by Richard Kemp
The ANA company advancing in the south had also reached Purple, and had met little resistance since their earlier near-disaster in Zumberlay.
B Company, who had almost completed the clearance of the Deh Adan Khan compounds in the Green Zone, were still about 1,000 metres short of Line Purple.
Carver wanted to push B Company on to the limit of exploitation, level with the other two sub-units. He knew he would be asking a lot of Aston. B Company had taken by far the brunt of the fighting, and had been slogging it out with the Taliban in the most horrendous battle conditions virtually all day. If they couldn’t achieve Line Purple, he would have to pull A Company and the ANA back a kilometre to conform with B Company, and move forward over the same ground the next day. In this terrain he couldn’t risk leaving a gap at night. The Taliban would find ways to get round behind the three companies and would be in a position to wreak havoc.
Carver knew the soldiers would already be dead on their feet. He had discussed his intention with Captain Phil Moxey, the ops officer, and with the battery commander, Major Andrew Dawes. Neither had said outright that it would be a mistake, but he knew they were both thinking B Company had done enough, and the other companies should be pulled back.
This was another tough call, but Carver considered all the factors and made his decision quickly. On the radio he said to Aston, ‘I want you to move forward to Report Line Purple, to the road, and get there by last light.’
Standing against a tree trunk in the middle of the Green Zone, Aston was as exhausted as his men. He looked at the soldiers near by. They were dripping with sweat, combat trousers ripped up from struggling through vegetation and hurling themselves to the ground under fire, dark rings under their eyes from lack of sleep, haggard. He was incredibly proud of what his men – many just boys – had done today. For most it had been their first day of battle. He had not seen any soldier or marine fail to do his duty. In fact, in Aston’s eyes every man had done much more than his duty. Despite their exhaustion he knew their spirits were sky high, after a tough and extremely dangerous but intense and exciting day. But he also knew they wouldn’t want to push on any further now, and he really didn’t want to ask them to.
But the commanding officer had said what he wanted to happen, and ultimately that was good enough for Aston. As with Biddick, Aston expected the impossible from his subordinate commanders. And above everything else he believed in leading by example. If the CO wanted the impossible from Aston he had a right to get it.
Major Aston called the platoon commanders to him and told them what they were going to do, dismissing them with the usual, ‘No time for questions, fellas. Just get it done.’ Aston made no attempt to clear the remaining compounds on the way to Line Purple. He knew they would not contain any Taliban, as the fighters had fled en masse to the north-east.
As B Company moved rapidly in the footsteps of the withdrawing Taliban, they passed through the carnage that had been inflicted on the enemy by the Recce Platoon, the fire support groups and the Apaches. The fire-break area, just short of Line Purple, was littered with dead bodies, mostly blown to pieces by the 30mm cannons of Scimitars or Apaches. Aston saw one man lying with his stomach peeled open and his entrails spread over the surrounding area. His leg lay 5 metres away. The body of another seemed to be turned inside out. The whole area was criss-crossed with blood trails and pools of gore. The ground everywhere was pockmarked with fist-sized holes from 30mm cannon strikes.
As each platoon filed past the bodies, Aston saw that to a man the spirits of his soldiers were lifted by the sight of the Taliban dead. These were the first dead bodies many of his soldiers had ever seen. This was the physical embodiment of their success. They could see the results of their work that day; these were their enemy, men who had been trying to kill them just hours earlier.
When they reached Line Purple, Aston and his Tac HQ went firm beside an irrigation ditch. He ordered the platoons to move off to their pre-designated positions and start digging in.
He slowly surveyed the devastation near by. Something didn’t quite add up. There was a large pool of blood next to the ditch… but no body. He noticed spots of blood leading right into the metre-deep irrigation ditch beside him. A good escape route from this carnage. He felt a tingle at the back of his neck, and that eerie feeling you get when you know you are being watched.
He turned to Naylor, his signaller, pointed to the ditch and hissed, ‘Follow me.’
Aston moved, crouching beside the ditch. Naylor was across the ditch to his right, and Corporal Wilsher, the MFC, was behind. Aston suddenly realized they were on their own, moving away from the company towards an unknown threat.
He turned and called to Corporal Si Thorne, whose section was a few metres back, ‘Come with us, Corporal T.’ Privates Tower and Nadriva also joined the Tac group.
Aston started moving forward again, his heart now thumping with anticipation. A few metres on, he looked down into the ditch – straight at two armed Taliban, staring at him, lying just a metre away. For what seemed like an age but was just a split second, Aston locked eyes with one of them – a terrified, young, thin Taliban fighter.
As the man tried to bring his AK47 into the aim Aston fired into the heads and chests of both fighters.
Screaming, ‘There’s another one,’ Naylor raced forward firing at a third fighter a few metres behind.
Aston moved to back Naylor up, and a burst of fire came from the right. Wilsher yelled, ‘One Taliban in this hut, sir. I’ve killed him.’
Thorne searched the immediate area with Nadriva and Tower. He found RPG-7 warheads, AK47 rifles, belts of machine-gun ammunition. Looking at the way the weapons and ammunition were laid out, Thorne deduced that these men had been preparing an ambush, perhaps against vehicles moving along the adjacent track. He said to Tower, ‘They never expected us to come up this far or this fast on foot.’
17
Back at battle group Tac HQ up in the desert, Carver was waiting for B Company to report that they had reached Line Purple and were firm in their defensive positions for the night. Instead he was shocked to hear a message from the company on the battle group command net: ‘Eight men killed and three casualties, we need a medic.’
Carver felt sick. Immediately he thought, They were totally knackered. I pushed them to the road. And now this has happened.
There was a pause. Carver could feel everyone in his Tac HQ looking at him. They were as horrified as he was, and he knew they were thinking: That was a big call. How bad do you feel? After all the close fighting in the Green Zone through the day, he had been amazed that none of his soldiers had been killed or seriously wounded. A few minutes ago he had been thinking he couldn’t believe his luck. And now the worst had happened…
But he was the commander, and he had no time to dwell on the rights and wrongs of his decision. He needed to make sure this situation was dealt with rapidly, and that the whole battle group was balanced for the night, with the defensive plan tied up. This could be a night when the enraged Taliban, decimated by the battle group’s savage advances of the day, might try to use the cover of darkness to strike back.
Moments later, Carver’s pain and anguish were instantly replaced by an even stronger sense of relief and elation. Moxey, who had been speaking urgently on the battle group net, trying to clarify the situation and line up the assets needed to deal with it, told him that the message had been garbled. The report had referred to Taliban dead, and B Company had captured three enemy wounded.
The following morning A Company moved back into Habibollah Kalay and completed the clearance of the village. Carver and the Royal Anglians’ regimental sergeant major, Warrant Officer Class 1 Ian Robinson, visited B Company. While Carver and Aston discussed the next stage of the operation, Robinson and Company Sergeant Major Tim Newton walked round the company, talking to the troops.
Thirty-nine-year-old Robinson had been RSM of The 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment for eight months. He was from Bury St
Edmunds in Suffolk, home to the Royal Anglian Regimental Headquarters. Regimental sergeant major of an infantry battalion, although junior in rank to all the officers, is second in prestige only to the commanding officer. He is the top soldier in the battalion, and has a critical, almost mythical, role in all aspects of battalion life, especially discipline, morale and the maintenance of standards. Standing only five foot six inches tall, Robinson was far from the stereotypical RSM. But most Royal Anglians – soldiers and officers – were in awe of him. He was respected even more for his strength of character, military competence and personal humanity than for the royal coat-of-arms he wore on his cuff.
Robinson went through everything with the men during the build-up to this operational deployment, and was eager to share in their hardships in Afghanistan whenever he could. Every soldier in the battalion who aspired to high rank considered Robinson to be their role model.
As they walked round the company position in the glaring morning sun, Robinson and Newton came across a group of young soldiers collecting the Taliban dead and placing them on to stretchers in preparation for handover to the ANA. The bodies had been dead for more than twelve hours and in the oppressive heat were putrefying. Most of them had been ripped apart by 30mm cannon fire or machine-gun bullets, and their insides had spilt out. Limbs and heads were detached from bodies. The corpses were blackening and covered in flies, and the smell was indescribable.
Robinson watched the soldiers, exhausted from the previous days’ fighting, and looking haggard after just a few hours’ much disturbed sleep lying on the rough ground. Their task was gruesome. Several of them were retching. One man moved away to throw up.
Robinson admired their stoical attitude. They were all young lads, and this was something none had done before and never expected to, even in their worst nightmares. This was not the stuff of the kind of war movies that first awaken the desire to become a soldier in most young boys who end up joining the infantry. But here they were, as ever just cracking on.
Robinson shouted out, ‘Lads. Listen in. Stop what you are doing now. Go back to your platoons. You have done more than enough.’
The soldiers stopped and looked up in surprise. What was going on now? But there was never, ever, a need for the regimental sergeant major to say anything twice. And certainly no one was going to argue with this particular order.
Robinson called Sergeant Majors Mark Freeman and Jimmy Self, who had travelled with him from battle group Tac HQ, to join him and Company Sergeant Major Newton. He gathered them round and quietly briefed them on what he wanted them to do. Steeling themselves, the four Royal Anglian warrant officers completed the grim task.
18
Lance Corporal Ruecker, the sniper who had been commanding a WMIK in Snow’s FSG the previous day, rejoined the sniper team with B Company.
The other snipers were sharing a compound with Seal-Coon’s 7 Platoon. Ruecker walked through the door and looked around. The men were sorting out their kit, cleaning weapons or sleeping. And, as ever, sweating in the intense heat. They’d had a few hours’ sleep but still looked worn-down and gaunt from the previous day’s exertions. One or two were trying to do something about rashes they had down their backs and sides from body armour rubbing. All were scratching the flea bites they had acquired during a night on the filthy compound floor.
Corporal Parker said, ‘Hello, Teddy me old mate, I didn’t think you were going to grace us with your presence in Afghanistan.’
‘Yeah, great to see you too, Stu. You guys been doing some fighting or something?’
Private Thrumble, Parker’s GPMG gunner, said, ‘It was quality, Teddy, absolute quality. What a day.’
Grinning from ear to ear, and gently caressing his machine-gun, he continued, ‘I put some rounds down with this baby, mate, I can tell you. Never thought I’d do anything like that.’
‘It was definitely a lot cheekier than Iraq, wasn’t it?’ said Ruecker. The two had been in the same platoon for the battalion’s tour in southern Iraq over a year ago.
Then Ruecker looked at Thrumble’s kit. He had rigged up an olive-green ammo bag, fixing it to his leg with bungees and cable ties. ‘What the hell have you got on your leg, John? What is it?’
‘It’s great, I made it up before the op. Gives me 200 rounds link, right there, ready to use.’
‘I knew I should never have left you alone without supervision. You’d better get a grip, John, mate, it looks absolutely bloody ridiculous,’ said Ruecker.
‘It’s not what it looks like,’ said Thrumble, pretending to lunge towards Ruecker, ‘it’s whether it can do the job. Anyway, you don’t need anything like that, do you, driving round the battlefield in your WMIK. All right for some, mate.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Ruecker. ‘I’m going to find Dean Bailey – can’t spend all day chatting to you pondies.’
‘Pondies’ or ‘pond life’ was the standard D Company term of abuse for rifle company soldiers. Pretty much every man in D Company had started out in one of the rifle companies, but with their elevated support weapons status, they now considered the rifle company men an inferior species, to be pitied and really only of use for carrying some of the support weapons kit like 81mm mortar bombs when there was a long foot insertion to be done.
Leaving the pond life inside, Ruecker bumped into Private Robert Foster, Parker’s eighteen-year-old point man, filling sandbags in the courtyard. ‘All right, mate? Do you need a hand with that?’
‘No thanks, I’m OK,’ said Foster.
‘How was yesterday?’
‘It was absolutely nectar. Best day I remember. I hope we have a lot more of them out here. How about you?’
‘Yeah, quality, you sure you don’t want any help?’
‘No, it’s fine. But I could really use a cheese sandwich if you’ve got one. You haven’t, have you?’
Ruecker shook his head as he went in search of Bailey, his fellow sniper and close friend. Foster hadn’t been in the battalion that long, but he’d already got a reputation across B Company, and even beyond, as a comedian and a real battalion character. He was what the troops called ‘morale’. But to Ruecker the cheese sandwich comment was a bit random even for him.
As he walked across the yard in search of his oppo Bailey, Ruecker thought, I don’t remember seeing such high morale ever before. The blokes are really buzzing.
19
During the day, Carver, the ANA battalion commander, Aston, Biddick and Major Steve Davies, the Royal Engineers squadron commander, recced locations for the three permanent patrol bases that were to be established in the area. They were to be constructed by the Royal Engineers from Hesco Bastion walling.
Hesco is made of a collapsible wire-mesh container and heavy-duty fabric liner, used as a temporary blast and smallarms barrier. Similar in concept to a sandbag, but on a gigantic scale, Hesco is assembled by unfolding its segments into open-topped cubes and filling them with sand, dirt or gravel. Originally designed for use on beaches and marshes for erosion and flood control, Hesco is used in nearly every military base in Afghanistan.
The ANA were going to occupy the bases, establishing a long-term presence in the area to prevent the Taliban from returning to threaten the town of Gereshk. Even as the recces were underway, Davies’s trucks and armoured diggers moved in to start the construction work.
Biddick was called by Carver to battle group Tac HQ. He assumed he was there for a discussion on A Company’s future operations, and as ever came armed with his thoughts and plans. What happened was the last thing he was expecting. Carver waved a letter at him, ‘Dominic, what the hell is this all about?’
Mystified, Biddick took the letter. It was headed ‘10 Downing Street’. He read on. The Prime Minister was acknowledging a letter criticizing policy on Afghanistan, suggesting that the government was not morally or practically supporting British troops in theatre, or being proactive enough in its handling of media scrutiny and criticism. The acknowledgement was addressed to a pri
vate in Biddick’s company headquarters who had written to Gordon Brown from Afghanistan. Carver had been sent a copy.
All Biddick could say was, ‘I will look into it, Colonel.’
While the engineers were constructing the patrol bases, A Company was given the task of an aggressive forward defence, thrusting several kilometres north-east up the Green Zone to keep the Taliban at bay. Biddick scolded himself for wondering whether this task was given to him to shift the phantom letter-writer as far away from Carver’s headquarters as possible. He knew it wasn’t a laughing matter!
Captain Tom Coleman, the battle group intelligence officer, briefed Biddick on the suspected location of an enemy headquarters near the village of Barak zai Kalay, identified by a Nimrod MR2 surveillance aircraft. Biddick devised a plan to make an incursion into the Green Zone at Barak zai Kalay with the hope of drawing the Taliban out and identifying the precise location of the headquarters. With Ormiston’s FSG Delta and four Recce Platoon Scimitars under Captain Wilde, A Company moved through the desert during the afternoon.
The FSG and Scimitars occupied vantage points on a clifftop overlooking the Green Zone.
A Company dismounted from their Vikings around 1500 hours, 500 metres back into the desert, behind the Recce vehicles. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon, and scorching hot as they sweated their way on foot with full combat loads along a zig-zag trail that led from the desert, down the 6-metre cliff face and across a canal into the Green Zone. The platoons cleared through a series of compounds on the outskirts of Barak zai Kalay.
Wilde’s Scimitars, with FSG Delta, provided overwatch from the clifftops, monitoring for any Taliban activity that might reveal the location of the headquarters they were trying to identify. Biddick had expected a violent reaction from the enemy as soon as his leading troops set foot in the Green Zone. But there was nothing.