Dan Mills - Sniper One

Top Sangar had practically the only eyes on. Des braved the hail of lead to scream out all the information about the enemy he could for everyone’s benefit.

‘Three buses pulling up at Yellow 3… at least twenty UKMs dismounting with AKs, RPGs, heavy machine guns… Separate dismounted attack coming up from Tigris Street, maybe twenty more men… No, make that the pontoon bridge and Tigris Street now, another dozen there… Another big group going over the bridge to Red 11. Heading up to the hospital and dam… Targets on the river road too now… Hang on; now there’s activity on the north bank as well. Minibuses pulling up. Get the fucking Gimpy onto them, Oost. Passengers are armed UKMs; taking positions in the rubble… It’s a 270-degree, no fuck it. It’s just a fucking 360-degree contact… Targets approaching from all sides. Repeat, targets approaching from all sides .’

They were crawling all around us like ants. Attackers were closing on us from the east, south and west, supported by constant static fire positions over the river to the north. There must have been hundreds of them; far too many to count. At least three times the size of the dress rehearsal mob.

Shit. We had to start getting our heads up, or they’d be all over us in five minutes.

‘Get the fucking rounds back down at them!’ I shouted over the din. ‘Lads, everyone’s got to start spotting for targets.’

Dale burst open the roof door and hurled himself down on the floor to join me giving out commands.

‘Oi, all of you get your faarkin’ heads up! Wait for the incoming to stop. Heads up, rounds back, heads down again.’

Dale grabbed at his PRR.

‘Ops Room, Sarn’t Major. Get every spare fucker up here now.’

This was it. There was no doubt we were facing a clear and concerted attempt by the enemy to completely overrun us, and with everything they’d got. They seriously meant business. Cimic had always been their prize. Now they were coming to get it. There was no doubt either that they thought they could do it. OMS mortar crews had landed a shitload of incoming right on us in the last sixty hours, let alone the last three weeks. Surely these British infidel dogs have had enough. They’re getting mortared to fuck, they’ve been on their own for ages; they’ll be a pushover. They’ll run away or surrender. If they don’t, we’ve got enough men to force our way in.

If you want to gain access to Cimic, there’s only two sides to do it from: Tigris Street and the dam in the south, or straight over from the alleys in the east. So they hit us from both. Dozens of small teams steadily approached, firing and manoeuvring just like we would. On the roof, we got bullets and mortars, while the front and back gate sangars got never ending RPGs. They were good.

If only Spectre gunships flew in daylight. They’d be in Shangri-La with this lot.

Nor could we expect any help from the battle group either right then. It would take hours to assemble a column big enough to have a go at getting through all those lunatics. We didn’t have hours. Got to suppress them and slow them up. It was our only chance.

Showing big balls, Louey was the first to scamper over to the western wall.

‘Watch out, watch out,’ shouted Des, as the whistle of a descending mortar round grew rapidly louder. It landed just long in the river as Louey poked his SA80 over the wall’s edge and began to squeeze off second-long bursts at whatever he saw.

A dozen blokes from Recce Platoon then joined us on the main roof. Another four with Minimis piled up the ladder double quick time to Rooftop Sangar with Des and Oost, and Dale now too. The L96s were abandoned. They couldn’t put down enough fire. Showing considerable pluck, the blokes followed Louey’s lead and started to get their heads up long enough to spot targets, and share them out.

Once the enemy started to get within range of their own mortars, their crews were ordered to silence their tubes. That allowed our spotting to pick up.

‘Gunmen running out of Baghdad Street now.’

‘Enemy at 500 yards, the river road.’

‘OMS grouping behind nearest tree to the dam crossing.’

They were the cues for anyone who could to concentrate their fire in the target’s general direction. Eventually we began to drop a few of the attackers.

A whoop went up from a young Recce lad who wasted an RPG man the second he emerged from behind the Pink Palace to fire.

‘Fucking get it! Whooooh!’

His four mates all cheered just as loud and air punched as the adrenalin of the tiny success hit them too.

‘Oi, keep the fucking noise down,’ Dale shouted. He was trying to listen in to the frenzied radio chatter to bring guns on to the closest enemy positions first. He also knew the importance of everyone keeping in control. Let the rush of blood go to your head, you lose concentration, you get shot.

I darted around the roof shouting out ‘covering fire’ as I moved; spotting, bringing lads on to targets, and letting rip on my SA80 when I could too.

After the initial twenty minutes of chaos, we began to find a good battle rhythm. The battle engine was ticking over nicely.

Another four gunmen began a sprint across Tigris Street in the direction of the dam. Reloaded now, the Rooftop Minimis were on to them in less than a second and cut the last two down right in the middle of the road. Then they slotted a third, who was stupid enough to go back for his mates.

Next, a black saloon car with an RPG sticking out the back window swerved out of an alley on to Tigris Street right by Front Sangar. Just as the RPG man leant forward to fire at point blank range, the sangar Gimpy filled the car full of holes. The driver swerved sharp left and away hurling the RPG man backwards into his seat. His warhead shot off high into the sky instead.

‘Out of rounds,’ yelled Pikey on the GPMG in Top Sangar. A second later someone sprinted over from the roof door with half a dozen fresh belts.

Rob Green’s call of ‘Minimi ammo’ was met by another young lad dashing a few metres forward from the stair block to skid a full tin of 5.56 along the floor at him. The moment it left his right hand he nimbly changed direction for Rooftop to deliver a second tin in his left hand for the gunners up there.

As the tin arrived against Rob’s thigh, the two blokes either side of him leant round to tear it open with greed.

‘If you need oil, it’s over here’, shouted someone else.

Soon Dale’s fears turned from not enough outgoing fire to too much.

‘Disciplined fire, boys. Disciplined fire.’

It was still his job to keep one eye on the ever depleting ammo pile. We were using it up fast. But there was a more pressing problem than that.

‘Enemy at 200 to the south west,’ screamed Des with renewed urgency.

I ducked down beside Louey on the western wall and poked my head up over its lip. Dozens of them were over the dam on our side of the Tigris now. They were gathering behind the huge piles of hardcore from the waste ground’s building site. It gave good cover, and an even better position to shoot at us. RPGs on target from there would do us some proper damage.

Smudge, Longy and Pikey all popped off grenade after grenade from the UGLs on their SA80s into the building site, but to no avail. The grenades had too small a bang to have any real effect.

Bloody hell. We were dropping them, but no way near enough to put the rest of them off. No matter how accurate our shooting was. The sheer volume and blinding fanaticism of the attackers made that irrelevant. They were getting nearer and nearer. We were at full stretch, everyone was battling their bollocks off, and we still weren’t halting the advance.

‘Look, Sergeant, man, see them guys behind the iron poles? They’re even wearing body armour and helmets.’