My second favourite memory of Alex was when we were in Canada. We had just finished the main exercise and so had a few days of low level administration to sort out, moving things around and packing things up. It was one of those rare occasions when it did not really matter if we went out and got stonking. So all the snipers decided to go out to dinner and chose one of these family franchised restaurants called Montana’s. There was Tom, Deano, Spud, Donny, Teddy, me, and of course, Alex. We all managed to use our English charm and sweet-talked the barmaid to allow us to eat our meals at the bar from the bar stools, which was not allowed normally. Alex and I were at one end, with Tom and Deano at the other. Tom and Deano had discovered that if it was anyone’s birthday, the restaurant would play these loud sirens, the employees would come out and silly Canadian moose hats would be put on and they would really go for it.
If it was a kid, that would be lovely of course and they would end up simply having a song played and blowing the candles out on a cake. If it was an adult, they would be made to stand on their chair and wear a moose hat in front of everyone and have a pie pushed in their face. Once the boys had realised this, they told the bar staff that it was Alex’s birthday and then waited for the fireworks and sirens.
The sirens sounded and Alex watched the moose-hatted staff stroll towards our area singing away, without suspecting for a moment that it was for him. Alex looked over his left shoulder looking for the poor unsuspecting victim and then did the world’s greatest double-take as we split ourselves laughing as he looked behind himself and then back at them and then again. When he realised that it was for him, he looked over at Deano and Tom and mouthed one word, ‘Wankers!’
The next thing you know, he was being dragged up on his bar stool by the employees and made to wear the moose hat. When they helped him back down, a pie was then splatted in his face. We all laughed for hours.
These were my two best memories of my friend Alex that I chose to play over in my head but neither they nor the other positive thoughts in my head could keep away the pain. The Battalion’s padre held a memorial service for Alex where there were many hymns that no one sang apart from the padre. We all stood with our heads down. We were remembering our friend in our own ways; in short, we were all utterly gutted by his death. No mistakes had been made, Alex had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a nightmare for all of us although nothing like how his family must have felt.
Alex’s repatriation took place a few days later and Teddy was asked to stand up and give a speech, which he of course did. The C-130 Hercules aircraft carrying his body took off from Camp Bastion and then turned, flying northwards towards us. We raised our heads as it thundered overhead, dipping its wings in salute before turning and carrying Alex away on the first stage of his final journey home.
Alex will always be in my memory, sadly missed.
On 1 August, the Battalion celebrated Minden Day, which is the annual major occasion for the Royal Anglian Regiment. This commemorates one of the Royal Anglian Regiment’s many battle honours that are emblazoned on the regimental colours. During the Seven Years War, four miles north west of the city of Minden in Westphalia, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick commanded the Allied Army made up of troops from Britain, Hanover, Hess and Prussia, while Marshal The Marquis Louis de Contades commanded the French Army. The Allied objective was to reopen its communications with Hanover. An ambiguously worded command sent six British and three Hanoverian infantry battalions against the French cavalry while still in line formation, a foolhardy move that should have spelt disaster. Despite this, the discipline and courage of the infantry repelled three French cavalry charges and smashed the French infantry in the centre of Contades’s formation. After the battle, which took place on 1 August 1759, the British battalions marched through a field where both yellow and red roses grew. The soldiers each picked one of each colour and put them in their head-dress with the red on the left and the yellow on the right. This stood for courage before dishonour. The six British infantry regiments involved, The Suffolk Regiment, The Royal Hampshire Regiment, The Lancashire Fusiliers, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, thereafter celebrated this victory as a battle honour on Minden Day each year. To this day, our tactical recognition flash (TRF), which is worn on the right sleeve of our shirt or jacket, comprises a red and yellow square that is the Minden flash.
In the UK, Minden Day normally begins at around 8.00 am with the officers of each company dressed up as Vikings storming into our rooms, crashing through the doors and beating us over the heads with foam swords and dragging us from our beds. We are then subjected to downing some ‘gunfire’ which is tea laced with rum. The trouble is that I hate tea so always ended up downing a glass of neat rum which was fine with me! After that, everyone quickly puts on some PT kit and we would get ourselves downstairs where there was normally some form of comedy act, normally consisting of some Z list celebrity leading us in aerobics on the parade square, during which we would just mess around. This is followed by a parade, with us in our best uniforms, during which citations are read out from the actual original report of exactly what happened on the day of the battle in 1759. During the parade, we attach fake roses in our head-dress and wear them for the rest of the day. In the afternoon an event takes place that I can only describe as being like a village fête, where we all organise a stand. It is full of the normal good fun stuff, with our company commander being put in the stocks and having wet sponges chucked at him, and the Royal British Legion appearing and raffling off a car. Throughout the day there are barbecues and plenty to drink, and by evening time we are all normally pretty well served. Basically, it is normally a day off just before we go on summer leave on 1 August each year and it is great fun.
This time around, of course, we were on operations in Afghanistan on 1 August, so no getting legless. That said, we still made it out on the cement square at Kajaki, which was normally our five-a-side football pitch. We had competitive games where points were awarded, to be totted up at the end of the day, with us in the FSG competing against 5, 6 and 7 Platoons. The FSG stand had been rigged up as a water jousting event for which we had obtained water from the reservoir and fashioned lances from Javelin transit tubes and bits of wood covered with foam padding. Two people stood at either end of a narrow plank, the two of them knocking the crap out of each other until one of them fell off into the water. As we obviously had not brought the traditional fancy dress with us to Afghanistan, we had to improvise. In my case, I fashioned a hula hula skirt from orange mine tape cut into strips and attached to a green felt belt.
The last event was a scrap heap challenge whereby teams used all kinds of junk to build a raft that had to carry its team out from the edge of the reservoir to a tower a good 800 or 900 metres out in the water. It was another good laugh as ours totally fell apart and we all got wet and had to swim back.
That day was a great laugh that I will never forget. We had a big barbecue where the CQMS squared away a few crates of non-alcoholic beer which tasted awful, but it was the only thing to drink that was actually cold, so everyone tucked in. A few guys had gone down to the river and caught loads of beautiful fresh fish, which were lovely on the barbecue and about the only thing that was fresh on the menu. We also had some spam, which we had for breakfast as well. It was a really good crack with lots of banter and laughter, allowing us to wind down just for one day. The most brilliant thing of all was that the FSG won the football by the tightest of margins after an awesome game.
By 10 August, Minden Day seemed like a distant memory because we received some very bad news and the reality of war kicked in once again. Private Tony Rawson, or Nicey as we fondly knew him, was killed in action. As I mentioned earlier, Tony was nicknamed Nicey simply because he was just one of the best blokes you could ever wish to meet. The nickname said it all. The arrival of a new recruit would capture the kind of guy he was, as he would always be the one that would go
and shake hands with them and show them around with that Essex charm he had. He did not have to do this, and the rest of us sometimes could be cautious until we knew that the new arrivals were okay, so to the poor buggers that came without knowing a soul he must have been a godsend. I knew Nicey from my time with C Company when I first joined.
What had happened was that C Company was in the process of clearing the Jucelay and Putay areas while further work continued on FOB Inkerman work could begin on constructing a forward operating base to stop the Taliban from infiltrating back into the area. The Taliban were really pushing hard to get back into Sangin and so C Company was seeing a lot of action down there, with contacts in the Green Zone occurring almost on a daily basis. Sadly our good friend Nicey was killed during one of these. We were all gutted by his death.
On the following day Captain David Hicks, the acting commander of C Company, was killed during a Taliban attack on FOB Inkerman. The Taliban had managed to lay their hands on a quantity of Russian SPG-9 tripod-mounted 73mm recoilless anti-tank guns, which they mounted on the backs of pick-up trucks. It was a round from one of these that exploded close to Captain Hicks while he was in a sangar, attempting to identify five enemy firing positions. Despite being very seriously wounded, he picked himself up and began organising a counter-attack, refusing medical attention as he did so. Unfortunately, he died of wounds shortly after the arrival of the chopper that brought in a medical emergency response team. Subsequently he was quite rightly awarded a posthumous Military Cross. He was a very courageous man, a real leader and a kind of typical officer with a chiselled jaw and posh accent but absolutely one of the guys as well. He possessed a really rare quality as he was one of the very few officers who managed to maintain the necessary distance, yet still be able to speak with you informally. He was one of those who, when he asked you how you were, he really meant it. It was a real tragedy that he lost his life.
The mood was understandably sombre as we resumed patrolling. This time we were deployed on a patrol to the south where once again we positioned ourselves up on the ridgeline with some GPMGs, with Corporal Si Thorn in charge of the gun line. There were some Americans present. I am not sure if they were part of Task Force Fury, but they were in the area and not involved with our operation, merely monitoring the situation. On this occasion, they were taking a spectator’s seat to pass information back on things like tactics of the Taliban, anything new, how we Brits were tackling them and anything else that was helpful to their own people. They were a really good laugh and great guys.
The normal situation ensued, with the Taliban shooting at us from the Green Zone and then moving back to their own headquarters location, followed by us putting down fire and then traversing it to allow our guys on the ground to push forward. We did not want a blueon-blue situation with us hitting our own men, and it was difficult to spot where the Taliban were down in amongst the trees. This said, we had been out there so long that our eyes had got used to what we were observing. Everything really stood out when we watched the area. I was looking through my scope towards the Taliban headquarters and zapped it with my rangefinders and they came up showing a range of 1,000 metres-plus as these things measured out to a distance of kilometre away. I began moving them down and zapped a few buildings at around 900 metres.
I was about to move on when I spotted a muzzle flash in one of the windows in a building. I zapped it again and the range was approximately 920 metres, so I prepared my rifle, which was an L96 on this patrol. I remembered from when we were in FOB Robinson that I was able to hit a track around a kilometre away, so reckoned I would be able to shoot within five metres of the target and put a round in there. If nothing else, it would make him get his head down for a bit and take some heat off our guys by stopping him from shooting. I tried to call over to Teddy to let him know I had someone a kilometre away, but the GPMGs were really thundering away and everyone was occupied, so I thought I would just crack on.
I began to line up my scope. I was watching the window but hadn’t seen any more flashes from it, so thought maybe the target had moved. I waited and waited until he suddenly appeared in the doorway, dropped to one knee and fired a burst of rounds. I had the range dialled into the scope along with the corrected windage, so took my shot which impacted slightly sort to the right as I saw the dust kick up from the ground. With this, he darted back inside the building. I reloaded and continued to watch. Suddenly, I saw him appear from the back of the building and begin to run into open ground. There was a dip in the ground surrounded by rocks and he stopped there to fire some rounds. I zapped the rocks and the range was further away at 1,000-plus. I put maximum clicks on my scope, added the windage, aimed high just a bit extra then fired. I hit him square from around a kilometre away! I could not believe it as I watched him fall back. It must have been one of the luckiest shots ever as it was such a distance away. I was cheering like England had won the World Cup and people were asking what I was on about, with me telling them that I had a hit a guy down there. Luckily, you could still see his leg and feet as he had fallen back into the dip in the ground. Anyway it was a good result and I was very happy with myself.
Teddy, Troy and I chatted to the Americans back at base that night about the best army in the world and what it would comprise. In the end, we all agreed that it would consist of German officers, British soldiers and American money and equipment. We all laughed as we reasoned that, if you stripped away the political side and horrible reasons for the Second World War and just focused on tactics and quality of soldiering on a professional level, the German officers were very good indeed. We had read various books about the North Africa campaign and the blitzkrieg and I was happy to admit that the German officers and also the German snipers were the best. We all agreed on the British soldier because basically you do not get much better than his true grit. In my opinion, we normally have the odds stacked against us because, although we currently do have some fantastic kit in the British Army, in 2007 the issue kit and equipment either fell apart or was not comfortable so we always had to modify and tinker and overcome the problems with it. At that time a lot of guys bought a lot of their own kit too, myself included. The American military, on the other hand, appears to be well funded and really does have awesome kit and weapons.
The next patrol we conducted was out to a place called Chinah. We were accompanied by some press from London who also did a small article on Teddy. As he was such a prolific sniper with over twenty kills notched up, they were keen to talk to him. These guys were behaving near enough suicidally as they kept jumping up to see what was happening. The worst one of the lot was the cameraman who seemed to forget these were live bullets that were being fired at them. They had some guys assigned to look after them and it was amusing listening to them from behind, shouting to the press guys, ‘Get your f...ing head down, you twat!’ We all had the utmost respect and regard for any civilian who came out voluntarily, just to bring the reality back to the British people. We all had a lot of time for Ross Kemp as he put himself on the front line to make his documentaries which showed people at home what we were doing. Anyway, it was an interesting exercise trying to ‘babysit’ the press whilst being in a fire fight with the Taliban; those press guys were great lads and we all appreciated what they were doing. They asked us the normal kind of questions, such as, ‘Are you homesick?’ and, ‘How do you feel knowing that each time you go out, you might not come back?’ and things like that. They also asked us if we knew why we were there and if we thought it was a good idea, which we answered honestly.
After that, we patrolled right to the far north and could see people moving out towards a compound. We had not yet identified it as a potential Taliban headquarters, but it was looking more and more likely as there were women and children hanging around and a few guys of fighting age between eighteen and thirty who stood in doorways looking out. They were a hell of a long way out but, using the trusty Leopold scope on 40x, we could observe a group of people outside the compound l
ooking at the area we occupied. The strange thing was that the whole area was just dead and we were wondering whether the Taliban were there and why they were not shooting at us.
We sat and waited for a while, wondering if they were perhaps sneaking up on us to launch a surprise attack, but nothing happened until eventually a few people turned up. Corporal Kennedy heard some rustling and sat up on the wall immediately, his safety catch off and rifle at the ready, only to see an old Afghan herding some goats. He was very lucky he did not have anything on him that resembled a gun, or anything in his hands slightly out of sight, because Corporal Kennedy was really close to dropping him as he thought it was someone creeping up on us.
We observed people moving between buildings, but could not see any weapons, which surprised and made us slightly on edge as it was all so unusual. There was one guy that was moving towards us between the buildings. I had chiselled out a loophole in the edge of a building where there was a parapet like the one in Jucelay, and was watching the guy through it. I did not know at the time but Teddy had also spotted him, so we were both tracking him. I zapped him with the rangefinders and he was around 450 or 500 metres away when he stopped and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He turned slightly to the right and I had to really squint and look hard, but was pretty sure I could see the barrel of a weapon poking out from his robes and the outline of a weapon. I asked Sergeant Chris Caneper, who was with me, to have a look and confirm and as he agreed that he could see something.
Teddy had also seen it and fired a few seconds before I did. The shot narrowly missed as the guy darted back towards a building. He was a fast moving target 500 metres away, so really hard to hit but Teddy reloaded and fired, missing again as I fired and watched my bullet impact literally right next to his toes. He managed to reach a doorway leaving Teddy and me absolutely gutted. The guy was such a lucky bastard and I guessed he would thank Allah for being a bloody fast runner.
Sniper in Helmand: Six Months on the Frontline Page 17