A Scimitar light tank managed to escape the ambush and turned back to go to the aid of the stricken Spartan. It too was soon hit by several RPGs and ran into a ditch. The commander, Corporal of Horse Michael Flynn, ordered the crew to dismount and shoot their way out. As they passed the smoking wreck of the the Spartan it seemed that everyone in it was dead. But Lance Corporal of Horse Andrew Radford, twenty-five, who was some way from the ambush site, could see that the driver had managed to get clear. In what was described in the citation for the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross he later won as an ‘almost superhuman effort’, he ran 70 yards while under grenade fire to rescue his badly burned comrade and carry him to safety. He was helped by Corporal Flynn, who was awarded the Military Cross for his courage. ‘B’ Company were then sent to recover the bodies of Eida, Johnson and Nicholls and to destroy any sensitive equipment.
Eida had been a particularly popular officer. Major Gary Wilkinson, the 7 RHA battery commander, was his superior officer and a good friend, and went on the mission to recover his body. ‘He was an exceptionally competent captain among the strong bunch that I had,’ he said. ‘He was very outgoing and extremely popular with the soldiers.’ Even by military standards he stood out as an adventure sports enthusiast. ‘He was big on skiing, big on climbing, big on every outdoor pursuit, so a real dynamic, larger-than-life character.’ Wilkinson found it ‘the most difficult day of the tour for me’. He could not let his feelings affect his performance. ‘You get on with it,’ he said. ‘You do it. You’re a professional soldier and you grieve when you get home.’
The Pathfinders did not finally leave Musa Qaleh until 6 August. They had been there for fifty-two days. It took a full-scale battle group operation, code-named Mar Chichel, ‘Snakebite’ in Pashto, to get them out and a relief force in. The newcomers were from the 1st Battalion, The Royal Irish Regiment (R IRISH). Some of its men were already serving with their fellow Irishman, Paul Blair, in ‘B’ Company. Calls from the field for more manpower had resulted in two more platoons and a mortar section being pulled off leave and dispatched to Afghanistan, almost all of them volunteers. Tootal went along to command the operation. The plan was for the resupply convoy, together with R IRISH’s Somme Platoon and mortars and the Paras’ Patrols Platoon, to drive through the night to a lie-up position to the west of Musa Qaleh. At dawn they were to secure a landing zone in the wadi and set up mortar lines overlooking it for 3 Para’s ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies to air-assault in. The companies would then clear the ground up to the green zone. A Canadian unit mounted in light armoured vehicles would punch through the green zone and secure a wadi on the other side. There, the Danes would meet the reinforcements and bring them into the base.
R IRISH’s 81mm mortars were commanded by Corporal Danny Groves. The Royal Irish came from both sides of the island but Groves was a Brummie. He was efficient, cheerful, optimistic and observant, all of which is revealed in the diary he kept of the exploits of his eighty-five comrades, the ‘Band of Musa Muckers’. Groves set up his mortar barrels on high ground overlooking the town while Somme Platoon moved out to secure the landing zone. While this was going on, a Taliban target was identified. The mortars of the Irish opened up. It was, as Groves proudly recorded, the first high-explosive round the regiment had fired in anger since the Korean War.
The battle group was supported by helicopters and bombers. The move into town opened with the dropping of a 500lb bomb at the start of the operation, ‘giving the Taliban the good news’, as the grim joke had it.
‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies then started moving through compounds to secure either side of the road that led through the green zone, using explosive ‘mousehole’ charges to blast through mud walls where they came across them. Once the road was in the Paras’ hands, explosive experts from the engineers combed the route into town for IEDs.
While this was going on the Pathfinders were preparing to leave. It was the Danes’ job to secure a 300-yard stretch of the road that led westwards up to the wadi and the landing zone. It took them three-quarters of an hour longer than planned to do so. When they finally succeeded, the Pathfinders drove out. They were saying a thankful goodbye to Musa Qaleh. When the time came, Groves and the mortar team descended from the wadi and joined their mates. The Canadian armour pressed forward to lead the way and the Royal Irish crammed into Pinzgauers and set off behind them. It seemed incredible that any Taliban fighter could still be alive in the green zone. But as the first wave of resupply vehicles returning from the district centre crossed back over the wadi, a gunner from the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) who was mounted on one of the WMIKs protecting the convoy was hit in the neck by a rifle bullet and was killed. Private Andrew Barrie Cutts was a member of 13 Air Assault Regiment, a specialist unit of the RLC trained to provide firepower and protection for the logistics convoys in Helmand. He was nineteen years old, a quiet, well-liked man whose passions were his local Nottinghamshire football team and his family. He had been planning to join the Paras. His CO, Lieutenant Colonel Neale Jouques, said later: ‘He died doing what he was good at – protecting his comrades. He was a brave and exemplary soldier.’
His death cast a pall over what had otherwise been an extremely successful operation. The delay in securing the route from the district centre to the wadi had allowed some of the Taliban to move into firing positions again. It was a sombre flight back to Bastion. Barrie Cutts’s body travelled with the departing Paras.
As the helicopters left, the Royal Irish were settling in. Danny Groves immediately set about scouting for the best fire base. He chose a site that offered decent protection, good communications and 360-degree arcs of fire, and began bedding in the barrels.
They had been there for only two and a half hours when the Taliban attacked. Groves regarded this as ‘the perfect opportunity’ to begin adjusting their fire to achieve maximum accuracy. He recorded in his diary that ‘it also gave us the opportunity to send out a clear warning to the Taliban: “Don’t fuck – the 81mms are in town”’.
12
Operation Augustus
In addition to trying to battle the Taliban in the district centres, the Paras were also expected to do their bit for Operation Mountain Thrust – the continuing US mission to track down and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda honchos. On 8 July Stuart Tootal was visited in Bastion by Major General Benjamin Freakley. He was head of the Combined Joint Task Force – 76, the American formation charged with counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan. As such, he was Tootal’s ‘two up’ superior, one above his Canadian commander, and yet another boss to answer to in the Coalition’s tangled command chain.
Freakley was there to discuss an upcoming mission, which had fallen to 3 Para. It was called Operation Augustus, and its purpose was to seize a senior Taliban commander who was thought to be operating out of a madrassa – an Islamic school – in a cluster of compounds at a location near Sangin. Freakley told Tootal that ‘by disrupting the Taliban’s command chain and killing and capturing the core leaders and fighters we will [persuade] the less committed that there are better alternatives than supporting the insurgents’. Tootal was partly convinced. But he still firmly believed that a major ‘kinetic’ operation like the one proposed had to be balanced by development projects that produced a tangible result. Not enough effort, he felt, was going into that side of the plan.
Freakley seemed a sympathetic soldier. He talked to ‘A’ Company about the loss of Damien Jackson, whose death was still casting a shadow. Jackson’s body was flown back to Britain early on the morning of 9 July. The coffin was carried up the ramp of the C-130 by six men of Support Company. Tootal, together with the new RSM, John Hardy, followed it into the aircraft to pay their last respects. Tootal was glad to see Hardy. He had lost one good man when the old RSM, Nigel Bishop, returned to Britain after being promoted. Bishop and Tootal were close. They had served in Northern Ireland and Iraq together. But he was getting an equally stalwart replacement. Hardy was ‘the right man … considered, robust an
d straight down the line, telling you how it is and how it should be’. Hardy was a reliable guide to the men’s feelings. He had decided against asking ‘A’ Company to provide the coffin-bearers, in order to spare their emotions. The 3 Para party paid their last respects, a bugler played the Last Post, and Damien Jackson was gone, though far from forgotten.
‘A’ Company were ‘understandably shaken and absolutely knackered’ after Sangin, in Tootal’s judgement. But they would get only a day or two of rest. They were needed for Augustus. After more than two years in command of the company, Will Pike was due to return to Britain to take up a new appointment, but was anxious to lead his men into what would be his last operation. Augustus was going to be big. ‘C’ Company were also taking part, as well as a Canadian company mounted in eight-wheeled LAVs.
‘This was probably the most serious one-off thing we had done since we had been there,’ said Pike. ‘It was certainly the thing that carried with it the highest risk … we all knew what was happening now. We had all seen it at close quarters. No one was under any illusions about what might happen.’
The target was a cluster of compounds about 3 miles north-east of the Sangin district centre. The plan was to place an FSG on high ground to the east of the compounds. ‘A’ and ‘C’ Companies would then assault in by helicopter as close to the Taliban base as possible. The thinking was that by doing so the risk of getting caught on open ground on the approach was reduced. It might be difficult to break into the compounds. But once inside, they would have the advantage of the cover that the buildings and walls provided, and have a launch pad for the next objective.
‘A’ Company were to land first and capture the first compound, code-named ‘Tiberius’. This was believed to be a Taliban stronghold. Then ‘C’ Company would leapfrog over them to the next compound, ‘Claudius’, which was believed to be the Taliban command post. ‘A’ Company would then jump forward again. So it would go on until all the ten or so compounds were secured and the Taliban chiefs inside them captured or killed. The LAVs, which were to move up from the south during the night, would link up with the troops and secure their flanks.
It was thought from the beginning that the Paras would meet strong resistance. ‘We were pretty sure we would take fire in the landing zone,’ said Pike. ‘It was that sort of place.’
Five Chinooks took off from Bastion in the early hours of 14 July. Each one carried about forty paratroopers and one quad bike and trailer. They would have plenty of company in the air. The Paras had the protection of a Spectre gunship with a radar-guided 105mm artillery piece and 30mm cannon, a Predator UAV equipped with Hellfire missiles as well as its spying equipment, a modified Hercules fitted with jamming equipment to block Taliban communications, and Harriers and Apaches to provide close air support.
Chris Hasler was piloting one of the Chinooks that was due to arrive in the first wave. He had decided to load on 200 kilograms of extra fuel to give him more ‘loiter’ time in the target area. As he strained to get airborne he felt he might have made a catastrophic mistake by doing so. The engines dipped into emergency power, something they could only sustain for twelve seconds before they burned up. But finally he reached flying speed and they turned southwards, executing a feint to fool any Taliban spies on the ground.
They reached Lashkar Gah and turned north, then dipped down to low level, going into a holding pattern in a valley while awaiting the order to go in.
The Chinooks had expected to be held for only one or two orbits, but they were kept there for ten minutes, watching their fuel gauges sinking alarmingly.
The target area had been quiet the previous night. Now reports came in that the Predator UAV was picking up signs of intensive activity. There were figures up on the compound roofs overlooking the landing site, in a hedgerow that ran alongside it and on the site itself. It seemed certain that an ambush was being prepared.
Stuart Tootal was in the third wave, aboard a UA-60 American command, control and communications helicopter. It seemed to him that either the mission should be aborted or suppressive fire called in. The Coalition air force had been cued to strike as soon as the fighting kicked off. But even with the new rules of engagement, it was not legal to blast positions unless the men in them could be positively identified as holding weapons.
Tootal was unable to see the video feed from the Predator for himself and radioed back to the JOC for an update on what was coming in. The picture was unclear. He ordered one of the escorting Apaches to make a final sweep. The pilot reported back that there was no sign of activity. Tootal gave the order to press on.
The Chinooks left their holding pattern and raced into the landing zone. Hasler was in the third ship, behind his boss, Wing Commander Mike Woods. As he approached, the situation on the ground seemed quiet and the radios were silent, ‘a very good situation indeed’. However, ‘the good fortune was not to last’. As Royal Navy pilot Lieutenant Nichol Benzie put down the first Chinook, the shooting began.
‘All hell broke loose around the aircraft,’ said Will Pike, who was in the lead chopper, sitting next to Benzie. The sky was laced with tracer from heavy machine guns and rifles and with the fiery trails of RPGs. Hasler thought he could make out five or six positions on one side of the dry river bed where the landing site was located and four or five on the other. ‘They were definitely dug in, definitely ready for us,’ he said. ‘They didn’t just pick up weapons when the aircraft came in. They were there.’
There were yells of ‘Abort!’ coming over the radios but it was too late. Benzie was calmly settling his Chinook into the middle of the flurry of fire zipping across the landing site. The thirty or more Paras aboard were desperate to get off and away from the chopper, charging down the back ramp and jumping out into the darkness, which was now stitched with glittering tracer. The ground was boggy and rutted, entirely unlike what they had been led to expect. While they searched for cover an RPG exploded just below the Chinook as it lifted away.
Looking down from the second Chinook, Hugo Farmer saw the pyrotechnics and was comforted by the thought that the helicopter escorts were laying down suppressing fire. ‘Then I oriented myself and could see that the rounds were coming in my direction. I thought, “All right, here we go again.”’ When they were 40 feet off the ground he heard the whang of rounds bouncing down the fuselage. ‘I was just standing there, making myself nice and small.’ Everyone was desperate to get off. The bottom of the aircraft was armoured but the protection ran only a few feet up the side. Private Steven Jones was one of the last in the queue surging down the ramp. Just as he got there a round pierced the side, hitting him in the shoulder. It was a lucky wound, missing all veins, arteries, bones and joints. His first response was to shout, ‘I’ve been shot!’ Then, according to Martin Taylor, who was next to him, he started to struggle down the ramp. ‘I told him he was going straight back to Bastion but he wouldn’t have it,’ Taylor said. ‘He was shouting, “I’m coming with you, I want to come with you.”’ Taylor ordered him to stay aboard. The others scurried through the swirling dust and dived into a ditch 25 yards away.
As Chris Hasler came in to land the third Chinook, he ‘wanted nothing more than to pull in power and get away from that place as fast as possible’. But the first Paras were now on the ground. He realised that ‘if I didn’t put my own troops on the ground to bolster their strength they would surely be cut to ribbons’.
He continued his approach ‘for what seemed like years. There was so much incoming fire and balls of tracer that he ‘didn’t realise how fast I was going until it was almost too late’. In order to slow down his helicopter he had to flare back while only a few yards from the ground, hauling the nose upwards so the belly acted as an air brake. It was a highly dangerous manoeuvre, running the risk of the aft rotor hitting the ground if the angle was greater than 26 degrees. Hasler ‘managed to check the nose forward to just under twenty-five degrees, half a second before we touched’. It was a hard landing but they were down. Hasler felt
‘jubilation that I hadn’t killed everyone on board’.
A heavy machine gun was pouring bullets at them from a position on the left, about a hundred yards away. One of the crewmen was trying to return fire from the Chinook’s door guns but ‘was having a tough time … the enemy had sent out groups of women and children ahead of them while they fired over their heads at us’. However cruel the tactic, Hasler though it was ‘quite effective as the enemy know British forces will not fire into a crowd of civilians and the Taliban seem not to care whether or not they hit their own’.
Before they set off the crews had been told that if they found themselves on the ground for more than thirty seconds they were to lift off, even if there were still troops aboard. Hasler now saw he had been down for more than a minute. His crew and co-pilot were urging him to go and he began to lift. Unbeknown to them, Flight Lieutenant Matt Carter, the principal forward air controller, together with Colour Sergeant Stuart Bell and Sergeant Webb, were still on the tailgate, struggling to unload mortar bombs. Rather than stay aboard and fly back to safety they all leapt into the darkness. Bell fractured one of his legs and Webb broke his hand. When Carter recovered from his jump he set about calling in fire from the Spectre gunship.
As the last soldier departed Hasler poured on the power and the Chinook lifted ‘like a cork’, pursued by ‘big green bulbs of tracer swishing past my co-pilot’s head at what seemed like only inches away’.
On the ground, Will Pike made a rapid assessment of the situation he and his men had landed in. It seemed to him to be vital to break into the compounds as quickly as possible so as to ‘secure this baseline, dominate the landing zone and the area around so we could then have a stable foot on the ground that would then enable whatever else was going to happen to happen’. Hugo Farmer was commanding 1 Platoon, and Andy Mallet 2 Platoon. Pike sent Mallet and his men to the southernmost of the two compounds and Farmer to the northern one. The easiest way of breaching the compounds was by blowing a hole in the wall. They had arrived with combat engineers armed with ‘mousehole’ charges. These were simple devices – two bits of plastic cabling in the form of a cross with ten sticks of P4 plastic high explosive on the ends. The plan was to blow two holes in each compound wall. That way the defenders would not know which one the attackers were coming through.
3 Para Page 19