Dan Mills - Sniper One

Finally there is Louey, who’s working as a bodyguard in London. He could be mine any day.

As for me, I’m now back with the battalion again. I leave the army soon as I’ll have served out my full 22-year engagement. I’ve no idea what I’ll do next.

View of Al Amarah city centre from above its southern edge, over a Lynx helicopter gunner’s shoulder

The Cimic House compound beside the River Tigris

Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR. Back row, left to right: H, Smudge, Des, DV, Dan, Daz, Rob, Chris, Fitz, Ben and Ads. Front row: Pikey, Longy, Oost, Sam, Harry, Redders and Louey

Yours truly on the look-out for enemy activity on Cimic House’s roof

Article picturing rogue cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, pinned on the wall of Sniper Platoon’s living quarters

A typical roof-top scene post-battle

Cimic House’s swimming-pool

Louey and Daz in the rear sangar

An L96 sniper rifle with a SIMRAD night sight

The view of the OMS building from behind the wall where Dan’s men first returned fire at the enemy, on 18 April

RPG Alley

View of the OMS building from the neighbouring park, a favoured launch location for enemy mortar teams

Major Ken Tait on his return from a fighting patrol before he was banned from going out

The remains of Daz’s burned-out Snatch after the 18 April contact

The awesome AC-130 Spectre Gunship

Chris, me and Sgt Ian Caldwell in the driveway of Cimic House, preparing to leave on an arrest raid

Chris snipes and Des spots while concealed on a roof-top in downtown Al Amarah

Ads snipes and Oost spots early in the morning from the roof-top of Cimic House — after a hard night’s work

An F-16 drops a laser-guided bomb

Dale fires illume mortar rounds from Cimic House’s roof — his birthday treat!

Best buddies: Chris Mulrine and US bodyguard ‘Red Rob’

Chris supports his L96 in a tripod on the roof of the Pink Palace

The platoon’s accommodation block after a mortar direct hit

The painful bruise left on my shoulder by an AK47 round during the OPTAG patrol

The hole left by the bullet in my body armour

Pte Daniel Crucefix, who got stuck at Cimic House for three days with a piece of shrapnel the size of a credit card in his nose

Pte Johnson Beharry VC poses with a belt of 7.62mm, a few days before he was critically injured

Pte Johnson Beharry’s badly shot-up Warrior the day after his first Victoria Cross action

Chris with an L96 and Oost with an SA80 and underslung grenade launcher outside the Pink Palace

Concealed sniping. Chris is Number 1 and Des is Number 2, during a raid on an enemy house

Heavy metal. A Challenger II Main Batde Tank from the Queen’s Royal Lancers

Mortar-damaged roof sangar. I left with Oost just ten seconds before a round came through the roof and exploded inside it

A US engineers’ convoy burns after its huge ambush on 1 May

Bored snipers watch a DVD during the July ceasefire. Left to right: Smudge, Harry, Ads, Longy and Pikey

Snipers in the roof-top sangar, with the ‘Royal Marine’ team hard at work on the right

The ‘Royal Marine’ sniper team. Buzz, left , and John, right , at work in the roof-top sangar

Dan receives his Mention in Despatches silver oak leaf from Brigadier Iain Cholerton, the Army’s most senior offficer in Wales

Dan’s Mention in Despatches certificate

Front and back cover photos of Dan: copyright Dan Charity/News International

Page 1: top and bottom, copyright Tom Newton Dunn.

Pages 2 to 5: all pictures copyright Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR, Telic 4.

Page 6: top, aviation-images.com; bottom, Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR, Telic 4.

Page 7: top and bottom, Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR, Telic 4.

Page 8: top, Aviation-images.com; bottom, Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR, Telic 4.

Page 9 to 16: all images on these pages copyright Sniper Platoon, 1PWRR, Telic 4.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

Sgt. Dan Mills was decorated for his command of an eighteen-man sniper platoon during the siege of Al Amarah. During a long army career he has served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and the Falkland Islands. Sniper One is his first book.

“A gritty, speedball run… strong, cohesive, and complete… it plugs the reader straight into the blood and guts of the action.”

“A highly charged, action-filled, adrenalin-pumped, page-turning read that, frankly, knocks the socks off all previous British accounts in this genre.”

“Full-on graphic detail… you can practically taste the dust and the cordite… . Quite simply, this is one of the best firsthand accounts of combat in the Second Gulf War that I’ve ever read.”

“The most vivid account ever of total combat on Iraq’s front-line.”

SNIPER ONE. Copyright © 2007 by Sgt. Dan Mills. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mills, Dan, 1968–

Sniper one : on scope and under siege with a sniper team in Iraq / Dan Mills.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-3342-1

ISBN-10: 1-4299-3342-9

1. Iraq War, 2003–—Personal narratives, British. 2. Mills, Dan, 1968– 3. Snipers—Great Britain—Biography. I. Title.

DS79.76.M475 2008

956.7044’38—dc22

2008020438

First published in Great Britain as Sniper One: The Blistering True Story of a British Battle Group Under Siege by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Books

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