The single reason that I believed Sergeant Al Blackman would be pronounced ‘innocent’ is because I wholeheartedly believed that to be true.
Unfortunately, that was not the conclusion of the seven-strong court-martial board. While Marines B and C were exonerated – and rightly so – for their part in the insurgent’s execution, Marine A was declared ‘guilty’ of murder. What a joke! What a farce! What a stain on the character of a good man! He had been tried by a military court but in the public eye he was suddenly judged as no better than Fred West or the Yorkshire Ripper. And that is an abomination. I believe it now as I believed it then. On 6 December Al Blackman was handed a life sentence, ordered to serve a minimum of ten years.
The outrage among my family, my friends and all my old team from 42 Commando reverberated for weeks. Each day I had the same conversations with new people. Even my physio clients got their ears bent. I was furious and ashamed and I didn’t care who knew it.
I managed to get an email address for Al in prison and fired off regular messages. He didn’t reply, and I had to assume that was his choice. In the meantime I did the next best thing and offered the full weight of my help to his wife, Claire.
‘I’m being deluged by the press,’ she said. ‘Will you help?’
‘Whatever you want. Although I’ve not had any media training.’
‘You don’t need training,’ she said. ‘You just need to believe in Al.’
Well, that was easy. Over the next few months – years, in fact – I spoke to news outlets from all over the world. Whoever Claire passed my way I made time for. BBC News, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, you name it, I did it. I never asked for payment even though some of the work – for example, an excellent Panorama programme – took up a lot of my time. At stake was the integrity not only of my friend, but of everyone who has ever served his country.
I wasn’t the only one fighting the good fight. Some very influential media people helped Claire wage a war against the decision. Most vocal among them was the thriller writer Frederick Forsyth. He is a man who had fought for Britain. He knows what is involved in maintaining national security. He was generous with his time and his money and his reputation. In part thanks to the media campaign, the courts-martial appeal court reconsidered Al’s case. Although the verdict was upheld, the sentence was commuted to a minimum of eight years.
Behind the scenes we all did as much as we could. Claire worked tirelessly to throw sympathetic journalists in my direction and I told them whatever I could to get positive PR for our guy. I kept sending Al emails although I never received a reply. I was sad that he didn’t think he could connect with me. In 2015, eighteen months after my friend’s incarceration, I finally plucked up the courage to visit HMP Erlestoke, near Salisbury. I went with Steve McCulley who, after months of treatment, had made a remarkable recovery.
Al looked better physically than the previous time we had met. Mentally, I’d have to say, he was still more docile than I remembered. I think he was on medication. At best it took the edge off his normally upbeat personality. At worst he was neutered by it.
‘Mate,’ I said, ‘I’m really sorry it’s taken so long to get here.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘I know Claire’s been working you hard.’
Then Al asked me: ‘What are you up to?’
Weirdly, it was at that point I told him I was considering writing my own story. This story.
‘Are you going to mention Afghan?’ he said.
‘Totally.’
‘Are you going to mention me?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘Yeah. Tell everyone the truth. Clear my name. Let the world know that I am not a murderer.’
I like to think that I have done that, in interviews and now in this account. Happily, in March 2017 Claire’s team succeeded in getting Al a second appeal judgement. This time medical reports not available in 2013 were drawn upon. Al was diagnosed with ‘Adjustment Disorder’ – a debilitating condition that affected a good many combatants in the field and thereafter. The fact that he had also been near suicidal following his service in Iraq and the death of his father on the eve of his departure for Afghanistan were all brought to bear. Any one of those could have driven a man to behave irrationally. While I still don’t accept that he did, I appreciate the civilian need for ‘a reason’. The enforced absence of people like Colonel Lee was also taken into account. It all helped. The result wasn’t perfect, but it was substantial. Al’s conviction was reduced from murder to manslaughter and his sentence to seven years. Under modern justice guidelines that meant a release within weeks, not months. By the time you read this book, Sergeant Al Blackman will be walking among us a free man.
And that is where this story ends. Not with my military career being cut short, my marriage failing after seven impossible months in Afghan, or with me rebuilding my marine contacts to become a trainer on the international market. It ends with a friend and hero able to walk proudly amongst us. Military service, and war in particular, changes us all. Most of us for the better. The ones who return with scars need help and care and love. Most of all, they need and deserve respect. For everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve experienced and everything I’ve done, I know I’ve escaped very, very lightly. Not all of my friends can say the same. To those men and women and our successors still serving, I can only offer my thanks, my hope and my encouragement.
Keep fighting the good fight. Know your enemy. And never – ever – hold back from taking a lethal shot. I did, and I regret it to this day. Be bold, be brave and make a difference.
And come back safely home.
‘A pothead like me’ – as a teenager, with my grandmother …
All photographs are from the author’s collection
… and, after years of service in the Marines, with my nephew Luke.
On exercise in Scotland during training. The yellow devices fitted to the muzzles of the SA80 rifles are blank-firing adaptors.
Jungle training in Belize; we also did the Arctic warfare course.
Having completed a signals course, I was one of the advance party sent out from RM Condor in Arbroath, Scotland, to Pristina in Kosovo, to maintain order in the war-ravaged country. Here I am showing off my living quarters.
One of our tasks was to persuade local Kosovans to hand in any weapons, although they tended not to give up ‘the good stuff’. This is me with a Second World War-vintage .45 Thompson sub-machine gun – the famous ‘Tommy gun’ beloved of American gangsters in the 1920s and 1930s.
Searching a house in Kosovo – in fact, much of the action we saw seemed to be farmers shooting at each other as the result of some feud, on one occasion a quarrel over a stray cow. However, a culture of violent revenge undeniably permeated the country at that time.
Me, exhausted, during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003; this was taken on D-plus-2.
Heading northwards into Iraq following the invasion in March 2003 – I am standing up in the back of the Land Rover.
Me during a house search while clearing villages south of Basra. I am holding up one of many portraits of Saddam Hussein that were to be found in all government offices and most homes.
Sitting on the quad bike on which I reconnoitred much of the area south of Basra; note my SA80 strapped to the luggage carrier at the front
Three comrades-in-arms, including Corporal Sibsy, and I (second from right) digging an emplacement in the Iraqi desert. We quickly learned that the desert is not only almost entirely sand, but is extremely cold at night or in bad or winter weather.
When dawn broke after my arrival at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, the first thing I noticed were the encircling mountains. An RAF CH-47 Chinook on the airstrip at Bastion – we would fly in these amazing aircraft many times.
‘Er, guys – I’ve got a situation here’ – me after discovering a landmine while we were building our camp at Bastion, even though the area was supposed to have been swept.
J (Juliet) Company, 42 Commando RM, at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Not all the men in this photograph would make it back home, and some would be terribly wounded.
Me (third from left) with members of my multiple, including Fergie, before we left Camp Bastion for our first CP. Neither we, nor our uniforms, would look so smart on our return some seven months later.
‘Sunray’ – Major Steve McCulley, commanding Juliet Company, in the ops room at CP Toki directing the ISAF response during an attack by insurgents – he had been bathing when the attack started, and only had time to throw on his body armour. Not long afterwards he was to be severely wounded by an IED.
Me in full battle array during a compound search. The weight of our equipment, including body armour, combined with the heat to take its toll during long patrols.
Patrolling alongside one of the many irrigation channels that criss-cross the countryside in that part of Helmand. At times we were glad to get into them to cool down a little; at others, they provided cover from Taliban fire.
A patrol entering a compound to search it and question its inhabitants, while locals Afghans look on. Note the tall crop and the mud walls
Me (left) and another of my patrol safely in cover after a prolonged firefight with the Taliban.
Homecoming parade at Bickleigh Barracks, Devon, after 42 Commando’s return to the UK from Afghanistan, late 2011. Proud Green Berets, but not all of them escaped unscathed, and some paid the ultimate price. The RSM (far left) stands at attention next to his injured marines; ahead of him, Kaz is in the wheelchair nearest the camera.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Driscoll was born in Roehampton, south-west London, in May 1976 to Tina, a dental nurse, and Clive Driscoll, an aspiring constable with the Metropolitan Police (he was to retire as a detective chief inspector). He spent a short time at school in West Ewell before the family relocated to leafy Westcott in Surrey, and thereafter he was schooled in and around Dorking. After leaving school, Robert studied engineering at East Surrey College before joining the Royal Marines in February 1998.
Having completed Commando training, jungle training and Arctic training, Robert went on to serve on operations in Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003), before leaving the Marines and following his father into the Metropolitan Police. After his initial police training (2004), he was posted to Southwark Borough South and cut his teeth as a police officer on the streets of Peckham, south-east London.
In 2005, with the war in Afghanistan intensifying, it wasn’t long before the lure of active service pulled Robert back to his beloved Royal Marines. On his return to the Corps, he quickly found himself deployed around the world, serving within the Royal Marines and UK Special Forces Group; he was to finish his military career as a sergeant with Juliet Company, 42 Commando RM, on Operation Herrick 14 in Afghanistan (2011), for which he received a Mention in Despatches.
Robert has three beautiful children and now lives with his partner in Devon.
COPYRIGHT
Published by John Blake Publishing,
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First published in hardback in 2019
ISBN: 978–1–78946–101–5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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