Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

These were the noises of a leaguer , a term for the temporary camp of a besieging army. We had arrived in a 12-mile-long convoy, tracked everywhere by the Taliban.

I was alone that night only in my thoughts. Tomorrow’s dawn light would sketch out on the desert plain an encampment of men preparing for war. I was among thousands of men there that night who were one prong in the biggest manoeuvre by the British army in Afghanistan since the days of the long-gone Empire. Its purpose was to support an attack on a town called Musa Qala, a town now infamous as a rebel stronghold.

That night, like generations of men before me, I wondered how, if it really came to it, I would react to extreme danger. As a reporter for twenty years, I had been on this edge before, staring at the sky and surrounded by the snores of men who would wake up and be prepared to kill. But always the tension had faded away. I had been arrested at gunpoint, seen bombs and mortars explode, seen the burning homes of ethnic cleansing and charred remains of the victims of massacres. I had met bad men all over the world, had friends who had been kidnapped and held hostage and had felt very afraid. Sometimes, though, I felt like a mere observer in some surreal scene which had no impact on me or posed no threat to me. What would I do if I came under direct fire myself?

Like the soldiers, I did have a serious mission: I wanted to understand this war, to report on what we were doing in this foreign land and to see if we could ever win or do any good. But, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t the only thing. I felt a thrill that I’d be an eyewitness to something important, and something real. I might also find out something about myself.

I found my war in Afghanistan the next day in a place called Deh Zohr e Sofla, which translates as ‘Lower Noon Village’.

We were walking across an open field. Beyond us were the mud walls of the compounds that marked the outer edge of the village. The point section of the lead platoon was already close. Through all the hours of waiting that morning, and in the heat of the midday sun, the tension of the night before had disappeared. As we strolled along, my mood was almost light-hearted.

I was attached that day to British soldiers of B Company of the 2nd Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment. I was following the company commander, Major Jake Little, and his group of radio operators. Their aerials were flapping above their rucksacks. In two columns ahead were his soldiers and the two Afghan army units they were supposed to be mentoring. On our flanks were the trucks with heavy machine guns on their roofs. They belonged to an ‘A-Team’ of US special force Green Berets, an elite unit.

The interpreter, a small man dressed in green fatigues, turned to me.

‘We’ll be the big target here… you look like an interpreter. They know the officers are always near by. That’s where they fire.’

I looked down to the left and right, at the shallow depression at the side of the track. I reflected on which way I would jump if a battle suddenly started. Not much cover to choose. ‘If it kicks off, I’ll be in that ditch,’ I joked to Jake.

‘I’ll be joining you there,’ he replied.

We walked forward in waves. One column moved while the other kneeled, ready to provide supporting gunfire. I realized how unfit I was and how useless my clothing was. With a belt bag digging into my stomach and the weight of the armour plates inside my padded flak jacket, I found it hard to kneel comfortably.

Then the firing began. A volley of bullets screaming in our direction. A cracking sound as they came near. We dived right into the shallow ditch. Again, my clothes didn’t seem to fit. My jeans were slipping, and I needed a belt. The firing was now intense. I concentrated on keeping my head down. I didn’t know who was firing or where it came from.

Jake and his group got up to run, and I followed in a stumble. We ran left across the track towards the shelter of one of the American trucks, a 4 x 4 Humvee. It was then the gunfire came closest. I remember a ‘zing zing’ and then – in a memory that exists only in slow motion – I saw the bullets strike the earth around my feet, kicking up little bursts of dust. But we made it to the vehicle, and I crouched behind the wheels, catching my breath.

‘If the enemy could shoot straight you would have been dead,’ someone told me later.

I remember just a feeling of confusion (or ‘flapping’ as the soldiers would put it) – not quite sure what I should be doing, which way I should be running, and a wish that I had spent the last few weeks in a gym and could run like the wind. The motto of Jake’s B Company was ‘Fortune favours the fittest’. My fortunes were fading fast. And I remember thinking of my wife, Rebecca, and one-year-old daughter, Sophie, and wondering how fair I was being to them in this crazy, precarious scene.

Jake had told me to follow him. At one point he got up from behind the vehicle. I stood up too, thinking we were about to move. But then he opened fire with his rifle. Stupid me. I got back down.

It was some time in the middle of this, I forget when, that I turned my head and looked behind me. I realized now that, bound up in my own dramas, I had missed something big. A white Toyota saloon car was now overturned, upside down and sideways on the track, and I could make out a gush of blood down the driver’s door. Even closer along the road was a small open-backed lorry. I had seen it before with women and children crowded in the back, whom I had taken to be refugees. There was a crowd of people standing in front of the cab and two bundles of cloth on the road in front: bodies, I presumed. Some British soldiers were approaching and being shouted at in English. ‘Go away, Go away!’

Captain Dan, the US special forces commander, had now joined us, looking impassive. ‘Who fired at them?’ I asked him.

‘I’m not sure. I’m trying to work it all out,’ he said.

For now, no one seemed to know. I finally remembered the video camera in my pocket and began to film.

Our shelter, the Humvee truck, now had to move, and so we ran across to the ditch to the right, going a little forward. The firing appeared to be dying down. Jake was giving orders. A team was sent forward to the front compound wall. I heard the shout of ‘Grenade’ and watched something thrown over the wall. Afghan soldiers rushed into the compound, and there was firing. A little later, the body of a man was brought out and dumped in the road.

The soldiers advanced into the village, and there was sporadic fighting. We finally reached the relative safety of the front compound wall. I sat down and rested. I felt I had had my story. I had seen my bit of war. Now I just wanted to sit down and smoke, and to stay safe. I began thinking of my family again and wondering if the Taliban might try to flank us.

Gradually, what had happened was beginning to make sense. The Americans, I was now told, were the soldiers who had opened fire on the cars. When the firing began, the civilian cars had tried to drive away. But the Americans thought they were suicide bombers and had engaged them.

A British medic, Corporal Philip French, came forward to join us. His face expressed shock. He had tried to save the driver of one of the cars, but hadn’t succeeded. The man had died in his arms.

I had met ‘Frenchy’ before, in the Iraq war. He was the medic at the scene of what became known as the Battle of Danny Boy near the town of al Amarah, when British troops had charged a trench line with bayonets. French had told me of a wounded prisoner he fought to save on that battlefield. He too had died in his care, his lungs flapping around.

Now French was pretty angry. He told me there were also children injured in the gunfire. For some reason, a few of the children were in the boot of the car. The lid had popped open after the car was hit. There were also women injured. But none would let the soldiers approach and treat them.