We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  My battery commander went for him. I cannot recall the conversation verbatim so I will not attempt to reproduce it here; suffice to say the bombardier left the Ops room almost tearful. Not for the first time, I wanted to use the cover of ‘war-time stress’ to flatten my battery commander. As far as I was concerned he was a classic product of a disconnected and over-privileged elite. While some admired his almost colonial approach, when it came to war-fighting I struggled to find it amusing.

  I followed the bombardier; I told him I was ashamed of the way my fellow officer had spoken to him and that he should ignore him. I thought his team, with Al, was doing a bloody good job and I could only imagine the pressure they were under.

  ‘I’m glad you followed me out,’ he said. ‘I’ve a present for you.’

  He went into his backpack and dug out a bottle of cider. It was surreal.

  ‘This is from Captain Ivy over in Bastion; he says you might need it.’

  I had left earlier than most of 29 Commando for Op Herrick 6, as that Afghan deployment had been called. My officer mates from the regiment had been to a cider festival after I’d left the UK, and had brought me a bottle so I didn’t totally miss out. That evening, I sat on the HESCO bastion protective wall around our camp and drank my warm West Country cider, watching the explosions and tracer fire from an attack taking place miles to our south against the darkening sky. It was a funny old war.

  One evening in early November, I was heading over to the mess hall from my grot when I saw the regimental sergeant major (RSM) from 29 Commando speaking in hushed tones with my battery commander. They called me over.

  ‘Johnny, I’ve got some bad news,’ said the battery commander. From this fool, this could mean anything from the delay of his order of wicket-keeper gloves from Amazon to the death of a close relative.

  ‘You’re doing a great job, and we’ve done absolutely everything we can to keep you here. But for some reason the Manning and Career Management Division of the Army has sent through your posting order for your next tour, and you are going to have to leave us.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ I said, thinking there must be some mistake. I always knew this was a possibility – as an officer one must move on from units in the military after a defined period of time – but surely this would not happen during an operational tour?

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ the RSM said. He was a good man whom I had known for some time, and he was behaving in an extremely odd and uncomfortable way. ‘The CO has phoned everyone, including the CO of your next regiment, but there’s nothing to be done for it; you have to go.’

  ‘The CO told me that he’d ensure this did not happen,’ I protested to the RSM.

  ‘He’s tried everything, Johnny, I promise,’ said the RSM.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘You’ll be heading home in two weeks,’ said the battery commander.

  I knew something, was not right. I was under the operational command of the Royal Marine commanding 45 Commando, so I asked him over a coffee if I was being removed for struggling with the battery commander. To my surprise, he told me he struggled equally, had been impressed with me thus far and had worked me into his seven-month plan.

  Given my posting order, I knew who my new CO was going to be. He was a lovely man who I had worked for previously. Once back in the UK, I spoke to him about this particular posting process, while re-affirming my commitment to my new job. He said he hadn’t heard anything from 29 Commando, and that if he had then of course I could have stayed with 45 Commando for the remainder of the tour; 29 just couldn’t bring themselves to do the requisite administration.

  Anyway, back in Afghanistan I had two weeks to push. I had been training my kandak, ready to go on operations in a fortnight. This meant I was going to miss out on any real combat. The CO of 45 Commando kindly gave me the option of going up to Sangin for a couple of weeks of action before I flew home. In Camp Shorabak, where I was, there was a beautiful memorial to my friend Jim Philippson, carved from wood and attached to the side of the mess hall. He had been operating from this camp when he went out on the patrol that was to claim his life. Having seen his brother and parents at his funeral, I had promised myself before I came on this operation that I would not chase ‘the action’ as hard as he had, so I declined. I was happy to accept that he was braver than me.

  In those two weeks, I became deeply disillusioned with the whole thing. The mission, the Army and the commanders who were supposed to be coordinating this madness. In a moment of childish nonsense, I decided that I was not prepared to commit my professional life to the Army as a whole, and wrote a letter to my 29 Commando CO resigning my commission.

  I deeply regret this. It was not a clever move and was the result of an almost childish sulk. The truth is that I suspected I had not done enough to mask my growing misgivings about the operation as a whole, and I had a fear within me that my CO in Afghanistan had not fought as hard to keep me as he claimed. My reaction was pathetic, and one I took a life lesson from. Almost immediately after I handed in my letter, I regretted it. Thankfully, my commanding officer told me to not be such a child, and put my letter in the bin where it belonged.

  I left theatre in November 2006, to take up my new role of training fresh recruits, and tried to put the experience of my first tour of duty behind me. At the age of twenty-five, it was clear that I still had some growing up to do.

  10

  Following my return from Afghanistan, I embarked on a tour of duty at the Royal School of Artillery in Larkhill, on the rolling hills of Salisbury Plain. I was given the opportunity to bring my recent operational experience to a rather gentrified training programme. My boss was an experienced, late-entry commissioned soldier who was precisely the sort of individual under whom I would thrive. He encourages me to this day.

  I re-wrote the way we trained our soldiers for operations in the Royal Artillery and implemented it – a significant feat in a military system that is resistant to change. I refocused efforts away from conventional vehicle and equipment maintenance; retaining its importance but ensuring that every soldier was capable of sustaining themselves in the field for extended periods of time. Royal Artillery soldiers in Afghanistan were being used to conduct a wide range of tasks, so I wanted to ensure that they had the core qualities of discipline, fitness and resilience required for operations in a harsh environment.

  Being an instructor in the Army is an immense privilege, and provided me with some of the most satisfying experiences of my time in service. I’d met some truly inspirational instructors and I took a little bit from each one.

  In truth, though, there wasn’t any single instructor who had the complete package. Perhaps Pete Simmons from the pre-commando course at Okehampton was the closest. Or the instructors on Rowallan Company, who I imagined murdering at times. On Rowallan they did everything with us – from crawling through cow shit to yomping from the top to the bottom of Dartmoor without a break. Remarkably, they would let us get lost, despite being on the hoof for forty-plus hours, and patiently wait for us to figure out how to get back on track ourselves. Crucially, this let us learn from some pretty emotional and painful self-generated mistakes.

  One of the main reasons that the instructor job was one of the most rewarding periods of my early career was that I could see myself in many of the soldiers who came through the training regiment. Young, away from home, in a challenging environment. They were making immature decisions both at home and in the Army – much like the one I had recently made in Afghanistan. The difference between me and them was that I was now aware how immature I had the capacity to be, and they were not.

  I had a good team around me and I worked the same long hours as I had in Afghanistan. There was one soldier in particular who summed up the entire experience for me. He had decided to leave Parachute Regiment training because he wanted to come to the Royal Artillery; not a popular move at the time. I knew there must be more to the story, but I did not pry.


  He was asked to turn-to in ‘smart casual’ attire for the first day. Smart casual to him meant a matching Ellesse tracksuit. He didn’t immediately come to my attention, until I caught him telling a female corporal to ‘fuck off’ during one of her field lessons. I took him to one side. I never shouted in anger, and wasn’t going to start now. I simply told him that this behaviour was not acceptable in the Army. I may have used the C-word.

  He was a big strong lad, and loved a physical challenge, so from then on I always paired myself with him on PT – I did every session with the troops – and made a point of rubbing his nose in it, in a nice way. I could tell he had serious potential, and he was beginning to like me and, crucially, respect me.

  One day he came into the office and asked how he could become a specialist soldier like me – they knew I was from a commando regiment. I gave him a completely unachievable training programme and told him I would be paying even more attention to him. I found out about his home life; no father, just avoided being taken into care, from a family of ‘tough’ criminals and drug dealers in Manchester.

  On the last day of his course I heard a confident knock at the door. He was standing there in his No.2 Dress uniform, as smart as a button. He marched in and banged his feet into the ground as he came to attention and gave me a salute.

  ‘What’s up, Cooper?’ I asked wryly. ‘Come in for a hug, have we? Getting all emotional now you’re leaving us.’

  He didn’t react to my stupid piss-taking. In silence, he pulled out a box of Celebrations chocolates and put them on the desk in front of me. He wasn’t smiling. He tried to say something – I think it was a thank you. Nothing came out and he coughed. He threw up another salute, turned smartly to his right and marched out and off to his regiment.

  I was later informed by his troop mates that he had never said thank you for anything in his life before, but he wanted to say thank you to me. He’d had no male role models whatsoever, and we had provided that for the first time. He finally believed he had a future outside of Manchester and all of the problems with his home life; we had given him a chance and he was determined to take it. (I say ‘we’ because my training team were far better than me, and did all the work.) It wasn’t the fact that I had made him a soldier that I found so intensely satisfying; it was the fact that I had invested something of myself in him, and inspired him to make something of himself.

  In 2008, at the completion of my tour at the training regiment, I expressed an interest in taking part in Special Forces operations. My reports from senior officers were very good at the time and I had personally come a long way from the rather sulky child who had turned up two years earlier. I don’t know if it was because I had endured a little bit of bad luck with my last move between regiments, but this time things went my way and I was offered the opportunity to deploy with a Special Forces group. I would be a non-qualified Operations Officer with a unit charged with man-hunting tier one targets in Afghanistan, and along the border with Pakistan.

  I would be in civilian clothes for the duration of this tour; testament to the entirely different experience it would provide me with. I joined a team of dedicated professionals at the top of their trade – in stark contrast to the OMLT mission in 2006 – and I felt that I might have finally found my niche. It was blisteringly hot as I arrived back in Afghanistan in the summer of 2008. I was to be based in Kandahar – scene of the Taliban’s last stand in 2001. They had been conquered by US and UK forces back then, but now it was the seat of the major insurgent commanders in the area.

  I was housed in the very comfortable SF compound, named after an operator who had been killed the summer before on a counter-terrorist operation. It is always difficult joining a close-knit team, particularly on operations, but this group of individuals made me feel entirely welcome. My role was to be very fluid. The guy before me had seemingly got the pizzas and coffees in when an operation went into the early hours; I was keen to play a far more active part, and early on it was made clear to me that the opportunity was there to do so.

  Al Qaeda and the Taliban were very much an interchangeable title at the time, although the AQ influence in Afghanistan was nowhere near what it was in Iraq. These terrorist networks establish themselves very much like any other organizations that have a hierarchy of power and pursue their aims ruthlessly. The task force’s specific job was to kill or capture as many of the Taliban/AQ leadership within the country as possible. They were directing a campaign of terror and intimidation on the local populations, and hounding the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operating on behalf of the NATO mission with a daily wave of bombings and shootings.

  We would spend most of our days trying to find the targets, before deciding on a time and place for an attempted detention. In almost all cases these individuals resisted strongly, and attempted detentions became killings. It would be inappropriate to outline the methods employed, but I can relate some non-specific personal experiences.

  Finding an individual target in the complex human and physical environment of Afghanistan is an enormous challenge, but we had some powerful tools and friends to help us. My role would often be to take part in the surveillance of a target, looking for a specific person leaving a house or advising on target viability for prosecution. We would sometimes use traditional methods, such as a kinetic strike using drones, but would more often than not deploy the blokes forward and interdict targets using helicopters.

  Al – my friend from 29 – was working in the same unit. Al is a dour Scotsman, almost impenetrable without a beer. But we became very close as we both grew into our new roles.

  Even operating at the strategic level, innovation is key. After some young Apache pilots started missing High Value targets that we had tracked for days without sleep, we sat down with Al and others and worked out a different way for the helicopters to interdict vehicles at speed. I was made to feel very much part of the team and I relished the opportunities they gave me.

  It was an intensely rewarding period. As a task force we were up against some of the very worst evil in mankind. We would sometimes capture individuals with paedophilic material on their phones, or personally filmed beheading videos. We would conduct operations with a relentless pursuit of the enemy, slowly working our way through the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership networks on intelligence-led, violent night-time visits. It made me want to operate with these teams for the rest of my career, but I was ‘non-badged’, and would be returning to the regular army after this tour.

  Because we were conducting high-level, strategic man-hunting operations that fell outside of the Army’s Task Force Helmand mission, our plans often required ministerial sign-off. Government ministers – including the Prime Minister – and other political decision makers would regularly visit our compound, and I was part of the ‘visits team’ when they came. We would all put on our uniforms for the day and try and tidy up a violent and messy operation into a neat PowerPoint slideshow that indicated clinical strategic progress. I was impressed by then Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague’s capacity to absorb information. He was very sharp and asked the questions you would expect from someone with his intellectual and strategic horsepower. David Cameron was also good, if very tired. I fear we sent him to sleep at one point. He spent time with, and clearly got on with, the blokes. Gordon Brown’s visit just before I arrived apparently didn’t go so well. He asked the team to fast-forward some Predator drone video footage of the blokes ‘on target’ because he didn’t want to see it.

  During December I was briefly CASEVAC’d (casualty evacuated) back to the UK for a scan on one of my testicles, which had become inflamed from washing in dirty water and was showing the characteristics of testicular cancer. It was all fine in the end, but I’ll never forget the simply bewildering emotions I felt on arriving at hospital in Birmingham just six hours after leaving Afghanistan.

  It is very difficult to put into words how it feels to extract from the sort of operations I was conducting and be entirely
on your own in a civilian environment, especially a hospital. I was put on a ward with all the other sick and lame from Birmingham. As the nurse left, drawing the curtains behind her, my head felt like a washing machine. Should I be getting so much professional pride from what I’m doing? Do these people in Britain know what we do to keep them safe? Would they care or object?

  I couldn’t phone anyone. I couldn’t talk about what I was doing with anyone. In any case, my family didn’t want to know. When I had returned from my first tour in Afghanistan my mother had barely raised her eyes when I walked into the room, calling me a ‘coward’ for returning home early; she had clearly not grasped the inexorable methods of the Army posting system. My older brothers wavered from being outright war-haters to mildly protective, but were thoroughly disinterested in my life. I did not want to appear weak to my friends and telephone them. I’d felt completely alone in what I had experienced on my first tour, but even more so in what I was experiencing now; I had never felt so isolated from the world before or since.

  I could feel my character bending, maturing and being forged for life during that summer, autumn and winter in Kandahar. For a start, as a task force we killed a lot of people, and I had a role in that. It would be fair to say that there was a grinding of the wheels in my mind between my Strict Baptist upbringing, a fairly sheltered first tour, and then the industrial pursuit of targets on this tour.

  Perhaps because I felt increasingly distant to and different from my family, my mind settled considerably. Something dropped into place and I knew I had to trust myself and the way I figured life out, as opposed to following what I was led to believe was the truth by some hardwiring I had received as a kid. Our targets were fucking bad people, and there was nothing wrong with ending their lives. I felt myself become, finally, entirely self-assured – my own being.