Attack State Red

by Richard Kemp

  Parker moved to the corner of the compound in front of the graveyard. From there he had a good view of the bridge. It was about 50 metres to his front. The track next to him bent left then right and down to the bridge. He looked through his permanent-focus binos. The bridge looked a solid enough structure, constructed of mud and wattle like compound walls. It was spanned by wooden beams, and wide enough to get a single vehicle across. Running under the bridge was an irrigation ditch, a canal, about 3 metres across, deep and fast-flowing with murky brown water. Beyond the bridge was a bank. To the left there were some trees and to the right a thick green hedgerow. Beyond were some small outbuildings and compounds which marked the start of the village on the far side. Among these was a new building that appeared to be nearing completion, which looked to Parker like some kind of medical centre.

  Parker thought to himself, This is more than a canal, it’s like a line in the sand. If that was my bridge I wouldn’t let anyone cross. This is dangerous. Maybe it is a bridge too far like Steve said.

  He said to his section, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this. It’s going to kick off. Everybody take your safety catches off.’

  7

  Corporal Greg Mann and his section were now in place forward left, ready to cover Parker’s men as they advanced to the bridge.

  Corporal Parker led his section round the compound in single-file, well spread out. He pushed right from the track into a large poppy field, heading towards an irrigation ditch that ran almost parallel to the track, meeting the canal off to the right of the bridge.

  When they got to the ditch Parker turned to his men, ‘I’m going down to check out the bridge, make sure it’s not wired up or anything. If it’s OK I’ll call you forward. You need to get in that ditch and go firm.’

  The men looked at him questioningly, not keen to jump into the filthy trench, up to their chests in stinking irrigation water and sewage.

  ‘Just get in,’ said Parker firmly, and they knew that the look he gave them didn’t allow for any discussion.

  ‘Fozzie, you’re coming with me. Let’s go.’

  Parker always used Foster as his point man, his lead scout. A young and inexperienced soldier, Foster nevertheless had a good feel for the ground and could read the situation well. He was a strong, brave and dependable lad, and Parker wanted him with him in what he saw as an increasingly dangerous situation.

  Parker and Foster crossed the field running between the ditch where they had left the section and the track that led to the bridge. Rifles in the shoulder, scanning over SUSAT sights, looking for any sign of enemy activity. They were in the open. Exposed to an area they thought might contain Taliban – that had not yet been cleared. This was what the infantry did. And it was about as dangerous as it got for anyone, anywhere.

  As they got closer to the bridge Parker was relieved to see that it looked clear. There was no sign of enemy in the compounds across the canal. Surely they would have opened up by now if they had been there, or at least Company HQ would have picked up something on the radio scanners. Perhaps if the Taliban had been there, they had moved out…

  Parker spoke into his PRR. ‘OK, lads, I think it’s clear, we’ll go across.’

  As he released the PRR pressel switch his heart almost stopped as an RPG-7 rocket screamed right between him and Foster, just a couple of feet above their heads. They dropped straight down as a massive blast of machine-gun fire erupted from all over the compounds across the canal, throwing up lumps of mud and scything through poppies. Parker hugged the ground, almost trying to pull himself through the earth, and, as the hail of bullets fell round them, the two soldiers crawled rapidly forward to a low bank, desperate for the small amount of protection it would give them.

  When he got to the bank, keeping his head and body low, Parker looked back. Where the rocket had landed there was a cloud of smoke and dirt. It was at the exact point he had left his section just minutes before. His heart was racing, thudding, and he had a warm taste in his mouth and a churning stomach. He felt sick. They must all be dead.

  He pulled himself up the bank, wanting to keep his head down so that it didn’t get knocked off his shoulders. But he needed to see where the fire was coming from so he could fire back. To the left, Corporal Mann’s section were firing over the canal. He could just see the bridge through the grass in front of his eyes. No one near it, but he could see the words ‘82nd Airborne’ spray-painted in large white letters right across its side.

  Looking to the left of the bridge, he could make out what Mann’s section were firing at, and then he saw smoke and flashes in and around the new building, the medical centre. This was where most of the Taliban fire seemed to be coming from. Firing rapid single shots at the corner of the building, he called to Foster, ‘Watch my tracer and shoot at the same target.’

  Foster fired, but after the first shot his rifle jammed. Expanded in the intense heat, the cartridge case had stuck fast in the breech. This was the worst possible time for a stoppage.

  Foster shouted, ‘You got any rods? I need rods. I need rods.’

  Parker said, ‘No. I haven’t. Crawl back over to the ditch, then get back along the ditch to the section.’

  Foster looked at him wide-eyed. No, he mouthed, no. Foster didn’t want to go back across the open ground, through the hail of bullets. He was terrified. He didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the section, and he didn’t want to be the one that found out. He had seen plenty of ripped-up enemy bodies on Silicon and he didn’t want to crawl back through enemy fire and find his own mates like that. If he made it back at all.

  Parker said, ‘Go on, Fozzie, and when you get back, I want the blokes forward, especially the guns, get the guns forward. And sort out your rifle and come back to me.’

  Parker too knew that the worst had probably happened to his men, but he didn’t want to admit that to Foster. And Foster had to get back to find out what had happened, and he had to get his rifle sorted. Without it he was useless to Parker where he was now.

  With courage that was characteristic of the nineteen-year-old Robert Foster, the man who was always at the front of the section, the one leading the others towards the enemy, the one always in the greatest danger, he took control of his fears and crawled as fast as he could back through the fire towards that trench.

  8

  When the RPG flew in to Parker’s section, Gillmore, the soldier attached from Company HQ, saw a little ball of light flying directly at him. There was no time to move or even dive for cover. Then there was a thunderous explosion right next to him. He felt a twist in his groin, and the next thing he knew he was looking down at his hands and shaking. His helmet had been ripped off his head and his Minimi was torn away from him, thrown 5 metres forward. He didn’t know where he was. He heard massive bursts of gunfire and loud shouting. His ears were ringing, and nothing was making sense.

  Behind him, a few metres back but on the side of the ditch scanning around the bridge and into the buildings beyond, Ruecker and his sniper No 2, Lance Corporal Jason Carter, dived straight into the water. Tracer bullets were bouncing in among them and ricocheting off the ground in every direction.

  Ruecker called out to the men in front where the rocket had exploded, ‘You OK, guys? You OK?’

  He got no reply. The rocket must have hit them. It had to. But there were no screams, and he thought they must have all been killed outright. He and Carter pushed forward, keeping low, bullets still zipping over their heads.

  The section were up on the lip of the ditch, where they had been in fire positions. They were all badly dazed by the shock waves from the exploding rocket but, to Ruecker’s relief, they had not been killed. Bullets were smacking into the earth around them, but they did not seem to realize the danger they were in. Ruecker and Carter reached up and dragged them down into the safety of the filthy ditchwater.

  Carter saw blood around Gillmore’s ankle and called out, ‘Gillmore’s been hit.’

  ‘No I’m OK, just twi
sted my hip, I’m OK.’

  Carter grabbed hold of Lance Corporal Steve Veal, who had been knocked unconscious and was just beginning to come round. ‘Steve, Steve, Gillmore’s got shrapnel in his ankle. Get on the radio for a medic.’

  More RPGs were exploding overhead, impacting in the dirt above the ditch or whizzing past. A total of seventeen rockets had been fired within five minutes. A hail of bullets continued overhead. Tree branches were falling down on top of them, cut away by the devastating machine-gun fire.

  Veal couldn’t get through on the radio and he needed to support Parker, isolated down by the bridge. He led the men back up to the lip of the ditch and across on their bellies to a slight rise in the ground. Even Gillmore, with his ankle torn open and bleeding from the RPG shrapnel, came forward to engage. Veal identified the compounds where the fire was coming from, across the river. He gave a rapid fire control order to the section to get them concentrating fire towards the main enemy position. RPG after RPG was flying overhead, with the distinctive whoosh-bang as they tore through the air and exploded on impact.

  Private Josh Lee opened up on the enemy with his UGL, sending volleys of grenades the 80 metres across to the compound.

  But the enemy got their range, and they came under fire from several machine-guns.

  ‘Crawl back, crawl back, back into the ditch,’ called Veal.

  The rest of the men moved back, but Private Troy McLure wouldn’t budge. Rock solid and fearless, he was focused only on killing the enemy, as he emptied mag after mag across the canal. Veal had to physically drag him back to the ditch.

  Seal-Coon had crawled forward and was beside Veal. ‘Sir,’ said Veal, ‘I’m going to push my fire team forward to support Parky.’

  ‘No,’ said Seal-Coon, ‘keep your men here. I don’t think Corporal Martin’s section are in a position to give depth support at present. We need you here to deal with any Taliban that try to infiltrate round the flanks and get behind Parky.’

  Seal-Coon kept trying to send a contact report to Aston, but the radios just wouldn’t work. After a relatively short military career to date he knew this was one of the unwritten but immovable laws of armed conflict – radios never work when you need them most. But that didn’t help. He desperately needed to call mortar fire down on to the enemy position.

  His men were pinned down here and on the canal. He needed to either extract or fight forwards. Without indirect fire support his platoon could do nothing but slog it out in a tough and unequal firefight. If they didn’t even up the odds there was every chance several of his soldiers would be killed and wounded. Given the heavy weight of enemy fire it was amazing they hadn’t been already.

  Seal-Coon needed height to stand any chance of getting through on the radio. He clawed his way up the soft muddy bank of the ditch. Even with his antenna now above the lip of the bank, he still couldn’t get any response from Aston.

  Next to him, beside the ditch, was a sparse tree. Seal-Coon dared not scale the tree, but he pulled himself part-way up and – bingo, he managed to get a signal. Difficult but workable. He was through to the company main command post, and company 2IC Captain Dave Robinson, back in the desert.

  ‘Hello, Zero and Zero Alpha, this is Copper Three Zero Alpha, contact. 1300 hours. Compound 245. Platoon minus of enemy. We are taking heavy smallarms and RPG fire. Currently trying to suppress from this side of the canal. Stand by for fire mission. Over.’

  He heard the crackling response from Robinson, ‘Zero, roger, send, send, over.’

  Seal-Coon paused and waited for Aston’s response. The company commander, located about 50 metres away, just to the rear of the platoon, needed to know what was going on and needed to confirm the fire mission. Nothing.

  Seal-Coon continued, ‘Zero, Copper Three Zero Alpha. Fire mission.’

  He transmitted the enemy grid and the direction from him to them in mils magnetic, then finished his fire mission. ‘Enemy platoon plus strength, in compounds and in the open. Neutralize now. Over.’

  Several bullets whizzed straight past Seal-Coon’s ears. He needed to observe the fall of shot if the fire ever came. But he couldn’t stay up there a moment longer and slid back into the ditch. Maybe the MFC at Snow’s position would be able to observe and adjust the fire. Maybe.

  9

  Behind Lieutenant Seal-Coon’s rear section, Major Aston’s Company Tac HQ was holed up in a small single-room building within a compound. Even here they were under blistering machine-gun and rifle fire. Bullets were hitting and sometimes penetrating the thick mud walls. Some arced over the walls and into the compound.

  Aston moved out of the building into the courtyard, trying to get through on the radio. Crouched on the ground next to the compound wall, he called up to Bailey and Fryer, the sniper pair on the roof, ‘Why aren’t you firing? Get some fire down. If you can’t see the enemy, fire where you think they are. Get firing.’

  Hugging the flat roof, Bailey’s muffled call came back: ‘We can’t get our heads up. Too much fire.’

  That wasn’t the only thing that was frustrating Aston at that moment. He could just about make out Seal-Coon’s broken transmission, but he couldn’t manage to get his signal out to acknowledge, or to give orders. 7 Platoon were in big trouble down by the canal, and he needed to help them out. As well as his own 81mm mortars, he needed to get artillery, fast jets and attack helicopters into play. Or at least one of the above. But he couldn’t communicate with anybody outside the immediate vicinity of the compound. And the fire around him was so intense he couldn’t move out to find a better position to communicate from.

  He had given up badgering his FST commander, Captain Pete Ridley, and his JTAC to get comms on their artillery and air nets, because they couldn’t get through either. They were in the mother of all dead spots.

  Aston had a sudden flash of inspiration. He took off his daysack, shuffled around and then pulled out his Iridium satellite handset. A bit like a large mobile phone, the Iridium was issued for routine administrative calls, not for operational traffic. Aston cursed when he realized the only number he had programmed in was 12 Brigade – Task Force Helmand HQ. He really wanted to speak to the JOC in Bastion or his own company 2IC, who would have direct radio communications with the fire support assets he needed. But he didn’t have time to find and then dial in the number.

  He hit the speed-dial for 12 Brigade, and the signal fired up to one of the sixty-six low earth-orbiting satellites in the Iridium constellation, then bounced back down to a handset in the 12 Brigade operations centre 145 kilometres away in Kandahar. In the tranquillity of the air-conditioned ops tent the watchkeeper pressed the hook button. ‘Hello, Task Force Helmand operations. Duty watchkeeper speaking.’

  At first the watchkeeper wondered if he was being wound up. He couldn’t make out Aston very clearly, his voice was distorted, and there seemed to be a lot of loud noise in the background. ‘Hello. This is Mick Aston. OC B Company One Royal Anglian. We are in contact. I need a fire mission. Take these details down.’

  Providing overwatch from the area between Aston’s compound and the ditch containing Parker’s section were Corporal Martin, wounded a few hours earlier by shrapnel from a Taliban mortar, and his section. Visibility down to the canal was obscured by trees and foliage, but Martin had pushed two of his machine-gunners forward behind a bund-line to get better arcs of fire.

  But the Taliban had picked Martin’s section up, and when the firing began, bullets peppered the ground and the compound walls around them too. The two gunners, Privates James Medlock and Joel Lewis, fired back as Martin ordered the rest of the section to take cover in a small outhouse immediately behind them.

  Private Ronnie Barker, UGL man and team medic, took up a position in the doorway, acting as link man with the gunners who were blasting away to the front. Corporal Mac McLaughlan, a medic attached to 7 Platoon, came running forward with Sergeant Mike Woodrow, the platoon sergeant. They had just received word that Gillmore had been hit and were rac
ing to find and treat him.

  The trees ahead of them were being riddled with gunfire, and Barker shouted out, ‘Don’t go down there, you’re in the killing zone, get in here, quick.’

  Woodrow made it through the door. As McLaughlan ran forward, Barker saw him jerk backwards then crumple to the ground, bleeding hard and screaming.

  Barker knew immediately what he had to do. His heart leapt up into his mouth with the terror of it. As well as the bullets, visible tracer rounds were bouncing upwards from rocks and compound walls. It was like some horrifically lethal laser light show. Screaming, ‘Man down! Man down!’ the young soldier dropped his rifle and daysack and, knowing he could be dead within seconds, ran without hesitation into the storm of bullets.

  When he reached McLaughlan he dropped to his knees. Attached to McLaughlan was his bulky and heavy medical Bergen and his rifle. Thinking fast, Barker knew it would be quicker to drag the medic with all his kit than to try and detach it out here, in this hell. In a superhuman feat, with bullets still zipping just inches away from him, Barker struggled back to the doorway, dragging McLaughlan, whose blood trail followed him in.

  Private Richie Barke, the platoon 51mm mortar man, had been following behind Woodrow and the medic. He hit the ground as soon as the bullets started flying, and was pinned down behind a bank in the open. He just wanted to press himself into the earth. His mind raced. One of those bullets is going to hit me if I stay here. If I move I’ll also probably get hit. He glanced left. I’ve got to get to the outhouse where the others are. Could try crawling. Too slow. Better to take a chance and run.