We Were Warriors

by Johnny Mercer

  As the helicopter landed, we picked him up again, but after a few steps the stretcher snapped. I caught the man’s soaking and heavy body and, together with the company commander, carried him like a baby onto the CH-47 and gently placed him on a stretcher they had waiting in the back.

  The helicopter took off and we ran back into the PB. The company commander asked if I was all right, and when I said I was he headed back to the Ops room. I went back to my tent and sat round with some of the boys, talking about what a shit day it was. I re-told the tale of the stretcher collapsing.

  ‘You need to be trimmed, boss!’ one of the sergeants piped up.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. How did it make you feel?’

  ‘Pretty shit.’

  ‘There you go. You’ve been trimmed,’ he replied, to inevitable laughter.

  Funny, but not funny really. Tokenism dominated almost every approach to veterans’ care and mental health, and the longer the tour went on the heavier the inadequacies of the care weighed on me.

  30

  As August turned to September, the fighting in northern Nad-e Ali did not simmer down as quickly as I had hoped. Instead, the Taliban adapted their tactics to keep us on our toes and we were faced with ever more complex ambushes involving IEDs and heavy machine guns. In the very north of the AO the sharpshooter, or ‘sniper’ as some persisted in calling him, was still operating and having some success in hitting his targets. This, along with other intelligence gathered by strategic assets, suggested that there was a specific cell of Taliban here, and that was why they were so robust and difficult to kill off. This was part of the reason we’d been given a small SAS team to help us in our mission. They had access to better intelligence, and would increase our capabilities when it came to targeting some of the key individuals in the area.

  As mentioned previously, in my view the ‘sniper’ operating to the north of our AO was just a Talib who’d worked out how to use his sight and was a lucky shot. His comrades were fighters who specialized in the ‘Beirut unload’ method of engaging ISAF troops (firing an entire magazine around the corner of, or over the top of, a wall without looking through the sights), so I suspect he was slightly overrated. Nonetheless, we would be required to conduct dawn and night-time operations against a series of compounds in the area to try and find him, if not his cache of weapons. Sounds exciting. It wasn’t.

  In my previous tour, I had been attached to the Special Boat Service so I had some experience to draw on. The truth is, these types of units do extraordinary things on our behalf every single day to keep us safe. Nothing could ever diminish my high opinion and respect for them. They are simply the very best of us, and whatever time I spent with them was usually a privilege.

  However . . .

  On the second or third night after they arrived, a group of us were treated to a full and formal set of briefs for a very basic patrol to the north of the AO, from the sergeant major in charge of the SAS team. As we were listening to his orders, the PB came under a fairly sustained attack from small-arms fire. We weren’t overly concerned, but I was granted an Apache that was on a neighbouring operation, to use if I required it.

  The Apache turned up and the attack died down. The SAS sergeant major’s orders resumed, but I was still exiting the attack helicopter out of our airspace after checking that there were no more targets available for them to engage. Subsequently, I came back halfway through the briefing.

  The SAS 2IC stormed over to me.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said. I didn’t think much of myself, but at the same time I wasn’t used to an aggressive manner straight out of the blocks from someone I didn’t know.

  ‘Sorry, who the fuck are you?’ I replied. Then I recognized him. ‘Ah – you’re the guy who’s come up with the sergeant major. I’ve just been doing some controls – all that helicopter shit doesn’t just happen by itself.’ I was trying to be nice and diffuse his anger.

  ‘Well, you need to be here from the beginning. It’s orders. You’re a fucking Rupert, right? You could learn a thing or two.’

  There are not many occasions when I could legitimately say I was in the presence of greatness, but this was one. I was genuinely taken aback by how much of a cock the guy was.

  I let it go. I wish I hadn’t – I wish I could say I put him straight, but I was in shock. What actually happened on our patrol the following day was, therefore, beyond irony.

  The plan was to push north into the area where the supposed enemy sniper was hiding out. Under cover of darkness, two sections of British and one section of ANA would patrol on foot into the village that the sniper was operating from. In my vehicle, along with Company HQ in their two armoured vehicles, I would patrol along the main road in the hope of coming under small-arms fire from said ‘sniper’. The patrols on foot would then be able to identify the firing point and deal with the sniper in the village. Not a terrible plan.

  The ground patrol duly went out and got into position. Upon first light the ‘suicide squad’, as I decided to rename us, started driving very slowly along the main road past the village.

  No one shot at us, and under the pretext of visiting another patrol base, we continued on east until I was sure we were out of range of any small-arms fire from the village. We then ‘leaguered-up’ (found a good spot to park-up) and awaited our orders to drive back past the village again in the hope of drawing some fire, before returning to the patrol base.

  I was watching my arcs, listening to the radio, when I heard of a contact come out of the village. I perked up and listened hard to the handset to work out what was going on. There’s nothing worse than some guy coming on the radio and asking for a SITREP from you when you are in contact.

  The three teams in the village had come under fire from a couple of firing points, and were looking to extract. I immediately moved our vehicles back onto the ridgeline and within range of our weapon platforms so we could provide fire into the village in support if required. While waiting, I also queued up some 105mm smoke to cover our imminent extraction.

  Suddenly, a call came over the net asking the company HQ call sign to move into position directly in front of the village, on the road, to give the teams in the village some cover for extraction. Those on foot would then move in bounds to the vehicles and seek cover in the dead ground behind us, while those of us in the vehicles provided covering fire.

  As we drove slowly into position, right in front of the village, on the road, the contact dropped temporarily. I saw the first man start heading for my vehicle. Both Brit teams were coming one after the other; apparently the ANA team had ‘extracted another way’ and were on their way back to the PB under their own steam. (They had legged it, again.)

  Just as the last man exited the village to cover the 150 or so metres to the vehicles, the vehicles themselves came under more accurate heavy-weapons fire; the rounds were pinging off the outside of my Mastiff. I engaged with 105mm smoke to cover the withdrawal.

  For some reason, the lads who had reached us had not immediately gone down into cover behind our vehicles. Instead a few were on the road itself, covering the remainder of their patrols.

  ‘Open your fucking door, and tell them to get off the fucking road!’ I told my driver, shouting to be heard over the noise of the bullets.

  As the door opened I heard three ‘Man down’ calls, one after the other, from different soldiers. We had multiple casualties. That familiar feeling in my arms and legs started almost every time I heard that phrase, let alone three times.

  The company sergeant major, who was providing top-cover from the vehicle with a .50 calibre, was yelling at his blokes to ‘get the fuck off the ridge’, and I remember hearing one of the soldiers encouraging his mate, who had clearly been hit, although I could not see any of this from my position in the passenger side of the second vehicle.

  A guy just in front of my vehicle was attempting to set up a GPMG position to engage the enemy when he too was hit, and he dropped t
he weapon. He was picked up and dragged back over the ridgeline.

  The SAS 2IC ran forward and grabbed the machine gun. He started firing it from the hip into the village. But what I couldn’t understand was why he was still on the wrong side of the ridge – exposing himself to the enemy while firing the weapon in a way that meant he was never ever going to hit anything he was aiming at.

  ‘Fucking hell, tell that twat to get off that ridgeline!’ I shouted at the sergeant major.

  The rate of fire was not dropping as the smoke started to take effect. I was not sure how but the Taliban always seemed to recognize when you had taken casualties. The SAS guy was still horribly exposed, trying to load another belt into the machine gun. I adjusted the point of aim for the three guns I had laid onto the smoke target and engaged with rounds of HE. We had now put in a call for emergency close-air support as well, and Baz was sorting that out. In the fog of war, it can be hard to recollect the exact sequence of events, but I remember what happened next as if it was yesterday.

  I gave the order to fire, and while I did so the SAS guy in front of me ran back out in front of my vehicle to engage the enemy again, firing once more from the hip. He was either fucking stupid, or trying to win a medal. I said to the driver, ‘Watch this, he is about to get hit.’

  He was immediately hit and rolled forward; it looked like his right arm had been shattered.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I shouted, not only pissed off with him for getting shot but also because I was – irony of ironies – now going to have to go and get my friend from the night before. I opened my door, and as I did so a burst of automatic fire shot up the wing mirror inches from my face. I shut the door again.

  ‘Don’t go that way, sir!’ shouted the sergeant major on top-cover.

  ‘Thanks, sergeant major,’ I replied. I think he was joking, or else he hadn’t noticed the wing mirror incident. As I went to exit the Mastiff on the other side, another soldier bravely ran out and dragged this SAS guy back to my vehicle.

  He was not unconscious, but was clearly in a lot of pain. He was pushed up to me and I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him inside. He was covered in blood and pretty unresponsive. Making a quick assessment of the casualty, I told the driver and sergeant major that we would have to make a single vehicle dash back to camp to get this guy on a MERT.

  The 105mm HE landed. I was going to be fully employed with emergency first aid, so I yelled into the handset to Baz back in PB Khaamar.

  ‘Those rounds are good but you are now the controlling station – I have taken a casualty in my vehicle.’

  Baz had never fired the guns in his life. Should be interesting, I thought, as I started getting to work on the injured soldier. Finding that I could not move properly around the cabin, I quickly took off my body armour and helmet, completely trusting in the vehicle to provide my protection. The guy continued to be unresponsive, and there was a great deal of blood coming out of his arm.

  I was worried he had been hit somewhere on his torso that I couldn’t see, as had happened with Bing. Every time I touched him he recoiled in pain, and it was a struggle to check him over. I started looking down his back and ran my hands over his chest, feeling for blood; after a while in theatre one can easily tell the difference between the sticky, viscous nature of blood, and the slippery, cleaner nature of sweat. He groaned. I told him he should talk to me and I wouldn’t have to move him so much. I asked him if he had been shot anywhere else other than his arm, and he said no.

  His arm was limp. I tried to get a tourniquet on it to stop the bleeding but there didn’t seem to be much bone matter there and I could not get it on properly. I sat behind him, pulled him into me and rammed my hand up into his armpit as tight as I could to try and stem the blood, even a little bit. It worked. I told the driver to get us back to camp as soon as possible, and the sergeant major to make sure the MERT was mobilized to pick the guy up. Over the speaker in the cab, I could hear the guns report to my call sign that they were ready to fire again, and I wondered what I should do – I could no longer see the target.

  Unbeknownst to me, Baz had got eyes onto the target through a fast jet pod, and was happy to engage to break the contact permanently.

  ‘You okay for Baz to engage?’ the sergeant major asked.

  ‘You’ll have to decide between you.’

  The sergeant major said the engagement was needed, and Baz got the rounds away. He told me later he had never been so nervous. I was nervous too, as I hugged this wounded soldier into me as tightly as I could, listening to Baz giving the order and waiting for the rounds to land and hear the result. Remarkably, they landed well, with one round directly onto a firing point. I knew Baz would never shut up about that, so if he hadn’t seen it through the jet pod, we all agreed not to tell him.

  We got back to the PB, where I passed the injured soldier out of the vehicle and made his weapon safe. He was taken in by the medic, given some morphine and stabilized. I thought he might lose his arm, but he would live. Baz controlled the MERT into the HLS and the three other casualties were all extracted. They had been very lucky – one suffered a shrapnel wound to his knee from an RPG, one was shot in the body armour, and one was shot in the helmet.

  That evening the company HQ had a wash-up from the patrol. The SAS sergeant major was over in the corner of the room on the phone to his boss, explaining what had happened. I cringed as he used the line ‘took it like a Special Forces soldier’.

  After a week of normal patrolling, the company was asked to conduct another patrol under the auspices of the now lone SAS sergeant major. He was adamant that he had intelligence (that he couldn’t possibly share) that there was a particularly unpleasant individual in a compound directly south of the NEB Canal.

  To cut a long and tedious story short, we patrolled there before dawn and tried to wake the guy up with a few flash-bangs, before entering the compound and discovering it was, in fact, empty. This was becoming a bit of a theme. While I was waiting on the cordon, holding off an Apache to the south, far enough away that its noise wouldn’t disturb the operation, I decided to scan the surrounding area with a device that can pick up heat signatures and has extremely good night-vision capability.

  Looking along our planned route out, I found twelve areas of disturbed earth in the space of 200m – the most obvious IEDs one could hope to find. The reason this place was deserted was because it was an old IED factory, mined everywhere. There was no one here. And there hadn’t been for some time.

  I told the sergeant major what I had seen on the radio, and asked him to come out of the compound to my position on the perimeter and have a look.

  In agreement, we stopped the operation immediately, and he asked me if I would lead the teams out of the area by a safe route, given that I could use my device. It couldn’t be used on the move, though, so while the rest of the patrol gathered themselves up, I mapped out where the IEDs were on a bit of card and plotted a route around them. It was night-time, and we were quite some way from the PB. If I brought the Apache into the overhead it would expose us, and while we were unlikely to come under contact, diving for cover – or any other slight deviation from the route – would set an IED off.

  We moved out, everyone following me in single file as I tried to remember where each of the signs of disturbed earth were. I ended up walking as close to the canal’s edge as I possibly could without falling in, and remarkably we all got out of there safely.

  Suffice to say, my confidence in the operational surge with this particular team was waning. It was a wildly different experience to my SBS tour.

  Two days later the sergeant major conducted a small patrol to another ANA patrol base and, unfortunately, he didn’t think to tell the ANA that they were coming.

  The patrol was leaving early in the morning, and perhaps sensing my reticence, the sergeant major had not asked me to provide anyone to accompany them. The first I heard of it was when I was woken by a frantic signaller telling me that a patrol
was under contact, with a British soldier seriously wounded, and could I sort out a MERT. I ran to the Ops room to discover that almost no one knew anything about this patrol, that it had been engaged by the ANA from the base they were heading to, and that one of the British soldiers had been hit by a 7.62 round in the shoulder in a so-called ‘green on blue’ incident.

  After the patrol returned, and as the MERT lifted off with the wounded soldier, I had had enough and I got the senior NCOs around me for a chat.

  ‘What the fuck is going on, lads?’ I said.

  Some of them were clearly a bit star-struck by the SAS team and were simply going along with it.

  ‘I don’t care who they are; we’ve been here for months now. You know how it works; you know we don’t hit compounds like we did two nights ago – it was obviously a bad place. You know what the ANA are like. Now one of your blokes has been shot by them?’

  The SAS sergeant major wandered over.

  ‘Look, buddy,’ I said, ‘this is all turning into a bag of shit. I respect you and what you guys were trying to achieve, but this is nonsense.’

  Nobody backed me up, seemingly too much in awe of the SAS team.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he replied, taken aback.

  ‘I just completed a tour with a Special Forces Task Force. This is not that; this is not a company of SF soldiers. The Afghans are not Afghan SF soldiers – they are fucking stupid and they nearly killed a Brit this morning. We do not have the resources or the assets to properly conduct the sort of patrols you are trying, with a realistic chance of success, in a reasonably safe manner. We’ve been to half of these compounds before; we know where the IED belts are. Let’s pause today and work out a better way forward tomorrow.’