By the end of August I’d been in Afghanistan nearly half a year. I swear I could stay a lifetime and still never understand the people.
One day H’s Kamiabi patrol were caught out in an ambush. They’d been cornered like rats while bullets rained down from a nearby compound. It was deadly stuff, although at least they knew where the attack was coming from.
In other words, they had a target with a bullseye on it to hand over to air support.
I can only imagine the buzz among H’s men as they waited for the Predator drone to arrive. Knowing that all they had to do was keep the Taliban shooting, then wait for the fireworks. It never gets old. The only thing that would have made it better was being able to see the looks on the Afghan faces in that split second when they realised they were about to be blown to smithereens.
The 200-pound bomb did exactly what it was intended to. Each insurgent was wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, so was most of the compound, including the family that lived there. The only survivor was the father. He was casevacked to Bastion to have his shattered leg amputated.
As a father myself, I felt for him. As a man I was appalled that innocent people were being caught up in this ridiculous war. But, as a marine on the wrong end of six months of compound owners like him letting Taliban scum use their properties to try to kill me and my friends, his personal tragedy barely registered. Play with fire and you get burned. Harsh perhaps, but that’s what I thought.
That is, until I was told I’d be doing a welfare check on him.
As per ISAF rules, once he was out of hospital the man had been given financial compensation for his loss. He had used it to buy another farm, which happened to be within our AOR (area of responsibility), hence my being tasked with this hideous job. Being betrayed by the locals we’d sworn to protect was one thing. Being asked to walk up to a bloke whose entire livelihood and family – and leg – had been wiped out by people on my side of the fence was something else entirely.
What – am I just going to say, ‘Sorry, mate’, pat him on the back and that’ll be it?
As we approached the new compound I went over and over in my head what I was going to say. Nothing sounded right. I felt more nervous than if I had been facing a firing squad. At least with guns I could respond. Whatever this man said I would just have to listen to and suck up.
We reached the gate and knocked. There was a strange scraping noise the other side, then the door flew open to reveal a farmer with a wooden leg.
We’ve got the right place at least …
I braced myself for the onslaught, but the moment the guy recognised our uniforms he welcomed us into his compound with open arms.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘You must be hot. Let me get you a drink.’
Well, this is weird.
One of the worst things you can do to an Afghan is refuse his hospitality. Even if you are convinced you are going to be poisoned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bloke. I didn’t want to be hostile but I didn’t dare trust him, either. When he offered me tea, I only took a sip of it, and once he had done so. When he produced some sort of cake, I made sure I bit into it after him. Obviously, I couldn’t rule out the chance of a ‘suicide chef’, for a man without hope might easily take his own life as well as mine. But something about his persona said he wasn’t in any hurry to die.
‘John,’ I said to our interpreter, ‘let’s get this over with. Ask him what we can do.’
The man replied, ‘You have done enough!’ Then he hugged us all.
Confused, I began reciting my rehearsed speech. The man barely listened. In fact he stopped me before I even got to the apology bit.
‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I didn’t really like my wife or children. You did me a favour. With your American dollars I have bought a better farm, I have more cattle than I ever dreamed of and I will be able to afford to buy two wives who will give me more worthy children.’
As the translated words came out of John’s mouth I thought that he had to be lying. The look on the farmer’s stupid happy face, though, backed him up.
I thought, This is beyond insanity.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said. ‘We have to go.’
I actually found more comfort on the way home when a gaggle of shooters engaged us in a firefight. At least that made sense to me. Everything else? I don’t think I’ll ever understand.
* * *
Watching the Afghan forces at work gave me hope that the populace could be saved. Just not in the way that we were going about it. The Afghan Army knew the people we were working with. They knew the culture. They belonged to it. To make an impression on the inhabitants of Helmand Province you needed to think like them and act like them.
‘You can’t fight fire with sweetmeats,’ one of the Afghans explained. ‘You have to use fire or get burned yourself.’
I knew our kid-gloves tactic wasn’t working. If I saw Mohamed Mohamed once, I saw him half a dozen times. On each occasion that he was captured he was arrested and sent to Bastion. The joke was that he knew he’d be back.
Luckily for him he was unarmed each time we arrested him.
‘You won’t be smiling if I ever catch you with a weapon,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll see what I’m allowed to do. Then you’ll see justice.’
Of course, the insurgents were well aware that if we saw that they were armed, then we could stop and arrest them. Shoot them if they didn’t co-operate. Yet they always seemed to have a gun to hand to shoot at us when we least expected it. How were they doing it? We got an idea during one patrol when Mac found something hanging from a tree. It wasn’t a body. It was a loaded AK-47. The rifle wasn’t there by accident. It could be reached easily from the road.
It explained the ‘shoot and scoot’ practice – when a moped carrying two young men could race past us one minute and then those same men could be blasting at us with automatic weapons a minute later. They’d drift by, casual as you’d like, produce a weapon from a hole in the ground or behind a particular bush, take a few pot shots, then wheel over to the next hidey-hole. It was cunning. Unless we were actually to shoot them we would never find them with weapons.
And what were we doing in return? Compared with hiding serious military hardware in trees, something passive, you could have bet money on that. And the insurgents knew it. One of the initiatives we rolled out was to post letters through every compound door asking for help from the locals in hunting down the Taliban terrorists. We offered the full protection of the British war machine.
And the insurgents just pinned these letters on local men’s backs and sent them back.
That’s when they were being respectful. On one patrol we found a hundred or so paper aeroplanes littering a narrow track. They were all made from our charming little peace proposals.
‘They’re laughing at us,’ I said.
No one could disagree. But what could we expect? We were applying Western standards to non-Western culture. We expected Afghans to react in the way that we knew citizens of Canterbury or Hamburg or Bruges might respond. I don’t think that our masters – the analysts and planners – paid any heed to what pushed the buttons of this very different breed of people.
* * *
Achieving justice, or making our mark on the enemy who had terrorised us for so long, was becoming more important to all of us with every passing day. Someone needed to pay. We weren’t even that fussed who it was. We’d take any win by then. A guy presented himself at the CP one day claiming compensation for a bullet wound for which he said we were responsible. I felt he was probably right. But part of me was thinking, I’m glad you got shot. I bet you deserved it, as well.
One day there was an ‘ops box’ command from Shazaad. The American Special Forces were initiating a raid so we were ordered to avoid a certain area for twenty hours. The assault, when it came, was of biblical proportions. Two attack helicopters have the firepower to level a building. The combination of Tankbuster and Spectre Gunship planes levelled a huge area. Then two helicopters dropped a squadron of SF guys into the zone to hoover up the pieces. There was bombing, machine-gun fire, and fireworks to rival the Fourth of July. For ninety minutes we had the best seat in the house, watching and listening. Then it was all over. The helicopters returned, the SF went home – and the dead stayed dead.
The next day we were commissioned with a recce to confirm the numbers killed. It was as impressive as it was horrific. Where six compounds used to stand there was just rubble. Bodies and limbs were strewn everywhere. For the first time I actually saw something like fear in the eyes of the locals.
‘Why did you do this?’ they kept asking.
‘It wasn’t us.’
But, I thought, I bloody wish it had been us.
Our camp was attacked several times that night. It seemed fair, somehow. And it was expected. Maybe it was retaliation, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the insurgents really did believe that we were responsible for the huge onslaught. We were attacked most nights regardless. It was difficult ever to pinpoint a reason.
* * *
I don’t remember what day of the week it was. Maybe Monday, maybe Wednesday. I didn’t hear my alarm clock, but I did hear the shouts of my men on the perimeter. There were holes in the mud. Someone had been digging underneath the wall. By sheer chance an outdoor patrol had spotted it. When they traced it inside we realised the hole had almost broken through.
‘Shit. Another few inches and they would have been in. Why do you think they stopped?’ No one knew. The best we could come up with was ‘luck’.
A few days later it happened again, but on the other side of the compound. This time they didn’t get as far. It was obviously laborious work and they’d been interrupted. I wasn’t sure we’d be so fortunate a third time.
The men were agitated, even jumpy. Considering how wired we were, anyway, through lack of sleep, this only magnified matters. We were all concerned about having our throats slit in our beds.
‘Just as well we never get to sleep then, isn’t it?’ Robbie said.
He had a point. Even so, despite getting barely three hours of shuteye in every twenty-four, I found myself taking my pistol to bed. I put it under my pillow. It wasn’t enough to be able to roll out of my trench and into the ops room or the sangar. I wanted to be able to take an insurgent out with me. It was lucky I couldn’t hear my alarm clock, because I’d most definitely have taken that out as well.
The tension within the team was already strong, overwhelming even. Discovering those tunnels so near completion tipped us over the edge. Without ever discussing it as a group, we all realised that we would rather die than risk capture by the savages that were the Taliban. As a result, we hatched a plan to place explosives all around the CP. In a critical emergency we’d activate one bomb, which would trigger a chain reaction, bringing the entire compound in on itself and taking with it anyone inside Daqhiqh.
We called it the last line of defence. What it really was – and what everyone acknowledged – was a giant suicide bomb. We all preferred to die at our own hands than be tortured, maimed and strung up as trophies.
* * *
The decisions you make in 50-degree heat and 70 per cent humidity, when you’re dead on your feet and feeling increasingly powerless. It didn’t help that Sunray couldn’t prise any further reinforcements from Bastion. He sounded as frustrated as I was. It was almost as though the new command didn’t believe we had a war on our hands. Perhaps, with 42 Commando HQ moving across to Sagin, it was because we were now under 45 Commando’s HQ.
But plenty of people knew exactly what we were facing on the ground. One day I got a message from a camp further in towards Shazaad. As far as I knew, they hadn’t seen any action at all in six months.
And that, it turned out, was the point.
‘I’ve got a couple of signallers here, Rob,’ the commander of the CP said. ‘They really want to get their hands dirty. Can they join you for a couple of days?’
Honestly, at that point I would have taken anyone apart from our former medic. The more bodies the better. Just a couple would allow two of my guys to close their eyes for more than forty winks.
It began to happen a lot. Men who hadn’t seen any kinetic action were signing up to join us for a few days. They’d arrive, we’d patrol, get shot at and respond. Then we’d come home, write reports and do it all again the following day. Forty-eight hours later the visitors would return to their CP with their still fresh uniforms and their stories of derring-do. ‘War Tourists’ I called them. I meant it derogatorily, but I think they may have saved our sanity, if not our lives. For every ‘bullet backpacker’ we got, my guys scrambled an average of one hour’s extra kip. When you’re being shot at or bombed every single day, the currency of sleep tops the exchange rate.
People who drive on motorways when they’re exhausted experience the phenomenon of micro-sleeps. They don’t know how they reached their destination. Or they suddenly realise they’re bouncing over the bumps of the hard shoulder. My men went through that every waking minute. ‘Waking’ being the operative word. I realised the hollowed-out men I had seen all those months ago at Camp Bastion weren’t ghosts. They were zombies. They were the undead. Men who’d forgotten how to sleep. That’s what it felt like, anyway.
* * *
At some point during late August we lost sight of our mission. Hearts and minds were in short supply among the locals we encountered. How could we hope to win what we couldn’t find? With just over a month of the tour left to complete we were focused on a policy of ‘kill or capture’. The emphasis was not on ‘capture’.
I decided to take the men to the place where we’d have the best opportunity. Green 13 had caused us all sorts of problems in the past. It was where we had finally realised, once and for all, that we were the rodents in this grown-up game of cat and mouse. It’s where I knew that, if any killing was going to happen, it would be there.
Bearing in mind what happened to us every time we ventured that way, it would take some planning, some skill and some luck not to be on the receiving end again. I spoke to Tom Phillips and we brokered a joint initiative to move up there together. But first, I said, I want to get some eyes on the place.
‘Are you sure? You’ve been ambushed every time you’ve gone anywhere near.’
‘I have a cunning plan …’
Early one morning, eight of us used the little stream in the compound to swim out, just as we’d done in Toki. We still had to cross Route Cornwall, though. As we stood poised to rush across, the remaining lads in the CP set off smoke grenades and fired several rifle rounds. The distraction worked. We bolted across Cornwall, dived into the canal and waited to hear what the ICOM had to say.
Plenty about the smoke grenades – but nothing about nine marines trying to be invisible.
‘Perfect.’
We made our way carefully. It was slow going. Some of the rat runs that afforded the best cover weren’t the most direct. It was worth following them, though. Concealment was the key. Barely a metre of track passed without our being reminded of what had happened on previous visits. There were crops still bent from our trampling through. Walls scarred with bullet holes. Patches of flattened grass where we’d dived for cover.
All the subterfuge paid off. We made it to within a building’s depth of the infamous junction. Turning left or right would bring us directly onto the road.
‘What’s it going to be, Rob?’ Fergie asked. ‘Left or right?’
‘Neither,’ I said.
‘Are we staying here?’
‘No. We’re going up.’
We always have collapsible ladders on us, but the building protecting us had New York-style fire escapes running up the wall. Two minutes later we were all lying prone on the flat roof, barely able to contain our laughter. How the fuck had we managed to get so close? In the past we’d been shot at just for thinking about Green 13. It made no sense.
We waited for ten minutes. When I was convinced our high-level sortie had gone undetected – the ICOM was the litmus test, as always – I inched on my belly towards the ridge of the roof, which, according to my maps, should overlook the crossroads. Fergie and Matt were right behind me.
The picture I saw below was pretty much as the intel had shown. A bustling junction on Route Devon, barely 2 kilometres from Taalander, full of mopeds and other small vehicles zipping up and down and across the junction, this way and that. Devon itself was lined with not exactly shops but booths or lock-ups. Whatever they were, dozens of young men were sitting on chairs outside them drinking Coca-Cola and smoking. Like any other men enjoying a sunny day without a care in the world.
‘You could almost think these bastards didn’t want to kill us,’ I said.
‘What do you think they’d do if they knew we were here?’
‘I don’t know, Fergie. Shall we find out?’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Maybe.’
I decided to sit up. The lads with me did the same. It felt weirdly naughty, as though we were mischievous schoolboys up to no good. In a way we were. Given everything we knew about the insurgents, about the ruthlessness of their tactics, about their expertise in navigating the warren of streets in the vicinity, it bordered on madness to get their attention.
Put it this way: I wouldn’t have done it in March, April, May, June or July. But, after five weeks of being shot at, bombed or cornered close to IEDs nearly every single day, you start thinking differently. Seriously differently.
When the men below failed to notice us I decided to up the ante. Again, you won’t find this in any training manual. But we were there for a recce. I wanted to see what we were dealing with.
‘Morning, boys,’ I called down. ‘Lovely day for it, isn’t it?’
In the street below us a couple of lads sipping coffee looked at each other. It was beautiful to watch. Above the din of the mopeds and the general chat and laughter they’d heard something. They couldn’t put their finger on it. What was it?
You could actually see the penny drop.
English!
A ripple like an electric current went through the groups of men relaxing with their Cokes or cups of coffee. It was like watching dominoes fall. One by one they all got the message that something was wrong. They looked left, they looked right.
The expression on their faces when they saw eight British Royal Marines waving down at them was priceless. A second later it was as though a powder keg had gone off. They leapt out of their chairs. Some ran inside the buildings. Some into the road. Mopeds were flagged down and cars were stopped.
‘I think that’s our cue to leave,’ I said.
We scrambled down the ladders and dashed back along as close to the exact route we’d followed on the way in. The odds of its having been contaminated by IEDs when none of the insurgents knew we were there were slim. Amazingly, we made it back unscathed. There wasn’t even a firefight. In fact, the loudest noise for the entire journey was the ICOM having a fit. One particular call sign was broadcasting virtually non-stop.
‘Someone’s not happy,’ John laughed. ‘Those boys are all getting it in the neck.’
That night our CP was targeted with grenades, machine-gun fire and any other shit the Taliban could muster. It didn’t matter. Inside those mud walls we felt untouchable.
Amazing what sleep deprivation can make you do.
The next day I started hatching a plan to go back to Green 13 in force. HQ agreed to have air support on standby and feed Shazaad’s intel directly to us. Tom Phillips would lead a patrol from Taalander.
‘Maybe a bit less kamikaze stuff this time, though?’ HQ added.
We moved out in exactly the same manner that had proved successful before. We got across the canal and sneaked our way to the last compound between us and Green 13. To the north-west of us Tom Phillips was doing much the same thing. There was no ICOM chat and we saw no bonfires lit en route. Yet for all our stealth, to achieve anything we had to cross Devon. And we knew exactly what would happen when we did.
The shooting began the moment Robbie set foot outside the compound wall.
Click-click-click.
But he was ready. We all were. We knew exactly where the shooters were because the PGSS camera had picked them out. Robbie dropped to a kneeling position, cool as a cucumber, fixed the direction of fire and responded in kind. Moments later he was joined by Matt, me and the rest of the snake’s tail, all raking fire at our enemy.
Now it was the attackers’ turn to be caught out. The wall they were hiding behind was solid but our wall of lead was already making inroads. A few more minutes and it would be more holey than a Swiss cheese.
I radioed the camera operator at Shazaad.
‘Status?’
‘They’re moving.’
I almost got him to repeat it. After six months of being shot at, being made the target in this lethal game of cat and mouse, we’d never once got the locals on the run. Until now. I hoped I could remember what to do.
We were to the north of the insurgents. Wherever they went it had to be south. A couple of minutes went by, then Shazaad came back on line. ‘They’re in compound 155.’
I checked my map. We were outside 157.
I gave the order to advance. It was slow. We had to be prepared for other shooters to pop up. Judging by the ICOM that was a possibility, although it wasn’t happening yet. In any case, I had every faith that our eyes in the sky would give us the nod.
Although I was exhilarated to have the back-up I found myself wondering, Where was all this support during the last six months?
Knowing your target’s location and getting to it are two very different things. They fired, we returned fire, they shifted position, we followed, and the process continued. The longer it went on the more confident I felt in getting a result. Since a flat roof had been useful on our last visit I decided to go up high once again and try to smoke them out. Four of us climbed up on to a roof. We could make out the movement the other side of the wall and fired on sight. The problem was, they could also see us. For a few minutes it was like a proper cowboys-and-Indians rifle shootout. What’s more, we were winning it.
‘They’re getting thrashed,’ Fergie said. ‘I don’t know why they don’t use their RPGs.’
The words had barely left his mouth when a grenade flew over our heads and into the building next to us.
If their aim was anything to go by, we had them rattled. They ran to another compound, then another. Thanks to the running commentary from our man on the camera at Shazaad we were never more than a minute behind. Each time they deluged the ICOM with pleas for back-up.
‘The Americans have us cornered. We need the Big Thing. Send the Big Thing.’
They were scared. They were panicked. If they knew Tom Phillips was a hundred metres from joining in they’d have been terrified.
And if they heard the news I was just getting from Shazaad they’d have packed up and gone home.
‘Guess what, boys,’ I said.
A couple of the lads humoured me. ‘What?’
‘There’s an Ugly on station.’
Instinctively eight heads swivelled up and round. They knew that was the call sign for an Apache. But the sky was empty. Nothing to see.
‘Are you sure?’ Matt said.
He was joking. You don’t see those buggers unless they want to be seen. And if we couldn’t spot them hovering on the horizon 4 kilometres away, what chance did four or five renegades have crouching behind a wall?
The pieces were falling nicely into place. Even so, I knew from experience that things in Helmand could go tits-up in no time at all. If back-up did arrive we might even take casualties.
‘We have to end this before they get themselves organised.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Matt asked.
‘I’m thinking we do this the old-fashioned way. We go in hard and fast. We’ve got them pinned back and outnumbered.’
I outlined my plan for a two-pronged assault. A buzz went around the group. This was already our best day ever in Afghanistan. After all the shit we’d taken in Daqhiqh, if we got to take a few scalps as well we could all go home with our heads high.
I ran the plan past Tom. He said he was almost in place to provide cover. Then I went to Shazaad. Unfortunately Sunray had different ideas.
‘Negative,’ he said. ‘Go firm.’
‘Go firm’ means remain where you are. There was only one reason: they were bringing the Apache into play.
‘With respect, sir,’ I said, ‘I think we can end this one on the ground.’
‘Negative,’ he repeated. ‘Go firm. Repeat: go firm.’
What choice did I have?
Breaking the news to the lads was difficult. The only sweetener I could offer was knowing that someone would have to go in and clear up after the helicopter had done its job.
‘If we’re lucky we might find some survivors.’
I was patched into the chopper’s comms. Their optics were out of this world. We couldn’t see or hear them, but their weapons guy had three insurgents in his crosshairs. There was a tense few seconds while they verified their orders.
‘Kill or capture’ was off the table. This was ‘kill’ all the way.
I heard the all-clear come through from Sunray. I turned to the lads.
‘Here we go.’
A couple of seconds later a section of wall 25 metres south-west of our position disintegrated. With it the lives of three insurgents. They wouldn’t have had a clue. We saw the blast before we heard it – and we were expecting it. It was swiftly followed up by a torrent of anti-tank machine-gun fire. There was no mistaking that noise. I think it could have been heard in Shazaad.
I know it was the sensible option to bring in the Apache. But I wasn’t interested in sensible. The eight men around me had been hung out to dry for the last few months, treated as target practice by a Taliban we weren’t really allowed to engage. We were deprived of sleep, of clean clothes, of back-up. And now, the only time we hadn’t been hunted down like dogs, when we’d had the chance to put down a bit of a marker for the honour of Daqhiqh, it had been denied us.
As I said, I wasn’t thinking sensibly. How could a sensible person think that giving his men the opportunity to kill other human beings was a treat? But I did. That’s what six months in Afghan had turned me into.
At least we still had the BDA (battle damage assessment).
When the dust settled and the plumes of smoke dissipated I got the boys ready to break cover. The BDA needed to be conducted as soon as possible. People had been known to survive some horrific Apache onslaughts.
I gave Sunray our position and said we were geared to go.
‘Tom’s closer,’ he said. ‘His men are doing it.’
You are shitting me? After all this? This was our operation.
I am still amazed that I held off saying it. But the thoughts were loud enough. My lads were as gutted as me. And, when we listened in to the commentary from Tom’s advancing party our mood got worse. The Apache had killed only two insurgents. A third was making a run for it – and was armed.
The rules could not be clearer. Not just rules – the logic. HQ had given the order for those three insurgents to be wiped off the face of the earth. They’d sent their most efficient death machine – an Apache helicopter – to make it happen. For anyone who had miraculously survived, his death warrant had already been signed.
I confess, when we heard Tom’s man, Tom ‘Smudge’ Gilbert, getting the rounds down, I had mixed feelings. Part of me wanted to punch the air, safe in the knowledge that the world was now short of one Taliban ambush group.
Another part was pissed off that it wasn’t me pulling the trigger. Or Fergie, or Robbie, or Matt, or any of the others.
We were owed this.
I could only hope our time would come.
* * *
When we finally moved over to the scene of destruction, it was to find one corpse without its face, another shredded and a third riddled with bullet holes. We collected DNA and then, as the locals began to appear again, tried to establish identities. The man without a face proved tricky but one of the others, a surprisingly tall man by Afghan standards, drew a less than concerned response from a couple of people.
‘He wasn’t from here,’ one said. ‘He was a pig. I’m glad he’s dead.’
If I hadn’t recently heard a farmer use similar words to describe his own murdered family I might have been more impressed.
Despite our ultimately frustrating day, back at Daqhiqh there was something of a party mood in the air, encouraged by Ugly doing a fly-by low enough for the pilot to give us a wave. The fact that we were celebrating three deaths tells you a lot about what we had become as people. The fact that we’d have been even happier if we’d pulled the triggers ourselves tells you a great deal more. We were beyond the point of seeing the Taliban as people any more. They were the enemy. Plain and simple.
And the sooner they were all dead, the better.