by Richard Kemp
Aston wondered whether he should have done anything different. The burden of responsibility always falls heavily on the shoulders of the commander, and when you have taken casualties it is natural to wonder if there was anything you could have done to prevent it. Perhaps even more than most commanders, Aston had forged a strong bond with his men and really cared about each of them and their individual well-being.
He shook his head. It was not the time to dwell on all of this. Their task in Heyderabad complete, he needed to focus on getting these men and their vehicles safely back to FOB Robinson – without any further casualties.
He checked his map and his GPS. The vehicles were moving at a good speed along a rough track cutting through the featureless but rugged and rocky terrain. He was baking hot and pouring sweat. Even the company commander’s vehicle doesn’t get working air con, he said to himself. He noticed a pair of motorbikes across the desert to the right. Maybe 1,000 metres away. Not uncommon, he thought. But what are they up to? Quite likely tracking our movements. For what? Just to find out when it was safe for the Taliban to carry on about their business in Heyderabad? Perhaps…
They were well spread out to minimize the risk if they were attacked along the route back. Aston could just about see the Viking ahead of him, about 30 metres away, partly obscured by the clouds of dust it was kicking up. It was the rear vehicle of Howes’s 5 Platoon, who were moving just behind the WMIKs. Aston knew this was Sergeant Keith Nieves’s wagon.
Short in stature, but larger than life, Nieves was one of B Company’s big characters. One of the great morale boosters. Aston thought, Nieves will be just the man to have around when we get back to FOB Rob and the men start thinking about the hell they’ve been through. He had known and liked Nieves for many years, ever since he had joined the battalion from the Australian Army back in 1997. Nieves was tough, hard-working and loyal, as well as a great family man. Aston counted him not just a subordinate but a friend.
Nieves’s Viking was weighed down with the normal platoon sergeant’s heavy ammunition loads, to resupply the men when they began to run short, plus bar-mines and boxes of explosives for breaking into – and sometimes out of – compounds.
Jammed in on top of this dangerous cargo were Private Scotty Fryer, one of the company’s snipers, and Corporal Ian Peyton, the remaining company medic, as well as the five Royal Engineers who had been working with B Company since they left Bastion.
Private Luke Nadriva, the tough Fijian 51mm mortar man, was wedged into the tiny signaller’s compartment directly behind Nieves in the front cab. Marine Biekes was at the wheel, and Marine Wright, thickly coated in dust kicked up by the vehicles in front, was in the cupola, manning his gun.
Three kilometres out from FOB Robinson, Aston checked his map and GPS again. The head of the column should be crossing a prominent wadi. Looking forward he could just see the lead vehicles in the distance, moving out of sight into the depression. Another ten minutes or so and we should be in the FOB, he thought.
He would have to get everyone together, and he hadn’t yet had the time to think about what he was going to say to them. He glanced again to the right. A lone motorbike now. He had seen several off in the desert, since he spotted the first pair as they pulled away from Heyderabad. He also thought he could just about make out some kind of a 4x4 off in the far distance. Probably nothing.
Then he saw the vehicle in front explode.
15
The right track of Nieves’s Viking had rolled over a buried anti-tank mine. The weight of the track had forced down the mine’s pressure fuze, and 5.7 kg of TNT – had thrown the vehicle up from its tracks in a thunderous blast.
Nieves was knocked unconscious and didn’t even hear the mine exploding. Most of the blast from the TNT went upwards through the floor on the front right side of the vehicle, searing into his right foot, ripping off his flesh and breaking the bones. A jagged shard of red-hot shrapnel ripped through his left wrist.
Seconds later he felt as if he was waking from a nightmare. The whole cab was full of a choking haze of black smoke and there was a strong, acrid smell of explosives and burning. His ears were ringing and he could hear no other sound, it was like being submerged in water. He felt a vicious heat on his left arm and slowly turned his head to see flames licking upwards from the engine block beside him. He pushed himself towards the door, forced the handle upwards and tried to shove it open. He put all his weight against it, but it wouldn’t budge. It had been distorted by the explosion, jammed into its frame. He couldn’t get out to the left because there was a wall of flames between the engine block and the vehicle’s ceiling, getting more ferocious by the second.
He was alone in an inferno and he began to despair, That’s my lot. I’m not going to get out of here.
He tried the door again. Nothing. Wouldn’t move. He put his head right against the door and looked out through a small gap that had opened up as the blast had forced it forward. Sitting on the ground, he saw Private Nadriva, his mortar man – dazed and in shock, head in his hands.
A flicker of hope now. Nieves put his mouth to the gap in the door and screamed out, ‘Help me, help me, get me out of this vehicle!’
Nadriva didn’t respond. He obviously couldn’t hear him, or was too shocked to realize what was going on. Nieves’s heart sank further. He now knew he was going to die in this hot steel box. He was fully conscious. He knew that it would be agony as the flames engulfed him and his body slowly burnt up – unless the engine or something else in the vehicle exploded and killed him first. That would be a mercy.
Suddenly the horror was replaced by an intense sadness. He would never see Angie or Peter and Harry again. Never. Even worse, he thought, was the sorrow they would feel, which would be with them for the rest of their lives. Angie a widow, and the boys growing up without a father.
He took hold of himself. That isn’t going to happen. He shouted as loud as he could, his lungs burning with the inhalation of hot smoke. ‘Nadriva, Nadriva, help, help, help.’
His whole body was stinging, his left side felt as if it was on fire, and his face was contorted against the gap behind the door. He was screaming at the top of his voice – screaming for his life.
Nadriva looked up. He was still dazed; his arms were burnt, and his body was battered by the force of the explosion. But he heard Nieves’s muffled screams. In horror, he forced himself painfully on to his feet and staggered back across to the burning vehicle.
He pulled at the door. No movement. The metal of the door was burning hot against his hands. His body felt shattered by the blast that had battered it only a few moments before. But he put all of his power into trying to get the door open. Every muscle was straining, and the veins stood out on his arms, neck and forehead as he willed the door to open.
Finally it began to give. Millimetre by millimetre, the distorted steel of the door scraped against the solid frame that was locking it in place. Then it came free, and with a feeling of victory and the most intense relief, Nadriva swung it wide, groaning on its hinges. He reached in and grabbed Nieves by the shoulders. As he was dragged through the narrow opening the melting skin was torn from Nieves’s left arm.
Out of the vehicle, Nieves took a couple of steps and crashed down on to the sand. He felt an excruciating pain from his foot so bad he looked down to check that it was still there. As he lay in the sand he looked up and saw the driver, Marine Biekes, staggering around, badly burnt and screaming.
When the vehicle exploded, the medic, Corporal Ian Peyton, in the back of the Viking, was deafened. He felt the whole cab being thrown up into the air, followed by a jarring crash, like an elevator dropping to the base of a lift shaft. Outside, the back cab was blazing, as the flames from the front travelled rearwards. Inside, the vehicle was heating up. The two engineers closest to the back door were struggling to get it open, but it wouldn’t budge. As in the front cab, the shock of the explosion had distorted the metal, jamming it into place.
Within the
cramped space, now filling up with thick black smoke, the seven soldiers began to panic. They were trapped on piles of high-explosives and bullets as fire was rapidly taking hold of the vehicle. And they could hear blood-curdling screams from the front cab.
Corporal Peyton managed to force open the top-cover hatch in the roof of the back Viking cab. Although flames were licking around the roof of the vehicle, he clambered through and dropped down on to the sand, hoping he wouldn’t land on a mine.
As he exited through the top hatch, Ben Wright, the marine gunner, dazed and in shock, realized that the troops hadn’t got out of the back. Flames were licking all round the door. Wright wrestled to pull up the lever, fighting off the pain as his hands burnt up. He could hardly bear the torturous heat, but eventually he forced open the door, and the men fell out, coughing and spluttering, leaving behind everything except their rifles.
Aston arrived on the scene of devastation, running along the tracks made by the Viking. A huge column of black smoke was building up over the vehicle, and orange flames were reaching up through the gunner’s hatch.
Aston shouted instructions to the soldiers: ‘Get out of here! Get back along the tracks to the Vikings behind! Keep to the tracks! There may be more mines!’
He grabbed hold of Marine Biekes, dazed and groggy, and pulled him back on to the track. ‘Mate, I know you’re badly hurt, but stay here till the medic arrives, stay right here. If you move around you might stand on another mine.’
Goodman had followed Aston forward and he led Biekes back down the track, away from the burning vehicle.
Aston went to Nieves, lying on the ground, all his skin burnt and red raw, his left arm bleeding where the skin had peeled off, his hair singed and the top of his head badly burnt. The sight of this tough and dependable sergeant – now weak, shrunken, vulnerable, helpless and in terrible agony – horrified Aston. But there was no time to dwell on this. ‘Keith, Keith, can you hear me? You’re going to be OK, mate. We’ll get you out of here. It’s going to be OK.’
There was not a second to lose. Aston knew the vehicle, and its explosive load, could go up at any moment. He looked through the choking smoke and searing flames into every part of the vehicle, double-checking that everyone had got out. Then he and Scotty Fryer, the sniper, picked Nieves up and carried him back along the Viking track.
By now Company Sergeant Major Newton’s Viking, with the doctor, Andy Tredget, had motored forward, pulling up short of Aston’s vehicle. The doc, assisted by Peyton and some of the team medics, started work on the casualties.
Leaving Nieves with the doctor, Aston leant into the back of the Sergeant Major’s vehicle. Captain Dave Robinson, the company 2IC, had his headsets on, map, notebook and pencil in hand, and was talking calmly into his radio mike.
As soon as he paused, Aston said, ‘Dave, has CASEVAC been tasked?’
‘Yes, sir, I reported the minestrike straight away and I tasked CASEVAC a couple of minutes ago, as soon as I knew we had taken casualties.’
‘Good, what’s the ETA?’
Dave held up his hand, then said into the mike, ‘Roger, inform me when it’s secure.’ He turned back to Aston. ‘Sorry, sir, should be about fifteen minutes.’
‘What do you mean about? Get on to them and get me an up-to-date ETA,’ said Aston impatiently.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you sorted out an HLS to get the casualties away?’
‘Yes, sir, the sergeant major’s on to that right now.’
Robinson took a deep breath and said, ‘Sir, can you just leave me to get on with my job? I know what I’m doing, and all this is just slowing me down. Please, sir, just let me do it.’
His voice was matter-of-fact, logical, calm. Aston looked into the young captain’s piercing brown eyes. He was an excellent operator and he knew his stuff. He had been doing a great job all day, as he always did, and Aston realized he was hassling him unnecessarily. Must calm down, he thought, Dave’s right, I should leave him to it.
Aston walked back to his Viking to figure out what to do next. The first priority was to move the vehicles either side of the burning Viking even further away, as it could not be long before the explosives started detonating.
A short while later he spoke to Captain Goodman, ‘The Taliban were tracking our movement. Obviously those bikes we saw were doing that. They will now know their mine worked the way they wanted it to. And from here our route back to FOB Rob is totally predictable. God knows what else they’ve laid between here and there. I reckon we’d better look at another route. What d’you reckon?’
‘I agree,’ said Goodman, ‘The only alternative is a hell of a long way round, it’ll take us about three hours instead of fifteen minutes. But it makes sense.’
As the two officers looked at Aston’s map, working out the long route home, they could hear loud explosions from the burning Viking as bar-mines, the engineers’ high-explosive charges and boxes of Nadriva’s 51mm mortar bombs detonated.
Sergeant Major Newton cleared an area of desert big enough for the Chinook to land. This was always done as thoroughly as possible, as the Chinook’s wheels, or its rotor downwash, could set off mines buried beneath the dirt. With what had just happened, Newton took exceptional care to make sure the ground was free of mines. And he picked the least obvious place he could to bring the chopper in, just in case the Taliban had decided to position something for the inevitable CASEVAC helicopter.
16
Propping up the badly burnt Marine Wright, Newton walked up to the Chinook’s lowered ramp, struggling against the strong downdraft and the dust it was swirling in every direction. The soldiers of the IRT, infantrymen whose job was to provide close protection on the ground for the helicopter, were blocking the ramp, looking around them with concern.
Above the noise of the powerful twin turboshaft engines, Newton yelled at them, ‘I’ve cleared the ground all round here. Get off the ramp and let me on with these casualties.’
Following behind Newton and Wright, Nadriva walked up the ramp, and Nieves and Biekes were stretchered on. Tredget gave the MERT doctors a rapid brief on each of the casualties, and the treatment they had received so far. As he was talking, the Chinook loadmaster kicked off several crates of iced water for the troops on the ground.
With a roar of its engines, and a wild blast of dust and debris, the helicopter lifted off, carrying the latest four of the seven casualties B Company had sustained so far that day.
Straight after the mine strike, Aston had pushed Snow and his WMIKs out to provide protection. While the casualty evacuation was in progress, Snow called Aston: ‘Hello, Zero Alpha, this is Four Zero Alpha. Sighting. Two thousand metres north-west of your location. White pickup truck. Static. Just hanging around. Could be dickers. Over.’
Aston told his JTAC to task the two Apaches escorting the Chinook to check the vehicle out. Minutes later, the JTAC said, ‘Sir, the Ugly callsigns report two men next to the vehicle, both with weapons.’
‘Take them out,’ said Aston.
He climbed on top of the Viking with his binos trained north-west, towards the pickup truck.
From the Apache overhead, he heard the rattle of 30mm cannon fire and watched as the explosive shells flashed around the vehicle, throwing up small clouds of dust. Next there was a long, loud whoosh followed by a thunderous blast, and Aston saw a small building near the vehicle explode.
The JTAC, next to him on the vehicle’s roof, was listening intently to his radio. He said, ‘Sir, the Ugly callsign says they killed one of the men with thirty mil. The other one managed to get away and take cover in a shed near the vehicle. Destroyed with a Hellfire. No sign of movement. Both enemy had AK47s.’
Aston said, ‘Good. Well done. Those guys are certain to be the ones that laid the mine. They will have been checking us out to report back on how successful they had been, and probably trying to get a fix on our future movements in the hope of hitting us again. Well, they won’t be doing any more of that dirty
work.’
Aston gave brief orders to his commanders, and at 1600 hours the company moved off in a circuitous route that would eventually get them to FOB Robinson. He had ordered the destruction of what was left of the burnt-out Viking, to ensure nothing remained that could be of use to the enemy, and as the column drove out of the area, one of the Apaches slammed two Hellfire missiles into the wrecked vehicle.
Goodman’s time estimation had not been far off the mark, and the column rolled up to the entrance to FOB Robinson four hours later, with daylight beginning to fail.
Forward Operating Base Robinson was a bleak and dusty outpost, about 600 metres by 600, surrounded by the ubiquitous Hesco Bastion walls and sandbagged sangars. Inside were a couple of basic accommodation Portakabins for permanent residents, a helicopter landing site, a compound inhabited by a detachment of US forces and a troop of artillery. In normal circumstances the men would have considered it an inhospitable dump, to be avoided at all costs. But right now it seemed like a five-star hotel.
The first four Vikings drove up the steep slope into the gates of the FOB, followed by the logistics vehicles. Now, for the first time, the Oshkosh got into trouble. The heavy tanker came off the track, careered into a steep bank and broke its axle. The entrance to FOB Rob was blocked.
Sergeant Major Newton jumped out of his Viking, at the rear of the column, and ran forward to sort out the company’s latest nightmare. As he moved, a single shot rang out and a bullet smacked into the side of the Oshkosh.
Through the twilight, all eyes turned towards a lone Taliban fighter. A couple of hundred metres away, black robed, he was sitting, holding his rifle, on a moped that must have stalled at just the wrong moment. Instead of screaming across the desert on his planned getaway, he was desperately trying to coax the engine back to life, while probably at the same time sensing that his luck had just run out.