While my three lads automatically returned fire, the Army kids just watched.
‘What are you waiting for?’ I shouted. ‘Get stuck in.’
They all nodded and began loading their weapons.
‘You weren’t loaded? What the …’
I had to bite my tongue. They were good lads, just badly drilled. What do you expect when you can pass the basic Army course in three months? There’s a reason we Royal Marines are the best at what we do. All of us. My guys were as experienced as me. Most of them could have led the multiple. I’d never once had to remind them to load their weapons. It was something we’d done from Day 1. I certainly never had to tell them to return fire. They weren’t kids. They were Marines. Commandos. Green Berets. If ever I doubted what that stood for, I saw it then, during those final days of my tour.
Not everyone who joined my multiple was a dead weight. My mate Pinky made a very welcome return. Travelling up and down Helmand with his colleagues capturing the battle groups’ stories on camera had its highlights but, with his time in Afghan drawing to an end, he’d moved mountains to get a gig with us. His bosses had said ‘yes’ and obviously I had no complaints. I’d have taken my mum. I was that desperate for bodies I could rely on.
‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for,’ I laughed.
‘I’ve done all the training you have.’
‘Yeah, keep telling yourself that.’
Despite struggling to fill a patrol, I still hadn’t given up on trying to get one over on the Taliban. If Al Blackman was still scoring victories this late in the day, why couldn’t we? I was going over the data from recent marches and analysing where we’d encountered contact – that is, been shot at. It was easy to see the patterns. A plan had formed in my mind: I would send out two patrols. One would be ‘normal’. The other would be ‘ghost’. The ‘normal’ patrol would take a route where we’d always suffered fire and would, in theory, take the insurgents’ attention, while the ghost mob would take the latter out. I put the plan before the troops. Everyone approved; everyone was eager to go.
The next morning, literally minutes after Pinky arrived, I announced we were going. Pinky was keen to join us: ‘I’ll catch a few winks later,’ he said. Our first patrol moved out. On paper it was a suicide mission. Six men do not a workable patrol make, but I was banking on the Taliban not smelling a rat. That was the decoy. Twenty minutes behind those lads was my mob, my half-dozen men, including Pinky. We were following in the shadows. In the trees, in the bushes. Out of sight.
Very early on we knew it was working. The ICOM chatter was all about the first patrol. Whether they knew it or not, they were being monitored every slow step of the way. When they reached the field where we were always targeted I warned, ‘Slow down. Get prepared. Let us catch up.’
They moved in. They were halfway through the field when I saw activity beyond the far perimeter. Several mopeds were pulling to a halt. Men were disappearing behind the stone wall. From experience I knew they would be unearthing arms from various bushes, trees and hidey-holes. Then it happened.
Patrol 1 was 100 metres from the edge of the field when I saw an insurgent step out with a rifle. I wasn’t the only one who spotted him. Fergie and Pinky were right by my side. Without a word we all raised our weapons. Without a word we all took aim. Without a word we fired.
Warning shots.
Three warning rounds echoed around the field. Patrol 1 dropped to their knees. My patrol followed suit. The Taliban man disappeared behind the wall. There was a burst of shouting, a squeal of rubber and suddenly they were all gone.
‘Cheers, boss,’ the leader of Patrol 1 said over the radio.
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied.
But inside I was torn up. Why had I fired a warning shot? Why hadn’t I ended the bastard? The whole point of the exercise was to fire a lethal shot. Why hadn’t I? And why hadn’t the others?
They were experiencing the same anguish.
‘I wish I’d ended him,’ Pinky said. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t.’
‘Because you’re a fucking commando and not a piece of Afghan scum,’ Fergie growled.
Pinky began to reply but Fergie cut him dead.
‘I wish I’d finished him too. I fucking hate being British sometimes.’
‘Aye,’ we all agreed. ‘You can be too nice.’
* * *
Patrols over the next few days went from the dangerous to the insane. Back at Daqhiqh we were on constant look-out for new holes in the wall. Two days in, Pinky was sweating adrenalin. It could have been blood. He’d had a tough tour, like many others, but nothing like this. He’d certainly never been shot at so many times.
‘How the fuck have you been coping with this?’ he said. ‘It’s unreal.’
I just shrugged. To this day I don’t know how we got through it. Especially suffering as few casualties as we did taking the risks we took on the amount of sleep we had been getting.
Personally I couldn’t sleep for worrying about locals digging under our defences and ending us where we lay. I didn’t realise I wasn’t the only one until Pinky’s time with us drew to a close. ‘Fourteen hours,’ he said to me. Over the ten days he was with us, he’d had just fourteen hours of sleep, he explained. This was quite normal to the rest of us.
By the end of the month he had left, along with more of my own men. With less than a week left of my tour I began to wind down the offensive side of the patrols. As part of the new boys’ acclimatisation, I led us all down to Omar, to Al Blackman’s checkpoint. The Army boys over whom I was pulling my hair out, all had friends there, so it seemed the decent thing to do. While we were there I was in the ops room chatting with Al about this and that, as usual, when I became aware of a group of his lads and mine laughing around a laptop. I stuck my face in and realised they were uploading films from various marines’ helmet cameras. We’d done the same thing in my multiple. There’s a wicked film of our death run along the canal path back to Toki which sends chills up my spine whenever I see it. One of the lads put a big booming classical soundtrack to it. It sounds epic. My dad has a copy and shows it to everyone who sets foot in his house.
Even though I was seeing the same trees and fields as Omar, it was interesting to watch their perspective on everything. Suddenly a film clip started playing that got everyone’s attention.
‘When’s this from?’ I asked.
‘The day we took down the insurgent,’ one of the marines said, ‘15 September.’
As I craned my neck to see that tiny screen I realised how much I had missed during the radio broadcasts on that day. There had been plenty of snatches of dialogue that I did hear, though. Plenty of Al’s orders to his men to wait for the Apache, to get ready in case the gunship didn’t destroy its targets. Other radio chat that, if I’m honest, I felt uncomfortable listening to. As the Apache approached the insurgents in the field and then deployed, the men from Omar were all whooping and hollering and cheering, like American spectators at the Ryder Cup. I half expected someone to yell, ‘Get in the hole!’
It was ugly. While everyone else laughed I couldn’t join in. The film showed the patrol to be unprofessional at best. Considering what had happened to their brothers, Sam, Ollie and Kaz, you could understand why. But it didn’t look good. Maybe because I was detached from the group I had that distance, allowing me to see what they could not.
Just when I thought I’d seen the worst, the film began to show the moments when Al and his boys had discovered that the Apache had failed in its kill mission. ‘The cunt’s still alive,’ one of them said. There was general derision at the chopper’s failure. Again, not the drilled responses you expect of the corps.
I watched as they were shown going over to the bodies. The images were obviously jumpy but I saw them discover the insurgent was alive. I heard them speak to HQ about their options and I saw a couple of the lads, Corporal Chris Watson and Marine Jack Hammond, begin to apply first aid. Al put a stop to that. The
messages from HQ, even now, listening to the recording, were to my ears vague. The insurgent was then dragged around. He might have been roughed up. Then I saw Al Blackman draw his 9mm pistol and shoot the man in the chest.
None of it was how I would have done it. But the result was the same. If it had been I who discovered that Taliban youth half dead then I would have finished the job. No question. That’s what the Apache had been deployed to do. That’s what I would have done. I would have expected the same response from any of my men, as well. We were at war. This man had been trying to kill us all. He’d failed, and had got his comeuppance.
It was the way it was done that was ugly. Clearly, Al and his team were under pressure. We all were. You could see from the video they were starved of sleep, and the paranoia and hatred that kept them awake at night were palpable. Yet, despite their doing nothing wrong, I sensed that in the wrong hands that film could spell trouble.
‘Lads,’ I said, ‘enjoy the movie but you need to delete it. It was a good kill, no one’s arguing with that, but I tell you now a lot of people will be uncomfortable with the cheerleading. Do yourselves a favour and get rid.’
I gave that order with a clean conscience. There was no attempt at a cover-up, no intention on my part to hide anything. I just knew from my two weeks’ R&R that explaining things to people who haven’t been to Afghan is more trouble than it is worth. We’d suffered enough on this tour – Omar patrol more than anyone. There was no point making unnecessary trouble for ourselves.
There was a general groan, as though I’d grounded a bunch of teenagers. But, with me standing over them, I watched as the movie was deleted from the helmet hard drive and the laptop.
What happens in the Green Zone stays in the Green Zone …
I honestly thought no more about that day, or the film. I’d seen too many worse horrors for it to register. We did a few more acclimatisation patrols. On each one there were fewer of my men and more of the Army nods. We were disappearing as quickly as we’d arrived. As per tradition, the sergeant leaves the checkpoint after everyone else. First in, last out. A few of the lads wouldn’t let me do it alone. Fergie and Mac both insisted on seeing out the last twitches of the tour by my side, the way we’d done everything. Finally, in early October, our time came.
I can’t say I looked back as we were driven away from Daqhiqh. There were no wistful glances out of the rear window of the massive transporter. It was a time for looking forward. A time for new experiences. A time to get back to being a normal human.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES
If you want to lose weight, try the Daqhiqh diet. When I went to Afghanistan my weight was about thirteen stone (eighty-two and a half kilograms). When I came back it was nine and a half (only just over sixty kilos) Robbie was down eight stone (about fifty-one kilos). To say our clothes were hanging off us sounds too flattering. We weren’t ghosts when we reached Camp Bastion. We were skeletons.
When I arrived I found the rest of my multiple still there. It had been only nine days since I’d packed the first off but I was chuffed to see them. They’d all been through the first stages of decompression, if you like, for the process of getting them ready for the real world was well under way. I should have got a week at least. Instead we were all packed on a plane as soon as I arrived.
By rights we’d have flown to Cyprus for twenty-four to forty-eight hours’ acclimatisation. Again, that stage was skipped. At the time we were happy. In hindsight it was an error. Cyprus gives you that valuable stage of winding down, getting certain things out of your system. In the end we were dropped back at Brize Norton and waved off. I think we were handed a leaflet on how to spot the signs of PTSD before we left.
My dad picked me up. I remember that it was 5 October, and that I’d just missed Will’s birthday. It was still quite warm in England, but not by any standards I knew. While Dad was in a T-shirt I was shivering. He drove me to Taunton with barely a word shared between us. He could see I was shattered, and didn’t push it. I barely hugged my wife and kids when I got home. I just remember wanting my bed.
Looking back, I think I slept most of the seven days that I had off, before returning to duty. When I did manage to stagger out of the house I was like a bear with a sore head. I wasn’t the only returning hero in Taunton – it’s that kind of town – but for my family and friends I was the only one that counted.
About the only time I could relax was when we went to visit my mate Greg Andrews and his family. They’d just moved into a new house. I remember the carpets being horrific. While the women and children were busy Greg and I went into the garage. He was a good friend. More importantly, he was an ex-marine. He’d served. He knew. Knew knew.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
I sighed. ‘Where do you start?’
‘Wherever you want.’
It was refreshing to be able to unload in front of someone who wouldn’t judge me. Who could listen without being disgusted. Even when I said how angry I was at the way we’d been neutered on the battlefield by our command, he just nodded. He got it. The only thing that foxed him was when I said, ‘I don’t have a victory.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Falkland boys had a mission. Succeed or fail, it was obvious. They secured the Falklands, so they won. We went over, we did our job but, if I’m honest, I don’t know if it made the slightest difference. As far as I can see there was no endgame.’
‘You did your job,’ Greg said. ‘That’s all they can ask.’
* * *
After seven days of pretending to be human I was summoned back to Bickleigh Barracks. It’s standard procedure after a tour. You get a week at home, then a fortnight with your unit before another six weeks to unwind with your loved ones. Getting back to like-minded people, however, was much more appealing to me.
There’s a lot to admire about the way the military machine just ‘does’ stuff. For example, after our tour there was a UK-wide ‘kit sale’. They do it for any company that has taken casualties, but it means more when it’s for your mates. The ephemera belonging to every marine who has died or been critically injured is put up for auction and various companies or divisions bid for it. On paper nothing up for grabs would deserve much more than the incinerator, unless you particularly collect socks and bullets and boots. But that’s not the point. All money raised goes to the family of the marine. And so you get the fantastic spectacle of a each piece of a bergan’s detritus going for two grand here, three grand there. It’s a magical moment seeing the full military family come together.
As for my own family, I was struggling. Alone with Carly and the boys, I felt like a fat man holding my stomach in to impress a young lady. Only back at base did I feel like I could let it all out and just be myself, because everyone else had gone through something similar. Or so I thought. I met loads of blokes whose tours seemed like summer holidays compared with ours. It was actually only the chaps from my multiple or those from Taalander, Omar, Kamiabi who got it. We had two big parties in that fortnight. One was the Seniors’ Mess, at which we all got plastered. The second, called the Officers’ Mess, was meant to be even bigger. But actually once Tom, Al, H and I got talking at the bar I just burst into tears. I remember the moment. We were talking to a fella who’d been based in the UK doing repatriations. Essentially his job was to knock on the doors of strangers and inform them that a member of their family had been killed.
‘There’s nothing worse than that,’ he said.
And that’s what got me.
‘Nothing worse?’ I said. ‘You try being the poor sod who has to watch them die and then load them onto a helicopter while you’re being shot at. I’d swap with you any day of the week, mate.’
That was it. The waterworks started. Nothing he said could stop it. In fact, my tears triggered the others. We just stood there, weeping like loons, while the rest of the comp
any got shit-faced on cheap lager.
Those first months back from Afghan! Looking back, it was a positive physical reaction. Bottling that sort of emotion up is a key factor in PTSD. I was lucky not to suffer that. But that’s not to say that Afghanistan hadn’t left its mark. Over the next couple of months we had various rehabilitation tests and meetings as part of the homecoming programme. One of them involved seeing a medic. Despite the drastic weight loss I passed virtually all the physicals. The only thing that let me down was my hearing. The bomb blast that had knocked me over while I was carrying two lots of armour had perforated an eardrum, leaving me with permanent hearing loss and tinnitus.
‘It’s all right,’ I told the doc. ‘I’ve been getting by fine. Ask my men.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘You don’t actually meet basic fitness levels.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s just ears. This happened to me in May. That was five months ago. I’ve led men on life-or-death missions every day since. No one would say I was damaged.’
‘That’s not strictly true. I would say it. Because you are.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘bottom line: what are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I have to recommend you come off active duty.’
‘Shit. And do what? A desk job?’
‘That’s an option.’
It might have been – but not one for me. Over the next few weeks I considered my options and regretfully realised that my time with the Royal Marines was over.
For once I had no plan.
* * *
This should be where my story ends. My military career was over, my days of touring the most savage parts of the world on Her Majesty’s service done and dusted. But, like everything to do with Herrick 14, even escaping wasn’t straightforward. This wasn’t the Falklands Conflict, remember. We never had a goal, so we never knew if we’d won or lost. We never even knew when we’d crossed the finish line. Maybe that’s because we never did. The vague remit of Herrick 14 – the wishy-washy ‘build hearts-and-minds’ agenda – never stacked up when we were there. After returning to the UK, it remained an ongoing grey area. Not only was my story not over, it was about to take a very dark twist.
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