Sniper in Helmand: Six Months on the Frontline

by James Cartwright

  At the end of it all, they slapped handcuffs on Rob and put him in the van, while a growing mass of neighbours looked on. This is a pretty quiet part of Werrington and it certainly was not normal for police to be storming the street, so literally everyone was out and standing around staring. Rob had now been packed off and his girlfriend had also left, so we went back inside. Annie was obviously quite upset, saying that it was all right for me because I was off again, but she now had to live in this area with everyone looking at her, judging her and thinking we were some form of chavs. I could see her point and said, ‘Right, I’m not having that’ and said that I would go and talk to them. They were all still out there, so I just addressed the massed crowd and said, ‘Look, this was clearly nothing to do with Annie, it was simply a guy who drank too much and we were as shocked as everyone else, but these things happen and it’s just one of those things.’

  The police, of course, realised pretty quickly that this was the case and put Rob in a cell for the night to sober up and let him go on the following morning with no charges. The rest of us meanwhile went back and continued to drink and party until the wee early hours of around 4.00 or 5.00 am without further incident. Apart from that little bit of excitement, it was good humoured, a great laugh and a fitting send-off. Annie and I collapsed into bed when everyone eventually left and we drifted off to sleep, only to awake needing the essential proper breakfast and got on with it.

  All too soon it was time to head back to Afghanistan. I decided that I would take my car back to the barracks as I would be back again in three months, and so my car should be fine there. We said our farewells and there were a few tears and many cuddles, especially as I was far more aware of the dangers than previously. I then left on the long journey back to Elizabeth barracks in Pirbright, Surrey, feeling very lonely after two weeks of being with my loved ones and friends.

  Following our arrival, the first thing for those of us who had been on R & R was to go and sign for all of our kit. We spotted Macca, who had been shot just underneath the armour plate in his body armour, hobbling along on a walking stick. We shook his hand and he told us that we really should try to avoid getting shot because, in his words, ‘It f...ing hurts.’ I told him that I remembered seeing the state of him on the stretcher and that I needed no persuading – I did not want to be shot.

  A lot of the barracks were still being re-furbished and so I took over a bed in B Company’s lines and slept for a while before ordering a Chinese takeaway and playing poker well into the night. Soon the minibus arrived to take us back to RAF Brize Norton, where we were processed in the same way as my initial trip to Afghanistan, before embarking on the aircraft.

  We arrived at Kandahar and stayed overnight before boarding a Hercules C-130 for the flight to Camp Bastion and the pods on Camp 501 for a couple of days while we waited for the helicopters to fly us out to Nowzad. B Company had also come off MOGs after Operation LASTAY KULANG and was now based at Nowzad, minus 5 and 6 Platoons who had been involved in another operation, GHARTSIGHAR, which took place during 20 June to 5 July. The number of attacks by the Taliban were on the increase and intimidation of the locals was spreading, so the aim of Operation GHARTSI-GHAR was to rectify this situation by pushing the Taliban back even further and preventing them from re-infiltrating the Green Zone around Sangin, thus taking the pressure off the city itself. The plan was to allow the locals to be able to move back into the city without having the threat of the Taliban on their doorstep all the time.

  The initial stages of the operation were recorded as follows in the Battalion’s tour magazine:

  Both A and B Companies made long approach marches through the Green Zone at night, in order to be in position to block the enemy’s potential escape route across the Helmand River. After an almost 12 km night approach march, both companies were in almost continuous contact for the whole of the following day. They remained in the Green Zone and the fire fight lasted for nine days. Once again, large numbers of the enemy were killed with far fewer escaping this time. As an act of desperation, the Taliban used a twelve-year-old boy to place an IED in the Sangin bazaar which detonated, killing the young boy and two policemen. This single incident was the turning point for public opinion as it caused outrage, resulting in the amount of information about the Taliban received from the local population being quadrupled. Most importantly, the Taliban’s perception that the area was a safe haven for them was shattered and the locals began to realise that there was an alternative to suffering intimidation. Reconstruction efforts were boosted following this operation with significantly more locals coming forward with proposals for a number of projects, particularly for irrigation projects and improvements.

  5 and 6 Platoons were in the Green Zone in the thick of the main part of Operation GHARTSI-GHAR. Meanwhile 7 Platoon was in Nowzad and the FSG was on ANP Hill, which was just outside the town but still provided 360 degree views around the entire area due to its elevation. The FSG could see exactly where the platoons were and knew exactly the location of the Taliban.

  While we were waiting in Camp Bastion, we helped to sort a mountain of mail for distribution. A few of the guys from C Company arrived back from their R & R at this time and, having been in the company, I knew a few of them. One of them was a guy called Tony Rawson whose nickname was ‘Nicey’ the reason was as simple as it sounds: he was one of the nicest blokes you could be fortunate enough to meet and would go out of his way to help newly joined soldiers joining the company and not knowing anyone, which is always a bit daunting. I also saw Si Mercer who showed me all his photographs of what C Company’s FSG had been getting up to in Kajaki in the north of the province. It was good to catch up with them and to find out about Robbo, Tom, Dan and Cas and all the guys in the snipers and FSG.

  Colour Sergeant Bill Shand had told us that it would be a few days before we were flown out, but that later that day he appeared and informed us that we were moving out immediately. We swiftly packed our kit and shortly afterwards were on the flight to Nowzad which proved uneventful. On its final approach, the helicopter swept in low and let off a couple of flares, landing us in a small wadi just behind ANP Hill. So there I was, a couple of weeks of peace now ended and the next three months of this tour of operations to get through, which would prove to be far from plain sailing.

  CHAPTER 14

  Nowzad – The Ghost Town

  The Chinook helicopter flew off, the downdraught covering us in dust. We took up defensive positions in the wadi and waited and waited, then waited some more. After a while, we began to think, ‘Oh shit. Where are our guys?’ There were ten or fifteen of us, carrying bags of mail as well as our own personal kit and full bergens. The trouble is, when a Chinook lands and then flies off, the Taliban know that something or someone has just been dropped off at that spot.

  Eventually, we observed a Pinzgauer driving up towards accompanied by some WMIKs from the FSG. They pulled up and we all jumped in before setting off along a dusty track that took us back into the Nowzad district centre. Our base there had now been renamed FOB Gray, after Private Chris Gray who was sadly killed not far from there on 13 April right at the start of the tour. Being back in the UK for even as little as two weeks had de-acclimatised us and we found it bloody hot and were soon desperate for some water. On arrival at the FOB, we unloaded all the kit and headed for the main HQ building where there was a big fridge with lovely ice cold water. I discarded my helmet and body armour before wandering off for a look around our new base which was not bad at all. There was even a television with BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service) that provided us with BBC One, Channel 4, a sports channel and a music channel along with a few others that no one really watched. There were also a few benches with tables nearby piled high with books for everyone to read and another table with ‘highbrow’ magazines like NUTS, Zoo and others. There were also three text link terminals, so we could securely send texts back home which was useful because Nowzad was a little out of the way. Mail came once a week
if we were lucky, more likely every fortnight when we would receive quite a good bundle of letters that was swapped for our outgoing mail.

  I went over to the Operations Room and spoke to everyone there, blagging on about my R & R. Other than that, I had nothing to do, so watched a bit of television and chatted on with a few people, finding out what had been going on in the area in my absence. Ross Kemp and his crew had now finished their filming and returned to the UK, and it was back to normal life in Afghanistan for me.

  After a while, the WMIKs returned with the FSG guys who all lived up on ANP Hill, which is an old fort on a feature that looks over and dominates the entire Nowzad area. Nowzad itself lies in a massive area of flat terrain and is surrounded by mountains, like crocodile ridge and also is populated by lots of little villages. One of them is called Karizi Afga, which we called Crazy Afghan, while other places had strange names like Jedi, which of course reminded me of the film Star Wars, but all in all the terrain was beautiful.

  Along with some defensive positions constructed by the Russians, ANP Hill itself has a shrine and crypt built in to it, which I was told dated all the way back to the days of Genghis Khan and that there were generations of important people buried under there. I am not a hundred per cent sure if this is true, but inevitably there were rumours that the place was haunted.

  I met the FSG guys and the normal high fives, hugs and catch-up took place. There was a real bond within our ranks that probably will never be replicated during the rest of our lives. I was hoping to see Teddy, but he had just flown out for his R & R and we had literally just missed each other. He had ended up taking Deano’s R & R slot as he had arrived a couple of weeks later in the tour, so all the good slots had gone. This would have normally meant that, by the time his came up, he would have gone back about five or six weeks before the whole tour was finished, and then only to fly back out for a few weeks. It would have firstly been a bit pointless, but also a bit of a bastard, because it’s a long hard slog without a break for around five months. Scotty was back from R & R, so it was us two as the sniper team. Having sorted ourselves out, we drove up to ANP Hill where I acquainted myself with my new home for the next six weeks or so before sending a bluey off to Annie. It was 15 July, right in the middle of summer in Afghanistan, so the temperature was well into the fifties and absolutely roasting – too hot to sit by a pool with your shorts on, let alone fight wearing full kit and body armour.

  We received an orientation and brief from Snowy, who was now a WO2. I now had to stop addressing him as ‘Colour Sergeant’ and call him ‘Sir’ instead. Scotty showed me to my room where I could not stand upright because it was so low. It was like accommodation of the First World War, extending along the face of the hill and dug in underneath razor wire with corrugated iron sheets overhead. Within arm’s reach of the beds were firing ports. I took Teddy’s bed and Scotty was in the same hole next to me; further down the line was the rest of the FSG. In our hole we had a .338 rifle and an L96. We also had our laser rangefinders and two Leopold scopes, so we were pretty well kitted out.

  There was a kitchen area round the back, with chicken wire fencing that had been made into a hut with hessian wrapped around it, so we could cook for ourselves up on the hill. The trouble was that it wasn’t as though we all sat down to dinner for our three square meals a day – we all ate ‘on the fly’ or when we could, so would end up having snacks and occasionally a big proper meal if we had sufficient time to cook one. There were shower facilities, which consisted of a hole in the ground covered by a parachute on top of six-foot pickets. We also had a makeshift gym, equipped with a rowing machine, chin pull-up bars, weights that were containers of various description filled with sand, and a bench press where we used a bunch of six-foot pickets. One of these pickets on its own does not weigh too much but when you stack half a dozen of them together, they are very heavy. We also had a satellite phone up on the hill on which we could call home on when the signal was strong enough, this depending on where the satellite was at the time. We used to look up at the sky at night to try and spot its faint white outline of continuous light overhead, the air being so clear out there with no pollution.

  Not a great deal happened in Nowzad because the local population had left due to the presence of the Taliban only some 700 metres away from us in the Green Zone. They watched us every step of the way and if we went to within around 300 metres of them, they would lay ambushes and subject us to heavy fire. When British forces first arrived in the area, the Paras and the Gurkhas had to deal with the Taliban coming right up to the perimeter fence and throwing grenades over the top. Our battalion was tasked with breaking this situation and A Company had achieved it during an operation that took place while I was on R & R. We succeeded in freeing up some of the open ground to create a buffer zone between us and the Taliban, and to allow us more freedom of movement, pushing them further and further back. Initially we had merely to maintain the buffer zone because, after the intense fighting in the Green Zone we had experienced on operations like LASTAY KULANG, the OC wanted to let us get our breath back before we launched our next assault.

  After about two weeks, 6 Platoon was despatched to FOB Fox for Operation GHARTSI-GHAR, the aim of which was to force the Taliban in the Green Zone to the south and into the jaws of A Company which was waiting for them. The Taliban obviously didn’t like the thought of being pushed into this scenario, so decided to attack 5 and 6 Platoons. 7 Platoon stayed back to look after the DC 6 Platoon stayed out there and took some serious casualties through what proved to be a very tough fight. One of the guys, named Giz, was moving forward during a sustained fire fight when an RPG was launched, detonating against a building beside him. The shockwave of the blast snapped his leg and he went down just as a bullet from an AK-47 hit the ground in front of him and then ricocheted up to smash him in the nose. He survived and recovered, and must be one of the luckiest guys I know. 6 Platoon had a horrific time down there, so we felt lucky not to be on the end of that, at least for a while.

  In our area, the Taliban wanted to keep hold of Nowzad because it was their staging post from which they launched operations. Their main stronghold was in the north and Musa Qaleh was not that far away, just behind Crocodile Ridge. Due to the ground being so flat, we could observe through our scopes the Taliban in the distance resupplying themselves, but there was not a great deal we could do about it.

  One night, I was lying in my pit and Scotty was on stag because we always had to maintain a sentry while we were up on the hill and worked a two hours on, six hours off routine. Suddenly I heard a sudden bang followed by shouts of, ‘Medic! Medic! Man down!’ I jumped out of bed and was told that Scotty had shot himself accidentally in the hand with his pistol while attempting to clear a stoppage. Luckily, the bullet had not gone through his palm but through the fleshy part underneath his thumb. Although this was very painful, it was a relief that the wound was not more serious. Pete Tointon was on the radio down to DC saying that we had a T3 casualty and giving Scotty’s zap number. Our zap numbers were basically our initials, followed by the last four digits of our service numbers, being a quick and secure way of identification over the radio net. I grabbed all of Scotty’s details from my day sack and read it out for Pete so he could relay this information back to the DC. I remember Snowy coming out and going mental, shouting, ‘What the f... is happening here? Right! I’m f...ing confiscating those f...ing pistols from the lot of you!’

  We organised the vehicles to take Scotty back down to the DC, and I volunteered to help take him as he was a fellow sniper. Snowy said, ‘Right JC, you’re in command of the lead wagon. I will be with Scotty in the other vehicle.’ We got our kit and other guys took over on sentry duty as we drove down to the DC. Lance Corporal ‘Lamby’ Lambell was driving in the darkness as we only had half a moon and no lights. He and I had to try to navigate back to the DC in the darkness as quickly as possible, because Scotty was losing blood and it was a fair distance from the hill to the DC. The problem
was there were quite a few different alleyways and roads. If we had taken the wrong one, we could have ended up getting lost and been in serious trouble with a man injured and the Taliban only some 600 metres away. I must admit my heart was thumping big time as we crawled along. I could hear Snowy shouting from the vehicle behind, ‘Hurry the f... up! We’ve got a man down here!’ I shouted back, ‘Yeah, no problem, sir’ before saying to Lamby, ‘Have you got any night vis?’ He just looked back and said, ‘No.’ I replied, ‘Okay, f...ing floor it mate, just floor it. I’ll have to use my Jedi skills,’ to which Lamby said, ‘Jedi skills? What?’ I said, ‘Yep, Jedi skills. F...ing floor it mate, just floor it. I’ll have to use my Jedi skills.’

  We hurtled off down the road. Luckily enough, having only made the trip three times before in daylight, I managed to spot the right alleyway and succeeded in directing Lamby through it. We made our way through alleyways and roads without taking a wrong turn and came bursting into the DC where the gates were already open for us. Scotty was taken into the medical centre there where the medics were ready and waiting for him. They patched him up properly, while Major Aston took a statement. Later, we sat with Scotty and waited for the helicopter which came in at dawn. We got him loaded up and across the helicopter landing site. Thereafter we manned our positions in case of attack and I took hold of my .338 rifle but then realised that I only had the rounds that were in the rifle while the rest of the ammunition for it were in Scotty’s kit. I ran across to Pete Tointon and Snowy to tell them, and we grabbed a vehicle and darted down there where we grabbed his kitbag, which contained his L96 rifle and the ammunition for it, as well the rounds for the .338 rifle.