We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  As a result of this more complex threat, my joint fires team was attracting more strategic focus across the task force. What this meant in practice was that we were allocated more assets – such as Predator drones, fast attack aircraft and our own dedicated gun battery. By now I was being given almost complete freedom to employ these assets as I saw fit to allow me to mitigate the threat and protect the men as best I could, and I felt in no way as inhibited as others certainly did, or indeed as I had done at the beginning of the tour.

  That morning we were expecting a fight. After linking up with the men from PB Shawaal just outside PB Khaamar, I had a quick check to confirm we were still on for the plan that the patrol commander and I had discussed the night before. The only change was that the particular focus on this area from the broader task force had spawned an additional team of Afghan Special Forces for this operation. They were in the area and had travelled under the cover of darkness to link up with PB Shawaal for this morning’s patrol.

  While clearly dangerous, this patrol was planned like any other – careful, gentle, slow movement into the area, go firm, watch pattern of life around dawn before dominating the area as we patrolled back to PB Shawaal. A standard, ground-dominating patrol.

  There was a brief problem with the radios when I tested them before we left. The security setting that was designed to encrypt our radios had been changed after someone somewhere else in Helmand had left behind a radio on patrol. Just to be extra safe, all patrols across Helmand changed their settings to ensure our communications were still encrypted. Baz and I had a good wrestle with the radios and after some heavy swearing, switching them on and off again a few times and eventually changing the settings, we left about fifteen minutes after our planned time to head east into the Jungle. We were eleven soldiers from 1 LANCS, a female medic, four ANA, Frank the translator, my team of Baz and Bing, and a Tiger Team of Afghan Special Forces. We all pushed east.

  It is a strange feeling, advancing into a certain firefight. The truth is that mentally you do attain a sense of invincibility – ‘it won’t happen to me’ – and this weighted the balance between fear and excitement towards the latter. I didn’t mind coming into contact with the enemy; I just wanted to ensure that we won the fight and that I used our overwhelming firepower advantage carefully, but with skill, on those who were trying to trap and kill us. It was a challenge, I suppose, and I was up for it. Did I get scared back then? Yes, but only on a superficial level. As the bullets cracked overhead, or an RPG whizzed past sucking the air out of my surroundings, I just thought about how much it would hurt if one of those hit me. Not the finality of that result. There was none of this head-banging rubbish you see in films; psyching myself up or any such nonsense. Just calm, clear professionalism.

  I could hear Bing walking about five yards behind me in silence. Behind him Baz was talking quietly into his radio. There was a familiarity about the noises that made me feel comfortable. The patrol commander was two in front of me. He would often refer to me for advice or use me as a sounding board for ideas. I gave it when asked, but I always made it clear that I was not an infantry officer and that he was in command. I was entirely content with the operation – he was a good team leader and I simply focused on joint fires options for the firefight that was coming.

  As we patrolled along I quietly chatted away into my handset. As soon as we left the PB, I had laid three guns onto a tree line where I thought fire might come from. I moved this ‘shadow’ target constantly as we moved across the ground, so that the moment we came under fire I could engage if required. I never laid the shadow target onto compounds – that was exactly what the Taliban wanted, with the inevitable civilian casualties, and was not consistent with surgical counter insurgency operations. Instead, I laid targets in a safe area nearby to what I assessed were likely firing points; the firing points themselves would therefore hopefully be within the 40m splinter range of the 105mm HE shell, and the enemy would be forced to stop shooting and duck for cover.

  This was unconventional use of artillery, but it genuinely saved lives daily in this environment. It meant that in those chaotic first few moments of a proper ambush (when the patrol came under accurate, heavy fire; not a ‘shoot and scoot’) if requested I could provide a significant effect on the ground some fourteen seconds (the time of shell flight) after being asked. Bing and I had come up with this practice together. He would ID the likely firing points, discuss them with Baz and then relay them to me. Baz would ensure that the gun–target line (the imaginary line between the gun line and the target) was kept free of air or aviation. I gave the orders to the guns.

  This tactic was perhaps not to be found in any textbook, but it was a result of walking into ambushes and fighting our way out, day after day that summer. For me, Army doctrine was there to enable the fight, not inhibit the fight. If it required changing, I would think outside the box and change it. In a small way, I was quite proud of the successes it brought; in ambushes like this the deck is so stacked against you that to continually get away without taking UK casualties was some sort of success.

  As we pushed further east into the Jungle that morning, the locals started to wake up. The ICOM chatter had started by now. We paused regularly as it was translated for us by Frank. By analysing the intercepts and matching them to the ground picture as we moved through the area, an hour into the patrol Frank and the team commander were reasonably confident that they knew where the enemy were preparing a present for us. It was not an exact science, but sometimes you can almost pinpoint where the enemy are before they reveal themselves. On this occasion, it was clear that they were observing us from a compound about 400m to our front, while encouraging more Taliban to move behind us to seal off the way we had come and trap our patrol.

  We paused. We had a number of options. We could have moved north, away from our objective, and taken the long route back to the patrol base. Some of us – me included – were getting a little tired of simply extracting every time there was sniff of the Taliban, letting them chase us back to the safety of the PB.

  After a bit of a Chinese Parliament, which I stayed out of, the team commander decided that we would close with this enemy position and destroy it before returning to the PB. I was in absolute agreement. I worked hard to retain our fighting edge and counteract the effects of constant withdrawals and ambushes on the morale and spirit of our men. I could not fault the commander’s intent.

  ‘We’re going to go for it, Johnny,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Roger,’ I replied.

  I was about five metres from the patrol commander and turned around to briefly relay the plan to Baz and Bing. Bing said something like, ‘It sounds good.’ We had paused next to a compound, which gave us cover from the assessed enemy position. I tried to speak to the gun line to give them an update of our intentions, but was struggling with intermittent communications.

  Despite never having paid attention to any radio training lessons in all my career, I was now becoming a bit of an expert. I could change angles of tactical satellite receivers to point towards a satellite in the sky; I could tell if the weather was going to be good or bad for communications that day; I could piss on the ground and put a ground-spike in the wet patch to improve the refraction of the radio waves in the extremely dry conditions of an Afghan summer.

  Eventually, I got through to the guns. I briefed the control post on the tactical situation and gave them a target, 50m away from the compound where the patrol commander believed the enemy to be hiding. Shrapnel would hit the side of the compound and, although it would not hurt anyone, it would shock the enemy and perhaps buy us time to bring a more precise asset to bear if required, or to extract if we were in trouble.

  Hopefully none of this would be necessary, because the plan would put us in the enemy’s compound before he knew it. The patrol was going to split into three parts. The Tiger Team would patrol north to act as bait for the enemy position. Once engaged, they could go firm in the drainage ditch they were han
drailing, and we would be close enough to the enemy to get in there and kill them from the flank, at close range, while they were looking elsewhere. A small, simple plan that offered a very good chance of success.

  My part of the patrol (less the Tiger Team) would again split in two. One group – comprising most of the Afghan soldiers and the medic – would stay in our current position in cover, ready to act as a ‘reserve’ and provide some rear protection. My group would assault the enemy position.

  There was no air or aviation immediately available. I paused, debating whether we should go for this without these assets on station. It was always a balance – bring an Apache into the overhead and the enemy usually scattered; nothing achieved. Hold a platform off and the time it will then take to bring it to bear increases, and thus your exposure in an ambush can be longer. It is all a balance – there is no right or wrong answer. I assessed that, on the face of it, this plan was not bad; it was tactically sound, with good use of the ground and a reserve in place. Doctrinally it worked.

  As the reserve group set up the strongpoint and Tiger Team headed off north, our small assault group monkey-walked (walking in a crouched position) further east, using a small wall for cover. We were heading for a medium-sized compound just to our front that would provide us with cover directly south of the assessed target compound. From there we could launch the final assault on the enemy position. We moved slowly, carefully and methodically.

  As we moved forward, I did not at the time grasp the significance of a very small gap in the wall that would have exposed us to the compound where the enemy was. Instead I was focused straight ahead on a small figure running from one side of the road to the other, eighty metres away.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked as I raised my weapon to look through my scope. I thought it was a Talib moving position. I was hoping to see a long-barrelled weapon and drop him. I was still very calm at this point.

  ‘Just a kid, I think, boss,’ said Bing from immediately behind me as he looked too. ‘Yeah, it’s just kids.’

  Kids running away is one of the last signs.

  20

  The patrol rounded the south-east corner of the compound and reset our course from heading east to heading north, handrailing the side of a muddy track that passed for a road in this part of the world. I thought the enemy was now about 120m away in a compound straight up this road. My head started to pulse with excitement.

  The team commander could see better cover on the other side of the track and crossed over; we began to follow in a single line. Looking north I could see the Tiger Team moving between some compounds 400m away – they were far too obvious for the enemy to miss.

  We crossed the track one at a time, quietly. I was the fourth patrol member to head over, with Bing directly behind me. He was my protection and we did everything together. Baz would follow up last.

  I got to the second tyre rut in the road when we were engaged from very close range by a burst of heavy automatic weapon fire.

  The fuckers were in the nearer building right next to us, closer than we anticipated. A second passed as I took two steps forward up against a muddy wall. There was no cover from the firing position available to me. I knew Bing and I were the target – we had been caught in the open. The enemy had clear line of sight and fire to me, and carried on firing. I anxiously scanned in front and either side of me for somewhere to head to. It was just a wall. There was no cover available. The worst possible place to get caught out.

  The remainder of the patrol had taken cover in irrigation ditches on either side of the track.

  While I was panicking, I heard Baz yell out in a tone I’d never heard from him before.

  ‘Man down, boss, fucking man down!’ he shouted.

  I spun around. I looked between me and Baz, who was in the ditch on the other side of the road, to see Bing face down on the first tyre track, arms flailed towards the enemy, motionless.

  It took a couple of seconds for the image to compute in my head. Time stood still, even as the enemy fire continued. There was still nowhere for me to go without wandering straight in front of the firing point. Forward, back, back into the road – no cover anywhere. I was pinned up against the wall, just waiting to die. I was very frightened. My mouth went dry and I could not feel my body.

  Then something flicked in my head. I saw the desperation in Baz. I remembered who I was and where I was. Somehow I told myself to die ‘properly’, without fear. Like a man. That was it, nothing more. No glory, no patriotism. Just die properly. Don’t embarrass yourself.

  Baz was staring at me, repeating, ‘Man down’. If I shut my eyes I can still picture his face now. The shock, the tears starting to well. It sounds strange, because people get shot in war all the time – we should expect this. But Bing was instantly killed; literally like a switch being turned off. He was talking to me seconds earlier. Our friend.

  Seeing Baz made me snap into action. If I was nothing else, I was a belligerent little fucker, and I was going to fight like a bastard to stay alive and keep the others alive. I forced myself to stop thinking about being shot. I wasn’t going to die today as well. I shouted at the three members of the patrol in front of me who were in a ditch, attempting to locate the firing point.

  ‘Man down. Fucking man down!’ I shouted, getting confidence the louder I shouted. The message went up the patrol towards the patrol commander.

  The enemy were still firing in bursts at me from about thirty yards away. It was so loud compared to previous engagements because they were so close. I could not see a person with a gun, but I could see an area behind some vegetation where the fire was coming from. I attempted to bring my weapon to bear on their position. But it was a right-handed weapon and engaging the target would have further exposed me. I was getting frustrated at my helplessness and I backed into the wall again. Baz started to reach out to Bing.

  The enemy saw Baz do this and the rate of fire increased. It seemed as though another firing point from the same direction had opened up on us. I could see the rounds ripping through the vegetation just above Baz’s head. Another couple of inches, and he would have taken a round in his skull too. I shouted at him to be careful.

  I made myself as small as possible against the wall and jumped on the radio to bring some HE down into the field that lay to our north west, about 80m away. I had to try to regain the initiative from what was evolving into the most brutal close-quarter contact I’d experienced thus far. All I heard was static, with my radio satellite system unable to work in such close proximity to an obstruction, in this case the compound. I would have to move to use it.

  Baz continued to tug on Bing’s leg to get him into the ditch with him, but the intensity of the fire around his head increased again. I could see something about to happen, like a slow car crash. At that moment Bing’s body turned over and I saw his face and his eyes. There was no life there at all.

  ‘Leave him, Baz!’ I shouted. ‘Fucking leave him. I will get him. We need to get a weight of fire down and I’ll get him.’

  Baz ignored me.

  ‘Baz! I’m fucking telling you!’

  Baz stopped pulling Bing, and I ordered him to take cover in the ditch and keep an eye to the rear of the patrol. The enemy firing reduced – perhaps they could no longer see me, and Baz was not presenting himself. The section commander was a battle hardened senior NCO, but the sudden brutality of a gunshot wound to the face had affected us all. It was the ‘lights out’ effect of sudden death. It’s very frightening.

  There was a man in front of me with a Minimi machine gun – a light but very effective weapon that fires 5.56mm rounds.

  ‘Oi! Oi!’ I shouted, unsure of his name.

  He looked at me over his shoulder. I will never forget his face; he was young, his helmet was lop-sided, he seemed paralysed.

  ‘Come on, mate, get the fucking rounds down, I need to get Bing,’ I said to him.

  If he fired bursts down the track towards the firing points I could run out into the t
rack, grab Bing and drag him into cover where I could try and do something.

  The Minimi gunner looked at me still.

  ‘Rapid fire up the fucking track!’ I ordered him. I thought I might have to take his weapon from him and do it myself.

  He faced back up the road and fired two three-round bursts. I was hoping for more. Glancing left I again clocked Baz looking at me; he was observing south of the patrol as I had asked him to. He knew what I was going to do, and I could read his face telling me not to do it.

  I had to go, though. I couldn’t leave Bing there, lifeless. I had to fucking try. I had no cover where I was anyway – I could get shot at any second. This was as good a chance as I was going to get.

  ‘Right, I’m going, you happy?’ I said to the Minimi gunner.

  He opened fire again. I didn’t think about it, just leapt up.

  The Minimi machine gun got a stoppage after just one round. But my foot had just touched the tyre track closest to me and it was too late to turn back. It was only six or seven paces, but I thought my time was up.

  Convinced I was going to get hit, I adjusted my run into an arc, so that if I was shot my momentum would take my body into the ditch next to Baz, and perhaps he could save my life. All I could think was how much it was going to hurt. There was no bravery, no glory; just childish selfish thoughts about how much it would hurt.

  I made it and collapsed into the ditch next to Baz, incandescent with the Minimi gunner. I felt like running back across the track and beating him with the machine gun. I got up immediately and together Baz and I pulled Bing into the ditch next to us.

  I started having a look at him. Keeping low in the ditch, I took his kit off him, including his helmet. I felt the back of his neck, where the exit wound was obvious. I heard Baz begin to weep. At that precise moment, we were engaged by further positions to the south-east and south-west.