Battleworn: The Memoir of a Combat Medic in Afghanistan

by Chantelle Taylor

  Plans are already on the table in the ops room for operations tomorrow. Monty and I discuss what he needs medically. He takes Abbie with him, and the OMLT have Sean until their patrol medic turns up. Jen and I cover the medical post here, realising in the early days that you can’t just put everyone out on the ground all of the time. The base has the safest area for helicopters to land, and my medics need someone with skills in advanced treatment to send their wounded back to. Maj. Clark needs sound advice and quick answers about casualties.

  Our system makes certain that no casualty is ever left waiting. The base only has a basic set-up, but it affords our guys a safe haven. They know that we will be waiting for them, and it reassures them that we will deploy to them without question if they can’t make it back.

  Making my way to my bed space, I look forward to a sound night’s sleep. The removal of my boots reveals the state of my socks, reminding me that our resupp of personal kit still hasn’t arrived. I am surviving on two pairs each of pants and socks. I’ve always kept a backup pair of each in the bottom of my grab bag, and I am very thankful for that now. Little things like this make life more tolerable; another day done and dusted. Placing my earphones in, I fall asleep to the sounds of my top-rated tunes, thinking about home and getting there in one piece.

  All too soon there’s movement outside; it’s not even first light as the blokes start to prepare to roll out. We all share some idle chat before they set off. I give Abbie and Sean the normal ‘stay safe’ routine. One thing that I always do is leave nothing left unsaid. Life changes very quickly out here, and you can easily find yourself wishing that you might have said more. A ‘stay safe’ is better than nothing.

  I feel responsible for Abbie, Sean, and Jen – not just because I am the lead medic, but also because all three of them are younger than I am. If anything were ever to happen, I would have to explain myself when I faced their loved ones. It would be naive to think that they could never be one of the ones to get hurt. That is something I don’t even like to think about, so I push it to the back of my mind, trusting my ‘stay safe’ to do its job. Watching as Sean and Abbie patrol off into the distance, I soak up the quiet they have left behind.

  Soon it’s too quiet. I decide to take a walk around the gun positions to check in with the blokes, knowing it’s a welcome break for the Jocks on the wall to have someone else to talk to. First, though, I must put in my ‘breakfast order’. We have taken to collecting breakfast rations in the ops room and cooking them in one of the many used ammunition tins. It’s Kev’s turn, so I hand him my boil-in-the-bag breakfast of sausage and beans before heading off on my checks. I put on my body armour and helmet and then make my way to the outer wall. This is the safest way to walk round, as it offers limited cover from any stray rounds flying around the base.

  I chat to the Jocks who are awake and those preparing to change over their guard shift. They ask all the usual questions: How long are we here for? When is the next resupp? Who’s the new bouffant-haired officer with the OMLT? This last refers to Flashheart of course. Ham has already given the blokes the low-down. The young Jocks don’t hold back about anything or anyone. Their humour is the one thing that never leaves them, even at their lowest point. I am positive that the end of the world could be inbound, and these Jocks would still be taking the piss out of someone.

  I finally get to the last position, and it’s bathed in bright sunshine. The radio net is peaceful for a change. I notice that something isn’t right: the soldier guarding it is asleep.

  ‘What the fuck?’ I say, putting my thoughts into words. As I shake him violently, he shunts forward. I recognise him as the armourer. He comes to quickly as I wade into him with some verbal encouragement in the form of, ‘What are you on, you fucking prick? Wankers like you are why grunts trust no one but their own!’

  He replies with, ‘Uh, uh, uh, uh.’ I can see that he is in a confused state, which further confirms the fact that he was asleep.

  Davey, who is in charge of the security of the base, wastes no time involving himself heavily in the situation. We are in Taliban-held Nad-e Ali, and the thought of the base getting breached didn’t even bear thinking about. It would be carnage. Short of shooting one of your own, this is as bad as it gets on operations. Davey goes ballistic! His boys have been getting thrashed, and this clown has only been on stag (or ‘watch’, as the Americans call it) for half an hour. Dragging the soldier from his post, he says, ‘You, son, come with me.’

  The armourer climbs down. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he says as they move around the corner.

  Discipline has to be Davey’s business: there are no training instructors out here to put right mistakes, just enemy soldiers waiting to take advantage of them. Returning from their ‘chat’, the armourer appears stone-faced; his duty has been extended from two hours to six, so he picks up extra duties. Whatever Davey said or did must have done the trick, because from that day on, the armourer was never found asleep again while on stag. His punishment brings joy to the Jocks in his corner as they snigger out of sight of Davey. After all, Jocks will be Jocks, and laughing at someone else getting thrashed is a feeling I recall myself when I was a junior soldier. In fact, I remember doing it not so long ago in the sergeants’ mess, so some things never change.

  Jen and I now turn our attention to washing ourselves as best we can. I go through the normal daily rigour of thigh burn in the back of one of the wagons. My teeth are clean, and I am good to go. Scoff is cooking away, and I look forward to my sausage and beans. We look about for any menial tasks that need doing.

  The morning goes by without incident. The men in Monty’s platoon have been clearing compounds, and there are two other call signs in our area. The OMLT are conducting low-level ops with the kandak, and there’s a police mentor unit en route from Lash. They are heading to the other compound, ‘Sterling Lines’, nearby with the police.

  Unexpectedly, there are three loud explosions, followed by the sound of heavy machine gun bursts; it’s all close by. The radio net goes crazy, and the base is silenced. Capt. Wood checks in with Monty, and he reports no activity from the enemy. He then checks in with Flashheart, again reporting no enemy activity.

  We soon learn that the Throatcutters’ call sign has been ambushed on their way into our area. One of their vehicles has taken a direct hit from an RPG. They are under heavy fire and have taken multiple casualties. It’s just me and Jen in the medical room, so we know that we are going to be up against it. We prepare ourselves and then initiate the nine-liner early in order to warn Camp Bastion that we have several casualties inbound.

  It takes at least fifteen minutes for the wounded to appear at our gate. There are four guys badly injured, one of them more severely than the others. An Afghan special ops soldier is KIA (killed in action). We cross-deck the injured and then get to work.

  The Afghans bring the dead soldier in, placing him in the middle of the room. I realise that they think he is still alive; this does not seem likely to me, and even if he is still alive, he is not likely to last long. He has been shot through the head, so there’s blood everywhere. (The head and face are typically vascular areas, which means they result in profuse bleeding. A nosebleed, for instance, creates far more blood than you would imagine. All of this accounts for why people freak out with head wounds.) It’s sometimes better if the blood comes out, as opposed to pooling inside, but this is clearly not the case with this poor soldier.

  The Afghans gather around their dead soldier and start fussing about him. They check his airway and try to move him. It’s hard to watch them desperately trying to wake him. During the final stages of death, the body can produce spontaneous movement, which they take to be signs of life. Having already seen that half of his head is missing, I know that nothing can be done. I have the unfortunate task of pronouncing the soldier dead. It’s not the norm, but we have no doctor to do it. I quickly make interventions on my own casualty and then move to the Afghan soldier. I check for signs of life: there’s no o
utput whatsoever, and his pupils are fixed.

  I feel for the other Afghans who surround his body. It’s their comrade and friend lying there, and they don’t want to believe that he can’t be helped. The Afghans deal with their dead in their own way, so I suggest that they take his body to prepare him for the MERT flight. I try to be as gentle as possible with them, as I know they feel the loss the same as we would.

  I spot a familiar face from the police mentoring team in Lash; it’s a relief to see that he is okay. He helps us tend to the wounded as we prepare our own for evacuation. These guys already received basic first aid on the ground. We recheck the tourniquets and make sure that fractured limbs are splinted. The skin is partially peeled back on one. I look at the injury with interest, noting, Ah, that’s what the radius and ulna look like, still intact and surrounded by blood vessels.

  The boss peers around the corner of the doorway. He looks at the carnage before him, and I can see he is taken aback. He gives me a sort of nod of appreciation. I understand that he needs information fast to relay over the net back to brigade HQ. He is being as diplomatic as the situation will allow. Maj. Clark is under pressure from brigade HQ and Camp Bastion, as they want information. This in turn will allow them to make their decisions and warn relevant surgeons to prepare for the wounded.

  I have no plans to keep these boys for long. An orthopaedic surgeon will be far more useful than Jen or I. I make the call that they are stable enough to fly. Giving me the nod, the boss disappears into the ops room next door.

  We have four casualties, plus another three with less-obvious wounds. Blasts often cause tertiary injuries in people close to the explosion, so these guys need to be evacuated as well. I can’t risk recalling the MERT for slow-developing chest injuries, as intelligence, along with very recent ICOM chatter that has been intercepted, is giving some worrying information about the Taliban’s future intentions and targets. So the number of casualties goes up from four to seven, plus one KIA.

  The MERT are en route, so we finish up and prepare to move them to the HLZ. It takes a lot of us to carry all the stretchers. Bearing in mind that numbers in the base are declining, blokes are woken from their rest periods to help. They get up without question, knowing that if they were the ones lying on the stretchers, every man here would get up to carry them to the helo. Soldiers will moan with the best of them until someone gets injured.

  Given the unexpected bloody start to the day, I start wondering if that’s our lot for today as we make it across to the HLZ, where we wait patiently for wheels down. I start thinking about stretchers and the fact that we are running short of them. I ask Davey to grab a stretcher off the Chinook, telling him I will do the same.

  Wheels are down, and we start hauling the casualties on, including our dead. The handover is done, and I reach out to grab a stretcher. A member of the MERT gestures for me not to take it, catching me unawares. I mouth, ‘Did that just happen?’ I’m in no mood to be told by some RAF nurse that I am only allowed to take one stretcher, especially when she can replenish her stock upon her return to Camp Bastion. I wonder if maybe they have somewhere else to go first. We’ve got men on the ground, and I am running dangerously low; they won’t be diverting this flight, as the lads are seriously wounded. I conclude she’s being a jobsworth. If ever there was a time that I wanted to inflict violence on a complete stranger, this was it! What the fuck? I raged inwardly, snatching the stretcher out of her hand and aggressively pointing to the stretchers that we have just loaded on, including our dead.

  The noise on a Chinook is loud, drowning out any words spoken. Emotions are running high, and in the desperate state we are in, I am angry that she thought her behaviour was appropriate.

  Sprinting down off the ramp I take cover while the helo lifts off. Aren’t we supposed to be on the same side? I think to myself, still very angry.

  This is turning into a shit day. First the armourer asleep on stag, and now the stretcher police. Heading back to the base, I mutter a host of profanities.

  One of the Brit mentoring team starts to tell me how he was on top cover just seconds before the Afghan soldier was shot in the head. They had just changed over! The guys are cleaning out the wagon which was covered in blood. The dead soldier’s helmet was retrieved; unfortunately, part of his head was still in it. Davey decides to bury it as a mark of respect. All British soldiers are made aware of local Afghan customs prior to arriving in Helmand, so they know that if bodies or body parts are found, they should be buried in a respectful manner (as long as time and safety allow it).

  I think that regardless of how mentally tough you think you are, when it’s your guys who are bleeding, you feel pretty vulnerable. That’s just how I feel today. My desire to not hear someone else’s war stories has gone. I want to hear anyone else’s story but my own. I am not interested in B Company’s holding Nad-e Ali. The mission to get the turbine to Kajaki Dam couldn’t be further from my thoughts. I feel dejected and uncharacteristically negative. I am angry that we are always on the receiving end. Every day, we keep getting hit; every other day, we keep taking casualties. We don’t have the kit or capabilities to sustain any of it. Our Osprey body armour is not holding up to the job at hand. I invested in BlackHawk pouches that fitted the armour much better, and I am now thankful to have done so.

  It suddenly dawns on me that all this agitation is covering up my concern about losing one of our own. Today’s KIA was Afghan, but it could just as easily have been one of ours. I don’t want to acknowledge the black body bags underneath the old desk in the corner of the aid post. B Company has grown close, and I have started to look at a lot of the guys as family.

  I go back to the medical room: it’s like a scene from a horror film, with blood everywhere after the treatment of the injured. Jen and I scrub it with what we have. We do this in silence of course, all very British and stiff upper lip. Sometimes saying nothing is better; a big fat discussion is the last thing we need.

  There was more to come for the PMT, who had to make their way back to Lash after being smashed on the way in. Strangely enough, they were smashed on the way back out as well. They report back with casualties, but none are serious. When you think about them making the journey back, knowing they were probably going to get hit, it shows the kind of blokes they are. But that’s what’s expected, and all the guys do it without question.

  We soon realise that the Taliban are cutting off our supply line, which is bad news. They litter most of our routes with IEDs, so road moves become impossible. Disruption can sometimes be a far more effective weapon than rockets. All of the wars in history tell you that.

  Surprisingly, Monty’s crew has been left alone, as has Flashheart’s kandak. The Taliban have already had their success today. Later in the evening, we endure a small-arms attack, but compared to earlier events, it’s pretty tame. The Taliban body count is already at thirty; somehow, though, their fighters still come.

  Earlier in the tour the Americans flooded Garmsir, a town which lies on the southern tip of Helmand Province. They deployed more than two thousand US Marines in the form of 24 Marine Expeditionary Unit; together with A Company of 5 Scots, they drove the Taliban out of Garmsir. This forced the insurgents to find another route up to the Sangin Valley. Marjah and Nad-e Ali have thus become the Taliban’s new ‘highway to hell’. A moment no doubt played out to AC/DC, in my head anyway.

  We welcome Monty’s platoon back in to the base. They can’t believe that they missed all the drama. There is a lot to talk about, and our room stays lively until around 2000 hours. Every roll mat in the base is full apart from the radio stag and the young Jocks manning the wall. We work a rotation to cover the radio net, doing two hours at night and two hours in the day. I am on death stag tonight, and it’s hard to stay focused. Radio checks take place every fifteen minutes. I wonder if anyone in brigade HQ has actually woken up to the fact that we are in a world of shit down here. It seems that the turbine move up north is taking all of the news. The latest ru
mour is that 3 PARA will be sent down here to boost numbers and conduct offensive operations.

  The Pathfinder (PF) Platoon are also rumoured to be conducting offensive ops in Marjah; this will hopefully smash the Taliban before they get to Nad-e Ali. I start to run through some ridiculous trains of thought whilst listening to the white noise of the radio. What if we get stuck out here or the marines somehow can’t get in? What if the base gets overrun or one of our helicopters gets shot down? This is what happens when you get the radio watch in the early hours, the ‘death stag’. I am pickling my own brain with this nonsense.

  It’s dark and quiet, so I keep a constant paranoid watch on the entrance to the makeshift ops room. Any shadows are starting to look like potential threats. My rifle is in my lap, barrel pointing towards the door. The longer I sit here, the worse it gets. An incident that took place up north in one of the FOBs suddenly hits my now-twisted psyche. One of the Afghan soldiers decided to fire a burst into a room where some of 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) lay sleeping. He shot three of them; thankfully, none of them were killed – good time to think about it, though.

  My stag is coming to an end, and it’s definitely time for some bivvy bag action to clear the fuzziness out of my pan-fried head. Jen’s on stag next, so it’s time to wake her. Probably the worst sound that any soldier will ever hear is someone whispering, ‘your stag!’ I hated it when I joined up, and I still hate it now.

  The white noise from the radio continues as I lay down my head, and it takes at least another hour before I doze off.

  Me, Sgt Chantelle Taylor, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2008; my final tour

  The Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders (5 Scots) a ‘multiple’ of fighting men also known as a platoon minus.

  The beloved Snatch Land Rover sitting behind the preferred open-top WMIK.