Stephen Grey - Operation Snakebite

The men standing before the OC certainly had a skinful of courage. They were men in the peak of fitness, and they had the drills and skills, the discipline and plenty of experience too for a fight like this. But it was also true that tonight they were not in uniform and had no weapons. And it was dark, by the seaside, and they were in Blackpool, Lancashire. Not Afghanistan.

‘I don’t think so, lads,’ said the OC. ‘Not tonight.’

Major Jason Alexis Little, aged thirty-six, had a twinkle in his eyes as he looked down the line of men. He was looking at people who were family. He had known some of these men for nearly sixteen years. He had grown up with them. He knew all their strengths and weaknesses. They knew his too. They all addressed him formally as sir or Major Little or the OC. But for the seniors amongst them, in their minds at least he was simply ‘Jake’, and he was one of them. He had been in and out of B Company for years.

Like so many other officers that you found in Helmand, Jake was very much the army brat. His father, Peter Little, had served thirty years in the army, mostly with the Gurkhas, and had retired as a brigadier. Jake spent most of his early life in Hong Kong before boarding at a prep school and then Tonbridge School in Kent. After studying history at Newcastle University, he followed his dad and his elder brother Paddy to train at Sandhurst as an army officer. It wasn’t family pressure that led him to the military, he would say, but just the grim thought of other options, like sitting in an office. He did also feel a plain pride in the army. That certainly was inherited.

Jake’s first job in the regiment had been in B Company as a second lieutenant or subaltern in charge of a platoon. Promoted to captain, he became the second-in-command. Then he returned as the OC in the summer of 2006, taking over from his brother Paddy.

Many thought being company commander was the best job in the army, at least among the officers. As a major this was the last rank of command where you fought your war with the soldiers and where leadership still meant getting close to the thickest of action. Step one rank up to lieutenant colonel and you might just get charge of a battalion, something like a position of being God. But it was also a more remote position: both from the men and from the action.

Against a guerrilla army like the Taliban it was small units that counted. Helmand was very much a company commander’s war. Higher-up ranks might set missions, but it was people like Jake who really worked out the tactics and directed the battle. And then it was often down to his sergeants and young officers (most fresh out of training) to actually run the fight.

The company was due out to Helmand in four days’ time with a mission from 52 Brigade to act as mentors for the Afghan National Army. The task was known as an OMLT, pronounced ‘omelette’ and standing for Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team. It was not just about training but about fighting with and often leading the Afghan soldier, the type of work that in other conflicts had been done by elite special forces. This one company would be mentoring an entire ANA battalion, what the Afghans called a kandak , of 400 men. And what they were doing would be at the heart of the conflict. Everyone knew any sensible exit strategy from the Helmand war involved getting the Afghan army up to strength.

The full complement of Jake’s B Company was 120 men. But the OMLT role demanded a smaller team, a bit heavier in officers and senior ranks. So two of his platoons had been hived off to other jobs. That left behind thirty-five in his team – and these were the men out tonight.

Of all in the 2 Yorks, it was father-of-three Sergeant Lee ‘Jonno’ Johnson, thirty-three, whom Jake probably knew best. Jonno was something of a legend in the regiment, described by its commanding officer, Simon Downey, as ‘one of life’s little gems’. His reputation had not always been won for the best of reasons.

Jonno was the reason they were all standing out here in the street outside the Walkabout. The bouncers had just evicted him for being drunk, not to mention for wearing flip-flops. Jake had gone out to remonstrate. If Jonno was a little drunk, as most were that night, then he was a happy drunk and no cause for worry. The rest of the company had followed Jake out, and that was why they were lined up for action.

The trouble for Jonno, as he grew up, was that he became plagued by a certain legend. As a boxer for the regiment and a judo champion for the army, his nicknames varied from ‘Judo Johnson’ to ‘Mad Dog Johnson’. Everyone who wanted to prove himself in every bar wanted to take Jonno on. And it invariably ended up in big trouble.

Jonno had moved up ranks and been busted down again more times than anyone could ever remember. But his offences – generally for fighting – had never taken him on the expected route to a spell in Colchester, the army military jail. And the reason was that every one of his commanding officers had intervened on his behalf. It had taken Jonno a long time, he would say himself, to realize why – to realize he was a good soldier, a man that others looked up to, a born leader. Now, for the first time, things were going right. For the first time he had come to realize his own potential and had mended his ways. And everyone in the regiment was proud of what Jonno had become.

Jonno had been in Jake’s platoon when Jake had joined B Company. And though they were poles apart in many ways, everyone around them remembered them as very close, often drinking together into the small hours. Dealing with a young green subaltern, Jonno had seen himself as Jake’s protector. If they were in a club and someone started to pick a fight with Jake and the officers, for example, Jonno would suddenly appear from nowhere, steaming to the rescue.

Time, of course, had moved them on a long path since then. Jake had risen up the ranks and was no longer quite the party animal and night owl. He had been married now for six years and had two young children. And Jonno too had become a different man, a classic ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, as his friends would say.

Like Jake, Jonno had a brother in the Green Howards, in his case a younger brother, four years his junior. Lance-Corporal Don Johnson was in C Company. Both would be going out on the tour, and Jonno would worry incessantly about how ‘our kid’ was doing.

There were others who had been there when Jake first joined. Nearly all had a connection with North Yorkshire, the historic recruiting ground of this regiment which until a year back was simply called the Green Howards, a name dating back to 1688. Now it was just one battalion in a new and super-sized Yorkshire Regiment. Still, the tradition of the Green Howards was important. Jake’s soldiers talked of people they admired in the regiment as having ‘green blood’.

At forty-one, Corporal Dave McCarrick was the oldest man in the company and was one of those who had been there when Jake had first joined B Company. Plagued by injuries, including a dodgy knee, McCarrick had never got the chance to do the courses to step him up to the rank of sergeant. But he would be acting sergeant in the coming tour and, after lobbying to be on the front line, he would also be Jake’s gunner – manning the machine gun on the back of the OC’s wagon. Like Jonno, McCarrick was from Stockton, on Teesside, and a Middlesbrough Football Club fan, and they had known each other long before the army.

Then there was Jimmy Lynas, thirty-four, probably Jonno’s best friend, from Thornaby-on-Tees, not far from Stockton. He had also been in B Company all his career and, like Jonno, had had his ups and downs. But – also like Jonno – he had just finally been promoted to sergeant.