Sniper in Helmand: Six Months on the Frontline

by James Cartwright

  After all the fun and games with the feet, we all went back out to the well and filled up with water and splashed about cleaning ourselves up and cooled down a bit, the sentries up on the roofs meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings. By this time, Sergeant Caneper had worked everything out regarding the goodies and supplies, imposing a limit on each item so it did not become a free-for-all and everyone got equal amounts. Everyone of course ordered the maximum of everything and the smokers stocked up on cigarettes. It was excellent for morale and the sugar in the ‘full fat coke’ and the Haribo sweets was a much-needed boost to our energy levels too.

  We all had another boil-in-the-bag, and I swapped a number of my other meals with some of the guys, so I had a decent amount of my favourite chicken and mushroom for going forward. I got my head down and slept for a little while and woke up to find a can of coke with a bag of Haribo sweets, so I walked outside and asked Teddy whose they were. He told me that there had been a few left over, so he had squared them away for me. We sat and had a smoke and a can of coke together, chatting for a while until ‘stand to’ was called and we all got kitted up and ready to go. ‘Stand down’ was called after a while and we retired to our sleeping quarters.

  We patrolled right through the Green Zone and all the way up to the Helmand River. There were a few compounds there, with a large open field with a long treeline running across it. There was a compound there, with another just behind it and a third in the distance beyond. Beyond the river was a kind of canyon that opened up, reminding me of films of Ayers Rock in Australia. We could also see big high yellow cliffs on the other side of the wadi with a kind of valley which stretched into the distance: this was the Musa Qaleh wadi and the back door to the Taliban’s main stronghold.

  We went across to the compounds and knocked on the door; there was no answer, so we kicked the door in. On entering, we found a family inside: a man along with his son, aged about twenty years old, his wife who was totally covered in a burqa, and some children. They all shrieked and screamed at first, but we called our interpreter in and told him to tell them that we were British forces and were there to help. We asked if they had seen any Taliban. The man told us that they had left a few days ago and gone via the Musa Qaleh wadi to Musa Qaleh. We pressed him politely, asking he was sure, but he insisted the Taliban had gone. We then asked if we could use his compound for the next few hours. At first he moaned a bit, but was soon relatively accommodating after receiving some compensation in the form of US dollars, telling us to help ourselves. We went out the back to his garden near the Helmand River which was shaded by extremely dense trees. We had been patrolling for a good six hours and my back was on fire, so it was good to drop the daysack, take on some food and water. Meanwhile, a couple of WMIKs and a Pinzgauer had succeeded in driving down and getting through to us.

  In view of the fact that there no Taliban in the near vicinity, Major Mick Aston decided to hold a shura with the elders of the area. We all got ourselves up to the edge of the river and, while we were waiting, Ross Kemp came over with his camera crew and talked with Teddy as we had told him about Teddy risking his life to save Deano. We sat with him for a while, showing him how to zap a rangefinder laser at a number of potential targets including some upturned boats.

  Shortly afterwards, I fell asleep but was woken by the CSM saying, ‘Do you want your R & R?’ He told me that we were to leave soon and for me to get my kit on, get loaded up and ready to move out. There were the inevitable calls of, ‘You lucky bastard!’ We all received the same amount of mid-tour R & R, so I enjoyed telling them that I would see them later and to f... off. I dived into my day sack and gave Teddy some of my cigarettes, thereafter dishing out the rest of my boil-in-the bags to the lads. Teddy said that he would walk me out. It was slightly strange in the sense that in normal civilian circumstances this just wouldn’t be appropriate, but we grabbed each others thumbs and palms and we turned and hugged. I don’t care what anyone says, because that was totally normal and totally appropriate to our situation. He told me to enjoy myself and I told him to keep his head down, stay low, move fast and all that stuff.

  With that, I jumped into the vehicle as Major Aston had finished his meeting with the elders. There seemed to be large numbers of people around as we drove out of there up to a massive hilltop where the Recce Platoon and a few other vehicles were stationed. We were quite high up, so could see down on to the Green Zone and the Musa Qaleh wadi. From this vantage point I could see clearly where we had come, how far we had patrolled and cleared and it was a really good sense of achievement. I recognised a few of the Marines that were tending to their Vikings and they asked me how it was in there and I described it to them, telling them of my kill and of Teddy taking the enemy RPG gunner’s head off.

  I met up with Pete Tointon and he told me in no uncertain terms that I looked like shit and I agreed by saying, ‘You’re not wrong.’ All of us were being pulled out on R & R, among them Josh Lee, OD and a few others were in the same state. I was offered something to eat and refused, saying I didn’t fancy yet another boil-in-the bag, until the guy mentioned that he had the last of a few Canadian meals, including veal steak in mushroom sauce.

  That night, I slept up on a ridge after talking to Colour Sergeant Snow and the next day we prepared to fly back to Camp Bastion with Ross Kemp and his crew. Before jumping on, we had to carry a stretcher laden with a pile of stuff to the Chinook. The nightmare was that the helicopter landed about four or five hundred metres away, so four of us had to carry this stretcher over to them. The blades were going full bore and kicking up dust as we ran, tripping over rocks and blinded by clouds of dust, towards the aircraft. We made it just as I thought my arm was about to be dislocated. Almost blinded by the sand which had been kicked up, but with a feeling of relief and elation, I sat in the aircraft as it lifted off thinking that at last I was flying home, albeit I would be returning in a few weeks.

  The flight to Camp Bastion was not long. As we landed, Ross Kemp turned and told me that he hoped we had a great break, which was good of him. We took ourselves over to the company lines where all the quartermaster stores were. I remember noticing about four or five new guys who had obviously just arrived: their clothing perfect, their skin white with sun cream all over their noses. I stood near them, in filthy kit, stinking to high heaven with a sweatband wrapped around my dripping head and my clothes in shreds. God knows what they must have thought.

  Lance Corporal Coolage, better known to all as ‘Coolio’, came out and told us that he would look after our weapons if we wanted to go to the cookhouse for some food. We lost no time in getting ourselves across there and were soon getting stuck into croissants, sausage and egg, and cold orange juice. This was heaven, five star treatment. Breakfast over, we went to strip and clean our weapons but the inevitable happened. After eating boil-in-the-bags for over a month, the sudden intake of fresh food had a dire effect on us. The toilets were far better than the thunderboxes out in the FOBs but it was still like sitting in a sauna. To top it off, there were no toilet seats to sit on, just hot metal – still the graffiti on the walls made for interesting reading.

  After the weapons had been cleaned, they were going to be serviced thoroughly before being reissued to us on our return from R & R, so I stripped and cleaned my rifle three times before I handed it in. I must admit that it felt weird not wearing body armour, sitting in a plastic chair with a pair of three-quarter length trousers on, with an iPod plugged in to my ears as I cleaned my weapon. I wrote out a list of all the ammunition that I handed in, then I tied it all up and put a name tag on, so everyone knew what was what when we came back.

  Finally, I reached the point that I had dreamt of for such a long time – shower time. I stood under the shower for what seemed hours and it was the best feeling in the world, I watching the water run off me and form a pool of solid brown obscuring my feet. Eventually, I came out and collected a packet of cigarettes from my box in the ISO container. I also extracted my
DVD player and saw a note from Scotty, who had left it from when he had gone on R & R. It read, ‘Hi JC, borrowed this to watch porn on, left it in for you though.’ I then telephoned home and spoke to Annie, before writing letters to people to let them know I was coming home. I had to wait for one more day before flying out. My R & R was to start on 5 June, so as it was the 4th I began to pack away all of my kit. At the same time, I unpacked a clean uniform ready for my return.

  CHAPTER 13

  R & R

  We flew from Bastion to the American base at Kandahar, and from there directly back to the UK where it was surprisingly warm as we disembarked at Brize Norton. I had telephoned Annie from Kandahar and gave her the time for the family to pick me up, but I got it all wrong and they were an hour late. Eventually, my mum and Annie turned up and there was of course a lot of excitement. It was just such a fantastic feeling to be home as forty-eight hours earlier I had been in the field taking incoming fire; now here I was in the arms of my loved ones.

  We arrived home in Peterborough and later that day Annie and I went over to my flat in Werrington where we spent some time before returning to my mum’s place where my brother Ben was waiting for me. We then all headed for our ‘local’, the Harrier pub in Gunthorpe, where we met a group of our mates. My mum had been giving them all updates while I was away, so when I walked in you can imagine it was a case of lots of people shouting, ‘Hey, he’s back! He’s back!’ Every time I produced my wallet, everyone told me to put it away and I remember a guy called Jeremy kept shaking my hand and slapping my back so hard it actually hurt, telling me how much he appreciated what we were doing and thanking me for it. I felt so touched and really grateful and of course tried to play it all down, but all I could manage to say, ‘You’re welcome.’ I kept trying to divert the attention away from me and tell them that the guys were still out there, but it was really nice to see such appreciation of what we were trying to do. It was a wonderful and very surreal experience and one I will never forget.

  I was lucky enough to be back on my mum’s birthday and she had organised for us all to go out into the city centre to a Chinese restaurant called Imperial Bento’s, a massive place that had only just opened. After that, we moved on to a nearby pub called the College Arms for a few more pints to see the night out before heading home. It was a great night which we all really enjoyed and I ended up collapsing on my mum’s sofa, waking up on the following morning with that ‘Where the hell am I?’ feeling before remembering that I was home on R&R.

  I needed to go to see Deano and so made my way to Birmingham and Selly Oak. On arrival at the hospital, I walked round the wards until I found where he was but, as I was a little bit early, I went to buy a card from the gift shop. As I entered and started walking up the ward, I simply did not know what to think or say. I could see wounded men with bandages around their legs and limbs missing and thought, ‘Shit! This is where we end up!’ It was an enormous eye-opener which made me feel so sad for the guys who had been doing their jobs and had simply been unlucky. It also made me feel incredibly fortunate to be healthy and alive, and so far to have come out the other end unscathed. As bad as that may seem, I guess it is human nature to think through what might have happened to you and then thank your lucky stars, so that’s what I did. I had read in the papers before about Muslim women attacking the lads in the wards and it made me feel sick. Surely, if they had become legal British citizens then it should make that kind of behaviour some form of treason. The extra security was clearly evident.

  As I rounded the corner towards Deano, his face lit up, despite the fact that he was still being heavily sedated to deal with the actual pain of his injuries. I don’t know, but I guess a familiar and unexpected face always helps.

  I shook his hand, which felt slightly fragile, so I was careful not to pull his arm off. I sat down beside him and started to show him his books and stuff that I had managed to bring back from Afghanistan. He slowly opened them without speaking and smiled as he flicked through the pages. As he was doing this, his girlfriend came into the room and said, ‘Hi’ and asked who I was. I told her I was JC and that I was on R&R before explaining that I was Deano’s second-in-command in Afghanistan.

  Deano gestured towards a pen and notebook on the side and I passed it over. He very slowly wrote that he could not talk or hear anything and pointed. So I started to write down initial things like, ‘How are you doing mate?’ Thereafter we had a conversation via paper and pen because it was the only way we could communicate with each other. He was deaf as a result of the RPG explosion, added to which he was pretty heavily sedated so it took a while for him to be able to write his replies to my questions, especially after having to decipher my terrible handwriting. He asked what had been happening and, as I began to explain, his parents turned up so after the introductions, I told them all everything I could to the best of my knowledge about what had happened to him, because he couldn’t remember any of it apart from the explosion. I reminded him that he had been covered in fuel and the fact that he had bravely taken his body armour off to enable him to continue to fight, but he couldn’t remember doing so.

  Shortly afterwards our old RSM, WO1 Tony Buff, turned up as he had been posted to Selly Oak as a welfare officer and was doing his rounds. He asked me how I had got to the hospital, so I told him that I had travelled over in my own car. He asked why I had not asked for official transport to drive me down and I said that I had not even thought about that but just obtained the address of the hospital and made my way to it. I could have caught a train, using a rail warrant, but that was not really important as I just wanted to see Deano and check he was okay. I would have paid for ten tanks of petrol to see him as he was my team commander and my mate. It was good to see him smile as he read my card. At that point I started to get ready to leave, as I did not want to out stay my welcome. He wrote down for me to look after the guys and I replied, ‘Of course I will. No dramas.’

  After shaking hands with everyone, I went outside. I must admit that I had to choke back the emotion as it had been so hard to see Deano like that. He was the heart and soul of every occasion, the party animal and larger than life, so it was terrible to see him in this state and I felt guilt and sadness.

  I drove back home and, as I arrived, I could smell that Annie had been cooking. I walked in and said, ‘Hi!.’ At that point I had a few tears with Annie as I thought about what had happened and the fact that I usually worked with Teddy and so it really should have been me in that ambush. Annie told me that Deano was just doing his job and leading his section, and no one could have known what was going to happen; indeed she reminded me that it might have been me that got hurt in place of someone else after I had switched to being a mortar man, so it was wrong to blame myself. She was right, of course, and I guess such emotions are simply one of the many mental challenges of being a soldier on active service.

  A few days before I was due to go back, I decided to throw a party at my flat in Werrington and so set about buying in all the meat for the barbecue. As it was a beautiful sunny day, we set up a gazebo in my postage stamp sized garden at my flat. I recruited the help of my mate, ‘Dodgy’ Dave, who is an absolute legend on the barbecue and I would challenge anyone to find a better man at donning the apron and cooking a barbie. As his job was a plumber and he had come straight from work, his girlfriend had brought his clothes across for him and he used my shower to have a wash and change and then he was straight out to sort the barbie.

  People started to arrive: Jodie, obviously Annie, my brother, Bones and Leanne, Cheryl, Hailey, Rob and Michaela, Ozzy and Becky, Leah and so on. We made the most of my flat and garden, with fairy lights strung up in the gazebo. Everyone ate great food and got nicely pissed, laughing and talking, which was great.

  Suddenly Rob, who had been drinking Vodka and Red Bull and had been fine earlier, changed and sort of snapped. In fairness to him, he took it outside as he continued to go totally nuts. I was a bit worried because he was a bit close to my ne
ighbour’s car, but this was all very strange because it was just not like him at all, so I sent Ozzy outside to see if he could calm him down and find out what the hell it was. It was no use, as he just became worse and neighbours started to come out as we tried to restrain him because he was lashing out as we attempted to calm him down and prevent from doing himself and anyone else any damage.

  The trouble was that we all ended up on the floor in a scuffle and the next thing we knew the police had arrived with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, then jumping out and running towards us with batons fully extended. We all jumped up and were saying, ‘Whoa, whoa! What’s all this for? I said to the police, ‘Calm down fellas, this is a storm in a tea cup.’ They told us in no uncertain terms to get off Rob and ran towards him. I just said, ‘What’s this all about? I live here,’ and pointed to my flat. ‘We’re just having a party, we’re all mates.’ Meanwhile, I was trying to calm Rob down and help him because he had had a bit too much to drink.

  The coppers told us that they had received a telephone call reporting three guys kicking the crap out of one another on his own. Of course we all laughed and said, ‘No, no. He’s a mate and he’s clearly drunk and got all upset and we were trying to calm him down, restrain him and find out what the hell he’s upset about. He hasn’t caused any damage or harm apart from disturbing my leaving party and is just a bit upset about something.’ The policeman turned to me and said, ‘Oh right. So this is your party, is it?.’ I thought, ‘Oh f..., here we go’ and began the process of giving a statement and confirming details.