Alex Duncan - Sweating the Metal

In another incident, Major Will Pike and his second in command exchanged fire with a Taliban fighter who ran off through a compound (as Colonel Tootal said, ‘You know it’s a bad day when the commanding officer and his 2i/c are firing their weapons!’). They chased him into a building and were peering around the compound entrance when some women and children came out. Suddenly, the Taliban popped up and started firing over their heads; Will and his 2i/c couldn’t fire back, so they waited until the civilians had all got out and went inside. At the end of the entrance, there was a door. They counted: ‘1-2-3-go!’ and burst through, levelling their weapons. One of them had a stoppage; the other heard the dreaded ‘Dead Man’s Click’ that signifies an empty magazine. They were back out quicker than they came in, just as the Taliban fighter unloaded a full AK-47 at them. In the meantime, the stoppage was cleared and a magazine changed. As soon as they heard the firing stop, they were back through the door where they unloaded on the gunman, killing him.

Over twenty Taliban were killed during Op Mutay, a fact that was verified when Colonel Tootal received a report a day later that twenty-one Taliban fighters had been buried in a cemetery in the Sangin Valley. Not a single British soldier was killed or wounded, although luck clearly played a huge part as Bash, Matt Carter, Will Pike and the driver of the Pinzgauer, among others, can testify. It was supposed to have been a three-hour operation; it lasted over eight hours. In the event, nothing much came of the operation – we found some money, a quantity of opium resin, which the Paras left behind in line with UK policy at the time. A few weapons were recovered, but nothing to indicate the major cache that the intel had predicted, nor the High Value Target.

Maybe the intel was wrong. Maybe the HVT melted away before the Paras arrived, taking the weapons and ammo with him. Who knows? What was never in doubt was that everything changed that day and nothing has ever been the same since. However we were regarded up to that point, however much progress we might have made in terms of hearts and minds, we’d opened Pandora’s Box and we couldn’t un-know what we’d learned. Whatever our preconceptions of the Taliban were, here was the reality: they were brave to the point of foolhardiness, well-armed, ruthless and tactically aware.

The genie was out of the bottle and we were confronted with an insurgency that would quickly develop into a major conflict. War, for our generation, isn’t always a conventional conflict fought between two armies. Ours is an asymmetric war; well-equipped and trained forces on one side, men in flip-flops and pyjamas on the other. We play fair and fight according to the rules of the Geneva Conventions. There are no rules for those we fight though. For them, anything goes. Nothing is off-limits. They don’t care if they kill or harm civilians to further their cause – they’ll even go out of their way to do so. Their desire to ‘down’ a Chinook extends to their planting IEDs in civilian markets because they know that the IRT will be scrambled to help.

It’s a war where the Taliban masquerade as civilians; where they will place mortar tubes in crowds of women and children and launch attacks on coalition forces knowing that our moral and ethical code prevents us from returning fire. It’s a war where a man will take his five-year-old child along as cover while he plants an IED. The Rules of Engagement that dictate how and when we open fire on the Taliban prevent us from fighting on an equal footing. These are the things we have to bear in mind, the things our infantry have to be aware of, in the heat of battle.

One thing was certain. After Op Mutay, things were very, very different.

The morning of June 11th dawned with Craig Wilson, Jonah, Rob Chambers and I down at Bastion on IRT/HRF for four days. It had been a quiet day with nothing much to mark it out as being different. Yet by the time I would next go to bed, I’d look back on a marathon sortie that saw us repeatedly taking fire, and some audacious flying which would eventually lead to Craig being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

It’s around 19:00 hrs when the phone breaks the silence: two long rings. I grab the receiver and listen: ‘You’ve got a shout. A T1, Kajaki. ANA, gunshot wound to the leg.’

When ISAF troops are wounded or ill and the IRT is required, the radio call coming from the point of origin is known as a nine-liner; nine lines of text requesting the medevac, each line giving a vital piece of information starting with the grid reference and call sign of the requesting unit. The next piece of information is the number and condition of the casualties given using a T-code. A T1 means immediate threat to life; it means urgent evacuation and surgery required. T2 means surgical intervention required within four hours. T3s are less serious – evacuation within twenty-four hours. Nobody likes T4 – it means the casualty is already dead.

We get to the cab and Craig gives me the details. We look at each other: ANA, Kajaki, T1? We share the same thought. Regardless, we still put everything we have into the call – we try not to be judgemental and work on the basis that if someone says we are needed, then we are. None of us wants anyone to die on our watch; certainly not through something we’ve done.

The reasons that drive men to risk their lives in battle are many and varied but one of the most important covenants is the knowledge that, if they get hit, they’ll be looked after. Rapid, timely evacuation to immediate medical care and surgery and don’t spare the horses. We are the exponents of that covenant, picking the guys up from wherever they’ve been wounded and delivering them into the care of the world’s best trauma surgeons – within minutes, in some cases. If we are scrambled, we go. We put everything into it, whether the guy at the end is a British or ISAF soldier, an Afghan civilian wounded in battle or, in some cases, a member of the Taliban.

We are there and back to Bastion again in an hour and five minutes, which is bloody quick, all things considered. We make the return flight on goggles as it is fully dark by then, and after shutting down, a debrief and some food, I decide on trying to get some sleep; you grab it where you can on the IRT. I grab a radio so I can stay in touch and have a quick shower, get dressed again and go to bed. I keep my boots on, but leave my pistol in its holster hooked over the end of the bed – it takes valuable minutes to put my boots on if we got a shout, but I can strap my firearm on as we run for the Land Rover.

I lay my head on the pillow and shut my eyes. It feels like no more than five minutes have passed when the phone interrupts my dream. Two long rings. I swim up from the depths of sleep and snatch it up, only half awake.

‘British soldier at Sangin. He’s a T1, bleeding heavily, so make it quick.’

I check my watch; it feels like five minutes’ sleep because that’s all it was. Oh well. I grab my holster from the bed and secure it to my right leg. The others know the drill and are ready to go as soon as they hear the phone ring. Make it quick? We are. We’re airborne and en route with our Apache escort within thirty minutes.

This was probably the first time that a cab had been to Sangin which, at this stage of the war, was not under siege as it would become later in the month. However, a patrol had been sent out from nearby FOB Robinson to recover a Desert Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that had crashed near the Helmand River. The patrol had been dicked by the Taliban almost as soon as they left their base and, having failed to locate the UAV, were ambushed on a track as they returned. Lance Bombardier Mason of I Battery, 7 RHA was hit in the chest. The patrol medic alone got through six SA80 magazines defending the casualty while waiting for assistance.