by Rob Maylor
The Taliban know from years of experience that if they hit you late in the afternoon they stand a good chance of getting away with it because it will soon be dark. So by 4 p.m. everyone was on edge and waiting for something to happen. Suddenly they opened up. The 107s make a huge noise as the rockets are coming in that is chilling. This particular time they fired four that landed close enough to cause concern. One rocket went directly overhead and dropped off into dead ground and exploded right next to a kuchie (Bedouin nomads) camp. This didn’t worry the occupants in the slightest; they live with it all the time and just shrug their shoulders and say ‘Inshallah’ (‘if Allah wills’) and go back to their business.
By the time we reacted and reached the village it was getting close to dark and of course no-one knew a thing. Next day we headed for the village of Manare to see what we could find, as at least one rocket had been fired from a knoll on the side of a hill close by. As we entered the outskirts of the village the enemy chatter started; our awareness was heightened–there was a good possibility of contact with the enemy. I was still a passenger in the back of RH’s car but I had also become the troop mechanic, not by choice. Babbs, the driver of our car, was also mechanically sound and at times both of us worked long hours replacing CV joints and diffs and repairing other mechanical failures. We had just got word that one of the other patrols had noticed a few ‘squirters’–Taliban shooters who head for the hills to evade capture. So we decided to hunt them down.
Bang! Our car had just broken a left front CV joint. I started ratting around in the back of the car to locate the replacement while Babbs began to jack the vehicle up and remove the wheel. We felt quite vulnerable as we were well within range of small arms fire and caught between two high features. It took about 45 minutes to replace the broken CV joint, then we got moving again.
A patrol was despatched on foot to follow up the squirters but it didn’t get far due to the severity of the terrain. One of the lads shot at these guys with the .50-calibre sniper rifle and the .50-calibre machine guns but because they know their backyard they got away.
We spoke to the locals to try to develop some intelligence, but got the same answer every time: ‘No, there’s no Taliban here, we haven’t had Taliban in the village for years. The rockets must have been from Taliban passing through the area.’ The fact was that the Taliban had a very firm hold over them, and most were very sympathetic. The Taliban pay their fighters–not very much but they do pay them–which is a rare source of income for these locals. It saves them having to scrimp and scrape from the land trying to sell dry roots for firewood.
But that’s only part of the story. Their way of life is very different. Afghans live by vendettas but they are the most patient people you’ll ever come across. If one of them commits a bad act against a family, the victim will seek revenge. It may not happen overnight but the culprit will eventually get his comeuppance. That’s something you learn on the ground. The Sydney taxi driver left that bit out of his cultural awareness lecture.
After fruitlessly chasing the squirters up in the hills we decided a patrol should stick around and monitor the village. So we gave the impression we were moving away, which we did, but we dropped off Stodds and his patrol at the base of one of the hills that provided good OBs into the village. But as far as the villagers were concerned the Australians had cleared out.
In the morning we heard from Stodds, his voice crackling over the radio: ‘There’s a Taliban fighter coming towards us with a .303. We’re going to have a crack as he’s going to compromise us anyway.’ As it happened, this bloke stopped just over 300 metres out and squatted for a dump. Two of the patrol’s snipers were tracking this guy through their scopes. As the target became static they took aim and fired, but they missed. This bloke instantly leapt off the small cliff face with his trousers around his ankles leaving his rifle behind. I don’t know what happened, but at that range it should have been a gimmie. They reckoned the wind was very strong and pushed their rounds off target. Stodds was not impressed and recovered the .303.
After that we moved back into the bowl and talked about the combat indicators–such as movement in the hills and in the green, radio traffic and the actions of villagers. You piece them together to give you a picture of what is going to happen or can happen. You learn with experience to read the signs but some soldiers seem to have a better developed instinct than others. Sometimes you just know when the shit’s about to hit the proverbial.
The next day we took a break for a game of cricket and to do some repairs on our ageing LRPVs in the middle of the dasht (the bare, strong Afghan landscape desert). We were halfway through the game when we got engaged by several 107s, which we aggressively followed up. NC, the troop commander, had had enough and we advanced to contact, pepper-potting forward. Half the troop’s vehicles would move, while the other half provided cover for them in case we were engaged again. Upon reaching the edge of the Khod Valley where this set of rockets came from we positioned the cars to give us all-round security and the other half of the troop drove down towards the green belt. There they were contacted by small arms and RPGs; we provided fire support. A couple of enemy RPGs exploded quite close to our vehicles and we engaged their main firing position, which was in a dry creek line behind a cemetery. We could see the enemy moving around inside this creek line, which gave them some good cover from fire. The boys on the flanks adjusted their .50-calibre machine guns onto the creek line catching some Taliban in the crossfire.
The Canadians were quite close to our location and joined in, providing 60 mm mortar fire onto these positions. Our MK19–40 mm grenade launchers, .50-calibre sniper rifles and machine guns also joined in. I arced up the Javelin rocket launcher in order to take out any other 107 mm rocket firing positions. The Javelin rocket locks onto heat, but due to the temperature trapped in the rocky landscape I couldn’t make out any distinct targets. So I ended up holding the bloody thing on my shoulder for four to five hours hoping that the landscape would cool down enough for me to get a lock on a target.
As I sat there scanning for a target I could hear the chatter from the Taliban coming through a captured radio in the background. I realised that the voice was getting rather excited. Suddenly from the radio, ‘Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!’ Then two more rockets were fired at us. Both went over our heads. One screamed just metres above our car. I had seen the dust cloud created from the back blast of the rocket and knew instantly what it was. I dropped the Javelin and lay flat on the stony ground. As I hit the deck the rockets passed overhead. I couldn’t get the Javelin back on my shoulder quick enough to look for the firing pad. Two of the cars engaged with their .50-calibre machine guns to try to provoke another reaction or some movement. Once again I couldn’t make anything out due to the warm lunar-type landscape.
The light was fading by this stage and the other half of the troop had moved a little further north of our location. We called in US air cover to help destroy the enemy positions. They sent an A10, a fighter bomber known as a Warthog, which has two engines at the very back of the aircraft. It is a very agile piece of machinery. At that time their call-sign was ‘tombstone’. Our joint terminal attack controller (JTAC), HM, got on the radio to get in touch with tombstone and gave them the grids of the main locations where the rockets were coming from. He also organised for them to conduct a couple of gun runs using their 30 mm canons to suppress the enemy fire.
However, that night intelligence suggested that the bad guys were still in the hills, so HM got the aircraft to drop a 500-pound bomb on the main location. As the US aircraft came in, our boys put a laser spot on the target. Then the aircraft lit up the whole area with infra-red. HM gave him ‘Clear hot!’–the signal to drop his ordinance. He came in and dropped the 500-pounder right on target. There was a huge flash that lit up the whole valley and we could see through our NVGs extremely hot shrapnel being thrown all over the hillside, then a second later, Bang!
We stayed in location that night to see if anyth
ing further would eventuate. Everything had gone quiet, so NC made a decision to move. We continued to snoop about this area gathering more information. We were contacted several more times, and on one occasion the car I was travelling in was targeted by 107s. Luckily they dropped about 150 metres short, but when I had a look around I could see piles of rocks about 1–1.5 metres high that seemed to be placed at 100–200-metre intervals. Smart bastards: they were using them as range finders, and we were parked right in the centre of them. Using these markers they could very easily bracket us with their rockets until they were on target. So I shouted to RH, ‘Let’s get out of here quick!’ Through the captured radio we had determined that there was a spotter guiding the enemy onto us. We did have a scout around for him, but it was uneventful.
Task complete, we drove the two-day journey back to Tarin Kowt. We had been living in the field now for a full month and in contact with the Taliban a quarter of that time. So it was good to get back not only to relax, but to get stuck into a decent hot feed, have a warm shower, but more importantly get a few beers inside us to release built-up tension.
One week later we were back in the field. We had decided that we had some unfinished business in the areas surrounding Saraw. This time I was in a different patrol and riding one of our Polaris ATVs. Dave O’Neil and MR were on ATVs also and Dave was the 2IC. (Unfortunately Dave died in a Melbourne car accident a couple of years ago. He was a great bloke, always happy and keen for a laugh.) Once again we found ourselves at the base of IED alley and began to clear it by foot. Shep was using a hand-held metal detector to sweep the road for possible IEDs and their components. We gingerly followed behind him. On reaching the top Shep had made a gruesome discovery. Three locals with hands bound had been beheaded and just left on the side of the road.
We gathered as much intelligence as possible and moved on to set up OPs in strategic locations around Saraw. We remained in that area for a few days, becoming very aware of the spotter network in the hills. At night we could see where they were camped because they had lit fires and you could see the faint glow several kilometers away. It was rapidly approaching winter and the nights were becoming extremely cold especially for those spotters at altitude. They were well out of range for the weapon systems we had, and access to these locations could only be achieved by local knowledge. Even behind a stone wall we could still see the glow from the fires through our NVGs or thermal imagers. The nights were generally very quiet, the peace only broken by a distant barking dog or burst of machine-gun fire.
Just before dusk we would prep ourselves for the night routine of sentry duty and rest. We had already had a hot feed and a brew, and there were no fires or white light once darkness fell. The level of threat at the time determined just how many blokes we would have providing security. If we were very secure we could reduce the number of sentries and get more rest. The 2ICs made a roster that included every man at various stages throughout the night. I didn’t mind doing piquet at night as it was so peaceful; the night sky became alive with light shows in the way of shooting stars as they entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Reveille for the locals was at 0500 hours when they were woken by the wails of their call to prayer through a cheap PA system.
On the third night I was woken by radio traffic from RH whose patrol was on an opposite feature 2.5 kilometres away. Through their thermal imager they were watching three Taliban fighters planting an IED into the gravel road. Two Taliban were doing all the work while the third was keeping watch. We knew that an American convoy was going to be travelling on that road in the coming hours so RH decided to contact the fighters. To make sure that the Taliban were killed and all the IED components destroyed and explosive burned, the Javelin was chosen because of its accuracy. Suddenly I heard the thump and whoosh of the rocket being launched and nine seconds later it impacted on its target. After the initial explosion I could make out the home-made explosive (HME) burning as it sparked and flickered in the night. A couple of bursts of .50-calibre and 40 mm followed the javelin rocket to make sure that the enemy was neutralised.
Just west of Saraw we had good intelligence that there was a medium-value target (MVT) who was operating from a small village and was watching us. As well as keeping in regular contact with commanders and his own fighters he had revealed a few other patterns. One particular pattern we had picked up was that every morning around the same time he would move to a similar position to radio his commanders or his spotter network.
We decided to set a sniper ambush on the high ground about 800 metres away, and the weapon of choice was the Barrett semi-automatic .50-calibre sniper rifle. Due to our being the prominent sniper patrol we were given the task and split into two three-man teams. My observer was Dave O’Neil. The PC came up with a plan and ran it past us. Once we’d given it the nod he went away and wrote his orders.
The plan was to get another patrol to drive us towards the high ground, stopping about 3 kilometres short, where we would dismount and walk the rest of the way. That vehicle-mounted patrol would then remain in that location and become our QRF. At the base of the high ground we would split and move to two key locations we had previously identified that were around 500 metres apart. Once in location we would set up a firing position that had good fields of fire and OBs onto the approximate area the MVT would go to that morning. On the call from the PC the two snipers would simultaneously engage the Taliban leader, continue to observe for a short time, then extract.
So once the PC had delivered his orders to us, we went to work getting our gear ready for the short task. EH and I were the shooters so we made sure our .50 calibres were clean and serviceable. I pulled the barrel through as a matter of course. Because of the short duration of the task we only took day sacks with minimal food and some water. It was early December and the start of winter so we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would freeze up there. We took a windproof smock, a beanie and a pair of gloves each. I also took a flask of hot water to add to the dehyde I took as food for the following morning. I took 20 rounds for the Barrett and carried a browning 9 mm pistol. Dave had his M4 and carried the optics in his day sack; MR carried a 5.56 mm Minimi light machine gun as he was to be our rear protection. We all carried personal radios.
Once we had completed our battle prep and actioned our weapons, we got stuck into a good feed and a hot brew. Darkness fell, and shortly after we were on the back of the two LRPVs moving slowly towards the back end of the village. On reaching our drop-off point (DOP) we all went silent for 10 minutes to establish if there was any movement in our immediate area. After that we conducted a quick comms check and set off on our foot insertion.
The going under foot was quite treacherous when crossing the dry wadi (river bed), but once on the other side we made good time. At the base of the large hill we confirmed a few ‘actions on’ and then we split to our respective positions. The night was very dark and when we approached the top of the hill we began to look for a suitable firing position without silhouetting ourselves. The other team was lucky enough to get into position almost straight away upon reaching their final location. We had a bit more of a climb.
MR got into a good position and started to provide security, which gave us a little more freedom of movement to pinpoint a good firing position. Dave and I still weren’t happy with the final position we’d selected, but we were running out of time and it was quickly approaching daylight. This position offered a good platform for me to shoot from, but cover from fire and view was minimal, which was going to make it extremely difficult for us to move around once daylight broke. The escape route we had identified wasn’t the best either. If we were compromised and started to take rounds we would have had to momentarily expose ourselves to the engaging Taliban in order to get away–far from ideal!
Just before daybreak we saw some human movement which we observed like hawks as we felt quite exposed. When the light was sufficient I ranged my scope into the likely area our target was using–850 metres, an easy task for the Barrett.
I assessed the wind, which was blowing gently on an oblique angle from right to left up the valley, and added a couple of clicks right to compensate for that.
After an hour of daylight a lone male approached the area where our target was supposed to be. He stayed for about 10 minutes and didn’t seem to be doing anything out of the ordinary. This gave me time to recheck the range and wind. He turned out to be slightly closer and the wind had picked up a little. I made the necessary adjustments and then continued to observe him through my scope.
The other half of our patrol confirmed via radio that he did not appear to be a threat; but we continued to observe on chance that he was our guy and became the target. As it happened, he never did pose a threat and the task was called off. Even though it was dud, all the excitement and adrenaline was present. It is these very emotions that need to be suppressed before you pull the trigger on a live target, because if you don’t, you will miss.
The order was given to move back towards Saraw, as a combined clearance was to take place. Once in location 4RAR were dropped to the east of the village behind a huge feature and walked to a blocking position on high ground. Their mortars were dropped off in front of our location. The ANA conducted a sweep from the south with some of our blokes in support. It wasn’t long before the ANA had found some enemy and started shooting. I and some other snipers took up a position on the high ground to provide overwatch and commentary, and to engage any threats. We located some likely enemy positions and gatherings but did not see any weapons at that stage.
As the clearance progressed we moved locations to another feature, which allowed us to see right into the village. We could also see the 4RAR blocking position but nothing else came of that clearance at that stage. We RVd back with the rest of our patrol, who had been watching a possible MVT on an adjoining feature some distance away to the one 4RAR had just walked around. This bloke was quite fidgety and talking into something regularly. He would run from position to position as though we were shooting at him, which wasn’t the case, as he was well out of range.