‘I remember thinking how much enemy fire was going into Jock’s position. I have never heard so much firepower.’
TROOPER JOHNNY, B TROOP, 1 SAS SQUADRON
COMMAND SERGEANT MAJOR FRANK GRIPPE decided to take a stroll down Hell’s Halfpipe to see how his men were coping under the intense pummelling they were taking.
‘G’day, Digger,’ Grippe said to Jock humorously, the way Americans do when they try to pronounce the unique Aussie greeting and know they haven’t quite pulled it off. ‘You having a good day, soldier?’
Jock had to laugh. This guy is unfuckin’ believable, he thought as bullets bounced into the bowl.
‘It could’ve been better, sir,’ Jock replied, typically understated. Grippe laughed. There was nothing like a bit of humour to keep morale up.
Despite the sun, which was high overhead and had mercifully warmed the valley a couple of degrees, it was still freezing. Jock was still digging in. His little trench was almost deep enough to lie in. He hadn’t spoken to the Australian headquarters for at least an hour and now radioed in a sitrep, getting a bloke called Ben from the chook pen.
Ben asked Jock where he’d been.
‘Digging in, over.’
Jock updated Ben, who passed the information through to Tink, who in turn passed it to Hagenbeck’s people. Tink had been watching the battle unfold, ensuring all the SAS patrols were safe and in contact, keeping informed of the situation and liaising between the Australian HQ and the TOC. Six JDAMs had been dropped over the valley but al Qaeda and Taliban elements were still shooting. Jock’s information was vital. He relayed the condition of the wounded soldiers: some were critical, others less so but most were coping with their injuries and several had received pain medication.
‘It’s funny, human nature,’ Jock says. ‘There’s one guy and he’s been wounded pretty badly up and down his side and he doesn’t whinge at all. And this other little prick, he’s got a few nicks and cuts and he’s obviously hurt, but he’s whingeing and carrying on enough so they just shoot him up with morphine. “Shut up, you little bastard.” He went down. This other guy, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t take the painkillers and they didn’t even know he hadn’t had any. I remember asking him, “Have you had any?” and he said, “No, no” and he’d been there for a couple of hours already. “Do you want any?” “No, no.” I’m pretty sure he wanted to be compos, switched on — he managed his pain.’
The fact that al Qaeda didn’t inflict greater damage on the men they had pinned down in a bloody ambush continued to amaze Jock, especially as the Americans’ ammunition was running low. Much of it was sitting in the rucksacks out in the open. Sitting ducks, just like the soldiers in the halfpipe.
‘I can’t really explain how such a big force in such an advantageous position didn’t manage to do more damage. I really can’t explain it,’ Jock says now. ‘It seemed like at times on the battlefield there was just so much shit flying around you that it would be impossible not to be hit.
‘And you’re watching guys with bullets landing right up the side of them, both sides of them, all the time, all bloody day. You’re thinking, what? Almost four guys simultaneously with rounds lighting up both sides of them for what seemed like ten, fifteen seconds … tttt, tttt, tttt, tttt, tttt, all around them, without getting hit and you think, “How the hell did that happen?”
‘We’re watching this one guy. We were screaming at him, “Get down, get down, get down, you dickhead.” He didn’t understand. “What? What?” “Get doowwwwwwwn, you’re about to get shot.” And he did. Whack, fair in the arse. He knew what we were talking about then, slipped two steps down the bottom of the hill.
‘I don’t know if he was confused, didn’t realise what was happening, but the ground was alive, boom, dancing around him. Four or five of us were screaming at him.’
Jock thought the soldiers would have learnt from past experience. Earlier, another soldier got caught in the free fire lane about 50 metres from Jock’s position. Al Qaeda had the GI directly in their cross hairs.
Ya bastards, Jock thought.
The enemy were taking well-aimed shots at the bloke, firing all around him, and he just stopped for a split second before he began running in a zigzag.
Jock couldn’t believe it.
How the fuck could you be so stupid, mate? Run one way; don’t keep turning and doing circles backwards and forwards across this tiny little space at half speed, crouched, thinking you’re hiding from someone.
The soldier was like a deer in the headlights. He had bullets landing at his feet, cracking overhead, and people were screaming at him to get one way or the other. He was completely stunned by the volume of fire.
‘I just thank Christ I have never reacted like that — except in the presence of a woman,’ Jock says. ‘That’s the most intimidating of forces.’
At 2.32pm, the Tactical Operations Center received the word that General Zia Lodin and his battered Afghan Force was definitely en route to Gardez and would come back to fight another day once they had recovered and reinforced. One American special operator would later tell The Los Angeles Times newspaper that Lodin and his men were extremely resilient throughout the rest of Operation Anaconda despite the beating they took on D-Day. ‘He got knocked down and then he got back up and he came back into the same place where he’d lost about ten per cent of his people. And then he did it a third time.’
But for now, al Qaeda’s promise to fight to the death as a test from God had temporarily stalled Task Force Hammer.
Jock knew how they felt, so did his SAS mate Johnny, who was on a hill further south with his patrol, sighting al Qaeda positions and calling in grid references.
Johnny could hear the amount of firepower going into the valley and was worried about his mate Jock. He hadn’t heard Jock’s voice over the radio for a while. An SAS veteran, Johnny could tell who was firing by the sound of the bullets. The coalition forces were using 5.56mm and the Taliban had the 7.62mm heavy weapons that make a bigger punch. A bigger whoomph.
‘I remember thinking how much enemy fire was going into Jock’s position,’ Johnny says. ‘We are not on any kind of death wish, but you always prefer yourself to be in that kind of position because I know how I would handle it.
‘I have never heard so much firepower, I bet my bottom dollar that I’ve never heard so much firepower go into an area, as where Jock was.’
He knew the GIs with Jock were well trained, even if many of the younger soldiers had no battle experience, and that some of the command were former Rangers and Navy SEALS who had undertaken similar training to the SAS troopers. But he would rather have been there himself.
The men from the 10th Mountain had brought in a battery-powered, shoulder-fired AT4 anti-armour rocket that has a maximum effective range of 300 metres and can penetrate 35 centimetres of armour. Lieutenant Colonel Paul LaCamera looked over at Frank Grippe.
‘Who’s our best shot, Sar Major?’ LaCamera said.
Grippe called out to a private who ran over.
Jock says, recalling the moment: ‘They’ve brought this poor bastard forward, and it’s, “Right, son, we’ve only got one round. You confident you can do it?” What’s he gonna say — “Ah, no sir”? This is LaCamera talking to the best-shot private soldier. “And don’t you miss, boy.” And of course, what happens?’
Jock was furious, not at the poor bastard who’d just missed an al Qaeda nest with the last rocket they had, but at the entire situation the soldiers found themselves in and the way it had unfolded. A control freak who ranks safety and preparedness as his top priorities, Jock was frustrated at the poor intelligence that had clearly underestimated the enemy positions and numbers. And he was frustrated that they were still under attack with no apparent way out, and vexed by the long delays for CAS.
‘Why didn’t you train your men not to drop their fucking packs — especially when they’re not even getting shot at?’ Jock says now. ‘Why weren’t you doing em-plane and ex-plane drills getting on and off the helicopter the day before, instead of going for a two-hour famil [familiarisation] joyflight? Let’s do the real shit, then it would have worked out.’
Jock didn’t blame the soldiers — ‘most of them were young’ — but he did blame the brass. The one thing he was thankful for was Grippe and Sergeant Robert Healy, who kept a firm hold on the show. ‘What prepped us for this was just watching the September 11 attacks,’ Healy told reporters during a press conference four days later. ‘We knew we were going to be called up and go into combat and rid the world of this evil here. And all the boys are ready to do that.’
One member of Healy’s 1-87 wrote on all of his hand grenades the names of two friends who perished in the September 11 attacks. This was personal.
Healy had a handful of guys including tactical air controllers and radio operators and forward observers in his position. Before flying out, he had ordered half a dozen of his troops to bring in empty sand bags in case they needed to make a secure fighting position around the control element. It would soon turn out to be a fortuitous move.
‘They were worth their weight ten times in cold piss, they were bloody brilliant,’ Jock says of Grippe and Healy.
‘These guys were, at the time, making the calls and coming up with the decisions that were effective — and required essentially — for our survival. They were the ones who had the initiative. They were the ones who stepped up to the mark. That’s the shit you can’t buy.’
Sergeant Michael Peterson’s eight-man mortar platoon had turned into an infantry squad. With their massive 120mm mortar out of action, they had nothing better to do than help each other stay alive. LaCamera had asked Sergeant Pete to liaise with Captain Nelson Kraft to find a position up on the slope of Hell’s Halfpipe and pull security for the men in the bowl. Kraft directed him to a position and Peterson instantly knew why none of the other troops had occupied it until now. It was a bad spot on the northeastern corner, completely barren and with no covering protection. But the position was vital.
An order is an order, he thought.
Peterson started up the hill and turned to his young soldiers.
‘Who’s got the balls to follow me up this hill?’ he yelled over the racket.
Sergeant Pete reckoned he sounded like an egotistical jackass but sometimes you’ve just got to say stupid things, he thought, and this was one of those sometimes.
He looked back over his shoulder; his men were stunned. His comments were totally out of character.
‘Get the fuck up the hill,’ Sergeant Pete yelled, and as one, his platoon fell in and started moving up behind him.
‘They were brave, they were just awesome kids. They were looking at me like, “You’ve just gone mad”,’ Sergeant Pete says now.
Peterson’s men got to position and instantly a young buck private named Ryan got pinned by a sniper. Each time the soldier tried to manoeuvre into a safer position a couple of centimetres in either direction, the sniper traced him, winging bullets right next to his head. Ryan was trapped.
‘Sergeant Pete, Sergeant Peeeeeeeete,’ Ryan yelled.
‘We just kind of reached over and grabbed him and pulled him away,’ Peterson says.
Sergeant Pete’s men were shooting at the enemy as fast as the enemy ducked out of their hideouts. The firepower was terrifying and would have paralysed lesser men. Sergeant Pete looked over behind his position and saw four al Qaeda fighters with weapons raised running towards his men, ready to shoot.
‘There is a rule that you never fire over the heads of any of your guys — you never want to do that, it’s called flagging,’ Peterson says. ‘You just don’t do that. But at this point I just don’t have a choice so I just start firing. I engage these guys and, alright, one of them is down, and that’s when [Raul] Lopez came in with the two-oh-three and he just kept dropping rounds in there. I don’t know if we got all of them but I tend to think we got a few. And I start to wonder if those are the guys who inflicted all the gunshot wounds later on that night, because somebody was back there.’