by Richard Kemp
He ran to the tower as volley after volley of mortar shells and SPG-9 anti-tank missiles were striking the compound, the area outside and the walls. In the tower he positioned himself behind a Javelin and CLU and immediately began scanning for targets. Lance Corporal Ian Goodship and Private Nicholas Stevens were on the tripod-mounted GPMG (SF) guns, blasting fire down into the Green Zone. Lance Corporal Alistair Procter, a broad grin on his face, was blazing away with his GMG.
Captain Ollie Ormiston, pouring sweat in the midday heat, was directing the fire, scanning through binoculars, checking air photographs, and with him was the FSG 2IC, Sergeant Nathan Love. Sergeant Alex Potter, the JTAC, was demanding air. He reported to Ormiston, ‘B1 bomber has been allocated, but they reckon it can’t be here for thirty minutes.’
Just after McCabe arrived in the tower, Dave Hicks scaled the ladder, wearing running shorts and trainers with his helmet, body armour, rifle and radio. Just before the attack, Corporal Ian Peyton, the company medic, had finished talking to his fiancée, Donna, and handed Hicks the satellite phone. Hicks managed a brief conversation with Nicola, his girlfriend, then, when the first shell crumped into the base, said a hasty goodbye, grabbed his kit and came up to get eyes on so he could plan and direct the company’s response.
Hicks could have stayed in the comparative safety of the company ops room, receiving radio reports from his commanders in the FSG tower and the sangars and stand-to positions. But he understood only too well the iron rule that the commander must position himself where he can see the battle as best he can and where he can make a difference. He could do little from the ops room, and not much more from the tower. But at least from here he could get a first-hand feel for what was happening and work out for himself what to do about it. Of course it was much more risky, and he was exposed to enemy fire. But that was of secondary importance to Hicks. His priority was to direct the battle and to lead from the front, whatever the dangers.
Above the din, Sergeant Booth, an MFC attached from the 2nd Battalion, yelled to McCabe, ‘What can you see? Any targets? Any targets?’
McCabe replied, ‘Can’t see anything. There’s rounds coming in everywhere, can’t see… Hang on a minute, Sarge, hang on. I think I can make out something, something at the X-Ray Two Three compounds. Maybe a mortar, can’t really make it out, there’s too much dust and stuff. I can’t engage. It’s out of Javelin range.’
Before McCabe had finished speaking, Booth was on the radio to Sergeant Adrian Evans, whose 81mm mortar section was set up ready to fire from inside the base.
‘Hello, Iron One Three, this is Iron One Three Alfa. Fire mission. Three mortars. X-Ray Two Three. Enemy mortars in the open. Ten rounds fire for effect.’
Evans brought his mortars into action, and Booth squinted intently through his binos to see where the rounds landed.
X-Ray Two Three was a pre-arranged mortar target, and less than a minute after Booth gave his fire orders, the mortars were spitting out the first three of thirty rounds that would pound the enemy mortar position. In normal circumstances, mortar fire had to be authorized by the company commander, but in this situation every second could save lives if Booth was able to take out the enemy mortars and stop the bombs falling into the base.
McCabe scanned across the desert into the Green Zone, searching, searching desperately for any further signs of enemy. Mortars, RPGs and SPG-9s continued to blast all round the base, non-stop. They had never seen anything remotely like this before. Machine-gun and rifle fire was slapping into the mud building below, pinging overhead and thudding into the sandbags all round them.
McCabe flinched and ducked, ‘That was close, Stevo.’
Next to him, Stevens was blasting away with his GPMG (SF), firing so fast it seemed his tracer formed almost continuous arcs of fire into the X-Ray Two Three compound. The two soldiers were laughing. Although he had learnt over recent months about this nervous reaction to coming so close to death, to getting shot at continuously, even as he laughed, McCabe was incredulous that he could do so at this, the most terrifying moment of his life.
Stevens had been firing so many rounds, and so fast, that he was running low on ammo. ‘Going down to get some more rounds,’ he yelled, ducking bullets as he weaved across the roof and slid rapidly down the ladder.
Stevens ran to grab the ammo boxes from one of the WMIKs. There was a large explosion and the sound of tearing steel as an SPG-9 missile blasted into the Oshkosh close support tanker truck parked at the rear of the compound. There was a blinding flash and a fireball flew into the air where the missile had hit. Immediately the truck caught fire and a huge, billowing column of black smoke headed skywards. Quickly the fire died out. The 5,000 gallons of diesel inside the tanker did not ignite, but noxious black smoke continued to pour from the vehicle.
All hell was breaking loose in Inkerman. The FSG tower was hammering fire back at the Taliban, and the C Company and ANA soldiers in their sangars and stand-to positions around the wall were searching for targets and engaging enemy movement.
As Stevens headed back to the tower, an RPG missile landed in the middle of a group of ANA soldiers near the compound wall. Above the gunfire and explosions, cries of ‘Medic, medic!’ resounded round the compound. Corporal Peyton grabbed a stretcher, and Stevens saw him race across to the far side of the compound, towards the ANA.
Peyton came upon a scene of smoke and gore. An ANA soldier was lying in the rubble, pouring blood. He had taken a direct hit from the RPG. Two of his mates dragged him towards Peyton, who grabbed the top half of his body and put him on the stretcher. His legs were almost severed, dragging limply behind him, held on by threads. The soldier was conscious, but he wasn’t screaming. Peyton thought, How can he be so calm?
He took out several packets of QuikClot, an American haemostatic powder designed to arrest high-volume blood loss in large wounds, stopping the haemorrhage before the casualty goes into shock. Peyton poured the powder into the seething bloody cavities where the soldier’s legs had been. The blood flow slowed, but Peyton was frustrated to see that it didn’t stop altogether. He slapped on some HemCon pads, which had similar effects to QuikClot, and then dressed the soldier with stump bandages before punching a morphine autoject into him.
Helped by the other ANA soldiers, Peyton carried the half-dead man back to the medical centre, put fluid lines into his arms, and continued working on his legs.
15
The radios were alive with traffic, and Sergeant Waters, acting commander of 10 Platoon, scaled the tower to give Hicks an update on what was happening on the ground. Hicks was standing up, scanning the area, trying to get an understanding of exactly what they were faced with. How many enemy were out there? This ferocity of attack and its accuracy were something completely different to anything they had seen before. The enemy were firing several different weapon systems from multiple, well-concealed firing points. Carver’s assessment that the Taliban had sent in their hard-core, properly trained fighters, perhaps from across the border, had come horribly true.
Did they plan to try to storm into the base? Looking around, he knew the enemy wouldn’t stand a chance if they did. He had too much firepower, and they would have to get across the open. What other options did they have?
After Waters had briefed him, Hicks shouted above the noise, ‘OK, thanks, Segeant Waters. Well done. Keep your lads on the wall. Make sure they stay totally vigilant. I’ll keep you informed by radio.’
Waters departed. Hicks called to McCabe: ‘Where are they? Can you see them?’
McCabe turned and shouted, ‘No, sir, nothing, can’t see anything.’
McCabe turned his head back and saw a black rugby-ball-shaped object, flying towards the tower from the left, hurtling straight towards him. Everything went into slow motion. He felt sick, his mouth went completely dry, his stomach cramped, and he thought, I’m dead. Can’t outrun that. That’s me gone. The Soviet-designed rocket-assisted fin-stabilized 73mm SPG-9 Spear anti-tank missile slammed i
nto the FSG tower at 700 metres per second. There was a blinding flash and a massive, deafening blast, which shook the whole building and threw up thick clouds of dust and debris. Heavy jagged shards of red-hot shrapnel scythed viciously through the air, ripping apart everything in their path.
The tower was a scene of almost total devastation. All of the soldiers had been hurled into the roof by the blast. Smoke poured from Lance Corporal Goodship’s body armour. He was concussed and had twenty shrapnel wounds on the back of his head, his shoulders, arms, back and legs. The blast sucked the breath out of Ormiston, deafened him, threw him across the sangar; the wall collapsed on top of him, crushing his ribs. He lay in a crumpled heap under the sandbags, struggling to breathe. Blood dripped from Love’s ears, covering his body armour. He was knocked off his feet, dazed and battered. Stevens was flung across the roof; he was stunned and disorientated, and a large chunk of shrapnel tore into his leg. McCabe was also thrown across the roof; he was bleeding from multiple shrapnel wounds in his hip, arms and calf, his eardrum was perforated, and he was knocked unconscious.
Captain Hicks took most of the SPG-9’s force. There had been only sandbags in front of him when the missile screamed in and exploded. The blast picked him up like a rag doll and flung him violently to the other side of the roof. He landed on his back beside Sergeant Love.
Love thrust his hand into a gaping hole the size of a coke can in the left side of Hicks’s chest to stem the streaming blood. Sniper Corporal Michael Morris and GPMG gunner Drummer Michael Williamson strapped on field dressings. Hicks was unconscious and had multiple shrapnel wounds to his head, torso, groin and legs. The three men fought to plug the holes so they could get him down from the tower.
In the midst of the carnage, Lance Corporal Proctor, standing up as if nothing had happened, continued to blast out burst after burst of 40mm high-explosive grenades from his Heckler and Koch GMG. Lance Corporal Goodship, covered in dust, battered, bleeding and still dazed, got himself back behind his GPMG and was sending streams of 7.62mm tracer into likely Taliban firing positions.
Love, Morris, Williamson and Sergeant Booth, the MFC, lowered Hicks down the makeshift ladder, burning their hands and legs on the hot steel rungs, heated up in the intense glare of the early afternoon sun.
Ormiston, who had managed to get his own battered and bruised body down to the ground, received Hicks at the bottom of the ladder, and they put him on a stretcher at the base of the tower. The medics went straight to work there, not wanting to waste time moving him to the medical room.
McCabe had regained consciousness up in the tower. He put a field dressing on his own leg, which was bleeding from multiple small shrapnel wounds. He wanted to stay at his post, but with his Javelin destroyed by the SPG-9, he was just in the way so reluctantly agreed to move down to the ground. There he saw Hicks and, with Sergeant Waters, helped to stem the bleeding in his groin, calf and thigh.
Peyton handed over the ANA soldier, whom he had stabilized as much as he was going to, slung the medical bergen over his shoulder and raced out of the medical centre to help with Hicks.
Sergeant Booth was kneeling beside Hicks, slapping him round the face. ‘Sir, stay with us. Sir, can you hear me? Sir, stay with us, sir. Stay with us.’ Lance Corporal Pearce, an RAMC medic, was fighting to stop the bleeding in Hicks’s upper body. She briefed Peyton on what she had done so far as she worked to fix a HemCon bandage to the gash in his shoulder.
Peyton knelt down and looked at Hicks. He was conscious, his face was white, and he was covered in thick, light grey dust. There was blood everywhere. Lance Corporal Pearce had strapped an oxygen mask round his face. A blood pressure cuff was strapped round his upper arm, and a pulse oximeter clipped to one of his fingers. The two devices were connected up to a Propaq patient monitor, on the ground next to Hicks, a box about the size of a car battery that gives a read-out of blood pressure, pulse rate and oxygen levels.
Peyton quickly checked the readings. Oxygen levels low: not surprising. Pulse is racing: his heart is working overtime to deal with the blood loss. Blood pressure is dangerously low. Fifty over thirty. That’s the first thing I need to sort.
Peyton knew what he had to do to bring up Hicks’s blood pressure. He desperately needed fluids, and Peyton saw from the readings that he had capilliary shut-down. His veins were collapsed due to the massive amount of blood he had lost, so there was no chance of getting fluids into his body intravenously. Peyton took out an EZ-IO intraosseous kit from his bergen. The main part of the kit was a drill, about the size and shape of a battery-powered screwdriver, and it functioned in much the same way. He connected the intraosseous needle into the head of the drill. He wiped clean the area around Hicks’s left knee and drilled into the inside of his tibia, just below the knee-cap. In two seconds he heard a click, as the needle automatically detached itself. He withdrew the drill, leaving the needle sticking about one centimetre out of the leg.
As he worked he told Booth to set up a fluid bag. He took the end of the giving set, a clear plastic tube fixed into the bag, and connected it to the needle.
‘OK, Boothie, squeeze the bag and keep the pressure on it, keep the fluid flowing through.’
Peyton studied the Propaq readings. Hicks was getting oxygen, Lance Corporal Pearce had stemmed the worst of the bleeding, and the sodium-chloride-based Hartmann’s solution that Booth was holding was now flowing into his body. With relief Peyton saw Hicks’s blood pressure creep back up. He was beginning to stabilize.
Hicks tried to sit up and tore the mask away from his face. ‘Get me back up there,’ he shouted, ‘Get me back up!’
Peyton pressed the mask on to him again and tried to push him down, but Hicks fought it off, ‘Get me up to the tower, get me back up.’
Peyton turned to Booth. ‘Boothie, keep that fluid going in. And keep talking to him. I don’t care what you say. Say what you like. Just keep talking to him. You need to calm him down. That’s the most important thing now.’
Peyton was amazed that Hicks didn’t seem to be in any great pain. That’s the adrenalin at work, he thought. Thank God for that, we can’t give him any morphine with his head injury, and with his breathing rate fluctuating so much, morphine would screw up his respiratory system as well.
Peyton checked the Propaq readings again. Still bad, but now heading in the right direction. He thought that Hicks was as stable as he was going to get here at Inkerman and, assuming he got rapidly back to the hospital in Bastion, he stood a fighting chance of surviving these horrific wounds.
Word spread around the base that Hicks was seriously wounded. It was the worst news. He was loved by the soldiers, and they were depending on him to lead them through the most intense attack any of them had ever experienced.
Lieutenant Manie Olivier, 11 Platoon commander, took command of the base and the company. Enemy missiles and machine-gun bullets were still pouring into Inkerman. Ormiston, who was back in the tower, continued to direct fire, urgently trying to identify enemy weapon positions and attack them with direct and indirect fire.
While Olivier confirmed the MERT was on the way in, Sergeant Major Taylor set about organizing the CASEVAC. He said to Lance Corporal Michael Robinson, a section commander in 10 Platoon, ‘Get a team together, get those two WMIKs and get the HLS secured. Report on the net when you’re in position.’
‘Sir, is the chopper going to come in with all this incoming?’
‘Yes, it’s going to try and get in. Now get some guys together and get it done.’
The HLS was just outside the compound back gate. Ignoring the fact that at least 50 per cent of all the incoming rockets and shells had landed in and around the HLS, Robinson grabbed a handful of C Company men and moved out into the enemy fire.
The sergeant major loaded Hicks and the horrifically wounded ANA soldier on to his quad bike and drove them down towards the HLS. It was dangerous, but there was nothing else for it. Hicks had to be got back to Bastion rapidly if he was going to have a chanc
e of surviving. The other casualties, Sergeant Love, Lance Corporal Goodship, Private Stevens and Private McCabe, hobbled out to the HLS under their own steam.
Within a few minutes the Apaches roared into sight and loitered overhead, hunting for any sign of the enemy. The Chinook wasn’t far behind. Taylor supervised the loading of the casualties, Pearce did a rapid handover of Hicks to the MERT doctor, and seconds later, hurling clouds of dust in every direction, the huge chopper was speeding back to Bastion.
In the FSG tower, Private Peter Howell, manning the remaining Javelin, continued to search the Green Zone with his CLU. Something caught his eye, a puff of smoke. He studied the area intently for a few moments till he was sure, then shouted above the deafening two-way gunfire and explosions, ‘Sir, I can see smoke, straight across the Meean Rud wadi. Three thousand five hundred metres. I think it’s their mortars.’
The JTAC, Sergeant Alex Potter, was standing next to Ormiston. Ormiston said, ‘Can you get some guns on to that?’
Fifteen kilometres away in FOB Robinson, the men of 28/143 Battery Royal Artillery were standing by their three guns. When they received word on the battle group artillery net that troops were in contact within range of their howitzers, the artillerymen straight away stood to, ready for immediate response if a fire mission was ordered. They had spread cam-nets and ponchos above the rear parts of the guns, to try to achieve some respite from the searing heat.
Sergeant Potter transmitted the fire orders to the artillery command post, and instructions were barked out to the gun line. Jets of flame spewed out from the muzzles of the three L118 light guns as they hurled their 105mm high-explosive shells across the 15 kilometres of desert. Fifty seconds later the shells started to pound in around the Taliban weapon position in the Meean Rud wadi.
They weren’t quite on target. Potter called in an order adjusting fire, and then a second volley of three rounds landed. Binoculars in one hand to check the point of impact, radio handset in the other, Potter hit his pressel and ordered the gunners at FOB Robinson, ‘On target, fire for effect.’