‘Everyone wants to get involved in a firefight when you first come out but when it’s happening every day you start to wonder how long your luck will last.’
Guardsman, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards
The RAF Merlin is flying ‘nap of the earth’, at low level, over the Helmand desert at an altitude of around 100 ft. The chopper is bobbing and weaving like a prizefighter trying to dodge a punch, twisting one way, then the other. In Helmand the safest journeys are the shortest, including those by helicopter.
I’ve flown out of Camp Bastion in a helicopter on dozens of occasions over the past four years but it remains a nerve-racking experience. RAF helicopters are pretty well protected. Most have at least two machine guns, one fore and one aft, a host of defensive aids, which should be able to handle any surface-to-air (SAM) missiles, and armour plating on the floor and sides of the fuselage. But there is always the risk of the Taliban getting a lucky hit. As I write this in June 2010, they have managed to down a US Black Hawk that was trying to extract a wounded British soldier. As the helicopter came down to land, when it is at its most vulnerable, a hidden Taliban RPG team managed to fire a rocket that hit the tail rotor. Four of the crew were killed in the crash. It will not be the last time that a helicopter is shot down on a routine mission.
The British military have already drawn up contingency plans for a mass-casualty event if and when a British Chinook laden with upwards of forty troops is brought down by enemy fire. It is feared that such a catastrophic event would kill off the diminishing support for the mission among the British public and lead to a full-scale withdrawal of British troops. So far the British have been lucky, whereas both the US and Canadian militaries have lost helicopters, either to enemy fire or to mechanical failure, at the cost of many good men. In war good luck always runs out.
I begin to think once again of Rupert and his last journey and wonder whether I will have the same fate. ‘Once you go beyond the wire there are no longer any guarantees,’ someone once advised me before I embedded with an infantry unit. ‘You share exactly the same risk as everyone else.’ The fear and concerns that gripped me are no longer so intense. I’m becoming acclimatized to the dangers Helmand holds, though I’m not sure whether that is a good or a bad thing. I know the fear will return, but I also know that I will be ready for it.
The landscape below is Old Testament. Rectangular, mud-made compounds baked as hard as concrete after decades, possibly hundreds of years, beneath the sun. The dwellings are purely functional; there is no exterior decoration, no outward sign of wealth or individuality. There are no roads, just tracks worn by years of use. Rectangular emerald fields magically appear on the flat, bleak moon-like surface of the desert. Afghan children wave excitedly, while the adults, mostly men, carry on tilling their fields and planting their crops in exactly the same way as their ancestors would have done centuries earlier. Farmers have been working the land here for decades, turning the barren desert into a fertile oasis. The lush, green fields are the first indicator that we are approaching the Green Zone. What should be a thing of beauty is anything but, for this is Taliban country.
In Helmand I’ve always found the concept of a so-called front line – the Army term is the Forward Line of Enemy Troops, or FLET – something of a misnomer. The reality here is much more fluid, for there are no real fixed lines and, at least as individuals, the Taliban have complete freedom of movement. The insurgents can come and go as they please into the villages, or kalays, which make up most of Helmand. Some have even ventured close to Camp Bastion. In 2008 a suicide car bomber attempted to destroy a two-vehicle Snatch Land Rover convoy on a routine run between Bastion and Camp Shorabak, where the Afghan National Army are trained. A captain in the Royal Irish Regiment who survived the attack told me of the horror he felt at the extraordinary sight of the bomber’s face lying in the middle of the road. He said that he wouldn’t have believed this was possible unless he had seen it for himself. The force of the blast had sliced the bomber’s face from his skull.
The Taliban’s cunning was laid bare in their killing of a British soldier on the ranges close to Bastion a few months before I arrived. As part of the RSOI package, units will often march the 5 km to the ranges, a fact which was noticed by the insurgents. So, in the dead of night, when the ranges are unguarded, they sneaked in and laid an IED in a position where they knew British soldiers would be training. The following day, as members of the Coldstream Guards arrived for a day’s live firing, Lance Corporal James Hill, who had flown into Helmand four days earlier, detonated a pressure-plate IED containing an estimated 5 kg of explosive and was killed instantly, proving once again that nowhere in Helmand is safe.
The Merlin continues to jink and twist through the air in an attempt to foil any group of hidden insurgents tempted to shoot down a NATO chopper. On each flank Army Air Corps Apache attack helicopters – called ‘mosquitos’ by the Taliban – are riding shotgun. The Apache is a fearsome £12-million killing machine. Each bristles with a vast array of weaponry which has been adapted for the war in Helmand. The Apache has a crew of two – the pilot who flies the helicopter and a co-pilot or gunner who controls the weapons systems in battle. The aircraft was originally conceived during the Cold War and came into service with the US armed forces, who have 800 compared with the British Army’s sixty-seven, in the early 1990s. Its primary role was to destroy columns of Soviet tanks should they swarm over the north German plain on their way into western Europe. That threat no longer exists, so here they are in Helmand using their Hellfire anti-tank missiles to obliterate Taliban strongholds.
The Apache also carries a 30 mm automatic cannon with a cyclic fire rate of 620 rounds per minute. It takes just one second to take out a target at a distance of 500 metres. A helmet-mounted display enables the cannon to be ‘slaved’ to the pilot’s eye line for manual firing. The flight helmet’s clip-on arm drops a small screen in front of his right eye – the helmet-mounted display, or HMD. At the centre of the HMD is a cross-hair sight, like a sniper’s. As the pilot’s eye moves, so the cannon swivels to follow his line of sight. All he has to do is to look at the target, select the weapon and range, and pull the trigger on the pistol-grip control column.
In addition the Apache is equipped with weapon pods, each of which can carry nineteen CRV7 rockets. These can be fitted with an armour-piercing warhead or packed with eighty 5-in.-long tungsten darts known as flechettes. So a salvo of just eight of these rockets releases 640 flechettes, saturating an area the size of a football pitch. The existence of these weapons is not overtly advertised by the Ministry of Defence because of the effect they have on a human body. The darts strip human flesh to the bone. Those Taliban fighters who aren’t killed instantly die a long and lingering death, and woe betide any innocent civilians who find themselves caught in the killing zone in the midst of a battle. The pain and suffering human beings are prepared to inflict upon one another in war is truly appalling, yet I’m secretly reassured to know that we have these weapons.
Like many of the trips by helicopter I have made in Helmand, my flight was delayed by twenty-four hours owing to the helicopters being retasked for a more urgent mission. I’ve known people who have been stuck in Camp Bastion for up to a week until a flight became available, so a twenty-four-hour delay is viewed as minor-league stuff. Helicopters are a ‘mission critical’ capability in Helmand, and the British operation has been under-resourced since operations in southern Afghanistan began. The government always maintained that commanders had enough helicopters for the job, and, when asked ‘on the record’, commanders would concur. But ‘off the record’ they would then declare that the numbers of helicopters were pitifully low and that troops were being forced to take unacceptable risks travelling in vehicles which were not sufficiently protected against Taliban attack. But, much to the dismay of the military’s rank and file, not a single serving senior officer was prepared to put his head on the block by stating what everyone knew to be a fact. General Sir Richard Dannatt, when he was Chief of the General Staff, came closest to directly criticizing the government’s failure to equip the military with adequate numbers of helicopters for the mission in Afghanistan. During a visit to Helmand in 2009 he stated publicly that he had visited UK troops located in various outposts by travelling in a US helicopter because no British helicopters were available.
Only now do commanders believe they have the requisite number of helicopters to achieve mission success. The bulk of the troop-carrying capacity is conducted by the half dozen or so RAF Chinooks – the twin-engine workhorse which keeps the Helmand mission alive. They are supported by a clutch of Army Air Corps Lynxes, which at first couldn’t fly in the summer owing to the intense heat but have since been adapted, ageing Royal Navy Sea Kings, and RAF Merlins, the latest addition to the British military rotary fleet. The size of the helicopter force has at least doubled since 2006, when NATO forces first ventured into Helmand. But troop numbers have tripled since then, so there is little if any overall gain.
Just fifteen minutes after leaving Camp Bastion we arrive at FOB Shawqat, the British headquarters in Nad-e’Ali. The Army likes to show off Nad-e’Ali because it is one of the few places in Helmand where the British and NATO strategy is flourishing. The Taliban have been forced from the district centre and the whole area is ringed by police and Army checkpoints. When any British VIPs arrive in Helmand, they are routinely shipped off to Nad-e’Ali. Few ever make it into Sangin or other areas where the Taliban presence is more apparent.
The helicopters touch down in a haze of green smoke on two adjacent landing sites within the base. It is rumoured that Shawqat was built in the ruins of a fort occupied by British troops during the First Afghan War, in 1840. Strange to think that 170 years later the British Army is still fighting over the same ground. The fort’s 40-ft-high walls are made of red-brown clay bricks, probably fashioned by hand for a seventeenth-century Afghan warlord. Some of the huge round turrets are still intact and have been turned into fortified observation posts by the Afghan National Army, who provide security at the base.
FOB Shawqat has hardly changed since I was here in November 2009, but it does have two important additions: working showers and toilets, crucial for morale. At that time only solar showers were available, but because the water is heated by the sun, a warm shower was impossible in the morning as the temperature then hovered around zero. Soldiers in FOBs were under orders to shave every day but the only means of heating the water was with an ancient ‘puffing billy’ water heater. This device, which was probably in service with the British Expeditionary Force when it retreated from France in 1940, heated enough water for about twenty soldiers on a base which contained several hundred. It was first come first served, and everyone else had to wash and shave in water chilled to almost freezing by the bitter Helmand night. I can still conjure up the agonizing cramps which momentarily crippled my hands when washing and shaving in the icy water.
The toilets represented an interesting departure in the task of disposing of human waste. Beyond Camp Bastion, apart from at the base at Lashkar Gah, which is home to the brigade headquarters and an infantry company group, plumbing was absent in all the FOBs. Until November 2009 soldiers defecated in foil bags. One of these was placed over a normal toilet, and when the job was done the bag was sealed and thrown into a fire pit. Simple but effective. Before the arrival of poo bags, soldiers were forced to use cubicles which had an open pit beneath them. The stench in the summer was unbearable, but, even worse, the open nature of the pit meant that disease was rife and many troops were struck down with the dreaded D and V, diarrhoea and vomiting.
Within seconds of our touching down, Lieutenant Colonel Roly Walker, the commanding officer of the Grenadier Guards, appears at the HLS, dressed in full battle rig and clutching his rifle. His eyes are obscured by military-issue wraparound sunglasses, but I still recognize his smiling face. ‘Thought you weren’t going to make it,’ he says, his hand outstretched, before adding, ‘Good to have you back, Sean. Right, there’s no time to waste. You’re coming with me – we’re off on a bit of a convoy up to Chah-e-Anjir. We’ll be staying out overnight, so grab what you need. You’ve got five minutes.’
Chah-e-Anjir, in the north of the Nad-e’Ali district, is home to Inkerman Company. The base is located at the apex of an upturned triangle which is known by the Army as the CAT – the Chah-e-Anjir Triangle. When I last visited Inkerman Company gun battles with the Taliban were almost a daily occurrence and the FLET was less than 100 metres from the base’s forward position. This position was in an area known as Five Tanks, named after five large storage tanks which were part of the mass of machinery left behind by the Americans when they left some fifty years ago.
Roly, a white Kenyan educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, is, at 39, one of the youngest battlegroup commanders in Afghanistan. He is passionately committed to the Afghan mission and is fully signed up to the vision of General Stanley McChrystal, who at that time was the US commander charged by President Barack Obama with breaking the stalemate in Afghanistan, until he was sacked and replaced by General Petraeus in June 2010.
Within minutes of stepping off the Merlin I’m strapped into the back of a Ridgeback armoured vehicle. There are four of us in the rear of the vehicle, each wearing body armour and helmets, so it’s a tight squeeze, but I feel secure. The Mastiff and Ridgeback come from the same class of vehicles and are almost identical, but the Mastiff is larger, with six wheels to the Ridgeback’s four. The Ridgeback is one of the latest British Army vehicles to arrive in Helmand and is packed with state-of-the-art technology. It has an armoured V-shaped hull which should help deflect blasts from mines and IEDs, while bar armour on the sides should protect those inside from RPG attack. It is also equipped with a remotely controlled 7.62-mm chain gun which is mounted on the roof and controlled by the vehicle commander through a pistol-grip control. A camera mounted on the gun gives the commander a crystal-clear 360-degree view on a drop-down computer screen. To engage the enemy he positions the cross-hairs on the target, flicks off the safety catch and presses the red trigger with his forefinger. The commander does not experience any recoil and the gun, which can fire sixty rounds per minute, can kill anything within a range of 1,200 metres. Thermal imagery allows the weapon to be used at night.
Every now and then WO1 Ian ‘Faz’ Farrell, the regimental sergeant major of 1st Battalion, the Grenadier Guards, and who, for this trip, is the vehicle commander, manoeuvres the cross-hairs onto some unsuspecting target. It’s a pretty awesome weapon – straight out of some hi-tech computer game. I feel detached from the outside world – it is almost a surreal experience, and the various TV screens just add to that sense of dislocation. It’s almost like watching an ‘in-vehicle movie’. Other cameras positioned on the exterior of the Ridgeback allow the troops inside a similar 360-degree view through two Situational Display Units.
Our vehicle is third in a convoy of six and I should feel secure, but I don’t. At the back of my mind there is a nagging, almost irritating uneasiness. It’s been there since I first arrived in Helmand, and I was hoping by now that it would have disappeared. On previous trips I have happily boarded an aircraft or climbed into the back of an armoured vehicle, but I’m now wondering whether this trip will be my last. All I can do is hope or return home. Rupert Hamer was travelling in a similar vehicle – a US MRAP – when he was killed and Phil Coburn was injured. The MRAP comes from the same family as the Ridgeback but is probably even more protected. So if Rupert was killed on a routine trip, just like the one I am about to undertake, why should I be any safer?
On previous excursions into Taliban country I have often paid lip service to the array of safety harnesses and seatbelts in the back of an armoured vehicle, many of which don’t even work or fit properly. But this time I ensure that I’m properly strapped in, and this time it’s the sort of seatbelt you might find in a Formula One racing car. I also do a quick check to make sure that everything else inside the vehicle is secured so that if we do hit an IED, nothing, including the passengers, moves around.
The convoy pushes out of FOB Shawqat and heads north. Turrets swivel as commanders scan the roads ahead for likely enemy fire positions. Ditches, compounds, vehicles, walls – almost anything which offers the insurgents cover – is a potential firing point.
I’m told the journey is expected to take forty minutes, which comes as something of a revelation. The last time I was in Nad-e’Ali, just some four months earlier, a trip of a similar distance had taken six hours. Every unsecured piece of road needed to be searched for IEDs by soldiers using mine detectors.
‘I bet you didn’t think we would have this sort of freedom of movement,’ Roly says with a wide smile on his face. ‘If we had come along here before Operation Moshtarak we would have had Apaches flying top cover and we would have been greeted by the mother of all ambushes. It would have been a very tough fight and there is no way we could have continued, but look at it now’ – he points at one of the display units – ‘it’s pretty benign.’ I ask Roly whether he thinks the Taliban have fled or simply gone to ground. ‘I think it’s a mixture of both,’ he says, hedging his bets. ‘We really won’t know how successful Operation Moshtarak has been until after the summer or even well into next year. I think the local Taliban have probably returned to their farms, packed the Kalashnikov away and will get on with the poppy harvest and wait for us to make the next move. But I think we have sent a very clear message. They know they can’t win here and we’ve got to get them to understand, and the local population, that this is not a short-term exercise. Up until recently the Taliban have seen themselves as the shadow government around here, but now they’ve been evicted. We must make sure that they don’t creep back in. The real test is not now but in the months to come.’
Moshtarak, which means ‘together’ in Dari, the language of Afghanistan, was devised to remove the Taliban from central Helmand in areas not previously cleared by ISAF forces. Success would mean that the writ of the government was extended, ISAF would have greater freedom of movement, and a major Taliban stronghold would be destroyed. Unlike previous ISAF operations, prior to Moshtarak the Taliban were given plenty of warning. General McChrystal, the US commander of ISAF forces, wanted them to leave rather than stand and fight. By telling Taliban commanders that the largest NATO operation in Helmand was about to be launched, it was hoped that they would see sense and flee. Less fighting would mean fewer civilian casualties, which was central to McChrystal’s strategy. The operation had two key objectives: the US Marines would seize the district of Marjah, while a combined multinational force led by the British would seize a series of objectives around Nad-e’Ali and in the Babaji area of central Helmand. Preparations started as early as September 2009, when members of the Canadian Army began training some 400 members of the ANA.
Shaping operations began in mid-January, and by D-Day, in the hours before dawn on 13 February 2010, the first of ninety helicopters left Camp Bastion to seize a series of objectives in an operation which would eventually involve up to 15,000 ISAF troops. Most of the British objectives were seized almost immediately, and opposition was light. But Marjah, farther south, was proving to be a tougher fight. Marjah was one of the most important areas to the Taliban. It was their key stronghold in the region and a centre of IED production and development. But it was also crucial to the production of opium, the sale of which was helping to fund the insurgency. The US Marines had by far the tougher challenge and the fighting, albeit on a small scale, continued for many months, and, by late July 2010, British soldiers were again being killed in areas from which the Taliban had supposedly been cleared.
While Operation Moshtarak was successful in the short term, the jury is out on whether it has achieved its long-term aims. At the time of writing, the end of July 2010, Operation Tor Shezada has just been launched to clear the Taliban from the southern area of Nad-e’Ali close to and around the town of Sayedabad, which was one of the last large Taliban strongholds in the area. As with Moshtarak, the Taliban had already fled, not surprisingly, by the time the British troops moved in.
As our convoy trundles through a small kalay en route to Patrol Base Shahzad there is a loud clang against the vehicle just behind where I’m sitting. WO1 Farrell turns to the driver and, with a wrinkled brow, says, ‘Was that an RPG?’ He is more curious than concerned. The driver shrugs and responds, ‘Dunno, sir.’ The sergeant major swivels the turret over to the left and using his display unit searches the terrain for Taliban fighters. ‘Probably just a kid throwing a rock,’ he mutters. I’m now waiting for all hell to be let loose, thinking that we have just driven into Roly’s ‘mother of all ambushes’. I turn to Roly. ‘Was that an RPG?’ I ask, trying not to appear nervous. He seems not the least bit bothered. ‘If it was, it didn’t detonate. Pretty good shot, though,’ he says admiringly. ‘It must have been at least 100 metres away. Could have just been a stone being flicked up.’
The convoy pushes on without stopping to investigate further and within a few minutes we are crossing a shallow river several hundred metres from the outskirts of the PB. On the right are rows and rows of traders selling everything from motorbikes to fizzy drinks. It is a scene of typical Afghan chaos, but business is clearly booming. ‘Last time you were here this market was dead. Now look at it, it’s flourishing,’ Roly tells me. ‘The locals had to change the markets’ days because some were being run on the same days and they were “stealing” trade from each other. That’s a real measure of success – that’s how you counter the insurgency, it doesn’t have to be all done by fighting.’ He’s really giving me the hard sell about what has been achieved since my last visit. And why not? His battalion has worked relentlessly for almost six months, they have taken casualties, and several of his men have received life-changing injuries. So they should feel proud of what they have achieved. But it would be a mistake to think that success in Nad-e’Ali is the beginning of the end for the Taliban.
Minutes after arriving, we are ushered into a large tent for a pre-lunch shura with the district governor, Habiullah Khan. Mutton haunches and rice is the menu of the day, along with what the soldiers call ‘toenail’ bread, joking that it is made with the feet of the locals. There are no knives or forks and, sitting cross-legged on a carpet the size of a squash court, we all tuck in, cupping the fingers of the right hand to scoop up the greasy but delicious rice. I’m amazed at the vast size of the portions, with the standard for consumption being set by the governor, who is famed for his large appetite. After lunch a steady stream of locals arrive and begin to fill the tent. They have come to listen to the governor and Roly. The message is one I have heard many times before, except this time the circumstances are different. For the first time in years the locals in this part of Helmand can live their lives in the knowledge that the Taliban no longer rule. Yet rather than jubilation there is suspicion, for the insurgents’ parting message was ‘We’ll be back’ and the locals believe it.
First to speak to the 200-strong audience is the governor. Habiullah Khan has a kind, friendly face, but he is also cunning and has acquired a good grasp of modern politics. He knows that in the audience he has both supporters and detractors, as well as members of the Taliban who are on an intelligence-gathering mission. The people of Chah-e-Anjir have always seen themselves as a class apart from the rest of Nad-e’Ali. In the 1950s US aid groups pumped millions of dollars into southern Afghanistan under the Helmand River Project, which was, somewhat ironically, responsible for the growth of the Green Zone – now regarded by the Taliban as its territory. Various ethnic groups moved into the area and today, with its thirteen different ethnic groups, it is one of the most ethnically mixed parts of southern Afghanistan. Even after the US pulled out, the good times continued, until Afghanistan descended into thirty years of self-inflicted chaos. There are still elders living in the area who can remember when Chah-e-Anjir was a thriving, almost autonomous community, and they have no interest in being ‘ruled’ by what in their eyes amounts to an ‘outsider’. So the governor was also doing the hard sell.
‘What have the Taliban done for you?’ he asks the all-male audience, but his question is met with silence. ‘You could not trade without being taxed, you had no freedom, your children couldn’t go to school, life was not good. But now, now you can trade and you keep your money and your children can get an education, and that is good for our society. You must tell your children that the Taliban offer us nothing, only misery.’ The governor’s speech rambles on for almost an hour and I begin to feel that I am losing the will to live. The lack of sleep, the heavy lunch and the rising afternoon temperature are beginning to take their toll. I look over at Roly, who stifles a yawn. I’m glad I’m not the only one suffering.
Then it’s Roly’s turn to address the shura. Speaking through an interpreter, he begins by thanking the audience for allowing him to speak and for attending the meeting. He is slick and smooth, but, most importantly for the locals, sincere. He explains why Operation Moshtarak was needed and apologizes for any inconvenience it caused, speaking in the knowledge that collateral damage in this area during the kinetic phase of the operation was nil.
Roly then turns to the insurgency. ‘I have no argument with the Taliban. If I could speak to the Taliban commanders, I would do it today. We would then sit down like grown men and discuss our differences and in the way of the world we would solve our problems by talking, not fighting. But I have offered and no one has come to my door. We are not here to fight the Taliban. We are here, at the invitation of your government, to protect the Afghan people. But if the Taliban attack us, we have a right to defend ourselves.’
The speech goes down well and afterwards there is a long queue of elders ready to thank Roly and shake his hand. ‘That seemed to go well,’ I told him afterwards. ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘Only time will tell. We’ve got to make the most of this transition period, we’ve really got to show the elders that there is an alternative to the Taliban, but, more importantly, we’ve got to convince them that we are not going to pull out any time soon.’
After the meeting I join Roly’s headquarters party, together with Major Ed Boanas, the officer commanding Inkerman Company, on a patrol beginning at Five Tanks and going across the FLET into a beautiful village called Abdul Washid Kalay. Up until Operation Moshtarak, crossing the FLET would have immediately provoked a full-blown firefight and British casualties would have occurred. Dense vegetation makes this ‘close’ country where the field of view is limited to about 100 metres at most. It’s classic insurgent country, made for ambushes.
When I last visited Five Tanks, in November 2009, I was spotted by a Taliban commander, primarily because of my blue body armour. An Afghan interpreter monitoring Icom communications heard a commander call for a sniper to be brought forward to engage two people dressed in blue. The blue body armour, which was supposed to identify me as a journalist, had merely made the Taliban assume that the photographer, Heathcliff O’Malley, and I were VIPs. This time I’m wearing khaki body armour in the hope that I won’t be so obvious.
It takes just a few minutes to walk up the road to the kalay. The road, a rock-hard muddy track, was once heavily laced with IEDs, the whereabouts of which were known only by the Taliban and local people. The track has since been cleared and secured, but walking along it still leaves me with an uneasy feeling. Abdul Washid Kalay was one of the first villages to fall on D-Day of Operation Moshtarak. The Taliban knew what was coming, and left. Those members of the community who were either sympathizers or actual members of the Taliban have put away their weapons and returned to their fields.
‘When I first entered the village I wanted to give them an unequivocal choice – they could carry on fighting and face the consequences of all that involves, or they could put down their arms,’ Major Boanas explains to me as we peer through the camouflage netting of a heavily fortified sangar position which provides a fantastic view over the surrounding area. ‘So far they have decided to do the latter. When we arrived they acknowledged that there had been no civilian casualties in their area, and they were grateful. They are looking at us to see what we do next – that’s why I call them floating voters. If we leave now we will lose their trust, and the Taliban will come in and say, “We told you ISAF wouldn’t stay.”’
This lush and fertile area is important to the illegal but flourishing narcotics trade which has been steadily increasing in Helmand since the arrival of the NATO force in 2006. ‘That’s poppy, that’s poppy,’ Major Boanas says, pointing at the sea of green fields surrounding the patrol base. ‘All of those fields over there are poppy. Pretty much poppy all around,’ he says, smiling. ‘But that’s not our problem, that’s for the counter-narcotics people to resolve. The last thing we want to do is to bound in here and steal their livelihood.’
Back in November I took part in a routine patrol to the north of the PB. It was fairly straightforward, the sort of minor operation undertaken by thousands of British troops every day in Helmand. But it is while on exactly this type of patrol that our soldiers sustain the most fatalities and injuries. Every day, sometimes twice a day, troops leave the safety of their base armed to the teeth and ready to do battle with the Taliban. After six months very nearly every man will have been involved in a firefight and seen his brothers-in-arms killed and injured in battle. It is during these routine, everyday events that soldiers demonstrate real courage.
On 30 November 2009 Lieutenant Douglas Dalzell of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards was leading a patrol into the Padaka, an insurgent stronghold in Babaji. As the patrol moved along a track, the soldier directly in front of Lieutenant Dalzell triggered an IED. The blast punched him to the ground, leaving him stunned and disorientated. Staggering to his feet, he saw that the young soldier who had stepped on the bomb had lost a leg. Lieutenant Dalzell, who was just 26 and on his first operational tour, rallied his guardsmen while coordinating the evacuation of the wounded soldier. The plan was to move back down the same alleyway with the injured man being carried by a stretcher party composed of Sergeant Paul Baines, who was attached to the patrol, Sergeant John Amer, the platoon sergeant, and four other soldiers
As the troops moved off, Sergeant Amer stepped on a second bomb, which blew off both his legs and left him with mortal wounds. The soldier on the stretcher lost his remaining leg in this blast and every member of the stretcher party suffered serious shrapnel injuries, including Sergeant Baines, who was bleeding heavily from wounds to the head, neck, and legs. It was a scene of utter carnage and as Dalzell and Baines composed themselves, Taliban machine guns rattled into life. Dalzell immediately took control of the situation, directing his men to return fire and clear a safe route to a helicopter. While medics began treating Amer, Baines picked up the other double amputee and carried him in his arms across a ploughed field to a waiting helicopter. In total five casualties were evacuated, four of whom carried rank. Baines immediately recognized the weakened nature of the patrol and refused to be extracted. Instead he picked up his rifle and helped Dalzell in the move back to the PB. Only then did Baines reveal the extent of his wounds and submit to evacuation. A week later he discharged himself from the field hospital in Camp Bastion and was back on the ground fighting. Back in the PB, Lieutenant Dalzell had the difficult task of informing his men that his close friend and their platoon sergeant had died. Four hours later the platoon was back on patrol.
The above account illustrates graphically the grave risks soldiers have to take in order to conduct the most ordinary of tasks. Every unit which has served in Helmand can probably tell similar tales. Lieutenant Dalzell carried on leading 2 Platoon until his twenty-seventh birthday on 18 February 2010, when he stepped on an IED while on patrol in Babaji and was killed instantly. He was posthumously awarded a Military Cross.
During the first three weeks of June 2010 fourteen soldiers were killed in action during routine patrols across Helmand. In Sangin alone, while much of Britain fretted over the future of the English football team at the World Cup in South Africa, four Marines were killed on four consecutive days. The Ministry of Defence refuses to provide timely details of the number of troops wounded in Afghanistan, but instead publishes monthly figures stating the number of soldiers wounded in action, describing them as either ‘very seriously ill’ or ‘seriously ill’. The details of the appalling injuries being suffered daily in Helmand, such as double and triple amputation, blindness, paralysis, brain damage and battle shock, are excluded.
I have been on many patrols, both as an embedded journalist and, back in the late 1980s, as a serving soldier. To walk out of the relative safety of any military base into hostile enemy territory takes courage. While serving in Northern Ireland I learned to live with the knowledge that I, like every one of the other 13,000 or so soldiers based in the province at that time, was an IRA target. Hard targeting – rapid acceleration of a vehicle through the gates of a British Army base in order to provide a ‘hard target’ for an IRA sniper – at Woodburn RUC Police Station in West Belfast in 1989 as the second in command of B Company, 3 Para, or commanding a Close Observation Platoon in a covert reconnaissance patrol on the home of a known IRA player, was an unnerving experience. To control my fears I would focus on the detail of the planning of the patrol, the target, and my own personal administration tasks, thereby filling my head with positive information rather than allowing fear to take control. But back in those days it was fairly rare for British troops to be killed by the IRA: between 1989 and 1991, 3 Para, which was the resident battalion in the Belfast area, had four soldiers killed by terrorist attacks and a fifth killed by a joyrider. In Helmand a battlegroup can lose the same number of soldiers in a day.
In November 2009 I went on patrol with the Grenadier Guards’ Inkerman Company in the Chah-e-Anjir area. It was a routine local security patrol, the bread-and-butter work of the majority of soldiers in Helmand. But routine does not mean safe. A week earlier Kingsman Andrew Campbell, 18, from Wigan, serving with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, had been shot through the face while taking part in his very first patrol. The bullet struck him in the cheek and exited through the back of his head. Miraculously, he survived and walked away from the battlefield, and after being evacuated back to Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham made a full recovery. A week before that attack, Sergeant Nathan Cumberland, of the Grenadier Guards’ Reconnaissance Platoon, lost both legs after detonating an IED while on patrol. His section was moving across a field on a track used by locals and Sergeant Cumberland was number three in the line. The first two soldiers walked over the device and he stepped on the pressure plate. One of his legs was blown off immediately, while the other was attached by muscle.
In the weeks after he was injured I spoke to Nathan and he told me that he could actually see one of his legs in a field a few metres away. ‘I knew immediately what had happened and at that stage you wonder two things: will I live, and how much damage has been done? One of the first things I checked when I got back to the hospital at Camp Bastion was whether I still had the family jewels, and thankfully I did. But then the Taliban opened up on us – some of my lads were pretty shocked – I could tell by the look on their faces, but when the Taliban hit us I had to grip them and started telling the guys to return fire. We were at a real risk of taking more casualties.’ The follow-up attack after an IED strike is a classic Taliban ambush, and while it seems a brutal and cowardly tactic it makes perfect sense from the Taliban’s point of view. The British troops were extremely vulnerable – they had a seriously injured soldier and were probably more focused on casualty evacuation than on a Taliban attack.
Another time, in a somewhat bizarre shooting incident, Lieutenant Paddy Rice was shot and wounded while trying to move a radio on the roof of a checkpoint called Compound 23 in Chah-e-Anjir. Paddy, aged 25 at the time, was shot by a Taliban sharpshooter through a murder hole of a compound a few hundred metres away. The bullet struck him in the back, just beneath the armhole in his CBA, travelled up through his back, along the outside of his spine and through his neck, which was sliced open, exiting his body just beneath his right ear. The bullet then passed through his helmet. Paddy realized immediately that he had been shot but was unaware how lucky he had been until he was taken back to Camp Bastion. The wound required twenty-nine stitches, but three weeks later he was back on duty.
The patrol I accompanied was composed of around a dozen members of the Grenadier Guards company, together with a section of troops from the Afghan Task Force (ATF) – a semi-covert unit of Afghan soldiers specially selected and trained by members of the British Army base. The plan was for the patrol to move from the company headquarters, located at PB Shahzad, into the surrounding countryside, visit some of the British checkpoints and examine a small bridge which had been blown up a few days earlier by the Taliban.
Patrolling through the Green Zone is an unnerving experience for everyone. Attack can come from absolutely anywhere and almost always without warning. I can recall my nervousness walking through the gates of the camp and expecting to be hit at any moment. My stomach was turning, shivers were running down my spine, and sweat was dribbling down my back. In some parts of Helmand the threat from IEDs is so great that soldiers throw up before going out on patrol, and I was certainly feeling weak-kneed and nauseous myself. But for one of those who was on patrol with me, fear is no longer the enemy it once was. Guardsman David Walton, a fresh-faced 18-year-old, had learned through experience that there was no point in worrying about what might happen. David was already a veteran of several battles and appeared to enjoy life as a soldier in Helmand. He once aspired to play professional football and was a member of Coventry City’s youth team, but those dreams were shattered when he broke his leg badly during a match.
‘I enjoy it most of the time – the Army is like a big family, so it’s quite a lot of fun,’ David told me, wiping sweat from his brow as we took shelter from the intense sun during a break in the five-hour patrol. ‘It’s not often in life that you really get a chance to help people and defend the country, and that’s what I think we are doing here. But it can be a bit scary. A few weeks ago one of my mates stepped on an IED but it wasn’t connected. If it had been we could have all been killed. That was a bit of a wake-up call.’
As the patrol moved along the dusty tracks, the sound of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the distance but neither the soldiers nor the farmers toiling in the fields took any notice. It seemed that everyone had grown used to the sounds of war.
‘My parents do worry about me,’ David added. ‘Especially my mum. When I call home and she asks me how things are, I always play it down and just say, “I’m OK, everything’s fine.” There’s no point telling her about the deaths and the injuries, she would only worry.’
Our route should have taken us along a track with a 5 ft mud wall running along either side. The patrol was about 1.5 km from the main base and close to the FLET. The two Vallon operators moved forward and began to scan the walls and the track. Within a few metres they began to get high tones, so a halt was immediately called. Captain Florinin Kuku, who was leading the patrol, decided that to proceed on the planned route was too risky. The Nigerian-born captain is one of the few soldiers in the British Army who has actually detonated a pressure-plate IED and managed not to lose a limb. He was blown up in 2007 near Gereshk, during the Grenadier Guards’ first tour in Helmand. Fortunately for him, IEDs were still in their infancy.
‘We are getting some pretty high readings along the walls and the track, so we are going to change our route and cut across that field,’ Captain Kuku told me after we arrived at one of the bases we were visiting on the patrol. ‘I doubt whether there are any IEDs along that route because it’s obviously being used by the locals and you would think they would know. But sometimes they just avoid the bombs and continue to walk along the same route because they know exactly where the bombs are. Frankly, for us it’s not worth the risk.’
As we cut across the ploughed field I begin to feel horribly exposed and vulnerable. I’m staring at the ground, trying to walk in the footsteps of the person in front of me. The nausea returns and my stomach begins to turn over. Images of myself reeling in agony on the ground, holding two bloody, mutilated stumps, begin to fill my head and it takes all my inner strength to carry on walking. I’m expecting an explosion with each wincing step. It is a feeling I’ve had many times before and my only solace is that I know it will pass. Later I take comfort from the soldiers who tell me that they have exactly the same feelings every time they leave the base. ‘Only a fool wouldn’t be scared,’ Captain Kuku tells me.
As we move towards the first checkpoint on the patrol, Captain Kuku spots a tourniquet lying on the ground. He tells one of the soldiers to take a note of the grid coordinates of the tourniquet from his satnav, and then explains that there’s a possibility the tourniquet could be linked to an IED. ‘That,’ he says, pointing at the tourniquet, ‘is unusual. It could have fallen from a soldier, or could have been used and discarded after someone was injured. But it’s definitely Army-issue. We know that the Taliban are attaching IED to pieces of NATO military equipment so that if it’s picked up by a soldier it will be detonated. The IRA used to do the same sort of thing. The basic rule is: “Never pick up anything on patrol.” We mark and avoid and then call in the details when we get back to the PB. Next time we have an ATO up here, if there is time, we’ll take him on patrol and get him to clear all the suspected IEDs. Until then we’ll just leave it.’
After we move into the checkpoint, a small compound occupied by a section of Grenadier Guards, I strike up a conversation with a corporal from another unit, working alongside the ATF. He tells me that he was here a few months ago, before the arrival of the Grenadier Guards, when the area was swarming with Taliban. ‘We were just moving across a field, which we just crossed and we were ambushed. It was pretty cheeky. I was almost cut off from the rest of my section – one of the Tiger Teams. But the lads did really well. They put into practice everything they had learned in training and we managed to extract under fire.’ Tiger Teams are the specially trained units of the ATF and they are in great demand across the whole of Helmand. The Tiger Teams’ members are all volunteers, mostly from areas outside Helmand, and they are trained and selected by special units within the British Army. Those who make the grade join the ATF, while those who fail are used as members of force protection teams guarding the camp.
‘This is the best job I’ve had in the Army,’ the corporal tells me. ‘I’m on my own working with these guys. We share the same tent, and eat the same rations. I try to teach them a bit of English and they try to teach me a bit of Pashto, which is spoken by Pashtuns in the south of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, but I always have an interpreter with me. They are really up for it. Every commander wants a Tiger Team in his AO [area of operations] because they have a unique skill set. They can spot things that we wouldn’t see or would take us months to learn. I’ve been out with them when they have seen someone on a motorbike and just said, stop him. When we’ve checked the guy out we’ve found bomb-making equipment on him. They saw that he didn’t quite fit in and they noticed the reaction of the locals to him and that’s what they picked up on. The villages are very insular, everyone knows everyone. Sometimes you just have one long extended family and the locals will immediately notice someone new. It’s the sort of thing we might be able to do if we spent two years here, but we don’t. They [Tiger Teams] are one of the real success stories of what we are doing out here.’
As we chat, the soldiers return from viewing the bridge which had been destroyed by the Taliban a few days earlier. One of the officers explains that the Taliban were trying to extort money from one of the local farmers, who refused to pay. ‘They blew up the bridge which we built a couple of months ago. The bridge helped him get across his land and the improvements we made to the banks helped with irrigation. What the farmers really want here is better irrigation so they can grow crops and make money. But the Taliban want their cut. This farmer refused to pay up, so they blew up the bridge. We can fix it but it’s likely to happen again unless we get rid of the Taliban or at least police the area properly.’
By the time we return to the PB I feel exhausted. We probably walked no more than 3–4 km but the heat and the constant threat of attack were an extra burden.
Within the hour the convoy is on the road again for an overnight stop at PB Tapa Parang, in the district of Basharan, in the north-west of the district. By the time we arrive it’s dark but I can still make out some of the features and hear the sound of the river at the bottom of the hill on which the base is located. Once again I’m struck by the stunning natural beauty of the landscape and I remain convinced that if Afghanistan sorted out its act it could make a fortune from tourism.
A group of soldiers, part of the commanding officer’s tactical headquarters, who are providing the security for the trip, are cooking Army rations over a small fire in the corner of the compound. I walk over with a foil sachet of pasta in tomato sauce and ask if I can share their hot water.
One of the group is an SAS sergeant – the special forces liaison officer attached to the battlegroup whom I met earlier on the patrol. ‘Of course, mate, fill your boots. Want one of these?’ he says and offers me an Army biscuit. The soldiers are chuntering about leave and R&R. They seem to be split over whether a two-week break in a six-month tour is worth it. I dunk my silver sachet in the boiling water and the conversation reignites.
‘By the time you get home and get your head sorted, it’s time to come back. And what have you done? Spent two weeks on the piss with your mates trying to forget about this fucking place and answering questions from tossers who want to know what it’s like to fucking kill someone. I’d rather do six months straight and get a bigger bonus at the end.’ The soldier who says this looks as if he is barely in his twenties but this is his second time in Afghanistan. The bonus he mentions is the tax-free operational bonus all troops serving in Afghanistan receive, irrespective of rank, at the end of their tour.
The soldier continues, ‘R&R just fucks you up even more. Can any of you honestly say that you felt better afterwards? By the time it’s over you’re in a shit state because all you’ve done is cane it for the last two weeks.’
The SAS sergeant laughs as he says, ‘You’re obviously not married, mate. Wait till you’re married and have kids. That’s when you’ll find that R&R is important.’ Then he turns to me. ‘You’ll get two differing opinions. Married blokes want R&R, especially if they have kids. In the US Army they get two weeks a year and the divorce rate is going through the roof. In SF [special forces] the divorce rate is already pretty high. Young blokes, guys who are single, are willing to stag on for the full six months, but they want a bigger bonus at the end. Some blokes would do nine months if the tours came around less often – once every three years – but nine months is a big lick out.’
I ask the group whether a six-month tour is too long. ‘Two weeks is too fucking long in this shithole, mate,’ says one of the soldiers, and the group grumbles in agreement. ‘Afghan is a fucked-up dump and nothing we do is going to change anything.’ I ask, ‘Don’t you think things have improved since you were last here?’ ‘Yeah, I suppose it’s quietened down a bit – it couldn’t have been much worse.’
Another of the group disagrees. ‘Come on, it’s a lot quieter now than it was before Moshtarak. Then we were being hit about ten times a day.’
‘Most of your commanders say this is what young soldiers join up for,’ I say. ‘Yeah, but you can have too much of a good thing,’ someone says. ‘Everyone wants to get involved in a firefight when you first come out but when it’s happening every day you start to wonder how long your luck will last. And then there are the fucking IEDs – they’re everywhere, man. It’s like you can’t fucking move without hitting one.’
As we chat, one of the men begins to complain about the so-called REMFS – rear-echelon motherfuckers – back in Camp Bastion. These are guys who never leave the camp apart from going on R&R and returning home. Their role is to support the troops in the field but some front-line soldiers find it difficult to stomach the knowledge that those who remain on the base are entitled to the same medal and the same tax-free bonus as the soldiers who have to go out and fight the Taliban every day.
Then we start to talk about kit, which by and large the soldiers think is pretty good. ‘When I first went to Iraq,’ says a sergeant, ‘the body armour was pants. All you had was this small plate protecting your heart and the blokes used to say, “The Iraqis will have to be a good shot to hit that.” But this stuff is shit hot. We’re getting new kit all the time – but that won’t stop the blokes buying their own. A soldier will always want his personal kit, especially when you’re on an op like this.’ The sergeant’s opinion is more or less shared by everyone else. The SAS sergeant then adds, ‘If you really want good kit, lad, you should join the SF – we get what we want.’ ‘Yeah, the fucking SAS – more pay, best kit and you’re allowed to grow your hair long. Bunch of cowboys,’ says someone. That brings the response, ‘Right, next one who says the SAS are a bunch of cowboys gets it right between the eyes,’ and everyone falls about laughing.
The soldier who served with the Grenadier Guards in Helmand in 2007 says, ‘The vehicles we had in 2007 were shite, especially the Snatch – great for Northern Ireland, not so good for Helmand.’ A Snatch usually carries four soldiers – the driver and commander plus two more who can provide top cover through a hatch in the roof. The vehicle made its way into the public’s consciousness during the Iraq War, when the insurgency began to derail any attempt to undertake reconstruction in southern Iraq. The Army needed a versatile, manoeuvrable patrol vehicle, and the Snatch fitted the bill. It was regarded as a success until it began to be targeted by insurgents armed with Iranian-built improvised roadside bombs. Knowing its deficiencies, senior officers shamefully allowed the Snatch to resurface in Helmand, where it was again being used on operations until it was effectively withdrawn from service in 2008 after four soldiers – Corporal Sarah Bryant, Corporal Sean Reeve, and SAS reservists Lance Corporal Richard Larkin and Trooper Paul Stout – were killed when their Snatch was destroyed by an IED.
‘I’d refuse to go in a Snatch now,’ said one of the younger soldiers. ‘We all know the risks in Afghan and we’re all prepared to take them, but I wouldn’t want to travel in a vehicle which won’t offer any protection if you get blown up. You know that if you get hit when you’re in a Snatch you’re dead.’
‘There’s no such thing as a bomb-proof vehicle,’ adds another soldier, ‘and if there was you would still have to get out of it at some stage. Even the Mastiff has been taken out and blokes have been injured. Terry [Taliban] will take one out one day, it’s just a matter of time, it’s just about building a bomb big enough. In Iraq the Sunni managed to blow up US Abrams tanks. If you can blow up an Abrams, you can blow up anything.’
The conversation eventually peters out and one by one the soldiers go off to sleep, like me, beneath a pitch-black desert sky twinkling with millions of stars. A full night’s sleep is impossible. The ANA soldiers are jumpy and believe they have seen gunmen moving through the fields which ring the camp. Every hour or so a parachute flare is fired into the air, an event which is usually a precursor to a gun battle, but not tonight.
By 8.30 the following morning we are back in Shawqat and I meet up with Staff Sergeant Gareth ‘Woody’ Wood, who is an ATO. Woody has just returned from a four-day clearance operation in Chah-e-Anjir, the area from where I have just returned. He is exhausted and in need of a shower and a good night’s sleep but he greets me with a smile.
‘We’re going to do some bomb-hunting tomorrow,’ he says to me. ‘Coming along?’
‘Can’t wait,’ I reply, and I’m genuinely excited.