by Richard Kemp
As soon as the shooting began Major Messenger told his JTAC to declare a TIC on the air control net. Meaning ‘Troops in Contact’, this message focuses all available air and fire support on the unit involved. The JTAC called up two US Air Force A10 Thunderbolt attack planes that were loitering in the airspace above and warned them they would be needed soon. He passed the same message to two British Apache helicopters that had also come on station, ready to support the men on the ground.
Messenger called Captain Mark Taylor, commander of Fire Support Group Charlie, and ordered him to bring down fire on any enemy identified. Within seconds, Taylor’s machine-guns opened up with withering fire on enemy in the northern end of Mazdurak.
Messenger told the MFC who was beside him, ‘Get the mortars on to the front edge of Khvolehabad.’
‘Already on it, sir.’
Almost immediately the company’s 81mm mortar section back at COP Zeebrugge unleashed a torrent of high-explosive shells, hammering the Khvolehabad firing positions to stop the enemy fighters shooting at the company, who already had enough on their hands with the Taliban in Mazdurak.
Messenger assessed that at least forty Taliban fighters were now wide awake and desperately defending the otherwise deserted town. His signaller reported, ‘Sir, enemy radio intercepts have been relayed over the net from Captain Hicks. He says the Taliban commander seems to be calling for reinforcements.’
Moments later Messenger got confirmation from 9 Platoon in their observation posts high up on the peaks behind Zeebrugge. ‘Taliban moving forward from the back end of Mazdurak. Can see at least ten to twelve men on foot, moving fast.’
Hitting his radio pressel switch, the MFC conferred briefly with his opposite number on the peaks, and Messenger didn’t need to say a word as the 81s switched targets to pound in on the enemy rushing forward through the town.
In the thick of the action, Lance Corporal Thomas’s section stormed through the compounds to the right of Sergeant Armon’s position. Guardsman Harrison – a Grenadier Guards soldier attached to 10 Platoon – was at the back of the team. He looked into a doorway and inside saw a tunnel entrance in the floor. As he turned to point his rifle into the black hole he was flung to the ground, a bullet fired into his right eye by a fighter in the tunnel. In agony and virtually blinded, blood pouring all over his face, Harrison somehow managed to stagger into cover behind a wall.
Racing back to help, two soldiers from Harrison’s section hurled high-explosive grenades into the tunnel entrance and immediately followed up with sixty 5.56 bullets on automatic at point-blank range. Nobody in the tunnel could have survived.
Before they could get back to Harrison, the men were pinned down by another enemy machine-gun position. They couldn’t move. Lance Corporal Andy Howe, a few metres away, saw Harrison writhing on the ground, holding his head. He tried to get forward, but bullets slammed between his legs and he was forced to drop down. He threw a grenade into the compound where some of the fire was coming from but was then pinned down by a rapid stream of bullets from another gun position.
The men were desperate to reach their mate, who lay seriously wounded in the dirt. He was bleeding heavily, and if they didn’t get him out he was going to die. They knew that and they knew that they couldn’t get to him. To have attempted to move through the immense weight of enemy fire would have been suicidal and would have done nothing to help Harrison. Their position was impossible.
6
Corporal Bomber Brown had sent the wounded Private Gordon back to Sergeant Armon’s compound to be treated. Hearing reports of Guardsman Harrison over his radio, Brown led his section back out into the alleyway to try to reach the wounded soldier. But, like Lance Corporal Thomas’s men, Brown and his section were driven back by the intensity of the fire.
Above the gunfire and explosions, cupping his hands around his mouth, Brown shouted to the wounded guardsman, ‘Harrison. Harrison. Listen to me. When I say go, get up and run back the way you came, back to the Sarge. When I say go. We will rapid fire into the doorway. Don’t worry about the shooting. We will stop when you go past… Stand by. Stand by. Now – go!’
With blood still pouring out of his eye, Harrison struggled to his feet and ran for his life down the alleyway, towards the massive blast of fire that was now pouring into the alleyway from Brown’s gunners and riflemen. He made it. Sergeant Armon grabbed him and dragged him to the safety of the building.
Armon sat him on the dirt floor and quickly checked him over. The platoon sergeant was desperate to get precise information on the enemy positions so he could help direct the platoon’s fire, and if possible launch more mortar bombs into their compounds. Before handing Harrison over to the medic Armon said, ‘Harrison, where exactly are the enemy? Did you see the position?’
Still oozing out blood and by now close to collapse, Harrison scrawled a map in the dust with his finger, indicating the enemy positions in the compound. He told Armon, ‘I believe there is a position there, there and up there, Sergeant.’ Then, in proper Grenadier Guards fashion, Harrison asked, ‘Leave to pass out, Sergeant?’
As Armon was organizing the evacuation of both of his casualties, Messenger had decided to extract the company. But the extraction was not going to be straightforward. 10 Platoon were in heavy contact from multiple enemy positions and would have to withdraw under fire. Carrying the two casualties would absorb twelve men, taking away essential firepower. And most of the company would have to make it across a 200-metre stretch of open ground – which was under withering enemy fire.
Messenger discussed with the JTAC how best to use the air assets. They could be employed to engage in depth and to the flanks. But they would be really decisive attacking the enemy that were in direct contact with the company. The fighting was too close for bombing, and even strafing runs would carry a high risk of hitting his own men. ‘Tell them to strafe as close as they can, but I don’t want a blue on blue. Make sure they know exactly where our positions are.’
Gordon was taken back to the initial compound, on the outskirts of Mazdurak, still occupied by most of Waters’s 11 Platoon. As he was brought in, the medic Corporal Boyle grabbed him and checked him over. He was bleeding, but not too hard: manageable.
Boyle was applying first field dressings to his wounds when Sergeant Armon brought Guardsman Harrison in, slung over his shoulder. As Armon was carrying him back, both men had narrowly avoided further injury. A bullet had ripped a hole in Armon’s trouser leg and another cracked into his daysack, passing just beneath Harrison’s head.
Boyle took one look at Harrison and realized immediately that he was the priority. He handed Gordon over to a team medic. He wound a field dressing round Harrison’s head to try to stem the bleeding. As he worked, he analysed the situation in his mind. Head injury, you’re not going to mess around with this. You can stop bleeding in a limb, you can put all sorts of stuff on. Even abdominal wounds you can treat. But not head injuries. There’s so much stuff that can happen there. This is not like Woollard. It’s not what you can do for him, it’s how fast you can evacuate him. Because there’s absolutely nothing you can do for him and he needs to get back. He needs to go back straight away.
Boyle saw that Harrison’s level of consciousness was sinking. When he was carried in by Armon he was talking. Now he was slurring his speech – badly. Boyle shone a torch into the remaining eye and tried to talk to Harrison. He was going downhill – rapidly. Boyle knew there was not a moment to lose. He turned to Waters and said, ‘We’ve got to move him now. I need a work party and a route out.’
He grabbed a field stretcher from one of the other soldiers and slid it under the wounded man. Boyle, with five of Waters’s men, struggled with the typically tall Grenadier Guardsman. Gordon was going with them, but, despite his serious wounds, had said he would walk rather than tie down six stretcher bearers, and was being assisted by two men, carrying his combat equipment and weapon as well as their own, and taking some of the strain as he stumbled along.<
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The journey across the open ground was a nightmare. The heat was excruciating, Harrison was heavy, and the men carrying him had to keep diving for cover from enemy gunfire. Bullets, cracking in from seemingly every direction, were flying over the top of them, and blowing poppy heads off around them. Rounds were zipping in between the men as they ran. They alternated between dragging the heavy stretcher along the ground, crawling on their belt buckles and running with it, knees bent, trying desperately to lose even a couple of inches of height.
Somehow, sweating and panting, they made it across the open ground, and every man was utterly exhausted, their lungs ready to explode with the horrendous exertions in such oppressive heat. Private Liam O’Connor, front left on the stretcher, felt as if his right arm was going to drop off. He now realized why stretcher races were such a big part of the battalion’s tough physical training regime before they deployed to Afghanistan.
Boyle and the work party loaded the two casualties into Company Sergeant Major Pete Ramm’s Pinzgauer, waiting in the cover of the wadi, and the medical officer went straight to work on Harrison.
Already the MERT Chinook, with its surgical team, was screaming towards Zeebrugge from Bastion, tasked twenty minutes earlier by Captain Dave Hicks in the company ops room.
10 Platoon was running short of ammo, and Ramm and Waters organized a resupply. Sergeant Waters’s bearer party would have to carry it back across the open into Mazdurak. While the soldiers were loading themselves up with ammunition, Waters was given new orders by the company commander on the net, ‘Remain in current location and provide fire support for the company’s extraction across the open ground.’
Waters acknowledged and was about to give orders to his men when the dreaded words ‘Man down’ again came across the radio.
Corporal Boyle heard it as well. Immediately he said to himself, You’re the medic. If someone shouts ‘man down’ you’ve got to go to him. Got to. No choice. It’s part of the job. Get moving. He knew he had to get back across the open ground, still under enemy fire. Blanking out the obvious danger, he got to his feet and began to rush back.
But Waters grabbed hold of him and dragged him down. ‘Stay here. We’ve got to provide covering fire. They’re going to bring the casualty back here. You can’t treat him on the move. Stay here and help sort him out when he gets back.’
7
Messenger had ordered the mortars to increase their rate of fire. Back in Zeebrugge, the company’s mortar men were furiously stoking bomb after bomb into the red-hot mortar barrels. It was hard work in normal temperatures; under the baking Afghan sun, it was utterly exhausting. But the Mortar Platoon soldiers worked on, pouring sweat, breathing hard and arms aching, achieving rates of fire they would have struggled to maintain in training back in England. They knew the lives of their mates out there among the treacherous compounds of Mazdurak depended on the bombs they were feverishly flinging into their upturned mortar barrels.
Dozens of 81mm shells crashed into Mazdurak, breaking down compound walls, exploding through roofs, hurling out great jagged lumps of shrapnel, tearing apart enemy fighters and – critically – forcing them to stay in cover as the company pulled back. At the same time the Apaches were ripping Khvolehabad apart with their 30mm guns, preventing the enemy there from interfering with the company’s movements. But the heaviest fire was coming from the A10s as they viciously strafed enemy positions in Mazdurak with their 30mm Gatling guns.
Major Messenger flung himself down as a 30mm shell impacted right next to him. Turning his head, he said to the JTAC, also lying flat, ‘Call the A10 pilot and ask him to adjust his fire further back into Mazdurak so we don’t get killed?’
Further inside Mazdurak, Perrin was leading the extraction of 10 Platoon through the compounds they had cleared, and then out of the village. Corporal Ferrand’s section was still in a toe-to-toe battle with the Taliban, and the densely packed compounds meant no one else could fire at the enemy to help them break clean.
The Taliban were very close, in the alleyway and the compound right in front of them. Hoping to buy a few seconds to get clear, Ferrand told every man to drop a grenade from the roof at the same time. On Ferrand’s count, Facal and the others lobbed their grenades, and as the bombs exploded at almost the same moment, like a gigantic, lethal firecracker, they leapt down on to the compound floor and raced across to the other side, weaving and ducking as the bullets continued to pour in and the RPG missiles flew overhead.
Corporal Nick Townsend, attached to the Royal Anglians from The Rifles, was a section commander with Waters’s 11 Platoon, positioned to the rear of 10. He led his GPMG and Minimi gunners forward to the corner of their compound to provide fire support for 10 Platoon’s movement back. Firing out of the compound with his section, Townsend was suddenly deafened by an enormous blast 2 metres from him. The explosion sent him reeling violently sideways, but he just managed to stay on his feet. Shrapnel had torn into Townsend’s neck, femoral artery, groin, leg and foot. He had eleven puncture wounds and was bleeding hard.
Townsend looked round. Behind him, Private Simon Peacock was in a real mess. He had taken the full force of the blast and was even more seriously wounded, hit in the chest. Townsend screamed out, ‘Man down. Peacock’s hit! Medic! Medic!’
Lance Corporal Howe, Private Ed Garner and Corporal Aaron Pinder ran to help. Peacock was face down. Howes turned him over to check his wounds, and Peacock threw up blood all over him. Howes instinctively recoiled, then he and Pinder picked up the critically wounded soldier and carried him back to the medic, Captain Baz Alexander.
Townsend staggered over to his platoon commander, Lieutenant Olivier, then collapsed. Soldiers rushed in to treat him. Private Budd tried to inject him with morphine, but Townsend shouted, ‘I don’t like needles – get it away from me. Get it away.’
Olivier organized the evacuation of the two casualties back to 11 Platoon’s compound, braving the continuous heavy fire. Alexander and the team medics had patched them up as best they could in the midst of the battle. Sergeant Armon took control of their CASEVAC out of Mazdurak. He had to get them back across the open ground to the RV in the wadi where Waters and Ramm were waiting. The rest of the company would follow close behind.
With the casualties ready to move, Armon led the way out through the compound door. As he emerged he was met with a hail of machine-gun fire, splintering the doorframe and ripping up the wall around it. He tried again and again, but each time was driven back by a violent storm of bullets. Armon identified the enemy fire position, several hundred metres away, and radioed Messenger, ‘Zero Alpha, this is Two Zero Charlie, enemy engaging my location from area of Kak e Jinan. Can you suppress with air? Over.’
Even with an air strike, Armon did not want to risk using that exit. The air might destroy the Taliban in the position he had identified, but he knew the enemy would almost certainly have this route covered by other firing points, and he could not risk being pinned down for any length of time with the two casualties. Peacock and Townsend were both in a very bad way, especially Townsend, who Armon feared might die if he wasn’t given proper treatment soon. He had to get them away immediately. He looked at his air photo. There was another route out. It was not totally covered, but at least it would not mean carrying two casualties into the teeth of enemy fire. There was no other exit from the compound.
Armon called over the engineer NCO attached to his platoon. ‘I intend to extract the casualties out the other side. Prepare to blow down the back wall of the compound. When the air comes in, you will blow it. I will tell you when.’
The engineer and his men went straight to work positioning and rigging bar-mines.
At Messenger’s command the Apaches and the A10s launched wave after wave of ferocious strafing runs against the enemy. When he heard the firing Armon shouted across to the engineer, ‘Blow it now.’
With a massive blast the wall came down. Armon and his men, showered with dust and debris from the explosion, carr
ied their two casualties through the smoking, craggy hole and raced across the open ground, covering each other as they went. The noise of battle was deafening, with the Apaches now hurling Hellfire missiles into the Taliban positions.
Once the casualties were clear Messenger ordered the remainder of 11 Platoon, followed by 10 Platoon, back across the open ground and into the wadi, covered all the way by fire from the A10s and Apaches.
8
Under Waters’s control, the work party that had evacuated Harrison and Gordon were furiously engaging with their rifles and machine-guns, giving cover for 10 and 11 Platoons’ movement. Corporal Boyle was with the group, firing and helping control the other soldiers’ fire. Several of the men were running low on bullets. Private Liam O’Connor, blazing away with his Minimi, had almost run out. When Boyle asked for an ammo check, several of the men called, ‘Last mag.’
Boyle shouted, ‘I’ll go and get some more ammo from the sergeant major.’ Then he thought, Till then, it’s bayonets, I suppose. He smiled as another thought came to him, I’ve always wanted to say this. It’s pretty pointless but I’ll never have another chance. He got up to run across to the sergeant major, yelling along the line, ‘Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets!’ As he ran, he clicked his own bayonet on to the muzzle of his SA80.
Armon had just arrived with Peacock, and Ramm was moving him back into the wadi on his quad bike. Boyle quickly checked him. Shrapnel had punctured both his lungs. His arms, legs and face were bleeding from fragmentation wounds. Alexander had given him all the treatment he could back in Mazdurak, and now he just had to get to the field hospital.