There’s a misunderstanding about snipers. Most people seem to think that their job is just to go out into the badlands and kill people, but the primary role of a sniper team is usually reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering. In Afghanistan, in particular, they were watching for significant changes in the pattern of life in the villages and hamlets, because that was often the first clue that the Taliban might have moved in. They observed their targets through telescopic sights, but the fact that the sight was attached to a long-range sniper rifle was almost coincidental – it didn’t automatically mean they were tasked with killing the people they were observing.
At Kandahar the snipers went out into the area and dug themselves in for days at a time, initially just watching the activity around them, acting as surveillance teams, and radioing their reports back to the regiment on the airfield. Only when they’d observed all they needed to would they then pick off the individual Taliban as they were setting up their rocket batteries, well before they were able to fire their missiles. And, even then, killing the men setting up or firing the weapons was only a part of it, because these were believed to be usually very low-ranking insurgents, given the most dangerous jobs. Whenever possible, the snipers preferred to target the people who gave the orders or directed the preparation of the weapons.
Once this operation got under way the numbers of rocket attacks on the airfield dropped sharply, and eventually almost stopped. It was an excellent demonstration of proactive force protection and, once the RAF Regiment took over, most of us at Kandahar slept a lot better knowing they were out there.
Counter-battery fire was, without doubt, one of the most impressive aspects of the RAF Regiment’s considerable repertoire of skills. As the name suggests, the tactic is return fire directed at a rocket battery or gun that is firing into the defended area. I saw it used several times, but one occasion in particular sticks in my mind. The base was again the target of a rocket attack, but while the rockets were still in the air an RAF Regiment mortar team responded, firing their rounds at the location they’d calculated the rockets had been launched from.
When a reconnaissance party went out to check the site the following day, they found the launchers exactly where they’d expected. They also found that one of the mortar rounds had landed within two feet of one of the launchers, and the other two at distances of about twelve feet and twenty feet. If any Taliban had been at the site when the mortar bombs landed, they would certainly have been killed. There were no bodies at the site, which was not surprising, as the Taliban invariably removed their dead and injured comrades, and we also knew that most rocket attacks were initiated by timing circuits.
This remarkable speed of response and staggering accuracy was down to the high-tech gear they used. The RAF Regiment mortar teams identified the location of the battery that fired the missiles, and a high-speed computer then calculated the trajectory required by their weapon to return fire.
Although the rocket attacks by the Taliban didn’t usually cause serious damage, sometimes the effect of their impact could be devastating.
Fairly early on in the coalition’s presence in Afghanistan, in October 2005, two Harriers were lost. One was totally destroyed and the second was eventually, after a couple of years, restored to flying condition. Both aircraft were damaged by a single rocket fired from outside Kandahar Airfield when they were parked in the dispersal.
These rockets are short-range, simple, basic, cheap – on Afghanistan’s black market they can be picked up for about $100 each – and very inaccurate. Despite all that, about $100 was sufficient expenditure to write off one Harrier – an aircraft that had cost around £11 million, or over $20 million, to buy – and put a second one out of action for a couple of years.
In terms of overall strength, it meant that a single $100 rocket could have a disproportionate effect on the Harrier force and highlighted one of the main challenges of forward basing, especially the forward basing of aircraft in or near the battle zone. The need for a ring of steel to properly protect an airfield is immense, especially when it’s faced with weapons like the Russian BM-12 rockets, which, despite all their limitations, have a range of over three miles. To sanitize a buffer zone three miles wide round an airfield would be almost impossible, particularly in Afghanistan, as Kandahar Airfield is very close to the town itself. It wouldn’t have been churlish to complain. And, in any case, life was an awful lot more dangerous outside the wire, where it certainly wasn’t just British forces who were taking a hammering.
10
The Graveyard actually was a graveyard, a reference point located next to the Snowman. When a group of Canadian troops became involved in a massive firefight I was pulled off task to divert there with my wingman. But when we reached the overhead we were instructed not to engage the target – which we could clearly see – because the ground forces were about to put down some suppression artillery. Instead we were told to hold above a certain height, for our own safety, which prevented us doing what we had planned and expected to do: to correctly identify the exact target and then surgically attack the bunch of Taliban who were doing the damage to the Canadian troops.
What followed was eye-watering. The Canadian forces fired a total of seventy-four 155mm shells into a fairly small area occupied by the group of Taliban they were in contact with.
That certainly wasn’t suppression. It was closer to Second World War carpet bombing. The Canadians were taking no chances.
We had also been tasked with covering the movement of the Canadian troops as they passed through a particular choke point – a place where there’s simply no alternative route – to their closest Forward Operating Base, or FOB. This choke point was just north of Highway One, which runs all the way through Afghanistan. From above, as shells rained down, we watched the whole thing. At the same time as the Canadian artillery hammered the enemy positions, they were also pulling back the troops who had been under fire from the Taliban.
This part of the operation looked almost comic from the air. Half a dozen of their LAV 3 eight-wheeled armoured vehicles raced down the road – which the Canadians were actually still building – dust streaming out behind them. They stopped at intervals to check that the road was still clear in front, then raced off again. Once they reached the location of the troops they stopped, loaded the men inside and dashed back up the road.
All the time this was going on we were watching the almost constant explosions of the 155mm shells – silent puffs of grey-brown dust from our vantage point, but lethal detonations on the ground – in and around the vicinity of the target area. It was an awesome display of firepower, but we had no concerns about collateral damage because the civilian population were long gone. It meant that if anyone was in the Graveyard they were by definition bad guys. And, as long as the Graveyard was home only to the Taliban, it would remain one of the most heavily shelled locations anywhere near Kandahar.
Two thousand and six had been a bad year for the Canadians. In July, accompanied by Afghan troops, they had entered Panjwayi as part of Operation ZAHARA, a campaign intended to clear the area of pockets of Taliban resistance. Heavy fighting began almost immediately in and around the mud-walled compounds occupied by the insurgents, who clearly had not the slightest intention of surrendering control of the area. But the coalition troops prevailed and, after what became known as the First Battle of Panjwayi, they managed to gain control of the area, killing or driving out the Taliban warriors amid heavy and almost continuous fighting.
But once the coalition troops left the area, large numbers of Taliban fighters moved back in and re-established themselves as the dominant presence in the district, and it soon became clear that ISAF troops would have to repeat the operation.
In September the Canadians launched Operation MEDUSA in a final attempt to root out all the Taliban fighters. It was a harsh, brutal campaign that led directly to the far more bloody Second Battle of Panjwayi.
On the first day of MEDUSA the Canadians managed to surrou
nd the Taliban positions. They called in air strikes and employed heavy artillery to assault the insurgents, and sustained no casualties themselves. But all that changed on the second day, when four Canadian soldiers were killed in two actions, three during an assault on a Taliban stronghold and the fourth in a bomb attack. The third day was no better: one soldier was killed and over thirty injured when an American A-10 Warthog strafed the Canadians’ position in a blue-on-blue incident, after air support had been requested.
During the remainder of the campaign the Canadians faced daily ambushes, mortar attacks and gun battles from some 2,000 heavily armed Taliban warriors, who were well dug in – they had prepared trenches and seemed intent on fighting a First World War-style battle of attrition – and determined to resist to the last man. The Canadians finally managed to drive them out, although the Taliban continued to offer sporadic resistance, both in gun battles and direct contact, as well as sending out suicide bombers and preparing deadly IEDs.
Earlier in the year there had been several contacts between their troops and the Taliban, one of which had resulted in the death of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female Canadian soldier to lose her life in front-line combat. She was acting as a forward observer, spotting the fall of artillery shells, in an action that also resulted in the wounding of three Afghan soldiers, the deaths of eighteen Taliban and the capture of thirty-five.
We were all acutely conscious of the dangers faced by the soldiers and marines on the ground. By the beginning of September 2006, coalition deaths in Afghanistan totalled 466, of which 329 were American, reflecting the very high proportion of US troops employed in ISAF. In comparison, only 39 British troops had been killed but that number was rising steadily. And so repatriations happened more often than any of us expected. Or hoped.
Whenever there’s a repatriation scheduled, a brief email message is sent round to all the computers linked to the Kandahar intranet that states just the name of the dead soldier or marine and that the ceremony will take place that evening. There’s no need to give the time, because it’s always the same. The C-17 that will transport the body back to the UK always leaves Kandahar Airfield in the dark for self-protection reasons, and its departure is also timed so as to slot into the arrival and departure schedules back at RAF Brize Norton.
The first time I saw a repatriation message I didn’t know quite what to expect at the ceremony, but I was determined that it would be a full, proper turnout by all the squadron personnel. I instructed that everyone who wasn’t working was to be there, though even without my order everybody would have attended, simply because it’s part of the military ethos. Personnel in the armed forces invariably honour their dead. We will always want to say a final farewell to our friends and comrades in arms.
Every nation was represented. They all turned out, every single time. Even if people were off duty, they would always put on their uniforms and attend the ceremony. It was never a case of ‘I might just take a look’. At every repatriation everyone who could possibly make it was there. And unfortunately there were quite a number of these ceremonies, for troops of all nations.
The first of the many we attended was for Marine Gary Wright, who had been killed by an IED worn by a suicide bomber when it was detonated next to his patrol vehicle at Lashkar Gah on 19 October 2006.
The ceremony took place, as always, in front of the hangars. When I turned up with the squadron personnel, we initially thought we were in the wrong place because it was utterly quiet. The only sound we could hear was a faint hissing from the auxiliary power unit on the C-17 that was already parked there, tail ramp down and with the internal lights on but at a fairly low setting.
Then, as we walked round the corner of the hangar, everyone drew a sharp breath, because already there were probably close to 1,000 people there. They were formed up in ranks about 200 yards long, twenty or so lines of dark figures, two massive columns of people either side of the approach to the back of the C-17. And everybody present was totally silent. No commands, no talking, not even the slightest whispering, just the faint sound of movement as more and more people joined the huge crowd and silently took their places.
As my squadron personnel joined the ranks, I glanced around. There was a dais just to the right of the back of the C-17, where the padre was waiting, ready to say his piece. And on the ground 300 yards directly behind the C-17’s tail, between the two massed ranks of personnel, was a single blue glow stick.
More and more people arrived, still in complete silence, until there were at least 2,000 men and women, standing and watching and waiting, alone with their thoughts.
Then there was a single sharp tap, which meant that the vehicle carrying the body was on its way. In one awesome moment every one of these officers, men and women came silently to attention, again without a single word spoken or command given. Beyond the airfield, by then in almost complete darkness, the looming shape of Three Mile Mountain was barely visible against the evening sky. Gradually the noise of an engine became audible and all of us could see and now hear a medical service Land Rover, with just its parking lights on, driving very slowly and sedately around the taxiway, heading towards the back of the waiting aircraft.
The vehicle drove between the two ranks of silent watchers and stopped directly over the glow stick. Shadowy figures climbed out of the Land Rover and slowly, with infinite care and absolute respect, they lifted out the coffin containing the body of their fallen comrade.
The CO of 3 Commando Brigade arrived in his own vehicle and walked beside the bearers as they carried the body slowly past the silent crowds towards the back of the C-17. They stopped at the bottom of the ramp and lowered the coffin gently on to a trestle.
Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Dewar RM ascended the dais and spoke quietly in the absolute silence of the early evening, his voice carrying easily.
‘Marine Wright was an outstanding young Royal Marine whose determination and professional ability led to his selection as a member of our highly specialized Recce Troop. Extremely popular, with a good sense of humour, he was very highly thought of by everyone who worked with him. He was an excellent Marine who died doing the job he loved and will be missed by all his friends in 45 Commando. Our thoughts are very much with his family at this difficult time.’
Next the padre climbed on to the dais and spoke briefly about the man, his eulogy the more moving for its brevity and sincerity.
The bearer party then lifted the coffin again and marched slowly up the ramp into the aircraft. At the very moment that they lowered the coffin to the floor of the hold, all the interior lights snapped out and the back of the C-17 was plunged into complete darkness. And from the assembled mass of people came a sound like the exhalation of a single massive breath. The ramp was raised and at that point all of us in the watching crowd dismissed and returned to our duties.
For me, as for the other squadron members, it was an incredibly moving – and almost surreal – experience, and a defining moment in our time in Afghanistan. The squadron had been in theatre only about three weeks and most people were still on a bit of a high from the intensity of the operations we were carrying out. But that repatriation, more than anything else we’d seen or heard up to that time, was a reminder that we were fighting a war, whatever some choose to call it, against an enemy that would give no quarter. And the silent show of respect given to the dead man by his comrades was simply awe-inspiring.
If ever there was a way to die in combat and go back home, that was it. There was no more respect that you could have shown somebody than that ceremony, and the incredibly moving moment when the lights went out at the rear of the C-17.
The ceremony was filmed so that the family of Marine Wright could see the kind of send-off he’d been given. I hoped, though I knew nothing could ever compensate for his loss, that his family would get a sense of the pride, respect and dignity shown to their loved one by that short ceremony.
Watching the repatriation was a forceful reminder of my own responsibi
lities. The very last thing I wanted to do was to have to take Duncan Dewar’s place on that dais and tell a couple of thousand people how good one of my men or women had been, and how much I regretted the fact that they were now dead. For me, that would be a failure of the very worst and bitterest kind.
But the pace of operations was ramping up still further. We were flying 24/7, apart from the single maintenance period every tenth day, and even then we were still responsible for providing two GCAS 120 alert aircraft. Nor was there any let-up in the quantity of munitions being delivered – in fact we seemed to be dropping more, if anything.
It wouldn’t be long before I was given further cause to dwell on the risks faced by my own squadron personnel.
11
Still dressed in flightsuits, the two pilots walked in to the Ops building. They both looked like they’d seen a ghost.
‘And what’s the matter with you two?’ I asked. Bernard and Mouldy – Lieutenant Commander Phil Mould – glanced at each other, then put down their gear and grabbed cold drinks.
‘Well,’ Bernard began, rubbing a hand over his chin. ‘I suppose it was my cock-up, so I’ll explain it. I took off as Devil Five Five with Mouldy here’ – he pointed to the Senior Pilot, who’d sat down opposite me – ‘as Five Six. We were tasked with supporting the Slayers – the Canadian JTACs – based in Panjwayi.’
They had been flying around for about an hour, he said, checking for any activity in the normal areas, when they were re-tasked to go to the Sangin Valley in support of Mastiff Zero Four. ‘Mastiff’ could have been either a British armoured personnel carrier’s callsign or one used by an American JTAC, but in this case it was immediately clear that it was the second.
The two pilots checked in to find that the people on the ground were a small team of US troops who were in a really hard contact with the Taliban. They’d already taken casualties and were waiting for a Quick Reaction Force casevac helicopter to come out to them from Bastion. Their other big problem was that they were in ammunition state black, meaning they’d pretty much run out – a mute testimony to the intensity of the firefight taking place below.
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