We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  This was getting out of hand.

  Baz started returning fire to the two positions directly south. I could hardly hear him firing in the cacophony of noise.

  The patrol commander had done a good job in getting the reserve to close-up to our position, and I could hear them over the radio making their way to the corner of the compound where Baz and I were.

  ‘He’s fucking dead, isn’t he? He’s fucking dead!’ I could hear Baz saying to me over the gunfire.

  I looked Baz in the eye. ‘Yes, mate, he’s fucking dead.’

  Although the two enemy positions to the south were wildly off target, I could tell by their enthusiasm that they knew they had killed a British soldier and that we were bogged down, unable to move quickly. The Taliban always try to overrun you in this situation.

  As soon as the reserve arrived, Baz showed them the enemy positions to the south. The medic was with them and I told her that Bing had no pulse, and had suffered a catastrophic gunshot injury to his head. While she unpacked her rolled up stretcher, took off her rucksack to access her kit and assessed Bing for signs of life, I managed to finally get into communication with the gun line. I slightly adjusted the target I had given them originally, and rechecked the grid to bring the fire closer to the enemy compound. I engaged immediately.

  I followed this with a SITREP into the handset. I indicated I was fixed at present, in an ambush with multiple firing points and I required emergency close air support to be allocated to Baz. Ten seconds later I was allocated one of the two emergency Apache attack helicopters that launched in dire situations from Camp Bastion. But they were fifteen minutes out. We were on our own for now. Save for the artillery.

  I heard the first two artillery rounds land very close; one seemed to hit just metres from the compound that was firing on us. Confident the rounds were not actually entering the compound, I ordered a repeat.

  The artillery fire calmed the enemy from the original firing point to our north somewhat, but briefly glancing south I could see the Taliban moving position. If I’m honest I could not identify who exactly was firing at this point and what direction they were coming from. It was, however, clear that they were coordinating in a deliberate effort to cut us off and overrun our position.

  ‘Have you sent this casualty up your chain on your net?’ I shouted at the section commander.

  ‘Yes, boss, I have,’ he replied.

  I was still on my knees next to Bing’s lifeless body. The medic was busy shouting at Bing, trying to get a response to keep him with us, but he was long gone. She wanted to start CPR on him and asked me to help her. I was not comfortable with this. Bing was a goner, and his face would not survive compressions, making a traumatic scene even worse. Similarly, time was not a luxury we had, given the continual movement of the enemy.

  However, against my better judgement I let her continue; I felt it was important for her to have control over this situation. She was the medic, I was not. She was brilliant; the sort of individual who let her training just kick in, and away she went.

  I heard the 105mm land again, not far from our position. They seemed closer to me this time but were definitely having the effect of keeping the enemy quiet to the north. I quickly worked out in my head where the guns were in relation to my position and whether any error could bring the fall of shot any closer. They were firing over my head; I was happy with the risk.

  As the medic started CPR on Mark I ordered a repeat, but didn’t have time to listen to the guns repeat my order back to me because I decided to intervene on the CPR. It was clear that Bing’s spinal fluid was being forced out of his mouth and the breaths were not inflating his lungs. I ordered the medic to stop but she carried on, ignoring me.

  I grabbed her bloodied hands hard in mine and used her rank.

  ‘Corporal! Stop now,’ I insisted.

  She didn’t bat an eyelid and started packing up her stuff. I lifted Mark’s lifeless body a couple of inches off the ground and someone else slid the stretcher under him.

  I looked around me. For some reason the main patrol reserve had already moved back towards the original position of the strongpoint, leaving five of us on our own. Our group was down to one LANCS soldier (a gristly sergeant who was trying to spot and kill the enemy to the north), me and the medic with Bing, Baz firing east and Frank, who was asking me how to use Bing’s rifle. It was entirely unintentional, but we were now dislocated from the main group.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said the medic.

  ‘Right, we need to go,’ I replied, scared but calm.

  I grabbed Baz forcefully by the arm.

  ‘We need to extract now,’ I told him. ‘These cunts are trying to overrun us. The rest of the patrol has bolted. I’m gonna lead the stretcher party, but it only leaves you to give us some protection as we move, OK?’

  ‘Roger,’ he replied.

  He immediately snapped into gear, and with professionalism and courage that sometimes brings a tear to my eye when I think of it now, he actually advanced towards the enemy firing his weapon on single shot, to get himself into a covered position in an irrigation ditch. There he could provide our covering fire east and withdraw with us. I threw him a couple of Bing’s magazines. If the position to the north started re-engaging us, we were just going to have to ignore it. I needed four of us on the stretcher. The reserve could take care of the south.

  Our only option for cover was the small wall that we had followed in. Now I could see that it was risible cover indeed, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  I got us set to move west with Bing’s body. The remaining 1 LANCS sergeant was going to be forward left, the medic back left; Frank back right. On my side, I was going at the front – being fitter I was probably going to have to pull this whole thing along.

  We crouched in position around the stretcher, which was still on the ground at this point. I waited for some further 105mm I had ordered, going into the original firing position again. It landed. I should have shifted it onto targets to the south, but it was a task too many. We moved.

  Frank started shouting at me that he could see the enemy to our north, but Bing’s weapon didn’t work. Acutely aware of the risk of him shooting me in the back, I paused the extraction and grabbed Bing’s weapon off Frank to check it over. As I did so, I saw it had part of Bing’s body on it. I wiped it off on myself and got on with checking the firing mechanism; there was a round in the chamber and a full magazine. I gave the weapon back to Frank. For the first time, he was going to be able to engage the enemy that he hated so much.

  I made it very clear where he was to point it (i.e., not at me), and he squeezed the trigger as a test fire in the direction of the enemy position to the north. I briefly explained the concept of the safety catch but Frank just told me to take it off. He promised he wouldn’t shoot me so I released the safety catch, and told Baz we were going to move. I heard two more 105mm artillery rounds land to our north. I hadn’t ordered them; I assumed my battery commander was somehow able to see my situation and had taken control of the guns. (I later found out we now had a Predator drone watching us, and he had done just that.)

  Using this artillery as cover, we again set off as fast as we could with Mark’s body. We did it in phases, moving to a position where we could pause in some degree of cover and provide some fire for Baz to catch us up. Basic fire and movement.

  Baz was ploughing through his ammunition. The position to the north wasn’t letting us go easily; I had clearly not killed with the artillery. As we ran, Frank and I fired into it, our rifles in one hand, stretcher in the other. No doubt we hit nothing, but things were getting desperate.

  At least we were making progress over the ground. After about 400m we hit another track junction and, relieved, found the remainder of the patrol. They had been providing us with covering fire onto the positions to the south, which were still engaging us and trying to cut us off. The patrol now set off again, covering our front and south; Baz continued to provide our cover to the rear on
his own. Thankfully, Frank had exhausted his one magazine of ammunition. I could now hear the section commander controlling the fire and movement, and was briefly reassured. I slung my weapon and started pulling the stretcher faster out of the area, encouraging the others.

  The section commander had simultaneously been busy organizing a rendezvous (RV) with some armoured vehicles that had been dispatched from our PB to come and pick us up. The Medical Evacuation and Response Team (MERT) helicopter was not going to land in such an enemy-riddled area, particularly given the Dushka incident three days before. I suspect if Bing had still been alive this would have been very different – their bravery was astonishing. The armoured vehicles had sped to the RV and I could now hear their comforting heavy fire engaging the enemy back over my head. I hoped they knew Baz was behind me. I shouted to the first vehicle commander to let him know and he nodded in understanding.

  I could hear an Apache not too far away now, too. Commanders had seen the enemy’s efforts to encircle us from the Predator drone, and were now focused on protecting us. Baz had a radio to speak to the Apache, as did I, but neither of us could get to the radio set on our back to flick onto the correct frequency; him because of the weight of enemy fire, me because I was doing all I could to get Bing out of there. I felt rather helpless and started to get tired; looking at the others, they had clearly reached that point and beyond.

  Eventually we made it to the lead Husky vehicle and ran behind it to put Bing down. I looked up and immediately saw the Apache about 3km away out to the west. I took off my rucksack to flick onto the air net and talk to the Apache myself.

  ‘Boss, boss, I’m out,’ I heard from Baz.

  The firefight had died down somewhat but hadn’t entirely finished. The rest of the patrol were busy engaging the enemy to the south while Baz was still under fire from the east, without ammunition, marooned next to a tree about 30m from the Husky.

  I reloaded my last magazine and ran forward to draw the fire coming from the positions that were still engaging Baz. I had seen what I thought was some good cover and made for it. Frustratingly it was not a pile of earth, but a pile of dead poppies, and absolutely no use to me at all. It was too late to go back. Standing up I poured a magazine into the enemy position – all twenty-eight rounds of 5.56mm ammunition. Baz bounded back past me. Out of ammunition, I legged it too. We both met at the rear of the Husky next to Bing’s lifeless body. The armoured vehicles were still returning some fire to cover the men extracting 100m away, back onto the track.

  Baz threw his bag onto the ground and started rummaging around in it while the platoon commander in charge of the armoured vehicles was shouting, organizing our shell-shocked patrol into transport for the journey back to PB Khaamar. Getting his radio out, Baz flicked onto the air net to try to speak with the Apache. As I raised my handset to speak to the guns I heard my Battery Commander give ‘check fire’ to the gunline.

  Now we had the assets I wanted to go back in, I hated running away.

  Bing lay dead on the stretcher at my feet. I thought for a moment. I felt sick.

  Reluctantly I started to load up too, and get Bing’s body in the back of one of the Huskies. He was a big and heavy bloke, and the medic, Baz and I could not get him far enough into the Husky to shut the door. I was not prepared to just fold him in and close it. I took my kit off – body armour, webbing and helmet – and threw them over his body into the far end of the vehicle. I put my rifle under the bench seat and then clambered in and picked up Bing’s body with a big bear hug, swung him round and sat down with him on my lap on the bench. I cradled him like a baby.

  Baz turned on his heel and headed for the lead vehicle so he could talk to the Apache and engage targets if required on our journey back. The platoon commander jumped down from the gun and shut the door of my Husky, leaving me alone with Bing in the darkened interior of the vehicle. We got moving almost straight away.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to him. ‘I’m so sorry, mate. You’re a good man. You’re a good man,’ I kept saying.

  I pressed his cheek to mine and gave him a kiss. Staring at his face, for the first time I saw the scorch mark under his left eye where the bullet had entered. I inserted my finger into the hole in the back of his neck, and realized he must have only been hit once. This in-and-out wound had passed straight through his spine, straight through his cerebellar cortex and killed him instantly.

  I took off his Help for Heroes band and put it on my wrist. His blood slowly seeped down my breast from the back of his neck; it was noticeably cooler than before.

  It took forty minutes to get back to our home PB along the IED-riddled Route Nike. I could hear the Apache overhead and grabbed my radio to listen in to the net, anticipating having to leave Bing, get my kit back on and get back to work. Somehow we didn’t get whacked so I cradled Bing the entire way, resting my head on his. It was comparatively quiet, very hot, and deeply affecting to be in the back of that armoured vehicle with Bing. He was neither warm and alive nor dully cold and passed on. During those forty minutes I think his soul left him. He wanted to check we all got out okay before he went.

  Finally, the truck stopped. The back of the Husky opened and there was a soldier there with a poncho. I told him to go away and get a proper body bag – Bing wasn’t going on the helicopter trussed up like a fucking turkey in a poncho.

  The doc came back with a body bag and took Bing’s pulse, confirming he was indeed dead. With the doc, I shuffled him into the bag and did up the zip. We grabbed an end each and ran straight out to the HLS (helicopter landing site) where the CH-47 MERT was turning and burning, ready to take Bing back to Bastion. I pulled him up nice and close to the medical team in the middle of the aircraft and hugged his head. The medical team paused and let me have my moment. The officer in charge winked at me. I ran off the back of the aircraft, grabbed my kit from the back of the Husky and walked back to my tent. A crowd of soldiers had now gathered but I had nothing to say. I walked through the tent, straight past Bing’s empty and untidy bed and out the back, where Baz was de-servicing his radios.

  I pulled his head into my shoulder. We said nothing. We cracked open some cigarettes and sat in silence, working our way through the packet, staring into space, alone in our own thoughts. Baz’s eyes were wet; he remained resilient, but in tears. I felt a deep sense of shock.

  After some time one of the lads from the patrol we were supporting came around on behalf of his company to offer his condolences. We chatted briefly before he left.

  The rest of that morning became a bit of a haze. I remember there being another contact in the AO, and I was called to the Ops room to coordinate a strike against some insurgents in a tree line who had pinned down a patrol from one of the satellite patrol bases to our north. One of my team from that satellite patrol base was out on this patrol, so I was able to use him as my eyes, and cued him up some 105mm HE. It wasn’t a particularly heavy contact; one round broke it and his patrol returned to their base.

  At the end of that engagement the company commander called me over. He said that the sight of Bing’s blood all over me was putting others off, and asked me to get changed. This seriously irritated me. I turned and left without saying anything. I didn’t want to change, to shower or de-service my kit from the patrol. I felt like that would be it then, the patrol would be over and Bing would genuinely be dead. I went back to the tent and joined Baz, who by now was sat on the floor going through Bing’s things. A letter had arrived that morning from his mum; he had never had the chance to read it.

  I imagined his parents; right at this moment they were probably being given the news. That unexpected knock on the door, too early in the morning to be a friend. As soon as his mum or dad laid eyes on the smartly dressed servicemen they would know.

  Whatever pain I felt at that moment, I knew it was nothing compared to theirs.

  21

  Bing died on a Tuesday morning. Baz and I flew out of the PB together on the Wednesday morning – Bing was bei
ng repatriated to the UK at sunset, and there was to be a service at Bastion which we would attend. PB Khaamar would be on ‘patrol minimize’ – i.e. no patrolling while we were away.

  The CO of 4th Regiment Royal Artillery flew in for it. We had a coffee and I told him of life on the line, and he seemed genuinely taken aback at the scale of the fighting. He reminded me that in the Second World War, units would get rotated with relative regularity, but this was not possible in this conflict; thus we were asking some of our men to undertake almost seven months of continuous contact with the enemy. I disagreed with this comparison – some units in the Second World War suffered 100 per cent casualty rates – but I took his point.

  He was a very decent guy, and I genuinely felt supported by him. I could not speak of my shock and pain to my men, but I did relay it accurately to Paul. He asked if I would say a few words about Bing at the Service of Repatriation, and form part of the bearer party to put him on the plane.

  The day passed in a bit of a blur. Baz and I stuck together, often spending chunks of time in silence. I knew he was struggling with the grief; mine was grief mixed in with a significant dose of guilt. The guilt started small but seemed to grow over time.

  It was simple in my head; if Bing had not been in my FST he would probably still be alive. He would have gone on to have a family, get married, build a life for himself.

  As we filed towards Bing’s repatriation service that warm evening in June 2010, all the reasons for my relentless and almost personal pursuit of the enemy were beginning to seem like nonsense.

  The service was deeply moving. I did not expect the whole population of Camp Bastion to be there but there must have been in excess of a thousand men and women in a silent, hollow square. As the sun set in the desert sky, with weak knees banging against the microphone stand as I tried to get a grip on my body, I said, ‘Lance Bombardier Mark Chandler was, in my eyes, the perfect soldier. He remained consistent, whether in combat or not. His selfless commitment truly set him apart from his peers. He would just as readily volunteer to empty the bins as go out on a patrol to disrupt the insurgents and protect the people, as on the day he was killed. He was the man that men aspire to be.