We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  Myself, him and another junior NCO called JT had first become close after an exercise on pre-deployment training in the Arizona desert, where we qualified ourselves in the use of the Apache helicopter. We had to do multiple ‘controls’ – correctly identifying and locating targets for missiles from the helicopters – in order to qualify ourselves to do it on operations. Time on the range was not hectic, and the three of us took it upon ourselves to explore the delights of Phoenix and the surrounding areas of an evening. It was a thoroughly enjoyable time.

  We would rise early each day and conduct some tough physical training while it was still cool, then make the two-hour drive up to the range. After long hours in the sun, we would drive back to our base, get changed and cement our friendship in a local bar, often with unintended results. Although my general behaviour was rather poor in between tours in those days, it did, I am ashamed to say, take another nosedive in those weeks in 2010 leading up to my third tour, and I suggest that the Arizona desert was probably the best place for me.

  One night I inadvertently committed a crime by consuming alcohol ever-so-slightly over the threshold of a bar in downtown Phoenix – alcohol is strictly forbidden off licensed premises in Arizona. An off-duty cop attempted an arrest, which did not go quite as he planned. I thought he was assaulting me, JT and Bing came to my defence, and a quite serious street brawl broke out. Eventually, some cop cars turned up. By then Bing, JT and I were in well over our heads, having been swamped by angry locals. The irate local police chief rescued us. Having been given the details of my trespass, the chief told me he was going to inform my CO. He wanted his telephone number.

  Drunkenness affects different people in different ways. Some fight, some chase girls endlessly. I act like I am eleven years old before falling asleep. I was my Commanding Officer in the country at the time, so when I gave the chief the number of my CO and my phone went off in my pocket, he was unimpressed.

  ‘You are an officer?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Yes – believe it or not,’ I replied.

  ‘You, sir, are a fucking disgrace.’

  ‘I know.’

  He told me to go and sit in the back of his police car, like a naughty schoolboy. JT was cuffed in the vehicle next to me, and we couldn’t stop giggling like kids. After about twenty minutes they realized we were no threat, and we were summoned over to the off-duty cop who had started the whole thing. I explained my ignorance of the local drinking laws, and that I hadn’t realized he was trying to make an arrest. We agreed on some significant cultural differences before heading back inside the bar to all have a beer together. Admittedly, I found it hard to chat to a guy who had kicked me in the face on the floor while I was unable to defend myself, but we all pretended we were now best friends for the police chief’s benefit. Once he left, we quickly went our separate ways.

  Most of the pre-deployment training for Afghanistan was, however, done in the UK. If I could skip it I did – ducking out of some very basic lectures about Afghan culture (don’t swear at the kids, etc.), myself and another officer would take off to Leeds for the day, the nearest city to our temporary base.

  It was while en route to one of these UK-based training serials – at perhaps my most unstable both personally and professionally – that I decided to visit an old schoolfriend of mine. I was driving to Lydd Ranges in Kent – miles from my temporary base in Yorkshire – and I wanted to break up the journey.

  We had lost contact, as I had with almost all of my childhood friends, and I hadn’t seen her in years. I knew as soon as she opened the door that I was in trouble.

  It was the worst possible time to meet Felicity. I was a very rough individual, caught in a seemingly endless cycle of military training and war – a rather ‘loose’ domestic life to say the least – and about to deploy to Afghanistan for the third time. But you can’t control the timing of these things.

  She was small, petite even, as the hall lights silhouetted her body in the doorway that Sunday. We got a takeaway and chatted all evening. She was warm and engaging, and tanned, with a beaming smile and a gorgeous figure. Living on her own in a little converted barn miles from anywhere, seemingly relaxed with a simple life, she was perhaps the opposite of me; happy, contented, stable and secure.

  As I returned to training I tried extremely hard to focus on the impending tour, managing to remain professional at work as I continued the relentless build-up to what was going to be a bloody summer. But I now had other things on my mind. I found I had to become incredibly mentally disciplined, desensitizing myself to anything outside of my mission, and becoming quite a hurtful person in the process, particularly towards Felicity. I could not entertain the idea of falling too hard for her and letting the fear of not returning from Afghanistan stop me from taking the risks I knew I would be asked, and expected, to take. I was truly torn, and it was not an easy period. I guess I knew I had just met my wife, but I was determined to fight it until a more convenient time.

  Looking back, I’m embarrassed by the way I treated her. But there was a reason I was so rough; it kept the thoughts at bay. I didn’t want to look too closely at what I was hiding from. Perhaps it was fear of what lay ahead; perhaps it was the way I’d learned to deal with the obsessions and compulsions that lay dormant in my mind, waiting for the chance to rise again. I just knew that it all faded if I did not engage my brain too heavily. I had a ruthless commitment to fitness and the resilience of me and my men. I did everything hard – running, soldiering, socializing. Fitter men lasted longer on the battlefield, and I knew resilience was not in healthy supply in some of the men, so I kept at them. They needed it; I knew what was coming that summer. I developed a total disregard for the wider strategic situation in Afghanistan; the place was becoming horrific – a trap of IEDs and gunfights that I just needed to survive.

  Some of it was undoubtedly fear.

  When I returned I could think a bit more about our future.

  13

  It felt familiar now to be putting on my body armour and helmet as the RAF Tristar commenced its final approach into Camp Bastion. There is something very ‘British Army’ about wearing a helmet and stab vest while on a passenger aeroplane, as if they would do any good at all if you were shot out of the sky on approach. From the air, I could see that the camp was five times the size it was when I was there in 2006.

  When the aircraft doors opened, I was hit by the dryness and the scorching heat and the smell, which brought memories both good and bad. As alluded to before, it is not unpleasant, but you are left in no doubt that you have landed in an environment that’s entirely different from your home, and you can’t escape by ducking into an air-conditioned hotel. I had to ignore any personal discomfort as I surveyed the blokes waiting to pick up their baggage as we moved towards the holding pen for new arrivals.

  For some reason, that first night in theatre on 23 March 2010, I felt very strange. I felt suffocated, as if I knew something terrible was about to happen, but I was unable to do anything about it. I remember getting out of bed, walking past the stinking toilets and the swarms of flies that didn’t disappear when it got dark, and stopping by the NAAFI to have a cigarette. By now I was a committed smoker.

  I don’t know what it is about war that makes one smoke. For some it is the diet, with food so tasteless that one wants the cardboard flavour gone straight away. For me it gave me time to catch my breath. It gave me an enforced five minutes to collect my thoughts and try and remain on an even keel.

  I was struggling, because the truth is I didn’t want to be here at all. Afghanistan was an interesting experience once, maybe twice at a push. But this, my third time, was getting a bit repetitive. And back in England, try as I might to ‘swim the other way’, the effect of meeting Felicity had been rather profound. Despite my best efforts, I was feeling real fear, because I had something to lose. I had been frightened before of course, but the conflict had changed remarkably since I was last in Afghanistan. The stories that we had listened to and tried
to learn from, particularly from the previous summer of 2009, were simply horrific. The bloodiest day for the British Army in Helmand had been 10 July 2009, with five killed and ten wounded in one incident alone. The insurgency was ramping up again. I was aware of the risks and what this life entailed, but this time, for some inexplicable reason, I was convinced that I would be lucky to return home. Very hard to explain. I put it to the back of my mind and didn’t share it with anyone.

  The first few days of an operational tour are always the worst for me. No matter if you have been to the theatre before, there’s no escaping the ‘in-theatre pre-deployment training’ for those who are going to be outside of Camp Bastion. We were herded around like cows from one training serial to the next. On top of the boredom, I was getting annoyed by the rigid atmosphere in the camp. When I first came to Afghanistan in 2006, there was a very deliberate focus on survival and soldiering. While in camp, the blokes could relax and essentially cut around in whatever gear they felt comfortable in. They must, at all times, retain the highest levels of professionalism with regards to servicing kit, physical conditioning and operational capabilities, but dress and camp routine were rightly allowed to be relaxed. It was a bloody hard war.

  But in the intervening years the culture had completely changed. The blokes were not permitted to leave their tents unless they wore full uniform and beret. There seemed to be an attitude of ‘everyone before me was shit, so I’m going to do things differently’, across the rank spectrum. Senior officers were specifically requesting to come to Afghanistan so they could get ‘combat’ on their annual reports. Almost to a man, they thought that they had the answer to an almost insurmountable problem, and the Afghanistan war had only been going as badly as it had because they were yet to have their turn at the wheel. Blokes like me, who were returning for a second or third time, were left in no doubt that all we had done before was wrong, we were now fighting in the ‘right way’ and we should get on board with the programme. The effects of a long-term war, I suppose.

  It was Sunday, 28 March when I went into the Ops room in the joint fires area of the camp to receive my forward deployment orders. As I sat there, I thought of my parents going to chapel. By now, I had command of a seven-man team – augmented in theatre from elsewhere, including reserve forces, to fit the area I was to deploy to. Three of the team were going to support two patrol bases (PBs) that were satellites for the main camp in the area – PB Khaamar – where the rest of the company and the core team of myself, Baz and Bing would be located.

  PB Khaamar had been set up after Operation Moshtarak – the largest operation of the entire Afghanistan war in February 2010. This operation was an effort to strike at the Taliban heartlands – the hardest core of a no-go area for the Afghan government in Helmand. There were plenty of ‘Tier One’ Taliban commanders in the area – those who liaised regularly with Al Qaeda in Pakistan and drove the waves of violence across the province, which seemed to be getting worse. Led by the Americans just further south in Marjeh, the coalition was determined to strike a decisive blow against the insurgency in Helmand with this operation.

  PB Khaamar was set up just south of Showal – a place General Stanley McChrystal had labelled as the ‘insurgent capital’ the previous month, just before it was cleared by British forces. The operation was largely a success, although inevitably a great deal of the Taliban simply downed their weapons or left the area. Those who ran had generally congregated immediately to the south of Showal and to the east of PB Khaamar, in an area on the map known as 31 West. One of the three PBs established in this area during Op Moshtarak had been overrun the previous month, and the resident ANA soldiers had had their throats slit.

  Completing Op Moshtarak in the winter was a smart move by the coalition – fighting is significantly lighter in the colder months, when the opium poppy harvest is growing. But the coalition were yet to hold this ground for a summer, by which time the poppies were safely harvested and Taliban commanders could turn their attention towards UK Forces in PB Khaamar.

  We passed from the pre-deployment training at Camp Bastion to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shawqat – the main base in the Nad-e Ali district, which was still relatively secure. From there I would fly further forward to PB Khaamar. At Shawqat I briefed my team on their own for the first time. I assured them that there were worse places to go. I told them about another team leader who, upon finding out how dangerous his patrol base was, went back into the Ops room in Camp Bastion and told them he wasn’t going. I must confess I found this extremely amusing. Amusing primarily because I wasn’t going there, but also because this guy had rather fancied himself throughout the pre-deployment training.

  I had met him as he was walking back to the Ops tent again, this time to reconsider his decision. He asked me what to do. I laughed and told him to get on with it, and never tell anyone he nearly bottled it.

  To be fair, he pulled himself together – unlike one of my own team in Shawqat. There are multiple challenges associated with commanding small teams in difficult and stressful environments, especially when the individuals are not brought together by friendship but simply because of their skills. I began to feel that one of my soldiers had lost his nerve and was going to ask to leave our team. Sure enough, he came to me and told me he had a back problem. Maybe he did but he was one of the fittest and strongest of my soldiers, and I felt the likelihood of him having a genuine back problem was pretty remote.

  I gave him an easy way out. I could have taken it personally and charged him – something I had never done before. But deep down I knew that one day he would grow up, and he would have to carry this with him for the rest of his life. He was a loud character, one who would consider himself quite ‘hard’. However, when faced with a challenge slightly greater than sinking a pint, or lifting some weights in the gym in front of his mates, his will to fight collapsed.

  I called him over for a chat the day before we left to deploy forward. I told him I was disappointed. That I had worked hard to train him, not because I liked him as an individual, but because we all had a role to play in keeping each other alive in this place. I told him he should not approach me again once our helicopter had left Shawqat. I then found the rest of the team back at their accommodation testing some comms kit, and addressed the situation honestly with them. Unbeknown to me, they didn’t like him anyway and were relatively happy he was staying behind, if slightly embarrassed on his behalf. I never spoke to the soldier again. We were all undoubtedly anxious, but quitting before it had even begun?

  We were due to fly out the following day at dawn. The final few hours before leaving the relative comfort of FOB Shawqat were not much fun. You knew that you would be shitting in a bag for the next seven months; you knew you would not have any internet or shower block. Some tried to drain their intestines in a last ‘porcelain poo’; some spent the time on the phone to their other halves; some spent the time mingling with mates from other units who were returning from the line, and worrying themselves stupid about what may or may not occur.

  My routine in times like this was always the same. I made sure my kit was in A1 condition. No broken straps; full functionality on the radio and optical kit I had. Once this was done I made myself not look at it again. The endless checking can send you insane very fast. I called Felicity for a quick chat. You never know if there will be phones at these outposts, and so you warn your loved ones that it may be your last chat for a bit. The welfare package had come on a long way since 2006, however, and I was hopeful there would be telephones in my new PB.

  Once this was done I would keep myself to myself. I would build my Bergan, webbing and body armour into an extremely comfortable recliner and sit on it, cradling my weapon and contemplating. On this particular night people came over for a chat – officers from other teams and some of the blokes. They seemed to think I knew what I was doing, and congregated around me, pulling up their Bergans. I felt a bit of a fraud – even then I didn’t have any real experience of war-fighting
, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. There was a furtive, restrained but hard-edged atmosphere. Everything changed once you left this place, and we all knew it.

  We were flying that night and we slept beside the helicopter, waiting for our 2 a.m. lift. It was 30 March 2010.

  14

  The Merlin helicopter touched down and Baz, Mark and I leapt off the back. We performed an ‘Arctic Huddle’ on our kit, to make sure it didn’t blow away in the enormous downdraught as the helicopter lifted-off back into the night sky.

  It was pitch black as we arrived at PB Khaamar, our home for the next six or seven months. We were met by the company commander – very decent of him at this hour – from 1 Battalion Royal Welch, who had been here since Op Moshtarak in February. After six weeks in the small patrol base with his men, the company commander was pleased to see some fresh faces.

  We were shown to our accommodation. The Army still segregated officers and ranks when it came to accommodation, something I was uneasy with but recognized was probably what the ranks wanted more than anything else. However, this was not going to work for our team, and I managed to get us all in the back end of a spare tent together, and we set about sorting ourselves out.

  It is remarkable how quickly one can adapt to austere conditions. I always found it best to completely surrender myself to the scenario, and adopt a survive or die attitude. Someone who tells you that they enjoy shitting in a sack and eating boil-in-the-bag sausage and beans for thirty days straight is, I’m afraid, lying. But it is possible to find a measure of comfort in the routine of it all, and this is what we began to do.

  During our first week, the Royal Welch lost a man in a firefight just outside of the PB. Fusilier Jonathan Burgess died of a sucking chest wound – a gunshot wound that allows air into the chest cavity – and the company were in clear shock. He was an extremely popular soldier and his death affected the men, especially so close to the end of their tour.