by Kemp Ross
Despite the fact that everyone appeared to be recuperating nicely, there was an unspoken acknowledgement that the death of A Company's Darren Bonner had affected everyone in the regiment deeply. When Darren had been repatriated, the remainder of A Company had been in the field, unable to pay their last respects. So it was that a memorial service was held at Bastion for their fallen colleague. It was a subdued group of soldiers who congregated to honour Darren's memory, and it was humbling to see the looks of solemn reverence they had on their faces as they watched a montage of images from his repatriation ceremony. Tears fell as his friends gazed at photographs of his coffin, draped in the Union Jack, being loaded on to a plane to be returned to his grieving family. All this accompanied by the strains of ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ by Green Day. An emotional tune. Emotional lyrics. I had to struggle to hold back the tears myself; and I couldn't help but wonder how many more Royal Anglians would have to make that same return journey. After all, they weren't even halfway through their time in Afghanistan.
I'm sure I wasn't the only person entertaining such thoughts.
There wasn't a lot of time for the regiment to mourn their lost colleague. Nor was there a great deal of time for B Company to continue resting their battle-weary bones. Very soon after their return to Bastion, the lads were briefed for their next task.
The town of Now Zad lies some 70 kilometres north of Camp Bastion. It had been the site of some severe fighting in the past and parts of the town were still rife with Taliban. As a result, many of the local people had been driven away. A Company had already been stationed there, with the intention of driving the Taliban away from Now Zad so that the locals could return; B Company were to replace them and continue that task. Easier said than done, although as we were being briefed in the heat of the Bastion day by A Company's 2ic, Captain Paul Steele, it was made clear to us that headway had already been made. A projector beamed a detailed satellite map of Now Zad on to a screen in front of us; a green dotted line appeared, bisecting the town. When the Anglians had taken over, the Royal Marines would not cross this line. This meant that the Taliban were calling the shots – literally. When the Anglians arrived, they started to push northwards into Taliban-occupied territory. This put the enemy on the back foot and gave A Company the opportunity to start to decide where and when contacts would happen. Progress, of a sort.
Now Zad, though, presented certain difficulties for which Jucaylay had not prepared the lads. For a start, the town was out of the range of our artillery. This meant that the Fire Support Group – located on a hill on the outskirts of the town – would shoulder much more of the responsibility for keeping the troops stationed in the town itself safe. Perhaps more worryingly, the Taliban in Now Zad seemed to be of a different calibre to those we had encountered during Operation Lastay Kulang. In Jucaylay, the enemy had fled as soon as the troops started to get the upper hand. In Now Zad they had a track record of digging in and making a fight of it. Despite the fact that A Company had undertaken an offensive role, they were still there. Their mortar fire was extremely accurate, as was their small-arms fire. It was also clear that they had a sentry point that enabled them to identify British troops whenever they pushed east, but so far the soldiers had been unable to pinpoint its location.
B Company were to be stationed in Now Zad for six weeks. It was a long time to be away from the comforts of Bastion and we would be joining them to see how they coped in this unfriendly outpost of Helmand Province. An advance party of thirty or forty men would be going on ahead to get the lie of the land; the rest of us would be following on when the order came through. We didn't know how we'd be getting there. There were two options. By road, which I knew from past experience was incredibly dangerous. Or by helicopter, which wasn't much better, as the landing area at Now Zad had come under regular attack by the Taliban. While the 140 men of B Company waited to find out how they would be deployed to Now Zad, they kept busy. All their additional weapons systems needed cleaning, as they had fired a lot of ammo during their time in Jucaylay; equally their vehicles needed to be thoroughly checked over by the armoured Marines. When you rely so heavily on your machinery, you want to make sure it's not going to let you down at the crucial moment. Morale had been boosted by the brief period of rest at Camp Bastion and I noticed that B Company seemed to have a renewed appetite for a fight. Tim Newton articulated it well. Although our location in Now Zad would be a relatively secure one, that didn't mean we would simply be sitting back and taking it easy. ‘We've got to take a fight to the enemy. We're not there to mince around.’
Quite.
Finally the word came through: we would be travelling to Now Zad the following morning by Viking, crewed by the Royal Marines.
Having already gone out on one operation, I felt a little more sanguine about our deployment to Now Zad. Not complacent, but at least I knew something of what to expect. I didn't have the fear of the unknown to contend with: just the fear of battle.
The Viking vehicles were prepared that evening. There wasn't a chance for much sleep, as preparations were completed in the pitch black of the small hours the following morning. It was amazing that everyone could prepare their gear with such ease in the darkness; but I guess they knew the vehicles and their kit so well by now that they could almost have done it blindfolded.
We set off in the dark, not knowing how long the journey would take us. We expected to be in Now Zad in somewhere between six and twelve hours; but I knew only too well from the trek to Jucaylay how such estimates could turn out to be wildly wrong. I knew, too, just what dangers we faced as we rolled through the desert at a crucifyingly slow 15 kilometres per hour. Just as before, there was a constant threat of landmines and ambushes. We relied heavily on the skill of our drivers to keep us safe and whole. I watched the sun rising magnificently over the desert in an attempt to keep my mind off the dangers.
The terrain was hard, the Viking hot and uncomfortable. And it wasn't just explosive devices that we had to watch out for. The desert earth was filled with deep indentations or wadis, which in the winter are wide streams of water but in the summer are baked hard into treacherous trenches. It's almost impossible for the drivers to see where these indentations occur because of the massive dust clouds kicked up by the vehicles churning over the sand. We were miles from anywhere when our Viking suddenly juddered and fell into one of these wadis. Our driver kept his speed up to try to force us up out of the other side, but without success. We came to a sudden, jolting stop, the Viking cocked at an angle, its tracks spinning uselessly in the sandy ground, the only thing keeping the two parts of the vehicle together being the hydraulics in the middle.
We were stuck.
It was a tense, risky moment. I was virtually hanging upside down and felt like an egg in a tin can. We were sitting ducks, a prime target for any passing Taliban. Our only option was to be towed out of the wadi by another Viking. As that happened, our gunner shot covering fire into the desert to make sure that we were not the object of any opportunistic enemy bombardment. It was a great relief to feel the Viking being hauled out of that ditch, ready to continue the slow journey to Now Zad.
Thankfully we approached the town in one piece. Well, almost. As a result of that choppy, juddering journey I lost a tooth – a fascia, in fact, the result of an old rugby injury. An unimportant event in the scheme of things, of course. We were all acutely aware that injuries of a much graver nature were more than possible and as we neared the end of our journey we were happy at least that it had not been blighted by tragedy as my last trip in similar circumstances had been. It had taken us nearly six hours to come into range of a strategically crucial land formation on the outskirts of Now Zad called ANP Hill.
So called because the Afghan National Police were once posted there, ANP Hill is a key location in the struggle for superiority in Now Zad. Located to the south-west of the town, it offers a view, and the possibility of making an arc of fire, over all the surrounding area, and most importantly o
ver the military base in Now Zad District Centre as well as the rest of the town. The District Centre, or DC, is actually located in the western part of Now Zad, approximately 900 metres from ANP Hill. To its south-west is a patch of desert. This is used as a landing zone for incoming helicopters and is under constant surveillance by the Fire Support Groups on ANP Hill.
It felt good to come into range of the hill. It didn't mean that we were safe from incoming fire, but it did mean that if the enemy were foolish enough to give it a go, the fifty-cals and mortars up on the hill would soon give them the good news that we were under their protection. Under the watchful eye of the Fire Support Group we moved into Now Zad towards the safety of the British base. There was something slightly spooky about the deserted streets of this war-ravaged town. The sturdy metal gates that marked the entrance to the District Centre opened to let our convoy in; then they closed firmly and, I hoped, safely behind us. We had arrived at our new home.
Now Zad DC had seen its share of action. The Gurkhas and the Paras had been holed up here while ANP Hill was still under the control of the Afghan National Police and Now Zad itself was fully inhabited. Things were different now. The area around the DC was deserted, for a start. Most of the residents of the compounds that made up the town had fled to surrounding villages or sought safety in the mountains that hulked in the distance. One of these mountain ranges was known as the Crocodile's Back because of its resemblance to the reptile; the name seemed appropriate, somehow. Towards the north-east of the town was a wide dried-out wadi that marked the heart of the green zone and it was here that the Taliban were congregated in force. The DC itself was a square compound surrounded by wicked-looking barbed wire and with lookout posts at each corner. It was once home to the Afghan National Police, and other buildings inside its walls included a prison and a mosque. At least, that's what they used to be. Although the Afghan national flag flew from the top of the DC, the compound was now completely controlled and occupied by the British and was the base from which they kept the Taliban at bay.
As soon as B Company arrived, it fell to Mick Aston to introduce them to their new surroundings. He was characteristically direct. ‘I'll be straight with you,’ he announced to the assembled company. ‘The tempo here is a lot lower than what we've had up until now.’ That, at least, was good news. It meant that we didn't have to expect the same level of contact with the enemy that we had experienced during Operation Lastay Kulang. But Mick immediately qualified his statement. ‘That doesn't mean we need to take it easy or become complacent. And to tell you the truth, that is my biggest fear. When you look out there and you go up to ANP Hill and you look out into the green zone over there, that's where the Taliban are. And they're there in force, in well-defended positions. You only have to look out 400 metres from the front gate and that's where A Company got themselves into a fair bit of trouble.’
What Mick was saying was this: Now Zad DC might seem like an oasis of safety, but it was an oasis surrounded by a desert of danger. ‘There's a lot of Taliban activity over there,’ he continued. ‘There's a big wadi and that's like a Taliban highway between the north and further down to the south-east to Musa Qala and Sangin. We need to pick our fight. And when we do, we'll go out in strength. Pick the time and the place, and we choose that, not them. We'll fucking put them in the hurt locker.’
Put them in the hurt locker. A favourite saying of Mick's and one that caused a ripple of laughter through the troops. They seemed motivated by his speech, and ready to do what he was asking of them: to take the fight to the Taliban.
In order to get more of a sense of the British base and the surrounding area, I joined Private Thomas Cox in one of the four fortified lookout posts, also known as sangars. These sangars are cramped, low-ceilinged little places, reinforced with sandbags and surrounded by the same caging that encased the armoured vehicles that had moved us through the desert. The caging is there to diffuse the force of any RPGs that are fired towards the sangar. How much good it would do I wasn't sure and I hoped I wouldn't have to find out. At eye level there was an observation gap through which Thomas could aim his GPMG. It looked out over the deserted area of Now Zad and into the green zone. On the wall in front of him there was a photographic map with a grid superimposed and each of the compounds numbered, an exact replica of the view from the sangar. This map is an important tool: in the event of a contact, it means a spotter can join the gunner in the lookout post and point to the exact area on the map where he thinks there is enemy movement, rather than try to explain it, which would be cumbersome and far from effective. The way in which the compounds on the maps are numbered is changed on a regular basis in case one of these maps should fall into enemy hands.
From these observation posts, the green zone was easy to see. The difference between our location and the enemy's was stark. We had the dry, arid desert where nothing grows and there is no water; they had irrigated land with all that comes with it – water, fruit trees, fresh food. I knew where I'd rather have been, if it weren't for the fact that walking unprotected into the green zone would have been less good for your life expectancy than it would for your appetite. The area intervening the British and Taliban troops was the deserted part of Now Zad. I couldn't help thinking that the situation bore all the hallmarks of a classic stand-off.
Private Cox had been working shifts in the sangar of two hours on and two hours off. I asked him if he managed to get much sleep in those two hours. He tried, he said, but I had the impression that sleep came with difficulty. From the sangar, you got a real sense of the true situation in Now Zad. The British troops had been forced into a static position whereas the Taliban had the run of the green zone and were also able to make use of the many compounds surrounding the DC. The streets between compounds provided cover and access and meant that the enemy could get within 20 or 30 metres of the British base without running the risk of being observed. Indeed, when the Paras and the Gurkhas had been there they had found that the Taliban were able to come close enough to hurl grenades over the wall into the DC. There was also a long, straight street approaching the base that had become known as RPG alley because it was easy for the Taliban to jump into the road, fire an RPG at the DC and then jump immediately back out of range before the lookouts had had time to counter-attack.
All this made me realize that having the base in the middle of the town presented a distinct strategic disadvantage. As Private Cox philosophically put it, however, you play the hand you're dealt. And it wasn't as if the positioning of the base was ideal for the ordinary inhabitants of Now Zad, either. Although the compounds were deserted, they occasionally needed to return to their houses and before they could even consider doing that they had to approach the British base and ask permission. They knew what would happen if they walked unannounced through the streets and were mistaken for Taliban; and I was left in no doubt that if whoever was manning the sangar saw any kind of unauthorized movement ahead of him, he'd open fire. Card Alpha, of course, would dictate that he would need to identify the target as a threat – the rules of engagement were such that he couldn't have shot someone simply for being a ‘dicker’. But it was pretty obvious to everyone concerned that if movement was spotted from the sangar, it probably wasn't someone coming to fix the roof. Private Cox told me that their hope was to get as many civilians to move back into the town as possible; but it was perfectly clear that with this kind of stand-off, that wasn't going to happen any time soon.
‘It's quite beautiful,’ I observed as I looked out of the sangar at the surrounding mountains. Private Cox didn't reply. I suppose, in his position, the beauty of the Afghan landscape was the last thing on his mind.
Leaving Private Cox with the distinct impression I was a bit of a luvvie, I tried to imagine what Now Zad might have looked like before the ISAF forces invaded. The nearby bazaar was lined with relatively newly built garage-type buildings with sliding metal doors. These would once have been shops selling the standard wares of an Afghan town: motorcycle parts
, Calor gas, clothes, shoes, more motorcycle parts, more Calor gas. Even under Taliban rule, the bazaar would have been buzzing with life and activity; but not now. Now the shops were closed down, their metal frontages firmly shut. There was no activity here, and there wouldn't be for a long time.
My sleeping quarters were below the sangar. After a couple of days in Now Zad DC I made the decision not to sleep inside – it was just too hot and claustrophobic and I would wake with my eyes and throat clogged up with dust – so instead I would bunk down outside against the exterior wall of the compound. It probably wasn't the safest place to sleep, especially given that I knew it was theoretically possible for the Taliban simply to lob a grenade over the wall. But I decided not to think about that. The Afghans often spend the night outdoors when the weather is very hot and with the company of the astonishing canopy of stars overhead, I slept much better outside than in.
Just outside the sleeping quarters was the area where we would wash and eat. This outside space was covered with camouflage netting. Normally this is draped over vehicles to stop them being spotted, but in this instance it was there to dissipate the sun and provide us with some level of protection from the fierce heat of the day. As always, that heat started early. When the time came for me to perform my morning ablutions, the big plastic canister of water with which I would wash was already hot. The water at Now Zad DC came up from a well and there were two types. The stuff used for washing was untreated; the stuff for drinking was purified, using chlorine or iodine tablets, and came in bottles with a white seal so that you didn't mistake one for the other.