ‘Leave the boy here,’ I said. ‘We’ll do what we can.’

  Fergie said, ‘Well done for not letting the dad in. I wouldn’t put it past these people to injure their own kids to get eyes in here.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought. How sick are we for even thinking that?’

  ‘You can only play the hand you’re dealt.’

  We were both right.

  Our medic cleaned the wound and applied what treatments she could. Then we put the boy back in the barrow and handed him over to his father

  ‘Bring him back tomorrow,’ I said. ‘He needs regular treatment.’

  Over the next few days we repeated the process. Gradually I saw an improvement in the lad. The father was pleased as well. On day 5 he was so smiley and chatty that my man on the gate forgot to make him wait outside.

  Big error.

  The medic was already getting ready to receive her patient when the dad came running over, screaming unintelligible noises and gesticulating at the woman. Before we could do anything he scooped up the wheelbarrow handles and ran his son back out of the CP. Absolute madness, if you ask me. And fucking selfish as well.

  ‘What do you reckon the kid’s chances are?’ I asked the medic.

  She was pulling her hair out. ‘If he kept coming here, fifty-fifty, maybe sixty-forty. Out there …?’ Her voice trailed off.

  I was angry. Not for the first time, I felt impotent. Three days later I’d had enough.

  ‘I’m going to get that kid.’

  I made a point of engineering our patrol that day so that it finished off by the dad’s compound. I knocked on the door and demanded to to be let inside. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly welcoming. Not threatening, but not happy either.

  I knew immediately the boy was dead.

  I looked in the father’s eyes and said, ‘You killed him.’

  He didn’t need to speak English to get the message.

  Barely two weeks later there was another case, worse I’d say. The Afghan police had set up a road block on Route Cornwall. A car hadn’t stopped so they’d shot at it. The driver wasn’t an insurgent – he was just late for prayers. So late he thought it worth his wife being shot and his daughter injured when the car crashed.

  As the closest
CP we went straight out to help. The car was a write-off. The mother and daughter weren’t much better. We all dived in to help but the driver took one look at our medic and it was the usual story.

  ‘She can’t touch us!’

  I was shouting at John, ‘Tell him his family are going to die unless he lets us help.’

  John told him, but it didn’t matter. The man was too distressed to listen. He had some sort of rag which he kept hugging. What did help was John starting to recite passages from the Holy Book. It calmed the man down, and for a minute I thought he was going to let us tend to his daughter at least.

  But no.

  I watched those two poor people bleed out before my eyes. If I’d had my way there would have only been one casualty, and it wouldn’t have been the women. That man – that fucking horrible excuse for a father and husband – chose to rub some shitty cloth on his wife while she died rather than allow another woman to save their lives.

  Remind me why we’re trying to save these people.

  * * *

  When it came to reporting the convoy incident I explained the facts as I recalled them. Not for the first time, I got the distinct impression that the severity of the ambush wasn’t being considered. When I saw a copy of the official report it wasn’t exactly airbrushed but it wouldn’t make anyone reading feel that thirty-plus men and women had been exposed to a life-or-death situation.

  It was the same story every time I made my daily updates to Shazaad. I’d list the number of grenades landing in our compound, the number of bullet strikes picked up by the sonar scanner, the sheer aggression we’d faced that day out on patrol, and I’d get the sort of reply that made me feel they didn’t believe me. I knew that wasn’t true. We had cameras on our helmets, we had computer read-outs, we had data from every weapon discharged. So it wasn’t that they didn’t believe what my multiple was going through.