Attack State Red

by Richard Kemp

  Woollard’s stump was sticking up in the air. Everything from his right knee down to the bottom of what had been his calf looked like shredded steak, with just the top of his combat boot wrapped around it. Boyle could see bare bone, and the calf muscle was hanging off, a piece of grey flesh. His foot was gone. Boyle had never seen a wound as bad as that, except in training pictures and simulated exercises. But he had been teaching first aid to the whole battalion for the month before they deployed to Helmand. Every medic had his own lesson to teach. Boyle’s was the catastrophic haemorrhage. And the example he used was traumatic amputation of the lower right leg.

  His training took over, and he went straight in. He didn’t speak to Woollard. His one priority was to save the boy’s life.

  Blood was spurting out from the young soldier’s ankle. He grabbed the leg with his right hand and gripped as hard as he could at the point where he was going to place the tourniquet. He could feel the bones meshing together under his grasp. He lifted the leg and at the same time with his left hand felt into Woollard’s right map pocket. Every soldier carries a tourniquet in that pocket, together with two first field dressings and two morphine autojects. Except in extremis a soldier treating his comrade will never use his own first aid kit. That is reserved for himself, in case he becomes a casualty.

  Propping the leg against his shoulder, as high as he could raise it, Boyle then applied Woollard’s tourniquet, as close to the wound as possible. The bleeding slowed, then seemed to stop.

  He looked Woollard in the eyes and tried to muster a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. ‘You all right, mate?’

  He knew how stupid the question was, but he needed to talk to him, to engage him. There was blood everywhere, black and mingled with dust. Woollard was bleeding from his nose and ears. The blast had burst all the small blood vessels around his face, which was covered in blood.

  Because he landed on his back, buckled over his daysack, Woollard hadn’t seen his wound and didn’t realize his foot was gone. Boyle didn’t want to be the one that told him. Instead, he took Woollard’s first morphine autoject from his map pocket and banged it straight into his left thigh.

  That’s got that out of the way, he thought. That’s going to help him for a little while. Calmed me down a bit too. Now, what’s after catastrophic bleeding? Yes, yes, breathing. Calm down. You’ve taught it a thousand times.

  As Boyle went over the rest of Woollard’s body looking for further serious bleeding, he asked him to count to ten in less than one breath. He knew that if he could do that there was probably no penetrating wound to the chest. And he could. Woollard wasn’t in too much pain to do the counting. Boyle thought, That’s good, adrenalin’s got him. He knew too that the adrenalin would constrict Woollard’s veins, restricting the outflow of blood: also good.

  Oblivious to whatever else was going on, Boyle worked away on him. He saw a bloody wet patch on his left thigh. The blast had come upwards and outwards, hit his thigh and both his forearms. Boyle quickly cut away his trouser leg and checked out the thigh. The sole of Woollard’s right boot, bits of leather, lumps of plastic from his rifle and rock fragments were stuck into his flesh. In all his body was peppered with 160 substantial splinters of debris.

  There was also a gaping hole and a lot of blood. Boyle checked to make sure the femoral artery was intact and it was. He removed the boot sole and threw it away, muttering, ‘Won’t be needing that again.’ Then he picked out the other large objects and applied first field dressings to Woollard’s thigh and forearms.

  Boyle looked at the stump. Don’t want his mates picking him up with all that hanging around, he thought, and bandaged the bloody mess up – in total he used nine first field dressings.

  As he worked he chatted to Woollard – about anything that came into his head. He had to keep him focused as best he could, keep him with it. He remembered they had talked about heavy metal when they were both on the OPs. ‘Matt, that band Rage Against the Machine, pretty crap, aren’t they? Haven’t they had to break up they’re so bad?’

  Woollard managed to get out through teeth clenched against the pain, ‘Bollocks. They’re the best. And you know that.’

  ‘Well, you must be deaf, then, mate.’

  ‘I am now.’ He managed to force a slight grin.

  ‘Me too, ’cos of your mine. Anyway, what’s your favourite track?’

  Now Boyle looked around him. Everyone else in the company had gone firm in fire positions, looking outwards, providing cover. Sergeants Waters and Armon, and several other men, were crawling forward on their bellies, prodding for further mines with their bayonets, clearing a safe path to extract the casualty.

  Messenger was about 20 metres away with his radio operator. He had already sent an initial report on the company net, getting helicopters into the air, and now needed to transmit a more detailed casualty report. He shouted across, ‘What have we got, Corporal Boyle?’

  ‘One times T One, sir.’

  Boyle knew that wasn’t the answer the company commander wanted. But he still didn’t want to be the one to tell Woollard he had lost his lower leg.

  ‘No, Corporal Boyle. What – are – his – injuries?’

  Boyle looked into Woollard’s eyes and saw him staring up at him, wide-eyed. He took a deep breath, turned his head to the company commander and called out, ‘Traumatic amputation lower right leg. Blast and fragmentation wounds both arms and left thigh.’

  The words struck Woollard like a bullet. He forced himself up so that he could see his leg. When he saw it he just cried out, ‘Oh no, no, no.’

  As he lay devastated on the ground his first thoughts were: What are my family going to be going through? Am I going to have any friends after this? Are they all going to see me as a different person and just not want to know me?

  He examined his left leg and saw how badly messed up it looked too, and his heart sank further as he wondered if he was going to lose that as well. He looked at his arms. And his hands, which were sliced open from the blast, with black blood congealed all over them. He thought he looked like he had just come down a chimney, covered in soot.

  Captain Baz Alexander, a Royal Army Medical Corps nursing officer attached to C Company, managed to get to the crater, and the two medics began the next stage of the immediate first aid.

  Woollard had lost a lot of blood and despite tourniquet and dressings was still bleeding from various holes in his body. His blood pressure was dropping. If it continued to fall critical organs would shut down. If it dropped below a certain level he would die. His system needed more circulating volume. They needed to get saline fluid into his body – fast.

  Alexander decided there was no way they would get a line into either of his forearms. From his medical bag he took out an intraosseous kit. He pulled apart Woollard’s body armour, cut away his shirt and pressed the inter-ossious patch to his sternum. He then punched the screw through his skin and began to twist, drilling into the bone. Boyle took out a 500ml saline bag. Attached to the bag was a plastic line, which Alexander fed through the screw and into Woollard’s bloodstream. Boyle opened the valve, and the liquid began to flow through at a steady rate.

  As the two medics packed up their kit ready to move off with Woollard, Sergeants Waters and Armon arrived. Waters grabbed Woollard’s messed-up hands and held on to them. ‘You’re going to be OK, mate, you’re doing well, you’re doing well.’

  Desperate to say something that might just give a fragment of hope to Woollard, he said, ‘Look, mate, I’ve known a couple of blokes that have lost legs and had a pretty normal life. Looks bad now but you’re going to get through, and we’re all going to be behind you, helping.’

  As his platoon sergeant chatted to him and the effects of the morphine took hold, incredibly Woollard managed to cheer up a little.

  Several members of the platoon, bent and dripping sweat under their heavy battle loads, were moving up to carry the stretcher to the helicopter landing site. Others were filing past
to provide protection.

  As they went by, his mates called out, ‘Get well, Matt, see you in England’, ‘Lucky bastard, you’re going home,’ and ‘Make sure you have some West Ham tickets for me when I get back.’

  The soldiers were devastated at what had happened to Woollard, but it is the hallmark of the military man to make light of every situation and not to add to the horror by appearing miserable and downcast.

  The medics and the two sergeants lifted Woollard carefully on to a lightweight stretcher, and six men got round and started carrying him away. It was too dangerous to bring the CASEVAC helicopter in here so he had to be taken to Broadsword, the secure landing site outside Zeebrugge.

  This was going to take some time, carrying him across rough terrain, and, with the heat beginning to build, it would be tough. Although the medics had stabilized him to some extent, he was still fighting for his life. Every soldier knew there wasn’t a moment to lose. Every man dug deep, moving at speed, lungs bursting, and changing over as the weight of the stretcher felt as if it was pulling their arms out of their sockets. But there were no complaints. Saving Private Woollard, their brother, was now the most important thing in the world.

  Alexander strode beside the stretcher, anxiously monitoring Woollard’s condition, periodically checking his pulse. Boyle, his combat suit covered in Woollard’s blood, followed behind, holding the saline, ready to adjust the flow on Alexander’s command.

  One of the stretcher bearers was Private McDermott, who was known in the company as ‘Rooney’ because of his resemblance to the footballer Wayne Rooney. With the morphine now properly kicked in, Woollard spent much of the walk back chanting ‘Roo-ney, Roo-ney,’ to the amusement of the troops around him.

  Moving as fast as they could across the rugged terrain and with the ever-increasing heat bearing down on them, the stretcher bearers carried Woollard 2 kilometres to an RV with Company Sergeant Major Pete Ramm and his vehicle. For speed they moved across open country, out of the wadi beds, with flank protection from the rest of the company.

  At the RV, they loaded the casualty into the back of the sergeant major’s Pinzgauer, and Boyle and Alexander handed him over to the company medical officer.

  Minutes later they arrived at Broadsword. The Chinook carrying the MERT was already on the ground, rotors turning, ready to lift off again. The MERT consisted of an infantry Immediate Response Team, or IRT, to provide ground protection, an operating department practitioner, at least one doctor, an anaesthetist and paramedics.

  The medical equipment aboard the chopper was brought on by the MERT, as all helicopters were rotated through the various tasks in Helmand, including troop and cargo movement, as well as CASEVAC.

  Ramm and his party carried Woollard up the ramp, where they transferred him to a stretcher fitted into the helicopter. By this time the immediate euphoric effects of the morphine had begun to wear off, and Woollard was sinking fast, close to despair, giving up. As Ramm left, he shouted calmly over the noise of the twin turboshaft engines, ‘You’ll be all right, mate. Keep your chin up, you’ve done really well since you’ve been in the battalion. And out here in Afghanistan. Be the person that we all know you for. The whole company’s behind you and always will be. Good luck.’

  Woollard whispered back, barely audible, ‘Yes, sir, I will, sir.’

  At this point he knew he was leaving the security of his company, his military family. It terrified him, and he didn’t want to go. He wanted nothing more in life than to be back on the ground with his mates, and none of this happening. Just patrolling with both legs back to Zeebrugge. The sergeant major’s words calmed him somewhat, gave him at least a small boost, a kind of incentive to keep going.

  As the Chinook climbed steeply into the sky, engines screaming, a face appeared right next to Woollard, shouting, ‘You’re going to be all right. You’re in our hands now. You’re going to be all right.’

  The doctor leaned over him, jabbed something into his right arm and shouted, ‘You’re fine. You’re going to be fine. Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it.’

  Woollard felt his body shutting down. For the second time that day he thought he was dying. He was terrified beyond anything he had experienced before. Much more than when the mine detonated. Even more than when he heard Boyle’s words, ‘traumatic amputation’. He had somehow, somehow, fought through all of that. But now… he had made it to the safety of the Chinook, and now he was going to die. He fought to stay awake, to keep his eyes open. He shouted, ‘You don’t understand. I’m dying. I’m going. I’m about to go.’

  ‘You’re fine, you’re fine.’

  Woollard panicked. He thought, I’m going. That’s me.

  He kept trying to shout at the doctor, but he just heard himself moan. He needed to make the man understand that he was dying. He tried to shout again, but again just a moan came out. Then nothing. And for the first time since he stepped on the mine there was not even any pain.

  Woollard had been so badly damaged that his heart stopped twice during the thirty-five-minute flight from Broadsword to Bastion. But the medical team, fighting against his rebelling body and the constant shudder and sudden jerking movements of the Chinook, managed to bring him back to life both times.

  3

  On the ground, the men of C Company were in a sombre mood as they patrolled back in to Combat Outpost Zeebrugge. Although one of their corporals had been shot in the groin at the start of the tour, and evacuated back to the UK, Woollard was their first really serious casualty in Afghanistan, and they knew he was in a critical condition and might not survive.

  As soon as they got into the base, Major Messenger got his commanders together. ‘That was terrible, terrible. But at least it looks like Matt Woollard is going to live. All the medics and everyone involved in the CASEVAC did a brilliant job. I will speak to them, but in the meantime please pass on my thanks.’

  Sergeant Waters, who had been the young soldier’s platoon sergeant since he joined the battalion the previous June and had worked hard with him to bring his fitness levels up since he broke his ankle, fought back his emotions.

  Messenger continued, ‘The job for all you lot now is to get the blokes’ heads back up and crack on as normal. Or as normal as possible. We won’t forget Matt Woollard, and we’ll do everything we possibly can to help him get through this nightmare. But we’ve got a major patrol into Mazdurak early tomorrow morning. So get among the lads, get them sorted out for the next op, and then get them fed and rested. Any questions?’

  Outside in the compound, several C Company soldiers walked over to Corporal Boyle. They patted him on the back, threw an arm round his shoulder and said, ‘Well done. You saved his life.’

  On top of the morning’s events, the praise and admiration of his comrades hit Boyle hard. He thought, I don’t know how to deal with this. He sat down on his own in the washing area. Many thoughts went through his head. Matt was bleeding out a bit, not sure I saved his life… Anybody else would have done the same for him… Thank God I taught that lesson, that put me on to autopilot… Could I have done more? No, no, I’m pretty happy with the job I did. Poor bastard, though…

  He sat quietly for a few minutes more, hoping above all that Woollard would pull through. Then the immediate practicalities of life dawned on him, an old soldier who knew the system backwards. He had to face the nightmare of trying to get a clothing pack out of the company quartermaster sergeant to replace the combat suit that was drenched in Woollard’s blood.

  That afternoon at 1400 hours, the C Company command group gathered in the briefing room. Present were Captain Dave Hicks, the Company 2IC and operations officer, platoon commanders and platoon sergeants of 9, 10 and 11 Platoons, Company Sergeant Major Pete Ramm, the fire support group commander, the Royal Artillery fire support team commander, specialist fire support controllers for air and mortars, signallers and the medical officer. They had changed out of their combats, fed and showered, and even though now wearing the standard off-duty dress of
flip flops, shorts and T-shirts, they were still sweltering. The briefing room was near the company ops room, within a single-storey stone building. Maps lined the walls, and there were collapsible wooden benches for twenty people.

  Messenger stood in front of them. ‘OK listen in, then. We get the lads straight back into it. No Coalition troops have been into Mazdurak before. We’ll go in there tomorrow morning as planned. This will be a probing operation, a raid in effect. We know the Taliban consider Mazdurak as a safe haven, but we have no real idea about how many there are there, what the set-up is, or anything else much. We’ve done air recce and we’ve got a fair bit of imagery, but it doesn’t tell you much. There’s only one way to find out what’s in there, and that’s boots on the ground. We don’t want to hold the place, we just want to go in and see what we can stir up. We’ll test their reactions and see what we can learn. We’ll kill as many of the enemy as we can and obviously it would be good if we take prisoners. One thing we can be completely confident about – they will fight to the death to defend Mazdurak. We can expect the stiffest resistance. Any questions so far?’

  He looked at the faces of the men in front of him. He could see the strain in the eyes of Sergeant Matt Waters in particular. He had been very badly cut up about Woollard, one of his boys. But Messenger wasn’t worried about Waters. He knew he was a strong leader who would work through it and get the job done. Tragic though the incident had been, no soldier could afford the luxury of allowing grief to dominate his life in a place like Afghanistan.

  Messenger continued, ‘The mission, therefore, is to determine enemy strengths and dispositions in and around the town of Mazdurak.’

  According to the time-honoured military formula he repeated the mission. It was essential that everybody knew exactly what the purpose was of any operation. That way, if things got really rough, and commanders were taken out of the battle, any soldier would be able to take over and keep working to achieve the mission.