‘Whenever we were in a dangerous situation, Mark would be sat in the ditch next to me smiling, seemingly without a care in the world. His sanity and calm humour kept our morale up. He was the perfect man to have in a fire support team. It was an absolute privilege to command this example of a man.’
The whole idea of stoical soldiers too hard to cry was another pointless myth about war. I never really cried, but not because I was a soldier. I just didn’t feel like it. But as I returned to my place next to Paul I felt the first tear roll down my face since the incident, and I could sense that overwhelming grief and guilt was not too far away. Paul winked at me.
After the service Baz and I made our way down to the pan, where the enormous C-17 transporter plane was going to take Bing home.
By now these repatriation services were a well-oiled machine. We picked Bing up in his Union Jack covered coffin and, in front of the entire Camp Bastion, marched him in slow time across the pan and up the ramp onto the aircraft. He seemed a lot heavier now. I moved on autopilot, unable to think of anything other than Bing’s body in my arms in the back of that Husky. I’ve always been shit at marching. But I tried.
The C-17 roared down the runway and threw itself into the night sky. In the darkness, I walked by myself back to the Royal Artillery part of Camp Bastion and collected my kit before making my way down to the pan for a helicopter flight back out to PB Khaamar. All those there in the support group operating out of Bastion were terrific, but I simply did not want to talk to anyone.
Baz and I flew back to the PB that night. By coincidence, I was going on R&R the next day, so I packed up my belongings ready to fly out again. Baz was going to man the fort for a couple of weeks with a replacement captain from another part of the AO.
Baz came to see me off the next day and we stood with the back gates open onto the HLS, waiting for the helicopter. He knew I felt guilty about Bing. I kept asking him leading questions about decisions I had made and how the patrol had gone, selfishly wanting him to make me feel better. How desperately weak. I needed a break.
I stopped after a bit and we just sat down in the dust near the toilet block and grunted to each other about cigarettes.
22
The Tristar landed at Brize Norton and I was met by Felicity, looking beautiful in a gorgeous blue dress she had worn especially for the occasion. It was always very surreal coming back from ‘the front’, but this time it was especially acute given what had happened just a day or so earlier.
We stopped at McDonald’s at the services in Oxford where I ordered a lot of food, but couldn’t even begin to eat a small part of it; my stomach had clearly shrunk. Then we drove back to her little house in Sussex and did what any returning soldier does for a few hours. We had dinner and got an early night. I didn’t want a beer; I didn’t want to leave the house. I felt overwhelmed, like water was lapping at me; I was being submerged by something but could not figure out what. For some reason, I just wanted to cry, and remember feeling that annoying lump in my throat almost constantly. At one stage I felt like making myself cry and getting it out of the way in the hope that the sadness might shift for a bit. I ignored it.
The following morning, I got up before the sun. I made a cup of coffee and sat outside in my heavy woollen cardigan and my pants. Dawn was different in the UK; wetter, but seemingly swifter as well, as if it knew we didn’t need that time to savour before the violence of the day. Same Earth; different country.
I got dressed, jumped in my car before Felicity woke up and drove five hours to see Mike and Ann Chandler – Bing’s parents. I had written them a detailed letter about Bing’s death which I’d intended to send the day Bing had died, before realizing that I would be back in the UK long before the British Forces Post Office service caught up and could deliver it in person.
I found their house in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. Mark’s parents were not elderly but they had clearly had their struggles. Ann had survived cancer once already; Mike was hardly fleet of foot. Ann opened the door and gave me a big hug. Mike, who was extremely ashen, was in tears in the living room.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to Ann. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She was cross with me for apologizing to her. Apparently, Bing had often told her about me, and how he had asked the regiment if he could be in my team because he liked ‘the way I did business’, although I found this hard to believe.
I recounted in painful detail every second of the patrol that morning, how we repatriated Bing that evening in Bastion, and his service where he was honoured by so many.
I told them how content Bing had seemed in the patrol base with Baz and me, how he was an extremely brave man; in the finest traditions of a British ‘Tommy’, and humbling to serve alongside. I told them it was a privilege to command him, and that despite the bigger picture and the UK’s strategic intentions in Afghanistan, he actually died protecting me, and I would never forget that. I promised my commitment to them would be enduring in the months and years ahead.
His dad wanted to know in detail of the seconds before and after Bing’s death, to ensure his son did not suffer. I told the story over and over again during the four hours I was in their house. They were beyond devastated by the loss of the man, who quite clearly was the life and soul of their family.
I left their house that evening. As soon as I got in the car, which was fortunately parked around the corner and out of sight, I broke down for the first time.
It was a long and lonely drive home amid traffic, all those cars driven by people who had little interest in and even less knowledge of what their Army was doing in their name. I couldn’t blame them.
That weekend, Felicity and I were supposed to be going to the Maldives for a mid-tour break, which she had booked about a month before. I had a difficult decision to make because Bing’s funeral was going to fall precisely in the middle of the holiday. I had a duty to him, but I also had a duty to Felicity, who was enduring all this with me. It was often worse for her, in fact, because she did not know what was going on half the time.
I had talked to Mike and Ann about it and they adamantly told me to go away. I had done my duty to Bing in their eyes, and I personally felt I had said goodbye to him in Afghanistan.
With a heavy heart, Felicity and I flew to the Maldives for a much-needed break. The place was almost celestial in its physical beauty, and I asked Felicity if she would do me the honour of marrying me. She said yes.
Ten days later I flew back out to Afghanistan to complete the remaining four months of my tour without Bing.
23
I passed Baz on the flight pan at Camp Bastion, as he headed off on R&R. Being in separate lines, we could only grab a few words. He seemed OK; he was looking forward to going home for a couple of weeks. I spent a few hours at Camp Bastion before catching a helicopter back to FOB Shawqat, where I would spend ten days as part of Nad-e Ali’s quick reaction force (QRF) – a small group of recce platoon soldiers who are used in emergencies. After that I’d return to PB Khaamar for the rest of the tour.
Things in PB Khaamar were continuing to get worse. While I was away on R&R an enemy ‘sniper’ (I did not believe he was a sniper – in my view he was just a lucky shot who happened to employ his sights properly) had shot three Brits with one round in the PB just north of mine. They all survived. Similarly, another run on the camp had been made, and an RPG had entered the command tent but not detonated, pinging off into the night air.
Patrolling with the QRF was much more relaxed and little happened. I was now deployed as a single FST element – with two radios capable of talking on the fires net and the air net simultaneously. One night we drove to Camp Bastion to pick up a piece of equipment. We slept in the vehicles for a couple of hours before driving back to Nad-e Ali the following morning. The vehicles were Jackals – the new version of the infamous WMIKs that I had used in my first tour. They had a little more protection, but were ultimately designed to be mobile, and as such drivers and operators were exposed
to the elements.
On that journey back from Camp Bastion, just as we began to enter the built-up area that stretched down to PB Khaamar, we were engaged by small-arms fire. I was woken by a round pinging off the anti-roll bar just next to me. After some shimmying around we could not identify the firing point and extracted from a heavily urban area without returning fire.
Later that day we were resting back at FOB Shawqat when we were given a shout to move out. A patrol from one of the satellite patrol bases in Khaamar’s area had gone out and walked into a complex IED field. Two men had been hit, both losing their lower legs, and two more were now stuck in this field, unable to move. The remainder of the patrol had secured the area, but they were being probed by the enemy. Being fixed in position meant they were very vulnerable. To ‘un-fix’ them, they would need the specialist counter-IED team to get them out. We were being deployed with this counter-IED team to beef up security.
A CH-47 came to pick us up, as well as two SAS liaison officers who were staying at the base. They were attached to the QRF that had been tasked to secure the area from further attack. There was an SAS squadron conducting strategic man-hunting operations in the area, and these liaison officers were helping coordinate their efforts with our own. Our part of Afghanistan was now becoming very contested, and there were multiple complex threats both from the ‘sniper’ and heavy built-up gun emplacements, which were apparently not faced elsewhere at the time.
There were about fifteen of us in the QRF, under the command of a junior officer – the recce platoon commander – who was very good. We landed near a compound and headed down to the stricken patrol. We’d just arrived at the scene when we came under contact from about 150m to our south.
It would be honest of me to say that at this point I was very much struggling to readjust to combat post R&R. I felt very, very different on the ground. I had worked hard to put Bing’s death behind me, but I could now feel – and even taste – the fear of being back in contact with the enemy. I tried to understand why, and could only think that while I had always considered I might well get shot – which was preferable to being blown up and bleeding out like so many other poor souls – I’d never thought it would just turn my lights off, that my mates wouldn’t have a chance to save me. That that would be it. Final. End. I guess I didn’t want to die too.
So, when we came under contact I was very very scared. I lost control of my bowels and shit myself a little bit. I was in the middle of the road with one of the SAS soldiers. I wanted to run. Instead, I forced myself to go down on one knee and search for the firing point through my sights. I could feel the fear rising up the back of my neck and my heart trying to jump out of my chest. But I forced my body to comply and stayed there, fruitlessly looking for the enemy.
‘Anyone see that?’ I shouted.
‘No,’ the SAS man next to me said. ‘Think it was a shoot and scoot. Let’s just be careful.’ He was Scottish and I struggled to understand him.
‘Roger,’ I said, after a couple of seconds.
With the small contact over, we made our way down to where the IED incident had taken place and were met with quite a sight. The incident had actually occurred about thirty minutes earlier, and the two injured blokes had already been evacuated by MERT. I found the section commander.
‘What’s going on, mate, where do you want us?’ I said to him.
‘Um – I’m not sure. It was horrific. Two blokes. Fucking hell.’ He was looking past me and was not fully engaging with me when I spoke to him.
The SAS guy joined us.
‘Where are the blokes cut off?’ he asked.
‘Just down that alley,’ the section commander replied, pointing down the side of a compound to a track that was joined by another compound on the other side. It was not an obvious IED point – he had done nothing wrong in going that way.
The SAS guy spoke to the recce platoon commander and between them they organized some defence. I stayed with the section commander.
‘You okay?’ I said to him.
‘Yeah, yeah. Not really,’ he replied.
At this point I recognized it immediately. This guy had gone. I looked above his eye-line for the first time and saw some human remains on his helmet. I wiped them off and told him to come and sit down with me.
‘Just chill out here for a minute with me, mate, OK? We’ve got it from here,’ I said to him.
I called the recce platoon commander over.
‘He’s gone, mate. He’s gone. This has been fucking horrific for him.’
‘Yeah, roger, Johnny. The counter-IED team are working on it now, I don’t reckon this will take too long and we will head back to their PB with them. It’s only about twenty minutes north of here,’ he replied.
The two soldiers who were cut off were uninjured and reasonably calm, and the QRF set about securing a safe area around them. While the counter-IED team did their magic and the two guys were retrieved I chatted to the section commander, trying to get him to chill out. He told me that both casualties had severe lower limb injuries. One realized he had lost his testicles and penis as he was carried out to the helicopter and let out a howl that the section commander was struggling to let go of.
We came under contact another two times while we were there. The recce platoon commander said he knew roughly where the firing point was. We wanted to drop one round of HE in a field just to the north of the shooter, in an attempt to frighten him off. Being fixed in position by the IED field, we had to retain the initiative and control over this scenario. I got on the net and ordered the guns to fire, which seemed to have the desired effect.
Once the counter-IED team’s work was complete, the entire group patrolled as a single unit back to the PB under the command of the recce platoon commander. There the QRF waited for onward transition to PB Khaamar, where we were to await further orders.
While we were waiting for the CH-47, I talked some more with the section commander, who remained in a very bad way. Physically he was fine; mentally, something had snapped. It was my first very visceral exposure to battle shock. I walked over to the recce platoon commander to have a quiet word. He agreed that the section commander needed help, so I got the company commander on the radio. He told me that the two guys injured would likely survive, but would be maimed for life.
‘You need to think about getting the section commander out,’ I told him.
I was no mental health nurse, but this guy needed attention as much as anyone who had a physical injury, and to my mind it was a category A requirement – immediate transfer back to Camp Bastion. The company commander agreed and I put in another discreet call to the MERT on my net, to get them to pick the section commander up. Thirty minutes later he walked onto the back of a CH-47 and flew out of the war, with perhaps his hardest battles about to start. I never knew what happened to him.
The heat of the day was upon us. The QRF, including the SAS liaison team, were sitting outside the Ops room waiting for our lift back to PB Khaamar, sunbathing. I nipped around to the toilet area, where I dug out my wet wipes, wiped my arse and burnt my pants. My shit had not seeped through to my trousers. The company held a daily lunchtime collective call to keep everyone updated on what was going on. In some of the PBs, one could become quite isolated quite quickly, so it was useful to keep everyone up to date. I listened in on most days, although it was all a bit samey. Taking ground, not holding it, extracting under fire, fruitless meetings with elders, locals coming in to claim money for damage we usually hadn’t done to their compounds.
If I’m honest I didn’t really care about the bigger picture; I was purely focused on looking after each patrol I went on, and then forgetting about the whole bloody mess. The locals hated us, and by now I was beginning to hate them.
The company commander came on the radio. He said that he understood how the lads at this PB must be feeling. That he felt that way too and that we were going to cancel patrols for the rest of the day. He rushed through the agenda for the call, and t
hen signed off. The sadness in his voice was acute.
I was next to one of the SAS guys, and we just looked at each other. We knew the company was getting hammered – I’d been there with them until about two weeks ago. During the few hours I had spent in FOB Shawqat the day before I had spoken to the battalion 2IC. He discreetly outlined to me, officer to officer, that he was beginning to get the impression the company was starting to struggle. The SAS guy confirmed that was his assessment too.
But still, the moment the will to fight is actually snapped is extremely tangible. I felt it was that moment, on that radio call. I felt something suck out the air around the PB. It was clear to me that everyone had had enough for now.
But we looked after each other in the Army – up and down the chain of command. I resolved that I was not going to mention it to battalion headquarters, as I had been asked to do in FOB Shawqat, but would instead raise it face to face with the company commander himself upon my return to PB Khaamar. After all, one could not blame them. They had taken heavy casualties and had been in this area for three unrelenting months now. It was taking an increasingly heavy toll mentally and physically.
I was surprised that the commander was allowing how affected he was to be seen. Maybe his men knew him well enough that there was no point hiding it, but I had always felt that a commander will earn his rank in the heavy moments. The moments that seem to last, where time passes very slowly. The moment when someone gets shot, the weapon jams, the enemy is 20m away, and the radio isn’t working. The moment after a death or serious injury like this. The truth is, it is fucking scary – we’re all fucking scared. Seeing someone lose half their body and scream all the way onto the helicopter is traumatic. Seeing someone shot dead is traumatic. In those moments, you just want to run onto the helicopter, go home and be done with it. That, I feel, is when you earn your rank. It’s just a piece of embroidery otherwise. Leadership isn’t all about riding your horse at the head of the parade. There are some fucking hard, blood-soaked, dust-encased shaking-with-fear, shit yourself yards you have to find it in yourself to make – you as an individual, not encouraged by others. But everyone has their limit and these guys were being pushed to it and beyond. There were many, many brave young British leaders in Afghanistan. I hoped our nation would be forever proud of them. This guy was one of them. He had just reached his limit.
We Were Warriors Page 17