Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

Jonno said, ‘Yeah. Musa Qala. I need to take Musa Qala.’

‘I know you do; you just wanted to ask me.’

‘I’m going.’

‘You need to be sure you want to go.’

‘Yeah, I’m going.’

‘OK.’

That was how the conversation ended. As he went to bed, Don thought Jonno was always going to go, no matter what he had said.

When Private Lawrence Fong and the rest of Jonno’s team up at Kajaki came back to camp, they were surprised to find Jonno still at Shorobak. He hadn’t gone on his R&R. They also learned he had started going to church. Someone said he hadn’t been to one for seventeen years. ‘Things change,’ said Jonno.

Having Jonno in the camp was a pain for some people. He was getting a little concerned about his brother and seemed to hover round the Ops Room. Every thread of news about Kajaki was turned into a question about Don. One night he heard there had been a mine strike up in Kajaki, and his brother was involved. He shook a friend of his, Corporal Lee Brook, awake in his cot to tell him.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Jonno?’

‘Guess where our kid is now?’

‘Kajaki.’

‘Yeah, and guess what he’s doing.’

‘I don’t know. What’s he doing, then?’

‘He’s in a minefield. He’s poking for mines.’

‘You’re fucking joking… but what are you doing up at four o’clock in the morning?’

‘How did Jonno know to be up when it happened?’ his brother Don wondered later. ‘How was he up? He shouldn’t have been out of bed at all. That’s just the way it was. How did he find out? He just knew. He knew.’

The mine strike at Kajaki was a horrible event – and it made Don realize how unprepared he had really been for the reality of war.

It was in the middle of the night, and the 2 Yorks mentoring team and their ANA patrol were moving fast down a dry riverbed to meet an H-Hour for an operation with the Royal Marines. There was a section that was in front, sweeping for mines, and Don’s section was right behind. Don had stopped suddenly because a battery alarm in his day sack started to go off. ‘Right, go firm,’ said Don, and he and his men got down on one knee. And then ‘for some strange, random reason’ an interpreter behind him ran straight past, right in front of him and stepped on a mine about 3 yards away and got blown up.

‘There was no explanation of why he was running past,’ remembered Don. ‘He had no reason to be. He should have been with his section commander. He ran past and he just got blown up.’

Don knew it should have been his own head blown off. ‘If there was ever a time when I thought I do not fucking want to be here then that was it.’ The incident only lasted about twenty minutes, and he gathered his thoughts again. ‘We tried to treat him but he’d lost his… his left hand had been completely blown off. Lost a few of his fingers, he had a big hole in his chin, I think his eye had popped out. It was a mess, his nose, you could see where he had been cauterized… It was a total mess. Me and the combat medic tried to save him, but I think we broke most of his ribs trying to give him CPR [resuscitate him], he was an absolute mess. We got him back to the helicopter landing site, but he couldn’t make it. If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t have wanted to make it.’

That whole thing made Don wonder about his luck. Back in Sangin he had walked right past a pressure-plate IED that had hit Sergeant Eddie Nicholls and he had been saved on that occasion too. And it also made him think that next time – if and when he returned to Afghanistan – he would tell all the young lads all the worst stories and show them the worst videos to prepare them for the horror.

‘I think it hit a lot of the lads, situations like that. I was not ready to see someone with so many missing body parts and trying to save him. It will scar me. Daft little things like you need to put rubber gloves on. You need to put them on before you treat him. But my rubber gloves were in the bottom of my medic pouch and probably cost me like two minutes to get them out… it probably cost that lad two minutes. But you need to prepare the lads for that, because if that’s me or one of them on the floor, or one of their muckers, you need to save his life. You need to save his life!

Over in Kajaki, Don was reading electronic messages from Jonno like ‘I think I’ve made a really bad decision’ or ‘I don’t think I should go’ or ‘I’ve got a bad feeling’. But Don told him, ‘It will be all right, we will be laughing in a few months’ time in the pub.’

What begins as support for a tribal uprising becomes the largest British-led operation in Afghanistan since 2001. A battle group of Royal Marines and another led by Household Cavalry are to block Taliban movements, while US paratroopers assault the town from the north, and special forces strike Taliban leadership. More than 2,000 Afghan troops, led into action by the 2 Yorks battle group and US special forces, have orders to capture the town centre.

An aerial armada circles above the battle, striking targets, jamming and intercepting Taliban radios and feeding live surveillance pictures to the ground troops.

Royal Marine commandos cross Helmand River from Sangin to establish Southern Block at the base of Musa Qala wadi.

Afghan militia arriving in school buses are sent to protect Mullah Salaam – but he turns them away.

Armoured battle group led by Household Cavalry establish the Northern Block across the wadi just 5 miles south of the town. Meanwhile, a 12-mile convoy of Afghan forces, with 2 Yorks battle group and US special forces, advances through the desert.

B Company, 2 Yorks, lead Afghan army’s diversionary attack to the south-west of Musa Qala while American paratroopers land by helicopter to the north and attack the town from three sides.

Afghan army forces enter the Musa Qala centre, led by 2 Yorks and special forces.

Keyhole spy satellite

200 miles orbit

E-8C JSTARS

(ground surveillance)

at 35,000ft

KC-135 inflight tanker