But the Paras, like everyone else, had their limits. The worst aspect of the fighting was, as Mallet said, the repetition. Conventional wars tended to be a succession of intense encounters. They were terrifying and exhausting but they were separated by firebreaks of time which allowed recovery, and a dimming of the memory of what was involved. The soldiers of the battle group were fighting a different kind of war. They were fighting day in, day out, facing danger over and over again, experiencing a lifetime’s worth of trauma in a week.
Inevitably there were psychological casualties. ‘Battle shock was an issue,’ said Jamie Loden. ‘There were guys who in the aftermath of particular incidents were very much shaken by what it had been like. As much as you could, you would try and rest them.’ As a result it had been necessary ‘to break up and mix sections together, partly because the wounded had removed the key commanders, but [also] because some people were being less effective … in terms of asserting their command responsibility, and it became necessary to make changes in order to make things function properly’. Some of his men ‘had made it pretty clear that they didn’t want to go on. But twenty-four hours later they were a bit ashamed about saying that’.
‘Blokes were saying, “What’s happening here?”’ said Private Craig Sharp. ‘We were going out every day and getting hit, and some were wondering why we were doing this … but it didn’t last long.’
Commanders had a fine judgement to make when faced with a weakening of resolve. ‘Leadership remains a balance of passion and grip,’ said Loden. ‘You have got to give them time to accept what has happened and then force them to get on with it.’
Only a few of the battle group experienced psychological difficulties during the deployment. But at dark moments, many suffered doubts about the value of the mission. This was not a war of national survival. The Afghanistan expedition was an aftershock of the earthquake the USA set in motion in response to 9/11. British soldiers felt little of the sense of outrage that burned in their American counterparts. As a result, said Loden, ‘there were inevitably moments when some of them thought, “What the fuck am I doing here.” I think that happened at every level.’ The only answer was to crack on, not out of any belief in the purpose of the War on Terror but from a sense of duty to your mates, your unit and your regiment. It was the spiritual cement that had held soldiers together throughout history.
On 29 August a full battle group operation was mounted to get a logistic convoy and an air-portable bridge into Sangin. The bridge was to span the Helmand river and open up a safe route to the west. Operation Baghi was conducted by ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies and the HCR. When it was over, ‘A’ Company would come out and ‘C’ Company would stay on.
It would be a potentially hazardous operation. In recent days, the Taliban had shown they were still determined and aggressive. They also appeared to have improved their fighting skills. The planning was detailed and maximum resources were mustered to ensure success. The HCR were to escort the convoy in. It would arrive from the east. On the final route in they would have to cross the open patch of land between the western edge of Sangin and the district centre. It was at this point that it would be at its most vulnerable. The plan was to swamp the area with troops to prevent the Taliban from infiltrating and attacking. ‘C’ Company would push down to the south of the town. ‘B’ Company would take care of the north.
That meant securing three buildings that the Taliban were likely to use as firing points. The most important was the ‘Chinese Restaurant’, so called because of its garish, pagoda-like decor. The other two lay slightly to the east. The job of taking the Chinese Restaurant was given to Lieutenant Ollie Dale, who had arrived with 3 Para only in May. He had joined the Paras as a soldier and had put himself forward for officer training. He was now commanding 4 Platoon. They flew in at first light and moved out of the compound a few hours later. Despite the recent fighting, there was still life in the town. ‘As we moved out, very aggressively and all kitted out to fight, there were still guys walking about, going to the market,’ Dale said. ‘It was quite surreal.’ He and his men waited by the ruins of the pharmacy while 5 Platoon from ‘B’ Company and 8 Platoon from ‘C’ Company moved out to the east. Before they had got very far, all three groups came under fire. Most of it seemed to be coming from the Chinese Restaurant and a wall that ran behind it.
‘B’ Company’s OC, Giles Timms, was with 4 Platoon and requested an air strike. Shortly afterwards, a JDAM bomb thumped into the Chinese Restaurant. This was followed up with a strafing attack by two Apaches. Artillery rounds and mortars were also landing on the Taliban position, but to Dale’s astonishment ‘they were still firing’.
The objective lay across a daunting stretch of dusty, ridged open field. ‘There was no way round it,’ said Dale. ‘We tried to put smoke into it, but it was still exposed.’ The Paras staggered into cover in a compound by the side of the Chinese Restaurant and prepared for the final assault. When they reached their objective they found that the Taliban had gone. ‘There were a couple of weapons and some rags but we didn’t find any bodies.’ The fighters had pulled back and taken cover behind a wall, giving them a good view of the Para lines. The Taliban knew what they were doing. ‘They had prepared their positions well,’ said Dale. ‘They kept bobbing and moving around. One of my soldiers was rueing the fact that he couldn’t zero in properly. This guy kept popping up his head but he couldn’t make the shot count. They were behind a wall a couple of hundred metres away and we were shooting at them, trading blow for blow.’ As always, the insurgents demonstrated an ability to use the ground to get in behind their opponents, so that even when the Paras cleared a position they could still expect to be fired on from all angles.
By now 5 Platoon had moved up towards the Chinese Restaurant to support Dale’s men. Lance Corporal Karl Jackson and his section had taken up a position to the south-east. He could see a group of Taliban moving through a field to attack 4 Platoon. ‘They didn’t know we were there,’ he said. ‘The blokes opened up on them and destroyed quite a few of them.’ The rest disappeared into the cover of the crops.
For a time the shooting died away. Jackson checked on his men then went to report to the platoon sergeant, Paddy Caldwell, who was lying up on a low roof with some others. ‘As I went up to see them, they were all looking over the side. The Taliban were about forty metres away, moving up through an irrigation ditch sheltered by trees.’ The insurgents had not seen them. There was a move to hurl grenades at the Taliban once they were in range but Caldwell stopped it. ‘Paddy got on the net and organised 81mm mortars to hit their location,’ said Jackson. ‘Once he had called in the fire mission he said, “Right, as soon as the eighty-ones go in, we will open up on them as well.”’ The first mortars hit the ground and the shooting began. ‘As soon as we started firing there was a crack which just whizzed past me,’ said Jackson. ‘I flinched and as I did I saw Paddy slumping back, like in slow motion, folding back.’
Jackson helped to drag Caldwell down from the roof and carry him to an irrigation ditch, where he applied first aid. ‘He was grey, his lips had gone purple, so straight away I thought he was looking pretty bad.’ The men struggled to undo his chest rig and remove his body armour to try to find the wound. There were two, one in the shoulder and one in the neck. They applied pressure to them while they waited for him to be evacuated.
The fighting was still going on and it took some time for the medical team to arrive. Eventually Caldwell was loaded on to the trailer of a quad bike and driven off in a Scimitar to the base. Stuart Tootal saw him in the aid post. Caldwell complained that he had no feeling below his neck. A casevac helicopter was called in and he was flown back to Bastion.
Operation Baghi had achieved its objectives. The convoy arrived safely and the prefabricated bridge was all ready for the engineers to install. It was time for ‘A’ Company to leave Sangin again. As they boarded the helicopters, everyone hoped that, this time, it was for good.
16
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The Musa Muckers
The competition for the title of worst platoon house in Helmand was fierce. All the outstations were bad, but each was bad in its own distinctive way. The soldiers who had to defend the Musa Qaleh district centre were convinced that they had the grimmest job of all. It was partly a matter of geography. The base was claustrophobically sited in the middle of town, hemmed in by streets and alleyways full of lurking Taliban. The location made resupply exceptionally difficult. Securing a landing site was a risky operation. Musa Qaleh felt very isolated, and not just because of its distance from Bastion. It often seemed to the defenders that their plight was not understood by the folks back in Bastion. They were tasked with unrealistic missions. ‘They would say go and secure this landing site,’ said Danny Groves of the Royal Irish Regiment. ‘But the buildings in between you and the location might easily hide a hundred Taliban. I don’t think they had a full grasp of the situation.’
Groves arrived in Musa Qaleh on 6 August with his mortar section and Somme Platoon of the Royal Irish. They were there to replace the Pathfinders and reinforce the 1 Danish Light Reconnaissance Squadron. Denmark was supporting the ISAF mission and had agreed to lighten some of the battle group’s load. By 8 August, there were about 170 troops in the base. The increase in numbers and the extra firepower the Danes brought with them did not appear to deter the Taliban, however.
At about 12.30 that afternoon Groves was talking with his friend Patrick Brannigan, the Somme Platoon sergeant, when ‘a loud whoosh went overhead followed by a massive thud and a loud detonation’. He ran to his mortar line and heard that the mortar fire controller’s OP had taken a direct hit from an RPG. The three men inside were ‘a little shaken but OK’.
Groves was the odd man out among the new arrivals. There was not a drop of Irish blood in his veins. He came from Birmingham and worked as a landscape gardener, until ‘one day I thought to myself, I don’t want to be doing this sort of shit for the rest of my life. I want to go out and make a difference and do something worth talking about.’ The local army recruiting office had steered him towards the Royal Irish, an amalgam of some of the historic regiments of the Emerald Isle. Its men came from both sides of the border, and although it was a new formation it had a strong identity and spirit.
The Danish squadron – known as the Griffins – were Copenhagen’s contribution to the NATO effort in Afghanistan. They were well equipped and lavishly provided for. They were 140 strong and were mounted in forty-six light armoured ‘Eagle’ vehicles, many carrying. 50-cals. They also had a twelve-strong medical team with them.
The Griffins were specially trained for mobile operations and dismounted patrolling. Yet here they were, virtually stationary. Before they arrived, the Royal Irish had been told by their Para briefers not to expect much from the Danes. ‘The impression we got was that the Danish would not be very aggressive and they were sitting on their hands,’ said Groves. They arrived ‘expecting to find a force who were going to be giving parcels to people and maintaining community relations. What we found was a force that was under siege.’ The Danes were ‘getting whacked every day’ and could not move out of the compound. The attacks were so frequent that they gave up recording the minor ones.
The Irish and the Danes hit it off. ‘Somme Platoon had a real natural relationship with them,’ said Brannigan, known to everyone as ‘PJ’. They shared their rations, which were much more lavish than the British ones, and also their abundant kit. ‘They would give us their night vision goggles to go on stag with. There were no dramas at all.’ The fraternising did not extend to ‘Combat Barbie’. This was the nickname given by the Pathfinders to Anna, a notably efficient .50-cal machine-gunner who was the sole woman on the base. It was said that she never made eye contact with a single British soldier for the entire duration of the deployment.
The inhabitants of the Musa Qaleh base were in a permanent state of tension. They could expect to be attacked at any time of the day or night. They were hit with every weapon the Taliban had: they were sniped at, mortared, hit with recoilless rifles, RPGs and Chinese rockets. The allies’ best defences were the .50-cals and the mortars. Everyone in the battle group loved the .50-cal. ‘Even a single round exploding over your head has a hell of an effect,’ said PJ Brannigan. The Danes had eight of them mounted on the sangars. They also built ramps so they could drive the armoured vehicles up them and shoot over the walls. This created an all-round field of fire that had a marked effect on the insurgents’ enthusiasm.
The Irish had two 81mm mortar barrels with them. This did not sound like much but they had an effect that was out of all proportion to their numbers and their low-tech specification. They were particularly useful in the special conditions of Musa Qaleh. The attackers were often invisible, hidden away in the compounds and narrow streets that crowded up against the walls of the base and out of reach of the machine guns and rifles. As in Now Zad, they had also burrowed through walls and cellars to creep up close to the base.
Mortar tubes delivered indirect fire. They could lob their bombs up almost vertically to crash down on advancing fighters. Being on the end of mortar fire was unnerving. ‘It’s horrible,’ said Groves. ‘You know it’s been fired because you can hear it going up in the air, but you don’t know where it’s going to come down.’
Groves’s team could easily manage ten rounds a minute, grouped in a pattern to create a ‘beaten zone’ which would kill everything for 40 yards around. The mortars had a definite deterrent effect. ‘If you get ten of them in the air, in the general direction of the enemy, and they’re landing, CRUMP, CRUMP, CRUMP, CRUMP, if it doesn’t kill them, it’s going to get them to stop.’ The Irish mortars were to kill many during their stay in Musa Qaleh. By the time they left they had fired 851 rounds, one quarter of all those expended by the entire battle group.
But the Taliban kept on coming. Two days after the Royal Irish arrived on 6 August, Sergeant Ally McKinney was badly wounded by a sniper. Another soldier, Ranger Ricky Armstrong, was also injured. The shoot was followed up by small-arms fire, which was silenced by the mortars. After dark the base was hit with sustained heavy machine-gun fire. The mortars were in action again. ‘As usual the Taliban shit themselves and hastily withdrew,’ Groves wrote in his diary. The mortar team’s day was not yet done, though. Reports came in of movement in the green zone, the lush land to the west, which was seething with Taliban. The mortars fired sixteen ‘illume’ rounds to light up the landscape for the benefit of the Irish and Danish snipers.
There was no respite. The next morning Groves recorded that the ‘Taliban must have woken early because they RPG’d the Alamo watchtower [the OP on the compound’s main building] … I was already awake writing my daily sitrep and again I heard the whoosh-thud and saw it hit the Alamo.’ Groves thought he could identify the direction it had come from and responded with five rounds of high explosive and two of white phosphorus. ‘We then sat down to breakfast,’ he wrote. ‘Sausage and beans. Mmmm.’ In the afternoon they came under mortar attack themselves. A duel followed which the Irish won. Intelligence recorded ‘some poor Abdul flapping that he had been on the receiving end of some very accurate and heavy mortar fire … Goodnight, Abdul!’
Groves had made it a point on his previous deployments to read up the history and background of the places he was going to. Whereas the rest of the platoon were volunteers, he had been called off leave to go to Afghanistan and had not had the time to do his research this time. He had no respect for the Taliban’s aims, but a reluctant admiration for their courage. Like many soldiers who had fought in both places, he made a favourable comparison between Afghan and Iraqi insurgents. ‘In Iraq, they didn’t have the balls to come out and confront you,’ he said. Their preference was for roadside bombs. The Taliban, however, ‘kept on attacking and attacking and attacking. We were dropping one-thousand- and two-thousand-pound bombs on them, firing at them with Apaches and they came back again and again.’ A story went round afterwards that a mass gra
ve had been found near Musa Qaleh containing 200 dead fighters. That seemed feasible to the men who fought the Taliban. ‘It proves the resolve of these people,’ said Groves. ‘How do you get inside their heads?’
The truth was that, living on their nerves and anxious only to survive, no one had the time or inclination to try to divine the motives of the Taliban. ‘I didn’t really care, to be honest, especially when they’re killing and injuring your friends,’ said Groves.
The soldiers of the battle group took losses personally. The death of Damien Jackson gave a sharper edge to the Paras’ efforts in Sangin. The wounding of McKinney and Armstrong had the same effect on the Royal Irish in Musa Qaleh. Late in the afternoon, three days after the incident, one of the sangars spotted some fighters moving into a known firing point and reported it to the mortar team. They cracked open boxes of ammunition for the 81mm and 51mm mortars. Then, wrote Groves, ‘all we were waiting for was the word’. At 5.35 p.m. they got the command to fire, and ‘unleashed our most vicious display of mortaring yet’. Sixteen high-explosive bombs from the 81mm and ‘countless’ rounds from the 51mm hit the position. Groves recorded in his diary that the men on Sangar Three who had alerted the mortar team saw the damage that was done and reported legs and arms flying in the air. It was hard to say how many were killed but it did send a clear message. Don’t fuck with the Royal Irish. This one’s for Ally and Ricky you bastards. The Danish guys came down and said: ‘You Guys Rock!!’ [It] was the most awesome display of accurate mortar fire they had ever seen. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ said one of the lads. ‘We’ve only been here five days and we’re just getting warmed up.’
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