by Rob Maylor
Step by step we moved closer to these young blokes, who seemed to be taking our advance rather casually. This put me a little more at ease but I wasn’t going to drop my guard. We cleared all the buildings in the bazaar and searched the young males; all the more mature men had disappeared. It was possible that they had used an unseen ‘rat line’ (escape route) that ran into the hills. Maybe they planned to attack us from there.
Once we cleared a small proportion of the village we got the cars through and harboured up about 3 kilometres on the other side. It was now getting dark. One patrol went back into the village at night to scout around to see if there was any activity. However, there was nothing doing, so the following morning we packed up and headed back towards Tarin Kowt. The Taliban tend to talk themselves up a lot and hardly ever seem to follow up on their tough talk. This can eventually lead you into a false sense of security.
Back on the road and four hours later the chatter started again. We were about to enter the next village when we heard, ‘Get ready, we’re going to ambush the infidels.’ As it happened we got through the village again without incident as they couldn’t organise themselves fast enough.
4RAR were about an hour behind us at this stage and the plan was to marry up with them before we entered the dasht, our last leg of the journey. We placed ourselves in a position of overwatch just in case the Taliban came good with their word of an ambush, which to my surprise they did! They waited until half the massive 4RAR convoy came through and then opened up on them with small arms fire and a possible RPG from the opposite high ground.
The first half of the convoy took off and headed towards us. The others were static for a bit until they got their head around what was going on. By the amount of fire they received there can’t have been any more than seven shooters up in the hills, but all of a sudden half the countryside was being shot at from the 4RAR boys who were itching to get among it.
We were in quite a good position to observe into the green and provide fire support, but we were taking a few rounds also. These rounds seemed to be coming from the village. I was half expecting the 4RAR OC to come up with a quick battle plan to enter the green to see what was there, because he was in the perfect position to do so, but nothing ever came. They decided that they were going to shoot on the move and rejoin the rest of the convoy.
I was pretty disappointed at this stage: we had a massive force on hand of highly trained soldiers who could have rolled up these bad guys easily. One of our patrols was securing the entry point to the dasht down on the low ground. We were stuck up on the high ground, and copping a few rounds from the green. We were almost on the crest of the hill so I got on the radio and said, ‘We’re sitting ducks here, we’ll drive down to the other patrol and help them out in case they need it.’
Upon reaching the other patrol we saw two bad guys running from the cover of some thin bushes to seek refuge behind a small square mud brick building. ‘Get the 84s out and we’ll send two HE over the top of that building,’ I told MR and SP.
You can dial a range onto the nose cone of an HE rocket and it will explode in the air once it has reached that range; otherwise it will explode on impact. The boys grabbed an 84 mm each; I ranged the target and they dialled in the elevation for the scope. I gave them the command: ‘Ready, ready’; ‘Ready, ready, ready! Stand by, fire!’ They both fired at the same time and the rockets exploded directly above the Taliban hiding behind the building. If the blast didn’t kill them the shrapnel would have. There was no movement after that.
Then we saw another guy walking through the green. He had kids around him for protection and was carrying an AK and wearing that very recognisable Chinese-style chest webbing. He was only about 450 metres away so I thought, ‘I can get this guy and not hit any of the kids.’ I put my M4 back in the car and grabbed the SR25 setting the range and adjustment for wind. He was walking at an oblique angle so I had to keep adjusting the elevation to keep up with his range. I kept on losing sight of him as he passed through soft cover–green foliage–but when he did produce himself he would be with the kids. When I decided I was ready to take a shot, he slipped into some bushes and vanished.
Conditions needed to be perfect for the shot before I would take it. I didn’t want to risk hitting one of the kids, and they were very close to him. Scenarios like this do happen from time to time and you can walk away from it feeling quite disappointed, but I’d rather that than have an innocent death on my conscience.
There was a Canadian infantry mortar section with 4RAR. They were now beside us and had started to send 60 mm mortars onto the hillside. The situation should have been controlled a lot better, but unfortunately it was the last patrol of that rotation and everyone had their sights set on going home. The seriousness of the contact had now died off, and we all thought that this was rather pointless, it was time to get out of there and head for Tarin Kowt.
15
Another Blackhawk Down
In 2008 I did a number of supervisory courses before we began the build-up for our rotation to Afghanistan in June. It was tough saying goodbye to George and the girls again, especially because young Ash was finding it difficult to deal with my absences. But when you head out for a combat zone you have to try to put these concerns to one side. We were able to contact our families from our base in Tarin Kowt but that can be a double-edged sword if they’re doing it tough at home. I’m very lucky that George is such a champion. She tries not to worry me, even when the situation becomes stressed. She knows I have to be totally focused on the job.
I was in 3 Squadron at the time and we left on the same charter plane that had taken us across the previous years. When we reached Kuwait we stayed for a couple of days organising kit and preparing for what lay ahead. We had all seen action, but we had no idea just how close we would come to being KIA ourselves. In fact, some of us would eventually become involved in one of the biggest Australian battle against an enemy force since Vietnam.
I went on the advance party to Tarin Kowt with about 10 other lads–a command element of the troop and 2ICs. In our patrol, three of us went early. When we got to Tarin Kowt we met up with the 1 Squadron fellas and they gave us a very good handover. It consisted of a couple of days of briefs and PowerPoint presentations, culminating in a combined patrol.
For the patrol we inserted by vehicle. At that time 1 Squadron was using two LRPVs at the front as scout cars and protection, so one patrol was responsible for that. Then we’d have the Bushmasters, which were the big square four-wheel-drive troop-carrying vehicles–a truck basically–which was quite heavily armoured. The hull was shaped like a V so if there was a blast underneath it wouldn’t go straight up; it would be deflected off to the sides. As it happened, this would save both lives and limbs in the days ahead.
Half the troop was dropped off south of the target village and the other half was deployed to the north. We did a few recces before all meeting up to roll on to the target. This work was all done at night and on the walk into where we were to meet the other half of the troop, our patrol bumped into some locals. They don’t usually mill around at night and if they do they’re usually farmers digging out waterways to irrigate their crops. But these guys were milling around excitedly for some reason and we became suspicious. As we walked up to them–tactically so that we were covering each other–they sensed something was wrong and ran off. We apprehended one guy, cuffed him and took him to the marry-up location.
We would have blindfolded him as well but he had to see where he was walking so we just kept his head down. Once we reached the other guys we covered his eyes to prevent him looking around.
The OC gave us a quick set of confirmation orders before we approached the designated compound. Half the troop went through one of the neighbouring compounds to make sure it would not be a threat during the task, and we made our way around the other side. On the way we apprehended two more men and took them with us. We then met up again outside the bigger target compound.
During
the summer months the Afghans generally sleep outside where it is cooler, and some of the men sleep on the roofs. On this occasion as we reached the main door all the occupants seemed to be awake in the courtyard. One of the guys who had done a language course explained that we were Australian soldiers and we’d come to search the house. He politely asked the people inside to cooperate.
But when we tried to open the door leading to the compound we found it was locked and the occupants totally ignored repeated requests to open it. The compounds are built out of very tough mud brick, which will easily deflect small arms fire, but as it gets old it becomes brittle and will break up. One of the PCs called up the troop boss and asked permission to use an explosive charge to open the doors. ‘Yep, no problem,’ so we set a small charge and blew in the door, which allowed us to enter the inner compound.
All of a sudden everyone was wide awake, so we had to calm them down and keep the women and children separate from the men. In fact, there were only about four men in the group. We conducted a quick clearance of the compound; then my PC and I entered another small adjoining compound. It had a big vegetable patch but otherwise seemed deserted.
The other guys followed us in and again checked out the area. When they got round to the other side they said, ‘Yeah it’s clear as far as we can see,’ so AS and I entered the building leading off the compound and found it was clear at the bottom level but there was a narrow stairwell leading up towards the roof. There was a whole heap of junk on the stairs–an old spring bed, half an old bike and parts of cars. We covered each other as we slipped past the junk as quietly as we could. It was really tight, especially because we had our body armour on, and as we got through the top doorway AS cleared his arc to the front. I was right on his arse so as he turned the corner I was a split second behind him.
There was a sentry on the roof and he must have heard us coming. He had quite a fancy set of webbing on, but all he had in it was two grenades. He was carrying an AK and strangely enough he wasn’t looking our way; he was watching my PC and the others below. He had his back turned to us and as we got up there, AS said to him, in Pashto, ‘Don’t move. Don’t move.’
But as he turned round we could see he was bringing his AK up to shoot. AS hit him three times in the chest very quickly, but because the 5.56 mm is only a small projectile it is very fast and more often than not misses the bone and cannot transfer its energy fully to the body, which meant the poor bugger was still raising his rifle to fire. ‘Christ,’ I thought and shot him in the head. He dropped instantly. This all happened in an instant and I was thankful for all the hours of bulk shooting we had done at the range, making snap shooting like this become instinctive.
Basically at that range we’ve been trained to neutralise a threat in the head with what is generally called a double tap–two shots in quick succession to the head. If you shoot them in the right place they instantly drop, only requiring one round to be fired.
AS covered me while I searched the body. His fancy webbing was made out of leather and every millimetre was covered with studs–quite a setup. I removed the two grenades and took his arms out of the straps to get the webbing off him. We stayed on the roof because we had a good vantage point to cover the others and to look for more potential threats.
There were still a couple of locals milling around, so we covered the other guys searching the outer courtyard of this compound. We let them know when there was movement in certain places and told them where the bad guys were going and what they were doing. They checked them out and if they were suspect they apprehended them.
When we searched the two compounds we found quite a big cache of grenades, weapons, IED-making equipment and booster charges for RPGs–these are round sticks of explosive material about 5 centimetres in diameter and 30 centimetres long. There were 20 of those. I got tasked with rigging them up with a charge and once everyone was out of the way I blew the charge and destroyed all that materiel.
On the walk out we married up with the vehicles again, climbed in and headed away from the village. We’d been driving for only five minutes before the second LRPV in the line of march drove over an IED. It exploded under the rear wheels and badly injured the two guys travelling in the back–a reserve commando and an engineer. The reserve commando was an extra bod to provide security for the vehicles because the drop-off point was some distance from our area of operations. He busted his leg quite badly. We had to secure that area and call the Dutch recovery team in to drag the LRPV onto their trucks and get it out of there. They organised an AME for the two injured guys to get medical assistance as soon as possible. Our guys in the car didn’t get hurt at all and were very lucky.
Then the OC of 1 Squadron organised a patrol to conduct a quick search of the immediate area. They had to clear some buildings to make sure we had a secure perimeter. The whole recovery process must have taken about eight hours. We’d been up all the previous day, worked all night and then had to deal with being IEDd in the blazing sun. It was about 44 degrees that day and we didn’t get back to base until about 3 p.m. When we arrived back it was time for everyone to ask what had happened. I let the other guys answer the questions. At the time I was more interested in getting a good feed and some kip. I don’t have any dramas sleeping after action like that. If I’m tired I’ll sleep, but I probably won’t sleep that long–maybe five hours–before I have to get up.
We had quite a big debrief the next day and came to the conclusion that over the winter the bad guys had dug in a lot of IEDs in key areas. The one that exploded had been there when we drove through but it hadn’t yet been armed. After we had passed they had run up to the thing in a hurry and connected the battery. They could even have done it remotely, as they get smarter all the time.
The charge itself was 20 kilos of HME. They had put it in a 20-litre container and dug it in while the ground was soft. In summer the ground goes hard so all of a sudden you’ve got a rudimentary shaped charge, which means all the blast is getting forced into a small area and going straight up instead of in a wide V shape. This was probably quite fortunate for the blokes at the back because it just bored a big hole in the centre of the car and injured their legs. It could have been much worse.
We concluded that in this area the same guy was making all the IEDs and possibly laying them himself. He was using the same techniques and the same materials. In fact, right through that rotation we recognised his work in virtually every IED incident, even to the way the components were taped together and assembled. We gave him the code name Stiletto.
That was 1 Squadron’s last job, and after watching C130 depart we waited for the rest of our troop to arrive. Our base at Tarin Kout was situated inside Kamp Holland, originally an American base, but then the Dutch took over in 2006. They turned it into a huge area easily a couple of kilometres long and the same wide. The whole place had completely changed since the first time I was there in 2005. It was now virtually unrecognisable. They had ripped down buildings and rebuilt it on a massive scale. We called our base Camp Russell after Andy Russell (an SAS sergeant who was killed on 16 February 2002). When 2 Squadron originally arrived there in 2005 the Americans allotted an area for the Australian contingent but it was bare so they lived in tents. Then they engaged some contactors and built wooden huts. In mid-2008 they ripped all the huts down and built brand new accommodation for us and by comparison it was very good indeed.
While Tarin Kowt was home, we often worked from forward operating bases. Part of our mandate was to provide protection to the engineer reconstruction team, which sometimes meant we had a few limitations placed on us and had to concentrate on the Taliban in and around Tarin Kowt. We needed to neutralise them before they hit soft targets like the engineers.
However, the more intelligence we got, the further afield we pushed, especially when we learnt that some of the bad guys in the Tarin Kowt area were moving out because we were starting to eliminate their command structure. This was no bad thing. It didn’t mean that Tarin Kowt
was safe either, but it was certainly better than it had been. However, you could still go 5 kilometres outside Tarin Kowt and discover that the bad guys were planting IEDs; and you could still find weapon caches inside the area as well.
Our next job was a week-long vehicle-mounted patrol, and it was during this patrol Sean McCarthy was killed. We were very mindful of the IED threat, and did everything possible to avoid them, but still managed to drive onto one.
During the winter months, the Taliban had been busy digging IEDs into the soft ground on both well-used and secondary tracks, in preparation for the drier months when coalition vehicle movements would be more regular. So naturally we were all pretty pissed off when Sean was killed. Twenty kilos of HME was detonated right beneath Sean; the driver and vehicle commander were thrown from the car and injured also. The Afghan interpreter who was in the back lost both of his lower legs.
I was in a car that was a fair way behind, and when the explosion went off I knew exactly what it was and felt sick in the stomach. We were on the opposite side of a small feature that dulled the sounds of the blast. HME combusts a lot more slowly than military-grade explosive and is very identifiable after you’ve heard it a few times. It’s not a sound you like to hear either.
We initially looked for a place to provide some security, but a call came through the radio asking for our patrol medic to assist Wal, a corps medic, who was treating Sean. We drove up and over the feature to drop TF off, then positioned ourselves on the high ground to provide overwatch. While we were waiting for the AME aircraft to arrive I pin-pointed a well-constructed spotter location 1,700 metres away–an easy task for the .50-calibre Barrett sniper rifle.
I borrowed SG’s rifle, as he was monitoring the channel for the AME. I tried not to make it obvious to onlookers that I was about to engage a certain spotter location, and concealed my location as best I could. I dialled in the range and made an adjustment for wind. No sooner had I done that, the AME informed us that they were five minutes out. SG then suggested that he could talk the Apache gunship onto my target, engaging it using their 30 mm canon. ‘Good idea,’ I said, then unloaded and packed away the Barrett.