Attack State Red

by Richard Kemp

  A sudden movement caught his eye. A compound roof, 300 metres to the right, in front of 2 Platoon. Bailey swung his scope on to it. Stacked on the roof were huge bundles of dried poppy stalks. Beside one of the bundles, a Taliban fighter, wearing a dark kurta, was kneeling up, holding a PKM machine-gun. Bailey could clearly make out the bipod, and the man seemed to be pulling the working parts to the rear, as if he was trying to clear a stoppage. Bailey adjusted his sights, took aim and fired. Missed. He knew he had the right settings. He knew he had the right point of aim. Why did it miss, or is this bloke bullet-proof? He fired again. The fighter fell forward on to his machine-gun and then crumpled into a ball on the roof. He didn’t move. Bailey kept him in his sights, watching to see if he got up. He doubted he would, not with a .338 bullet in him.

  He detected movement on the left-hand side of the compound wall and slowly moved his sight to it. Another fighter, wearing a light-coloured kurta, AK47 slung over his shoulder, was climbing up the wall, pulling himself on to the roof. He walked across to where the other man lay, put his hands under the dead fighter’s armpits and started dragging him towards the edge of the roof. He dropped the corpse to the ground. Bailey fired, and the second fighter followed his comrade down, head first.

  Heavy fire was still streaming towards the two FSG soldiers in the open. Below him, Bailey heard Colour Sergeant Faupel, the FSG commander, shout to them, ‘Gav! Gav! You’re going to have to run for it. Drop your daysacks off. When I give rapid fire, get up and run back here. Stand by. Stand by. Raaaapid – fire!’

  The enemy compound and the treelines round it were hit by a wall of fire, as all the FSG and 3 Platoon machine-gunners and riflemen opened up. From the roof, Bailey joined in, cranking off his .338 rounds into windows and doors.

  The Taliban fire slowed significantly but did not stop, and the two FSG men got up and ran, bullets cracking around them, and somehow made it back behind the compound wall.

  5

  After Bailey killed the two fighters on their compound roof, all enemy fire into Alexander’s position ceased. Behind him, the other section in the platoon was still in contact, and the firefight continued with 3 Platoon and the FSG on the left. On the net, Alexander heard Biddick, calm as ever, say, ‘All stations, this is Zero Alpha. Orders. Two Zero remain in current location and suppress the enemy. One Zero are to move forward and assault the enemy compound forward right of Two Zero. Three Zero are to continue to provide fire support from current position. One Zero Alpha, acknowledge, over.’

  Lieutenant Denning said, ‘Roger out,’ and Oliviero watched as he gave rapid orders to the three section commanders. Then Brooks was back with the section. ‘OK, lads, we’re going to move through the ditch and assault the compounds to the right, two hundred metres away.’ He indicated a complex of three dark brown compounds. The men nodded, confirming they knew where they were going. ‘2 Platoon were contacted from there. Don’t know enemy strength. As a platoon we will clear all of the compounds. 2 Platoon will give fire support from their current location, as will 3 Platoon, further left.’ He pointed out the other platoon positions. ‘Order of march from here is Davies’s section, Field’s section, then us.’

  They moved into the ditch. Members of 2 Platoon were in fire positions near the bank, providing cover. The water was chest height, and the men waded along, holding rifles and machine-guns above their heads. Oliviero fought against the strong current and the tree branches, tangled roots and brambles, struggling to move forward with the sludgy mud at the bottom of the ditch sucking his boots in.

  As they battled along the ditch, an Apache sat overhead, and they heard the thunderous rapid clatter of its 30mm gun as it blasted enemy further in depth.

  The platoon reached a point just short of the compound, and Corporal Davies’s section clawed their way out of the ditch and moved up to assault the first compound, attacking at state red. Oliviero, still in the ditch, heard the ear-splitting blast of a bar-mine exploding into the wall, then two grenades and the rattle of smallarms fire as Davies’s men entered the building.

  Oliviero was now out of the ditch, water pouring from his daysack and dripping from his trousers and shirt, and Brooks stacked the section up against the compound wall. Davies’s men were clearing the place room by room, and Oliviero could hear the muffled rifle fire within.

  The engineers set up a bar-mine for entry into the next compound. Oliviero and Private Craig Broom, Assault Team 1, were poised to rush in. The charge refused to function. Brooks cursed then moved quickly to the corner. ‘No explosive entry. We’ll go in through the entrance round this corner. Hicksie, push past the entry.’

  Hicks, carrying his Minimi, ran forward to secure the far side and protect the assault team from enemy attack. Brooks shouted, ‘Assault Team 1, move in now. I’m right behind.’

  Oliviero and Private Craig Broom ran up to the compound entrance. The entry was blocked by stacks of dried opium poppy stalks, piled up to close it off. With one hand pointing his rifle into the entryway, Oliviero pulled the stalks away. He was worried. Too exposed.

  Broom fired into the room, as Oliviero dived over the top of the poppy stalks and rolled through into the compound. Immediately he knelt up and started blasting bullets all round the courtyard area. Broom dived in. The two sprayed a hut on the left and checked it. Clear. The pair raced from room to room, firing into each one.

  They moved back into the middle of the open courtyard, and Oliviero heard the whoosh of an RPG just above his head. He was thrown to the ground, deafened by the blast and battered by lumps of baked dirt as it exploded against the far wall. The explosion was colossal, far greater than any other RPG impact. By an amazing fluke, the warhead had exploded precisely where the defective bar-mine was positioned, causing it to detonate at the same time.

  Dazed, bruised and disorientated, Oliviero picked himself up. There was a mush in his ears, as if he was under water, but from outside the compound he could make out muffled cries of ‘Medic! Medic!’ He couldn’t see anything. The compound was full of dust and smoke. He thought, Where’s Broomie? Broom had been nearer the point the RPG exploded. He was horror-stricken. He called, ‘Broomie! Broomie!’ There was no answer. God don’t let him be dead. Please.

  The dust began to settle, and he could now begin to see the outline of the compound. He saw Broom picking himself up, unsteady on his feet.

  Oliviero moved over to him. The two men were totally covered in thick, brown dust from head to foot. They looked at each other. They said nothing, but Oliviero knew Broom was thinking exactly the same thing as he was: How did we survive that?

  Broom started laughing. Oliviero thought, What the hell is he laughing about? Then he was laughing himself.

  Brooks and the rest of the section rushed in through the entrance-way. Brooks said to Oliviero and Broom. ‘You two OK? Thought you’d been clobbered.’

  Without further ceremony, he allocated fire positions and arcs to the section, who filed past, staring at Oliviero and Broom as if they were ghosts. Oliviero thought, Covered in all this dust we probably look something like ghosts anyway. We nearly were.

  Biddick had walked in behind Brooks and was conferring with Captain Charlie Harmer, his FST commander. Oliviero looked at him, as ever cool, calm and collected. He thought, Biddick at the front, what a surprise, always at the front.

  Biddick half-grinned, ‘Hello, Oliviero. You having a good war?’ and then he and his men left the compound.

  He’s probably taking point now, thought Oliviero. He dropped to one knee, drank some water and reloaded his magazines from the spare ammo in his bandolier.

  Brooks, positioned on a small platform that gave a view over the compound wall, together with Private Scott Hardy, his GPMG gunner, yelled, ‘There’s enemy over there.’

  As Hardy opened up with his gun, Hicks leapt on to the shelf and got his Minimi firing almost the second he was up there.

  Brooks called, ‘Ollie, up here with your UGL.’

  Oliviero cl
ambered up, squeezing on to the now overcrowded platform. Bullets were pinging into the compound wall below. Hardy and Hicks were blazing away with their guns, tracer pouring towards a group of trees.

  Pointing with his arm, Brooks shouted above the clatter of gunfire, ‘Ollie, ten o’clock, one hundred and fifty metres, trees, two enemy.’

  Oliviero’s UGL was loaded. He looked through his SUSAT sight to confirm the target and could just make out one fighter, between the trees, firing from behind a bund-line. At that range he had to fire indirect. He flipped up the black plastic foresight, recessed into a bracket on the left-hand side of the UGL, near the rifle muzzle. He flipped up the rear sight, also black plastic, about 10 centimetres long, further back on the bracket. He leant against the compound wall, right hand on the rifle pistol grip, left hand on the forward UGL pistol grip, resting the base of his UGL on the wall to give a stable firing platform. With his left thumb, he pressed down the safety catch from ‘safe’ to ‘fire’. He placed the point at the top of the foresight on to the target and lined up the white 200-metre graduation on the left of the rear sight. The weapon was now aligned at 45 degrees to the ground. With his left hand he pressed the UGL pistol grip. The weapon jerked back into his shoulder, there was a deep thud and the UGL flew over the treeline. Missed – reload.

  He didn’t have time to scold himself but, dropping to one knee, banged straight into the reload drills. He pressed up the barrel release catch in front of the UGL trigger guard, and the barrel swivelled to the left. He held the rifle up to the vertical, and the empty case, like a large green plastic bottle cap, dropped at his feet. He took another grenade from his chest bandolier and pushed it into the breach, then clicked the barrel shut.

  The gunners were still rattling fire into the trees, and enemy fire was still crunching into the compound wall and zipping overhead. Oliviero got back into his firing position, this time selecting 150 metres, and fired again. The grenade exploded with a loud blast, kicking up a cloud of smoke and dust. It was right in the centre of the clump of trees.

  Brooks was ecstatic. He clapped Oliviero on the back, ‘Quality, quality.’

  6

  The enemy fighters had been firing from behind a deep bund-line, and the machine-gunners had been unable to get them. After Oliviero’s grenade hit, there was no further fire from the trees. He had killed them both.

  Lieutenant Denning moved the whole platoon into the compounds that had just been cleared, and he and Sergeant Holmes positioned themselves with Brooks’s section. The Apaches had spotted Taliban withdrawing from the area, moving around a group of compounds several hundred metres away. Biddick ordered them to engage.

  One of the Apaches hovered above Oliviero’s compound. It was so low that Holmes thought he could almost reach up and touch it. The noise from the engines was deafening, but Holmes and his men were elated. An attack helicopter that close in the middle of Taliban country was a real confidence boost.

  On the net, Biddick, relaying a message from the Apache pilot, said, ‘All stations, this is Zero Alpha, Ugly callsign now engaging with flechette rounds.’

  Holmes looked up and saw smoke coming out of the Apache guns, then heard the deafening sound of the chaingun blasting at the Taliban. It sounded like a pneumatic drill as the machine sent burst after burst of deadly flechette canisters into the enemy-held compound.

  Biddick said, ‘Ugly about to fire Hellfire.’

  There was a sudden whoosh as the Hellfire missile flew towards the enemy, and then a distant explosion as it smashed in through the compound wall. Holmes watched the aircraft hover sideways, and he could clearly see the American pilot, pulling the Apache upwards, circling away, looking for further targets.

  The Apaches continued to engage Taliban in compounds and in the open and then moved off, standing by for further tasking. Biddick sent the ANA platoon forward to check and clear the compounds that the Apaches had engaged, and they found several dead bodies and numerous blood trails.

  Biddick tasked 2 Platoon to clear the area of trees that Oliviero had engaged with his UGL, and Corporal Alexander reported on the radio that he had found two bodies, blown apart by Oliviero’s grenade, as well as two further blood trails.

  It was now late morning, and 1 Platoon remained in the compound while the clearances continued. Holmes got around the men. ‘Make sure you drink plenty. Have something to eat now, while we’ve got a pause. Have a boily or something.’

  As he walked round the men, Holmes squeezed down a revolting bag of corned beef, covered in melted lard that had heated up in his webbing and was lukewarm. Some of the men were too exhausted to bother eating, but Holmes made sure they did. ‘Why aren’t you eating? I know it’s disgusting, but eat. Think of the thousands of calories you are using up. You’ve got to replace it. I’m not having any of you going down.’

  Holmes was always mindful of Biddick’s warning to the platoon sergeants before every operation: ‘If any of your men go down because they haven’t drunk enough or eaten enough, I’ll be coming to you for answers.’

  Holmes had Hornigold, acting as his runner, moving around the compound, checking ammo states with the section 2ICs and helping to redistribute bullets, grenades and belts of machine-gun link. He was impressed by Hornigold, the youngest soldier in the battalion, and a strong, tough and fit lad. He had just been in his first contact and for the first time in his young life had been shot at, witnessed RPGs exploding near by, bullets flying in every direction and attack helicopters firing rockets into the enemy from just a few metres overhead. Holmes sat beside him in the compound and said, ‘Well done, Kane, mate, you survived your first contact. You’ve got to survive all the rest too, because your dad’s going to sort me out with my new car if I get you back alive. Believe me, mate, you’re worth a few quid to me.’

  He winked at Hornigold. Then the company was on the move again, advancing with the Helmand River on the left and C Company on the right. All through the day, the fearless Private Sam Hicks led 1 Platoon, and often the whole company, across the battlefield and into contact after contact. During the advance, on Hornigold’s first day of battle, he saw a Taliban fighter concealed in a tree to his front and unhesitatingly fired a full magazine of thirty rounds from his SA80.

  Throughout the day Biddick’s platoons had frequent firefights with the Taliban as they cleared through what seemed like an endless network of compounds; crawling through the undergrowth, wading along irrigation ditches. The men were so utterly exhausted that some of them even fell asleep firing their weapons during contacts. There were many close shaves, as sections were ambushed at point blank range, from compounds and across cornfields. They replied with 81mm fire from the battalion’s Mortar Platoon. And when the attack helicopters departed, Biddick and his FST commander, Captain Charlie Harmer, used to devastating effect a troop of Royal Artillery 105 light guns deployed in the desert.

  With the heat still intense, but the shadows lengthening, at 1800 hours Biddick ordered the company to go firm in a night harbour area near the river.

  7

  After several hours spent helping Sergeant Holmes haul supplies dropped by Chinook to the troops in the harbour area, Oliviero finally got his head down at about midnight. He only managed two hours’ sleep before being shaken back to life for his turn at sentry duty. He was on stag with Private Dan Burgess, one of the section Minimi gunners. Watching their arcs through nightsights, the two men whispered to each other to keep themselves awake. Oliviero was glad to chat: it was the first conversation he’d had with anyone since leaving Sangin. They discussed how the day had gone, what tomorrow might bring and what they hoped for the future. They spoke about the often-discussed and never-realized rumour of ice cream when they got back to Sangin, about football, about the new rumour that they would be marching all the way to Musa Qalah. And about the other rumour that they would be in the Green Zone for ever.

  Five months earlier, on Friday 13 April, both men had been under heavy fire on a compound roof in their
first contact of the tour, blasting away at the Taliban to help Sergeant Holmes and his section get to safety. They had been through so much since that day: endless patrolling around the ruins of Sangin, marching across the desert, battling through the Green Zone, being ambushed, firing bullets back at the Taliban.

  After his close shave just a few hours earlier, Oliviero was now convinced he was going to make it to the end of the tour. ‘You know, Dan,’ he hissed, ‘I can’t believe we haven’t got a scratch with all those bullets and RPGs fired at us since we got out here. How have we got away with it?’

  Burgess shrugged. ‘God knows. I suppose we were just lucky, mate.’

  Oliviero whispered, ‘I wish all our lads had been as lucky as us. I was in the same platoon in training as John Thrumble. I was Chris Gray’s mentor when he first joined the battalion, and I was on the NCOs’ cadre with Skinny Murph and George Davey. Great, great lads, all of them.’

  ‘Yeah I know, and Daz Bonner… I still can’t believe he’s dead.’

  The two soldiers lay in sad and silent thought for a few minutes, all the while intently scanning their arcs, then Burgess whispered, ‘I’d love some Taliban to try and infiltrate into here now, I’d proper mince ’em up.’ He gripped his machine-gun tightly.

  Oliviero grinned. ‘I’d hate to be them, Dan, mate. I’ve seen you firing that LMG too often. Anyway, a lot of our lads may have been killed and wounded – and I’d give anything, anything at all, to have them back. But when I think about them, I always remind myself that we’ve smashed the Taliban a lot worse than they’ve smashed us.’

  After Action Review

  1

  Private Oliviero was right. The Royal Anglian Battle Group, together with their air- and ground-based offensive support forces, ‘smashed the Taliban’ very hard. In addition to the engagements related in the foregoing pages, the Royal Anglian companies fought many, many battles throughout their six-month tour, destroying the enemy in substantial numbers. Despite frequently stiff Taliban resistance, no Royal Anglians were killed in any of these other battles. Many, however, were shot and blown up during firefights; and many more suffered broken bones, especially ankles, heat exhaustion and various other debilitating illnesses.