I could hear the bullets scything through the vegetation a foot or more above where Cantrill and I hugged the earth. I could fire the 51 mm from the prone position, that I knew. I could slam the base plate down, level it with the spirit level built into the tube, grab a round from Cantrill, reach forward and drop it down. It was all doable lying prone as I was, and I’d be far safer that way. But like this I couldn’t see properly to target the enemy with the light.
If you can’t see you can’t fire accurately, I told myself. Get on your knees, Heaney.
Decision made, I laid my SA80 on the dirt – no other place to put it – and levered myself up into a kneeling position, all the while trying to blank out the hiss and crack of rounds tearing past to either side of my head and shoulders. I cursed again the lack of any body armour. Right now if an accurate round came my way I was taking it with no protection, and it would likely kill me outright.
I stole a glance around me to sight my targets. We were right in the heart of the battlefield – the no man’s land between the two sides. It was carnage. Streams of tracer fire were pouring out from the jungle, from where the rebels had sited a good dozen or more machine guns. To either side of me I could see scores of AK47s spitting flame, as rebel fighters probed forward, unleashing long, savage bursts.
To the southeast of the village I caught a momentary glimpse of distant moonlight glinting on a pair of linear objects – the railway tracks. Fuck me. I was so far forward I could actually see them, despite the darkness. On the opposite side of me and just to my rear I had the reassuring sight and sound of H’s lone GPMG pounding out the rounds.
I heard H yelling out target instructions: ‘Sixty yards! Dead ground exit Lowe!’
Sure enough the rebels were closing in for the final push, and they were doing so via the dead ground – where we couldn’t see clearly to shoot them. If they were at dead ground exit Lowe, that meant they were just dozens of yards away from Nathe’s battle trench. For an instant I wondered how the other patrols were faring, and if any of those had yet been overrun.
I told myself to keep one hand on my SA80, in case the rebels swarmed us. They would know where our main positions were by now: our muzzle flashes would have given us away. But we couldn’t know where they were unless we saw them firing or moving – and for that we sure as hell could do with some flare rounds.
Siting the mortar base plate was key to accuracy, so the first thing I did was swipe the ground with my hands, to clear it of any rocks, roots or other obstructions. That done, I placed both hands on the tube and drove it down as hard as I could, slamming the solid base plate into the earth to anchor it. The kickback from the first round would really bed it in, and stop it skidding around or jumping.
I moved my right knee back, in case the tube jumped with the first round, smashing the base plate into my kneecap, which could easily break it. With my left hand on the heavy mortar sleeve – a tough canvas shield that protects the operator’s hand from getting scorched – I glanced behind for Cantrill. He was flat on his belly, bang on my right heel. Good positioning. His rifle lay to one side of him, the daysack full of rounds right next to him. I reached out with my right hand palm upwards, feeling for the mortar that I needed him to deliver, like a relay baton.
‘Round!’
He flipped open the top of the pack, reached in, dragged out the first mortar and slapped it into my hand. As it went past my face towards the mouth of the tube I did a quick visual inspection, just to check that it hadn’t been damaged during the long crawl forward. Last thing we needed now was a dud round getting stuck down the tube.
I raised myself on my haunches, reached forward and dropped it down the tube, tail-first. I heard it slide down the barrel and make a hollow thunk as it hit bottom, coming to rest on the firing pin plate. I aimed by sight and feel. The 51 mm has a sighting mechanism, but I had neither the time nor the light to use it. Instead, I was aiming by intuition. The higher you angle the tube, the higher the round goes, but the shorter the trajectory.
From long practice I knew that at a 45-degree angle the round would burst 500 to 600 metres in front of me, which was just where I wanted it. I needed the light behind the enemy, throwing them into silhouette against its glare but leaving us cloaked in darkness. I needed the rebels smack bang under its 200-metre cone of light, and us well out of it. That way, we would be invisible, and they’d be pinned under the blinding glare.
Being this far forward I needed to let the lads know it was Cantrill and me opening fire, otherwise they might mistake us for the enemy and slot us.
‘STEVE HEANEY – PUTTING UP ILLUME!’
I repeated the yell in both directions, to our right and left front. I saw the silhouettes of two heads nodding their acknowledgement from H’s trench, so at least those guys had heard. I was also giving the lads a warning: Prepare for the rebels to be lit up, and be ready to put down aimed shots to smash ’em.
I left a second for the lads to prepare, checked the orientation of the barrel one last time, grabbed the dick-like handle to the front and slammed it down, hammering the firing pin into the rear of the mortar. It emitted a loud phuuttt as it fired, the flash of the thing throwing Cantrill and me into sharp relief. If the enemy hadn’t known we were here they sure as hell would now. They could range in on us, using the noise and the thick plume of smoke hanging in the air to target us.
I blanked my mind to the threat and gazed skywards, following the trajectory that the mortar would have taken. The fire from the rebels was as intense and murderous as it had been from the start. A great deal of it was zipping past to either side of my head now – so I guessed they’d seen the telltale signs of the 51 mm firing.
Everyone on our side knew a mortar was in the air. They were poised for the burst and what it would reveal. But the level of fire from the enemy and their wild shouts and screams continued unabated, so hopefully they hadn’t a clue what was coming.
The 51 mm illume fires to a height of 250 metres. It detonates to leave a flare drifting beneath a parachute – one that looks like a giant roman candle. It burns with a 350,000 candle-light power – illumination by which the lads could see and kill. But it would also signal that I was here, taking charge of the battle.
If we’d had HE rounds I’d have got an illume up, nailed the enemy positions, then hammered them with HE to tear them to pieces. On a good day I could put down six to eight HE in sixty seconds. But right now we didn’t have any HE. We didn’t even have 40 mm grenade launchers to mallet the rebels, putting ten rounds into them on the back of the illume. All we could do was get the light up so we could better call down the GPMG and SA80 fire.
I waited the last few seconds it took for the round to reach height, and then pop! – it hung there like a tiny sun burning in the heavens. It had burst just where I wanted it: bang above the line of the jungle, throwing light over all the ground to the front of it. Just for an instant I sensed the enemy fire falter, the pounding percussions from their machine guns seeming to stall in mid-fire.
They hadn’t been expecting that – not to be pinned under the fierce, fluorescent daylight of the illume. For an instant we had them foxed. We had to seize the advantage. A sense of euphoria swept over me that maybe this was all doable – we still could win this one.
‘PICK YOUR TARGETS!’ I yelled. ‘PICK YOUR TARGETS! PICK YOUR TARGETS!’
In spite of having rebel gunmen charging down their very throats, the guys had refrained from using rapid fire. They’d been aiming at shadows. Now they had the light, all of that had changed. All to our front rebel fighters were frozen under the glare, and trying to find some cover to go to ground. Thanks to the villagers cutting the vegetation, they had precious little foliage in which to take refuge.
I glanced behind me for an instant, and in an arc bending around to my right I could see a solid line of muzzle flashes, as our guys opened up. In an instant the goading, animal cries from the enemy died. Instead, I could hear screams of agony as rebels went down.
Voices started yelling out what had to be orders, as their fighters scrabbled to get out of our line of fire. But the ground from the dirt highway across one hundred yards or more to our front was lit up like a football stadium under floodlights.
For the rebels, there was nowhere much left to run or to hide.
17
I straightened up, so more of the lads could see me: ‘USE THE LIGHT! USE THE LIGHT! DELIBERATE FIRE! DELIBERATE FIRE! PICK YOUR TARGETS! PICK YOUR TARGETS!’
A rapid rate of fire with the SA80 – when it doesn’t jam – is thirty rounds a minute. Ten minutes and you’d be 300 rounds down – which was all each of us had. That’s why I’d called for ‘deliberate fire’. With deliberate fire the lads would put down controlled, aimed single shots – so around ten a minute. Even so, some of the lads were very likely pushing 150 rounds down already.
I remained on one knee as that first illume round drifted to earth, long bursts of machine gun fire kicking up mud and shit all around me. I was spotting for rebel movement in the light, and yelling out the fire instructions like a madman.
We also needed the illume so badly because most of the blokes didn’t actually have workable night vision equipment, or at least not gear you could rely on. Each patrol had been issued with one common weapon sight (CWS) – a long, black night vision unit that screws onto the SA80. Trouble was, here in the soaking wet and humid tropics it would rapidly steam up, which made it unusable.
All across our patrols I could hear more of the lads having problems with their SA8os. ‘STOPPAGE! STOPPAGE! STOPPAGE!’
Those with a stoppage they couldn’t immediately clear would try to use the CWS sight to help direct the GPMG fire – yet there were no guarantees that the CWS would be working properly. Without the light from the illume, any number of us were going to be left fighting blind.
I went down on my belt buckle again. Illume round up and targets spotted – I could afford to hit the dirt for a good few seconds. Rounds were coming in thick and fast, so the rebels must have switched on to where Cantrill and I were positioned and what we were up to. To my left H was hammering away like a good one, slamming fire into the bunched-up fighters caught under the harsh glare on the main highway. The rebels were being cut down as the Death Dealer got to work.
But then I heard him screaming out a warning: ‘MOVEMENT! By the railway track! By the railroad!’
Pinned under the illume to our front, the rebels were desperately trying to get away from its murderous glare. But just as I’d feared, they were also trying to hit us from over on our right flank, and that’s where the Death Dealer had spotted them.
That’s where they needed the light.
I forced myself into the kneeling position again, getting my head and shoulders up above the surrounding foliage and fully into the enemy’s line of fire. No other way to do it. I swivelled my body through 90 degrees, until I was facing southeast. I dragged the tube around with me and slammed the base plate down again. The 51 mm tube is fixed to the base in such a way that you can only adjust elevation – hence the need to haul it around every time you seek a new target bearing.
My arm shot back towards Cantrill: ‘Round!’
The guy had anticipated the move, and the cold steel of the mortar slapped into my open palm almost before I’d asked. Good lad. The railway line was 450 yards away, but I needed the illume a good 100 yards beyond that, so we were talking a 550-yard shot. Working on muscle memory and instinct alone, I lowered the barrel to the 35-degree angle, dropped the round in and checked the alignment one last time.
I hit the firing lever. Phuuttt – the second mortar was away. It left Cantrill and me enshrouded in the telltale pall of smoke billowing out of the muzzle. I hit the deck again, and lay there tracing the mortar’s trajectory, staring into the dark night and trying to ignore the bullets zipping past to the left and right of us. We now had one mortar shell to our front, hanging under its chute and gently oscillating as it drifted towards the forest canopy, and another about to burst over the railroad.
The second illume popped a good 150 metres beyond the railroad, casting a cone of brightnes like daylight across the ground a hundred metres to either side. It hung lower in the sky than the first – I’d had to fire it on a shallower trajectory, to achieve the range – so it would have less than the optimum burn time, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I yelled out the fire instructions, screaming at the top of my lungs to try to get heard by Ginge and Taff’s patrol. ‘PICK YOUR TARGETS! PICK YOUR TARGETS! PICK YOUR TARGETS!’
Almost before I’d finished I heard Ginge’s distinctive Mancunian accent cutting through the night: ‘Two hundred metres, half right railway track – rapid fire!’
In the light of the illume they’d nailed the rebel figures advancing stealthily along the steel tracks. Patrol 33 Charlie’s GPMG spat fire, a long burst hosing down the new rebel target. I saw figures diving for cover, as the GPMG rounds tore into them. Once hit by a GPMG’s 7.62 mm bullet you weren’t getting up again, no matter where it tore into you.
Or at least normally you weren’t …
Here in Lungi Lol things were a little different.
We were facing hordes of drugged-up fighters who truly believed they were invincible in battle. The rebels gave themselves noms de guerre – war names – like Baby Killer, Belly Slasher, Colonel Savage and the Born Naked Squad (those who stripped their victims naked before abusing and killing them). They were infamous for ‘playing’ the Sex The Child ‘game’. A pregnant woman would be captured, and her belly slashed open with a machete – the rebels placing bets beforehand on the sex of the unborn child.
‘Bathed’ in their voodoo ‘medicine’ prior to going into battle, they truly believed they were bulletproof. The voodoo priestess would promise them: ‘With this I make you invincible in battle! The bullets will flow off you like water!’ Doubtless they’d have done just that in preparation for the first major battle of Operation Kill British, and in part it seemed to be working.
I saw rebel fighters get slammed to the ground by a round from one of the guns, then clamber to their feet and start charging forward again, screaming maniacally. Some took three or four rounds from the SA8os before they finally went down and stayed down.
Not good for conserving limited supplies of ammo.
Right now the main thrust of the assault seemed to have shifted to the railroad. But no matter how much light I put up the rebels just seemed to keep coming. It was sheer suicide to charge ahead when the cover of darkness was ripped away, but I guessed the rebel commanders could afford to sacrifice any number of fighters … and over on our right flank serious battle had now been joined.
The battle trenches of 33 Delta lay some three hundred and fifty yards away, and I could see the long tongues of fire spitting out of them towards the enemy massing along the railroad. I could barely hear Taff’s dulcet Welsh tones – he was too far away for his voice to carry properly above the deafening noise of battle – but I presumed he was calling out the targets to his blokes.
For an instant my mind flashed to fears of the rebels totally outflanking us and getting round our rear. That must be what the move down the railroad was meant to achieve. Just as I would have done it, they’d sent in one force on a full-frontal assault, while filtering their main body of fighters silently past our right flank. It was only getting the light up over the railroad that had blown their cover, and I didn’t figure any of the rebel commanders had been expecting us to have flare rounds.
Right at this moment we’d seized a slight advantage. But I was certain of one thing now, more than ever before: the RUF commanders were no slouches. In fact, for all the voodoo crap and the taunting animal cries they’d launched a textbook attack. If I was in command of their forces I knew what I’d try next: I’d go for an outflanking manoeuvre further to our left or right flanks, one that would get my forces in to our rear. Then I’d hit us from behind.
All we had to hold them off with were sixtee
n Nigerian peacekeepers with very likely a dozen rounds per man.
That’s if Mojo and his men had even got into their positions.
Wag was back in the HQ ATAP, so hopefully he’d overseen the Nigerians rallying under Mojo and getting into their battle trenches. Hopefully. But right now I had no guarantees that Mojo and his merry band were in position and every man ready to fight, and no way of knowing. Our rear could be wide open. Unwatched and undefended. That’s just how it was.
The rebel commanders were moving to outflank us, that much I was sure of. Plus they had the numbers to do so on both sides. That meant Dolly’s patrol – 33 Bravo – could well be in their line of march. Dolly’s lot were way out on our left flank on the far side of the highway. Were they in action too? If so we were getting hit all along the 600 yards of our front, meaning they were coming at us from all sides.
Risking a peek, I levered myself up into the kneeling position. I glanced over the top of H’s trench, and sure enough I could see the guns at Dolly’s trenches spitting fire.
Fuck me, that was everyone in action.
The entire platoon was sparking.
The highway effectively split the rebel formation, for H had that nailed as a kill zone. I’d seen him blast apart any number of rebel fighters as they’d tried to move across that open patch of dirt. Ginge and Taff’s patrols had the railroad similarly covered. So, in effect, the rebels were split into three units: those north of the highway facing 33 Bravo; those sandwiched between the highway and the railroad, facing H and 33 Alpha; and those south of the railroad, facing 33 Delta and 33 Charlie.
We could kill them in their droves as they tried to cross those open areas under the light.
But if they filtered through the thick jungle to one or the other side of us, we were going to have problems.
Operation Mayhem Page 21