by Richard Kemp
Brown had run like a madman through the Green Zone, and he had been the first to arrive. Armon was right behind him. When they got there, Hawkins’s heart was racing – a last-ditch effort to survive. It wasn’t looking good, but they weren’t about to give up on him. Messenger saw the grim determination in the eyes of these two tough and experienced commanders. Both shattered from the race through the Green Zone. Both intent on saving Lance Corporal Hawkins.
Beside the track sat Private Henning, bleeding, grey, shocked and covered in dirt, being treated by a medic. The other members of the FSG stood around, covered in dust and some with blood on them from the wounded. All shocked.
Messenger could see the casualties were being well looked after, and he didn’t need to interfere. The platoon commanders had deployed their men into position, and the whole area was secure. He now had to focus on getting the casualties out. He identified a suitable HLS, a poppy field right beside the track, and radioed the grid to Hicks at Inkerman, just 600 metres away.
Willan was tasked to secure the HLS. He sent his section 2IC to physically clear the ground where the helicopter would land, and then went with Private Tony Rawson to check the two compounds and make sure they were clear. It wasn’t likely any Taliban would still be in the area after planting the mine, but you could never be sure. And the last thing they needed was for an enemy to spring up from nowhere and fire an RPG missile or a burst of machine-gun bullets into the landing Chinook.
Sergeant Major Taylor arrived with a group of four Vikings from Inkerman and took over the casualty evacuation.
Corporal Ian Peyton, the company’s senior medic, was with him. Tall, dark-haired and thin and with a huge medical Bergen over one shoulder, he raced across to Hawkins. Peyton’s arrival at any scene of devastation gave everybody a lift. If the casualties themselves were conscious they knew their chances of survival were increased by Peyton being there. And the men around them – desperate to see their mates stay alive – were reassured by the knowledge of just how good this experienced and dedicated medic was.
Peyton was always utterly unflappable when treating the wounded, even if enemy fire was landing close by. Watching his steady hands, intense concentration and total confidence in what he was doing, the troops were full of awe, particularly when they recalled that, back home in Pirbright, Peyton spent more than his fair share of time in front of the Military Police or the RSM explaining the outcome of his activities the previous night in the pubs and clubs of Woking.
Brown and Armon were still hard at work. While they continued, Peyton knelt beside Hawkins. He looked at his chest and saw there was no rise and fall. Most of Armon’s breath was escaping through the hole in Hawkins’ neck. Not enough was getting into his lungs. Peyton checked his breathing. Nothing. He checked his pulse. Again, nothing. He looked at Brown and Armon and thought, There isn’t much hope. But I’m not giving up on him any more than these two are. Let’s see if we can get him back.
Peyton opened up his medical bergen and took out a BVM – ‘bag valve mask’ – a hand-held device used to provide positive pressure ventilation. He attached a small oxygen bottle and put the mask over Hawkins’s face and handed it over to Armon. It would be more effective than mouth-to-mouth. Peyton then punched an intraosseous screw into Hawkins’s left leg, drilling into the femur . He plugged in a saline drip, trying to boost his fast-falling blood pressure. Over the next fifteen minutes, Peyton, Brown and Armon fought to bring Alex Hawkins back.
The Chinook swooped down in a storm of dust, right next to the track where Hawkins lay. Dirt, stones and dried-out poppy stalks swirled violently through the air, and Peyton, Brown and Armon lay across Hawkins’s body to shield him as best they could. A hornets’ nest was blown on to Armon, but he swiped it away, and with the other two and Sergeant Major Taylor carried Hawkins straight up the helicopter’s tail-ramp. Two soldiers assisted Henning into the chopper. Peyton shouted a briefing to the doctor on board, and they laid Hawkins on a stretcher on the vibrating floor of the helicopter.
Armon ran back down the ramp, with his hands stained with Hawkins’s blood, picking twelve hornets out of his arm, which was already beginning to balloon.
The chopper rose rapidly into the sky, then dipped its nose and banked southward, heading towards Camp Bastion and the field hospital.
Back on the ground, one of the FSG soldiers grabbed Peyton’s arm and said, ‘He’s going to be all right. He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’
Peyton looked into the soldier’s tear-filled eyes. ‘Don’t worry. He’s on board now. He’s got surgeons, he’s got the anaesthetist, doctors. He’s got the best available care.’
Messenger ordered the removal of all equipment from the blown-up Vector and then sent the sergeant major’s Vikings and the FSG WMIKs back to Inkerman. He moved the company clear of the danger area and then ordered the Apache that had accompanied the MERT Chinook up from Bastion to deny the Vector. He watched as the Apache unleashed two Hellfire missiles, and a new column of smoke and flames rose up from the stricken vehicle.
5
Before heading back into Inkerman, Messenger reflected on what had happened. It had been a textbook attack. It was only 600 metres from Inkerman. The compounds provided perfect concealment for the fighters positioning their lethal device. The damage that had been done to the compounds, the surrounding area and the track itself, meant that any signs of digging would be hard to detect. The device was positioned at a narrow point on the track, just where it began to rise. And once the FSG vehicles had deployed out of Inkerman along the Jusulay track, there was only one way for them to come back. A well-reconnoitred, carefully planned and perfectly executed operation. There was no doubt in Messenger’s mind – this was a professional piece of work, carried out not by locals but highly trained and experienced Taliban fighters.
Carver had been telling Messenger ever since he arrived at Inkerman that it was just a matter of time before the Taliban returned to the Green Zone north of Sangin. And they would want to demonstrate to the local community, as well as their leaders in Musa Qalah and in Pakistan, that they were far from beaten. They would do this by striking back at the British, on the ground and in their bases. Although it had not materialized last night, the intelligence that the Taliban were reinfiltrating fitted with this well-executed ambush.
The battle group intelligence officer, Captain Tom Coleman, had mentioned the callsign ‘Farouk’ to Messenger on several occasions. They knew virtually nothing about the man that used this radio callsign, but there was intelligence that he was a seasoned commander and might be the leader of a renewed Taliban offensive in the area, bringing in battle-hardened jihadists from across the Pakistan border. Messenger wondered whether the shadowy Farouk was behind this morning’s attack.
If that is the case, he thought, this is just the beginning…
Soon after he got back into Inkerman, Messenger was informed on the telephone by Lieutenant Colonel Carver that Lance Corporal Alex Hawkins had been declared dead on arrival at the field hospital in Camp Bastion. It was a devastating blow for C Company, their first fatality of the tour. It was even more devastating for the men of FSG Delta, who made up a tight-knit team and together had seen a great deal of action in Helmand. The loss of one of their number was no less a blow than would have been the death of the closest family member.
After Messenger had given them the news, the FSG soldiers sat on their camp beds under cam-nets in tearful silence. Private Harry McCabe spoke to Private Michael Smith about the comrade they had worked so hard to save. ‘One thing I’ll always remember about Alex. You know how if you ask someone a silly question you get the piss taken? Even if you ask rank about something, they still rip you apart, don’t they? Well, the one person in the whole company that I always used to be able to ask a silly question, you know if I was worrying or wondering about something? It was Alex Hawkins. You always knew he wouldn’t take the piss, no matter how bone the question was.’
Sergeant Major
Taylor spoke to Corporal Matt Willan. ‘Matty, I’m sorry about what happened. Must have hit you really hard.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Willan. ‘I didn’t know the bloke.’
Earlier, when he had asked one of the FSG soldiers about who had been wounded, they had said ‘Alex’. Willan assumed it must be a new soldier in the FSG, as he didn’t know anyone called Alex. Despite their closeness, he only ever knew him as Steve or Stephen, the nickname he had given him. When the sergeant major told him that it was Alex Hawkins, his long-time mate almost since school days, Willan felt sick.
6
A few days later, Messenger temporarily handed over C Company to Captain Hicks. Messenger was heading back to Camp Bastion and then to the UK for his R and R. Every soldier in the battalion took a period of fourteen days’ R and R during their six months’ tour in Afghanistan. Although two days were taken up flying to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, it allowed around twelve days to see the family and recharge batteries.
Many soldiers found it hard to relax on R and R. They were so tightly wound by the intensity of operations in Helmand, coming back so quickly into normal day-to-day life in Romford, Chelmsford, Ipswich or the villages of rural Norfolk or Cambridgeshire was a surreal experience. It was often frustrating and bewildering. The age-old story of the soldier returning from the front. No one they met, chatted to or drank with had the slightest idea what they were doing in Afghanistan or what it was like. And very few cared.
The wife might want to let off steam about the trouble she had been having with the kids. Trying to hold down a job and look after them single-handed. And there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills every month, never mind actually get out of the house and away from the depressing and gossip-ridden married quarters area.
Mates from civvie street were absorbed with the day-to-day politics at work, who was nicking who’s girlfriend, why West Ham were being so crap this season, how little the dole paid out, and how much a pint cost.
Of course the iniquities of the latest in a fast-moving string of West Ham managers was of critical importance. But apart from that the Royal Anglian on R and R was not interested in the banality of day-to-day civvie life, and their mates and families were not much interested in what they had been doing either.
And the soldier on R and R was poor company. Peering wistfully into his pint, remembering that insane dash across the Green Zone, pouring sweat, legs almost giving out, heart almost bursting through rib cage… And always distracted, thinking about Sangin, Inkerman, Kajaki, FOB Rob. Looking at the watch. Nine p.m. here, getting on for 0200 hours there. What will the lads be doing now? My platoon will still be up on the peaks overlooking Kajaki, some on stag others in their doss bags. The rest of the company will probably be getting ready to go out on patrol, or maybe they’re moving out now… Wonder if they’re OK? Didn’t hear anything on the news today, not about Afghanistan, although two of our lads were killed in Iraq.
In the same way as civilians have found it impossible to understand in other wars, many of the Royal Anglian soldiers just wanted to get back to the front line, back with their mates, back where – for the time being – they belonged.
Before Messenger left for his R and R, he and Hicks ran through the plan for the next couple of weeks. Hicks had been in the Army for five and a half years. An experienced infantry officer, before coming to Afghanistan, he had served on operations in Iraq and Bosnia, and had done a stint as an instructor at the Infantry Training Centre, Catterick.
Hicks had spent most of the tour so far tied to the company ops room, first in Zeebrugge, then at Inkerman. It wasn’t through choice. He had been desperate to get on the ground, but Messenger needed him in the base. With a range of powerful communications systems to keep the battle group headquarters in Bastion informed about the company’s activities and intentions, and crucially to cue up combat support, resupply and CASEVAC, the ops officer’s role was crucial.
But it was deeply frustrating for most infantry captains, like Hicks, who just wanted to be on the ground, commanding soldiers and fighting the enemy. Hicks was eager to take over the reins of the company in Messenger’s absence. It would get him out on the ground every day, and it was a great opportunity to prove – to himself and everybody else – that he could command a company in combat. And much as he liked and worked well with Messenger, it would give him a welcome break from the hour-by-hour demands that this hardest of taskmasters made on him, plus the chance to bring his own, very different, leadership style to the company, if only for a short time. But as well as being enthusiastic about the prospect of command, Hicks was apprehensive. Stepping up from second in command to company commander was always tough. Somehow it was much more difficult, and in this sort of situation, just as you are getting used to running the show it is time to hand it back. And Hicks didn’t know the ground very well. The company had only been at Inkerman for a couple of weeks, although Messenger had made sure he had got out into the Green Zone a few times, standing in for one of the platoon commanders during his R and R.
Above all, Hicks hoped that the decisions he would have to make as a commander would keep the men of C Company safe. Like his company commander, he cared about his men more than anything else. He knew what his responsibilities were for keeping them alive and making sure they did their job effectively. He liked and respected them, and the feeling was mutual. Again, like Messenger, Hicks was one of the most popular officers in the battalion – among all ranks. He had earned their trust, affection and admiration not by letting them take the easy option or by being ‘one of the lads’, but by doing his job diligently and effectively, and by his actions making it absolutely clear that he cared for them and was as loyal to them as he was to his brother officers and his superiors.
Squinting out of the window of the Chinook as it flew south towards Bastion, Messenger worried about what lay ahead for his men while he was away. He had no qualms about leaving the company in Hicks’s hands. He trusted him utterly and knew that he was more than capable of doing the job. But ever since the attack that killed Alex Hawkins, he had speculated on what the Taliban were up to. It had gone quiet again since that devastating blow, and, most worrying, there was an almost total intelligence vacuum.
Messenger had driven the company harder than ever since Hawkins’s death, knowing that he had to continue to dominate the Green Zone north-east of Sangin. He had to find out as much as he could about Taliban activity, by talking to locals and by observing what was going on – getting ever-greater insight into the normal pattern of life so that he could spot the abnormal. He had to have troops on the ground as much as possible to try to deny freedom of movement to the enemy. And he needed to maintain a presence in order to reassure the locals that the British would be staying and would defend them when the Taliban came back.
He had told Hicks to maintain this momentum, to patrol in strength in the Green Zone as often as possible, and preferably every day.
7
On the morning of Tuesday 7 August, the Taliban launched a series of 107mm rockets at FOB Inkerman. They landed harmlessly outside the base, but this was the beginning of the campaign of attacks against Inkerman that Carver had predicted. There were further attacks the following day and the day after that.
On Thursday 9 August, Captain Hicks, acting company commander, led 10 and 11 Platoons and the FSG on a patrol to the village of Putay, 7 kilometres from Inkerman. The company group moved out of Inkerman mounted in a column of Vikings, WMIKs and Vectors heading north across the desert. A thousand metres from Jusulay, in the desert, the men dismounted and patrolled towards Putay, in the Green Zone.
The Vikings, with their turret-mounted machine-guns, and the FSG with their guns, GMGs and Javelin missiles, remained on the high ground in overwatch. But their utility to the company was limited. Once the men on foot passed through the first row of trees on the edge of the Green Zone, the Vikings and FSG could not get a clear enough picture of them, the enemy or the civilian population to b
e able to provide any effective fire support.
It was early morning, but the sun was already beating down hard, and after only a few hundred metres on foot, the men of C Company were dripping sweat as they crossed the 611. Entering the Green Zone, with its multitude of well-concealed ambush sites, jungle-like undergrowth and deep, muddy irrigation ditches, was never a great experience, but at least the heat was mitigated to a small extent by the Green Zone’s intermittent shade.
Corporal Andrew ‘Bomber’ Brown, normally a section commander, was today commanding 10 Platoon. Lieutenant Perrin, the platoon commander, was still on R and R, and Sergeant Armon had an injury and was under treatment in Bastion. Brown, a tough and energetic NCO, whose courage and leadership under fire had saved the lives of Private Gordon and Guardsman Harrison during a heavy contact in Mazdurak in May, was relishing the opportunity to command at a higher level.
As 10 Platoon approached Putay, leading the company in, Brown saw a scene he had never witnessed before. If the Taliban were preparing for a fight, the local farmers and villagers would often up sticks and head out of the area, returning when the shooting ended. But this was different. A vast mass of people, mainly elderly men, women and children, were running towards them out of the area dense with compounds. It was an exodus, and the women, covered by black robes and head scarfs, were bent double under piles of their possessions, some carrying babies, others dragging goats and cows.