by Rob Maylor
I dedicate this book to my wife Georgina, whose love
and support has enabled me to follow my dreams, and to
my girls, Lauren and Ashley, who inspire me every day
and fill my life with joy.
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Prologue
1 The Hunter
2 Marching Out
3 Marching In
4 Out in the Cold
5 And If You Thought That was Cold
6 Heating Up
7 Hot Spots
8 Cold Comfort
9 Cooling It
10 Hot Spots (2)
11 Making the Grade
12 Mission Aborted
13 Crash!
14 Long Shots
15 Another Blackhawk Down
16 Ambush! The Battle of Khaz Oruzgan
17 The Final Days
Epilogue
The Eleven Rules
Ballistics Terminology
Abbreviations
Picture Section
Foreword
I gives me great pleasure to write the foreword to this riveting account of Rob Maylor’s career in the Royal Marines and Australian Special Air Service.
The Royal Marines and SAS are both highly regarded elite military units, with countless battle honours earned from daring missions across the globe. Steeped in tradition, entry into their ranks is limited to the select few who are able to pass the ruthless selection and training regimes.
Royal Marines training is acknowledged as being the toughest basic training course in the world, with less than 50 per cent of those who begin completing the grueling eight month commando course to earn the coveted Green Beret. Those who succeed gain entry into a unique brotherhood. A brotherhood that live by the Commando Spirit: courage, determination, unselfishness, and cheerfulness in the face of adversity.
The SAS has a reputation for soldering excellence that is second to none. Recruited from military ranks, only a select few pass selection and complete the fourteen month ‘reinforcement cycle’ before joining their regiment.
Having worked alongside Rob on numerous operations it was clear that soldiering was second nature to him. He lived and breathed the profession, specialising in counter-terrorism, desert and arctic warfare, covert vehicle and in particular the ‘dark art’ of the military sniper. Within military ranks the sniper is regarded as soldering perfection. Working in small teams snipers are trained to operate far from friendly forces, deep behind enemy lines remaining invisible to the enemy. The sniper will lie and wait for long periods of time for the opportune moment to fire a single devastating shot before moving silently onto the next target. This was Rob’s speciality in both the Royal Marines and the SAS where he became a sniper team leader.
From the streets of Northern Ireland to the mountains of Afghanistan, Rob shares candid insights into his life as an elite soldier. Through rough humour Rob shares the loss of comrades on the battlefield, the sacrifices he made on the ‘home front’ and the shadowy world of being an SAS sniper.
Sean Chapple FRGS
(Former Royal Marine, polar explorer)
Preface
One of the joys of authorship–whether of fiction or non-fiction–is the way each new book propels you into a different world. The experience can be engaging, astonishing, disgusting, exciting and sometimes frightening. And occasionally–as in SAS Sniper–it’s all of the above.
When Rob Maylor approached me with the proposal to tell his story, my first instinct was to decline. I’d had more than enough of war, not least because however one tries to avoid it, the very act of telling the stories of the battlefield legitimises and condones the obscenity of deliberate killing. I had begun with The Battle of Brisbane in 2000 with co-author Peter Thompson, progressing to our Kill the Tiger (2002), Keep off the Skyline (2004) and my own Jacka VC (2006) and Bravest (2008). It was with a tremendous sense of moral relief that I turned to the political world of the then opposition leader for Kevin Rudd: The Biography (2008), and then–again with Peter Thompson–to the dusty mines and boardroom battles of The Big Fella–the rise and rise of BHP Billiton (2009).
However, in the interim I had been invited to meet SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson when he presented his newly minted VC to the Australian War Memorial, and I presented him with a copy of Bravest which tells the story of a number of our most remarkable VC winners. He was a close mate of Rob Mayor’s, and he apparently enjoyed the book. So when Rob decided to retire, and wanted to tell his story, Mark suggested he get in touch.
Two things convinced me. The first was my meeting with Rob, who came to our Canberra home. I’m not sure what I had been expecting but it was not the tall, softly spoken bloke with a quiet gentility who told his tale with such unaffected honesty.
The second was the extraordinary response of the publishers to whom our agent, Pippa Masson, sent a very short outline of the story. Put ‘sniper’ together with ‘SAS’ and, it seems, a powerful reading appetite awaits. And when the opportunity arose to work again with Hachette Australia’s Matthew Kelly, the last of my moral defences crumbled.
I’m glad they did. For this is a soldier’s story like no other. Rob Maylor was born with khaki bones. He only ever had one goal: to be the best soldier it was possible to be. And that meant, finally, that he must aim for the peak–a sniper in the SAS–and not just any sniper, but the finest of all. I was delighted to travel with him in telling the story of that quest.
In doing so he opened for me a small window into the world of the Australian SAS–The Regiment–and I was privileged to relive with him that terrible three-hour ambush–the battle of Khaz Oruzgan–the biggest engagement of Australian forces since Long Tan in Vietnam.
That was the engagement in which Mark Donaldson won his VC when he ran back to rescue an Afghan interpreter who had been blown out the back of a fighting vehicle, and carried him 80 metres over open ground to safety. It was an action worthy of our highest award for bravery under fire, but it was not the only act of great courage that day; and some of them–including Rob Maylor’s–have not been properly recognised.
He would not say so himself, but as readers will recognise, Rob’s actions in protecting the American JTAC under withering fire from the enemy did more to bring the team out safely than almost any other taken on the day. It should be noted that he and other worthy recipients have yet to receive the honour that is their due.
It is my hope and belief that his remarkable story, as told in these pages, will go some way toward compensating for that failure, at least among the reading public. Rob gave himself willingly to the soldier’s life; it was only when the mutual love between himself and his family took a proper precedence that he laid down his arms. But it would be fitting if his efforts on Australia’s behalf were sealed with the reward he so richly deserves.
Robert Macklin 2010
[email protected]
Prologue
Afghanistan, 2 September 2008:
The Taliban had caught us in a classic ambush. Somewhere between 100 and 150 fighters were pounding us from three sides–down in the green, up in the high ground and to the front of us. Two of my closest mates were badly wounded. Then a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) exploded a metre behind me and tore into my legs and back.
Hoady and I ran for the American Humvee about 40 metres in front of us and we were getting absolutely hammered by fire. I got clocked on the elbow. Luckily I was running; that meant the elbow was bent and the bullet from the Taliban fighter skimmed off. Had it been straight it would have gone right through and I’d probably have lost my lower arm.
I could see rounds striking the hard ground in front of me and as we raced for the car I could see bullets hitting its armoured flanks
. All of a sudden it too was a target, a magnet. An American who was watching said later, ‘Man, that was awesome. The bullets were chasing you everywhere; we thought you were history.’ The car was getting absolutely smashed.
Hoady grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. There were six members of the Afghan National Army inside. I kept on going. I saw a ditch, a washout, about 30 metres in front of the car, slightly off to the left flank, right beside the road. I ran down towards it and threw myself into it. It was close to half a metre deep, just enough for my body to move around without showing over the edge. I still had my sniper rifle so I got down behind it and started to observe for any targets.
I was hurting. As I was running between the cars I could really feel my wounds. The shrapnel had cut into my foot, my calf, my thigh, my arse and my lower back. I was in a lot of pain and covered in blood.
Suddenly I was taking fire from 360 degrees. I could tell that I’d been targeted. There were rounds hitting the edge of the washout from every side. It was at that point that I looked down at the ground, the hard, flinty ground of Oruzgan. I shook my head and said, ‘Are we ever going to fuckin’ get out of this?’
1
The Hunter
I was born to be a soldier. I have no idea where it came from. Certainly no-one in my immediate family was that way inclined. My father had no time for the military life at all. Maybe he lost a relative in World War II, I really don’t know, but he was dead against it and still is. But from my earliest memories I was attracted to soldiering.
I have always thought I had a pretty normal childhood. But one Christmas when I was very young my parents gave me some little plastic toy soldiers as a present and it wasn’t long before I had hundreds of them, plus Action Man, a British-made boy’s doll that came with a range of military uniforms and plastic hardware–the best toy in the world–ever! I used to make parachutes for him out of plastic bags and throw him off the roof of the garage. When I wasn’t playing war with the other kids around the area, I was living a military fantasy through Action Man, my toy soldiers or watching war films that starred the likes of David Niven, Anthony Quayle, Roger Moore, John Wayne and Michael Caine. Come to think of it, maybe that’s not normal after all.
Both my parents are from Anglo-Saxon stock. My father Bob and mother Sara migrated from Cheshire to New Zealand in 1964. He’s retired now and living in Perth. He was a toolmaker and she was a receptionist when they married. They’ve lived a quiet life, not much socialising and much less now that she suffers from multiple sclerosis.
Mum seems to be handling it okay. They go to the MS society in Perth, do what exercises she can and stay in touch with the new drugs as they come onto the market. But we’ve never been particularly close and that’s mostly my fault, I suspect. I never had a strong relationship with my father as a kid. He couldn’t really talk to me. We don’t argue or anything, but we just didn’t talk much and over the years nothing’s changed. I was happy living in my own world pursuing my own interests.
I was the eldest; my sister Louise is three years younger than me and it was the same with her–we have never really been close. She’s been in Canada for about 15 years and I haven’t spoken to her in that time. Even as a kid I didn’t get on with her either. I just liked different people.
We grew up in Manurewa which is in South Auckland, New Zealand; a quiet, respectable area at the time. Our school backed onto farmers’ fields and it wasn’t uncommon to see a group of children laughing and shouting as they chased a frightened rabbit or hare from one side of the school to the other.
I never particularly liked school and always resisted learning, something I regret now. I can’t put my finger on why; I just didn’t like it and spent most of my time daydreaming about the Rhodesian bush war or being on patrol with the Americans in Vietnam. They tell me I’m bright enough and whenever I did a military course I always produced good results. I find something has to really interest me before I’ll put my mind to it and somehow school just didn’t cut it. We had a class of about 20 and I had one really good mate, Craig Sharpe, a real champion of a bloke. In fact we’re still the best of mates today. Generally we’d hide up the back to muck around.
We both loved the outdoors–sport and hunting ranked right at the top. Of course, my father hated me shooting, so I had to ease him into the idea and started off with the old spud guns, which were great. But it took a lot of convincing for my father to get me a slug gun. It didn’t help when I was shooting birds through my bedroom window with a friend from school, when this bloke didn’t check his muzzle clearance and shot the wooden sill, putting a nasty-looking hole in it. Because I knew what was going to happen when my old man came home, I began to panic. I couldn’t patch the hole up because there was too much damage. I just had to take this one on the chin. My old man went mad and I copped a few wallops for that one. I reckon I deserved it. It wasn’t abuse, it was general discipline; pretty much the way he was brought up.
It didn’t stop me shooting. Next I bought a .22 BSA Meteor Super.
The father of one of my mates from high school was the principal of a nearby girls’ borstal–a low-to-medium security prison for juveniles–and it was surrounded by acres of land on an estuary. So we used to go down there with a shotgun, .22s and slug guns and shoot birds, rabbits and ducks and seagulls; anything that moved really. We’d take light bulbs down there and throw them in the estuary–they’d float in and out with the tide and we’d shoot them too.
Craig and I both left school at 15. I really wanted to join the New Zealand Army but my father wouldn’t wear it at any price. And he’s never changed.
In 2003 after selection for the Special Air Service (SAS) and a number of courses into the cycle you are awarded your beret. There’s a ceremonial parade. The family comes along and it’s a day when you really feel you’ve made it into the top level of your chosen profession. The captain who was running the reinforcement cycle at the time said to my father, ‘You must be proud of your son.’
‘No, not really,’ he said, ‘He’s too old–shouldn’t even be here.’
That’s why we don’t get on–we’re just totally different. He has never asked me about the work I do, and that’s okay. But I think it’s sad if there isn’t a bond between the generations, and that was part of my reason for leaving the SAS while still relatively young–to make my own family bonds stronger.
Anyway, since the army wasn’t an option, both Craig and I did apprenticeships. This meant I left school without any educational qualifications at all, but I was unlikely to pass any of the exams anyway, so at 15 I got my driver’s licence and became part of the New Zealand workforce.
Craig became a horticulturalist and I signed on for a mechanical apprenticeship in a small workshop in Manurewa with a bloke called Roger Bertram. Roger was about 40 at the time, a short fellow, very wiry, no fat on him at all, and he occasionally sported a goatee. His claim to fame was that he was the New Zealand speedway champion 10 or 11 years in a row. No doubt this attracted a bit of business. Speedway fans would bring in their cars to be fixed and he’d charge them for the privilege of meeting him. Some would return, but most felt that they were over-charged and wouldn’t come back.
I got on with him very well. He was very professional, very down-to-earth, and wasn’t afraid to tell people the truth, even about their cars. He was a brilliant mechanic, especially when it came to the big V8s. I was never going to be a top mechanic but Roger was patient with me and I crewed for him a few times at Waikaraka Park, one of two speedway venues in Auckland. These cars were built with a few modifications. The alloy and titanium space frame cradled a heavily worked V8 that was normally aspirated, which means the fuel was fed into the engine through a carburettor and not fuel injected like the sprint cars at Western Springs, the other Auckland venue.
I was too inexperienced to do any mechanical repairs on the car between races so I just ended up being the gofer and pushing the car on and off the race track with a few of the others. T
here was a fair bit of posing to be done as well–after all, I was working for the New Zealand champ. There was a lot of competition and testosterone being thrown around the pits area, and most people loved to hate Roger because he was such a serious competitor.
Coincidentally, Roger did his mechanical apprenticeship while in the New Zealand Army. I remember his stories at lunch time of fixing heavy machinery in the pine forests while on exercises. Generally they had to make or repair broken items, as there were no spares. Little did I know at the time that mechanics would play such a big part in our battles against the Taliban.
He was also a boxer as a young bloke, and one night while watching him race things got a little out of hand and tempers boiled over. A few of our crew ended up in fisticuffs with the crew of another driver. I stood back and watched as it was all rather pathetic. It was all over in seconds and no-one was hurt, only the odd bruised ego, but our team got a few good shots in.
Unfortunately Roger sold Speedway Automotive to a bloke named Bob Homewood, another race car driver, whose passion was rally and circuit cars. Bob was an older man with a very clever mechanical mind. He had a strange air about him and always seemed very on edge, as though he was about to explode.
It was okay for the first 12 months, but morale took a big dive when one of the other lads, John Kelly, was fired in front of me after a heated argument. I felt bad for him as he was a good worker and friend. I should have stuck up for John that day but didn’t and I still carry that burden today.