Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

The Taliban opened up this time from in front, from across the wadi to the south-east. One of the trucks took an AK-47 bullet through the door. The platoon dived for cover behind the trucks and were soon calling for artillery to drive the attackers away.

Finally the patrol could move on again. The trucks rolled into 1st Platoon’s compound just as it was getting dark. The men refilled their canteens, and Corona walked up to Fusco and First Lieutenant TJ Tepley to check up on the map and the plans. He was told his next objective and entered the coordinates on to his Garmin GPS. The plan was to head east for 900 yards and then turn round finally south towards Musa Qala centre. ‘It had been three days and we weren’t even at our first objective,’ recalled Corona, ‘so we were kind of eager to get in there and start clearing our objective, because, until then, you know, we were just held down by vehicles and sporadic fire, and we hadn’t really moved.’

Joe McGovern heard nothing. No pops, thuds nor whistles. Just explosions out of nowhere. Others heard a hiss and then a boom, like a mortar, except backwards. There was confusion – some people shouted ‘mortars’, others shouted ‘RPGs’. Whatever it was, there was plenty of it coming in.

That day Alpha’s 1st and 3rd Platoons had been pushing south, clearing down the green zone on the opposite bank of the wadi from Musa Qala centre. After their earlier fight in the village, McGovern’s 2nd Platoon had stayed to guard the Roshan Tower and the battalion headquarters.

The day had begun like the day before. Waking up in the cold dawn to the zinging sound of Dushka rounds. The Taliban had been firing Dushkas at the hill all day – and at the choppers too, scoring that hit on the Apache. But most of the fire was just harassing rounds. The big attack came when the sun was beginning to set. This time, they struck home.

Tyler Clas was cooking up some rations on the hilltop. He heard one bang and thought it was a stray RPG. Then after three more booms, he put on his armour vest and ran for the trenches, clutching his half-cooked food. His team was standing there staring at him wide-eyed. ‘Aw, it’s not that big a deal,’ he said. He hadn’t seen the explosion behind him, just where he had been sitting.

They lay flat down in the trench for two minutes. Then Clas switched on his radio and heard the call. ‘Hey, we got wounded. We got wounded, four guys wounded.’ With the rounds still landing, two of his guys ran down the hill to help while Clas looked for stretchers. Then there was a pause. The Taliban waited. They knew the men would run for the wounded. They opened up again when they saw movement. This time – with paratroopers on the hilltop now firing back at what they thought was the firing point – the enemy were firing back more wildly.

Specialist David Goth was closer to the action. His team leader, Sergeant Stephen McBride, had just called him over to help guard the line. He looked across and saw one round hit and then another. He glanced at the weapons squad, all lined up together in a shallow trench. He saw McBride and Jason Strickland, a private just twelve days in theatre. He saw the shadow of a round going right at them and then a bang and smoke and he was thinking ‘They’re fucking toast.’

That explosion had hit McBride and Strickland; and another took out Specialists Adam Blackburn and Steven Martinez as the pair ran down the hill to help with the casualties.

It was a scene from hell. Goth recalled: ‘Everyone was just getting up, fucking rolling. Strickland’s fucking crawling, oh my God, you know, ‘cause he can’t walk, his feet are fucked. I mean, Marty’s bolting down the fucking hill. Everyone’s just scattering. And, I mean, I figured that fucking – I figured Strickland was done. But I saw Marty get down the hill. He started bleeding out of his thigh and shit. I’m guessing like anyone, it’s pure adrenalin. He fuckin’ bolted down the hill. He got about down and he was like “Oh, shit.” Same with Blackburn. I mean, all the guys were just like – Sergeant McBride got hit in the arm. He didn’t even know it until somebody pointed it out to him.’

Strickland had been lucky. He had been lying flat on his stomach with his legs spread apart, and the round landed right between. It messed up his legs, though. Martinez was hit by shrapnel in both legs; Blackburn got hit on his backside and abdomen.

McGovern, the platoon leader, was by now at the scene. He got the feeling that the enemy must have an observer somewhere close. By now a new volley of rounds was getting close again, like it was being walked towards the target. The men started ‘hauling ass’ downhill. Strickland and Martinez were on stretchers; Blackburn was hobbling along. Though McBride was hit in one arm and about to be evacuated he insisted on helping carry another casualty with his other, good arm. They got down to the medevac landing site, the same one they had used a day earlier.

Inside the battalion HQ on Roshan Hill, in the hut beneath the metal tower, First Lieutenant Anthony Fera, the fire support team leader, was calling in the artillery for Bravo Company up the wadi when he heard the explosions outside. The Taliban’s grenade launcher was being backed up with another salvo of highly accurate Dushka rounds. Some in HQ shared the suspicion the rounds were tipped with explosives.

Fera’s team had to run the mortars and artillery, talk to the Apache helicopters and talk to the fast jet bombers on station. It had got busier now than at any time. Fera gave Bravo the British guns for their missions. They were slower to get fired up as the mission requests had to go through more channels. Alpha Company, defending Roshan, was given Red Leg, the American 105mm field guns.

The hut they were working in was crowded. Measuring 15 feet by 10 feet, it had not only the fire team, but Mennes’ radio operators and his operations staff, and also a team from EW – electronic warfare. Their classified equipment for intercepting and jamming signals was proving itself.

Matthew Hatfield, the fire team sergeant, was out on the ridgeline when all this was happening. He was in the OP, the observation point, where the job was to spot the firing points. He watched the first of the twenty-odd grenades come flying over the parapet and strike the back of the hill. The next one dropped short of the ridgeline. ‘Holy crap,’ he shouted, ‘they’re bracketing us.’ Bracketing is a standard military procedure for dropping rounds long and then short before adjusting the range to hit right on target. It was moments later when Alpha 2nd Platoon started taking casualties.

The EW team was now picking up interceptions. Someone close by was acting as spotter for the grenade-launcher team: describing where the paratroopers were moving. As the medics ran down in the open to attend to the casualties, the Taliban radio piped up: ‘They’re on the back side of the hill now.’ Then the fire shifted. ‘Oh shit,’ said Hatfield.

Hatfield had never seen the Taliban so effective. The firing was accurate. It was being coordinated. And even their ammunition – so often defunct – was working. When he saw the explosion by Blackburn’s feet, he thought: ‘I don’t even want to go down there and see that. This is going to be carnage.’ But he saw Blackburn get up and start to run downhill, shouting out, ‘Oh, hell, somebody shot me in my ass!’

Inside the HQ, Mennes’ operations officer, Major Guy Jones, decided something decisive had to be done. He ordered a smoke mission to smother the battalion’s positions. ‘We got to win some time,’ he thought. If the Taliban had a fire observer, then the paratroopers needed to get themselves hidden while both the firing points for the Dushka machine guns and for the grenade launcher were located for the two Apaches still on station to strike. Jones turned to Fera’s fire team, but they were all busy talking to the companies under contact. And the man he asked to raise the smoke mission didn’t seem to know what to do. So Jones decided to step out himself and take a grip of the situation. Grabbing a map and compass, he proceeded to climb up on to the mobile phone tower. As he got up he saw an Apache scream down the wadi. And just then, in the fast-fading light, he saw on the far side the flash of a Dushka opening up. Noting the position on the map, he climbed back down to the hut.