Ross Kemp on Afghanistan Page 14

  11. Fighting in Somebody's House

  The missions and tasks were easily explained.

  We were briefed by Dave Robinson, my mouse-crushing partner in crime. The faces in that briefing room were serious, angry and ready for war. In the ten days since the blue on blue, the depleted B Company had been unable to keep the pressure up on the Forward Line of Enemy Troops. All that was about to change. They were to deploy to the southern FLET. Once there, they were to locate the enemy's position and engage them. Once they were engaged, fast air would be called in to destroy their positions. The same fast air, it was lost on nobody, that had been called into Mazdurak with such cataclysmic results.

  Our route would take us along the 611 highway. This is little more than a dirt track and most of it can be surveyed from Sparrowhawk East and Sparrowhawk West, the two OPs at Kajaki. Not all of it, however: there are certain blind spots, which meant that the Taliban could easily have planted mines or IEDs – improvised explosive devices – along the way. IEDs were usually constructed from explosives taken from anti-tank mines that have been attached to artillery shells. They have predictably devastating effects. The Taliban have a rich source of material for constructing IEDs, namely the mines littered around the country that were left by the Soviets. It is a horrible irony that during the 1980s it is said the SAS taught the Afghan Mujahideen how to construct IEDs. Now that knowledge is being used against British forces and IEDs can be made by anyone with the bottle to dig up a mine. Talk about being hoist by your own petard.

  I was to travel with the Fire Support Group. When we approached the FLET, B Company would split: 6 and 7 Platoon would enter the green zone to flush out the Taliban, and the FSG would move to high ground to provide covering fire. This was going to be a serious contact. B Company were being thrown right back into the deep end and I heard no complaints about that whatsoever. For them, it was payback time.

  We made the journey early in the morning while it was still dark. Our convoy travelled slowly, all of us well aware of the danger of this journey: IEDs are difficult enough to see during the daytime; during the hours of darkness practically impossible. The crew and I travelled in a WMIK, an open-top Land Rover. A mine would make very short work of a vehicle like this one. I could sense everybody hoping that the people in the observation posts had been vigilant enough over those areas of the road that they could see to ensure that nobody had dug anything in. When we reached the hidden stretches of road, the convoy would stop and the track ahead was swept with minesweeping machines. These are essentially advanced metal detectors, although metal-detecting an Afghan road isn't quite like looking for Roman coins in a ditch. The minesweepers have a nervy, dangerous but ultimately crucial job – especially when it's done, as it was on this occasion, under cover of darkness.

  Once the road was declared safe, the convoy moved on. 6 and 7 Platoons moved past us towards the enemy positions in the green zone. I waited with the FSG for dawn to arrive so that we could leave the road and head up on to the higher ground overlooking the southern FLET. If the journey up until now had been dangerous, this would be doubly so. The Taliban knew that this was the only location from which we could offer fire support, the only place where our weapons systems could get the necessary arcs down on to their positions. So the likelihood was that they would have left us a little welcome gift. It was a vigilant FSG that edged up that hill when first light arrived.

  Their vigilance paid off. As we approached our firing position, some picks and shovels were noticed nearby. Nobody was under the illusion that the Taliban had been digging potatoes. Once more the convoy halted and the mine detectors were brought out. It was light by now, but in the rough, stony earth it would still be nigh-on impossible to locate the tiny pressure pad that would explode a mine, so yet again our safety was down to the skill of the men handling those metal detectors.

  They didn't let us down.

  Only a few metres ahead of us, bang in the middle of the path we were taking, they found the mine. All that was visible of it was the pressure pad – an innocuous-enough-looking bit of metal, but if the guys had failed to locate it and one of our vehicles had driven over the mine, it would have been blown to bits, along with all the soldiers in it. We drove around the mine and reached our final positions.

  Ivan Snow, who was in charge of the Fire Support Group, explained that they would be splitting into two groups. The dismounted FSG, led by Corporal Si Thorne, would act as a sniper team with fifty-cals and Javelin anti-tank missiles from a separate position; the remainder would stay on the top of the ridge with their vehicle-mounted weapons. In the distance we could see an area called Big Top, which was where we knew the Taliban commanders were. Snowy had a pretty good idea which compounds in the green zone each of the two positions would draw fire from, and also how the battle would go. We knew where the Taliban were; the Taliban knew where we were. This was a fight that had been played out in the past.

  ‘Basically,’ I said to Snowy, ‘it's a bit like “I'll meet you at the bike sheds at quarter to four,” then everyone goes back home and tomorrow they do the same thing.’

  It's exactly like that, Snowy told me. Exactly.

  There seemed something a bit farcical about this Groundhog Day-like situation, but in fact it was crucial that B Company kept the Taliban regularly engaged along the FLET. The previous year the enemy had got so close to the Kajaki base that they could fire down on it from the surrounding hills. It was essential that this didn't happen again. Even if B Company weren't gaining any ground in these encounters, they were stopping the Taliban from advancing and getting any closer to taking the base.

  The FSG set up their positions. And then they did what soldiers have to be prepared to do. They waited.

  All around us there was silence. It was the silence of anticipation. We knew that at that precise moment 7 Platoon would be moving deep into the green zone, advancing on the enemy positions.

  Half an hour passed.

  The FSG surveyed the green zone with quiet, determined care.

  An hour.

  I suspected that when the sound of contact came, it would be sudden and intense. I wasn't wrong.

  After two hours of sitting on the hill, there was a loud bang. The ground troops were gaining entry into a compound with a bar mine – long planks of explosives intended as anti-tank mines. A telltale cloud of smoke rose from the compounds in the green zone. It was like a starting pistol: suddenly the air was filled with the fire-crack of rounds. The FSG slipped effortlessly into action: Snowy yelled an order that the WMIKs, mounted with fifty-cals, be driven up to the ridge. Immediately they started raining down heavy fire on the enemy positions to support the two platoons, which at that very moment were eye to eye with the Taliban. The dismounted FSG fired Javelin missiles; through the image intensifier of that weapon they could see a Taliban commander giving orders to his troops.

  It was an awesome display of firepower. Clearly it was causing the Taliban some difficulty, because almost immediately we ourselves started taking incoming fire from one of their positions. The rounds flew over our heads, landing just a few metres behind our position. We had gone from silence and anticipation to a deafening, brutal frenzy in a matter of a minutes; and there wouldn't be any let-up for a long time yet.

  The contact lasted for three hours – three long, aggressive hours, during which our ears were constantly filled by the grating, metallic boom of the weaponry and by the shouts of the soldiers around us. I already knew that war consisted of long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme action, violence and terror. This was one of those moments. 7 Platoon were pinned down a mere 18 metres from the Taliban positions; 6 Platoon fired upon the rear of the enemy from a roof 250 metres behind them. The FSG continued to pour down fire from the ridge and between them, despite the fact that they were taking a good deal of incoming, they managed to suppress the enemy. The two platoons and the FSG had a single aim: to get the Taliban into a position where they couldn't escape when the f
ast air support was called in. When the Americans dropped their bomb, they wanted to make sure they killed as many of the enemy as possible.

  The order came through to stop firing. The air was still for a moment, but then I heard the now familiar whizz of rounds shooting past my head. The enemy were still firing back, but they were hemmed in, pinned down, and they wouldn't be there for long.

  Because at that moment I heard the order we'd all been waiting for. ‘OK! Call in air!’

  The American F-16 took about four minutes to approach. I strained my numb ears to listen for the sound of the aircraft; when the droning noise arrived and started to get louder, I plugged my ears with my fingers. I knew what was coming. The F-16 roared over the enemy positions and started to disappear. But not before it had delivered its package. There was a short pause as its bomb fell to earth.

  And then the explosion.

  It rocked the surrounding area like a small earthquake; a flash of orange on the ground and then an enormous dust cloud billowed from the enemy compounds. A direct hit. No one in the range of that bomb could possibly have survived it; and if there was any lingering doubt about the accuracy of the American fast air after the blue on blue, this was enough well and truly to put it to rest. The F-16 performed a strafing run. This is when fast air comes in and delivers a burst of fire from a low altitude, in this instance using thirty-cal HE (high explosive) rounds; followed by a slower flyover as a show of force.

  In the wake of the Americans' ordnance, the gunfire stopped. It was time to extract. The F-16, however, remained in the area, circling high up ahead and making sure that 6 and 7 Platoon achieved a safe extraction from the green zone. The same was true of the FSG. They remained on the ridge, weapons systems at the ready, covering the ground troops until they had managed to pull out to a position of relative safety. They are always the last to leave and as we prepared to get back down the hill, I was very aware of the fact that there was nobody supplying fire support for the Fire Support Group as we travelled carefully to the main road to meet up with the others.

  Back at base, we received encouraging news. The Taliban radios were silent. It meant that several of the enemy had been killed. The operation had been a success.

  More importantly, though, it was good to see everyone safe – especially Woody, George Seal-Coon and the other members of 7 Platoon who had been so affected by the blue on blue. This had been their first contact since being returned to Kajaki; it would have gone some way to exorcizing the demons that were still with them. And I hoped that this would help them as they prepared for their next task: returning to Mazdurak, where the incident had happened, where they had lost their friends and come very, very close to losing their own lives.

  The assault on Mazdurak would serve two purposes. Firstly it would enable B Company to reassert their authority on the northern FLET, just as they had done to the south. But there was another, perhaps more important objective: to destroy any equipment from the compound involved in the blue on blue and so deny it to the enemy. It was crucial that no British Army equipment fell into the hands of the Taliban: it could give them intelligence as to the army's methods or even a propaganda tool to persuade the locals that they were winning the war.

  The return to Mazdurak would not only be an emotional operation for the guys: it would be a particularly dangerous one. The enemy's morale would be high in the wake of the blue on blue; they would know that it had made international news. Moreover, B Company knew that there was an accurate sniper covering the village, probably using some kind of fifty-cal weapon system, as well as some highly effective machine gunners. It was clear that B Company were not going to regain the initiative in Mazdurak without a fight. Dave Robinson articulated well how he and the men felt about returning to the scene. ‘On a personal level,’ he told me, ‘there's nothing I'd rather do less. On a professional level, we've got to get back up there and we've got to reassert our authority.’ It was one of those moments when I was reminded of the accomplished, businesslike attitude these soldiers had to the job in hand. It was to be an emotional operation, but there was no time for emotion. Just professionalism.

  The mission to Mazdurak was not aided by the fact that we had a false start. At 03.30 on the day we were supposed to hit the village, the operation was spiked. Elsewhere in Helmand Province a British soldier had been killed and five more injured. The MERT was therefore not available to us. We would have to wait another twenty-four hours before being given the orders to advance.

  So it was that the following day we reassembled before first light. The plan was to cross over the Helmand river and then advance north along a dried-up wadi. The assault would be spearheaded by 6 Platoon – accompanied by me and the crew – while 7 Platoon and the FSG moved to the high points of Essex Ridge and Barakju to provide fire support. Our first objective would be the compound where the blue on blue happened. We were to wait until the RAF had dropped two 1,000lb bombs on it, then clear the compound and continue our assault on the village of Mazdurak.

  For this operation, we had two extra members of the company – not human but canine. There are a lot of dogs in Afghanistan, both domesticated and feral. Often they get adopted by the ISAF forces and they stick around as long as there is food for them to eat. These two animals had had a particularly rough time of it. The Taliban, it was said, knew that they had been fed by ISAF troops. Consequently, when they returned to their village, the animals had had their bollocks cut off with a wire. Perhaps it wasn't any wonder that they preferred our company.

  03.22. We left the base in silence. The cover of darkness would, we hoped, protect us from the unwelcome attention of the Taliban sniper that we knew was in the area; but we didn't want to alert ourselves to him by making too much noise. Moreover, earlier in the morning thirty Taliban had been seen moving to the west. Our advance into Mazdurak would not be a secret from them for ever, but we wanted to retain the element of surprise for as long as possible. Negotiating the treacherous ground in the dark was difficult; but it was a hell of a sight better than the alternative.

  It took an hour to come to a halt in the wadi near Mazdurak. By this time we were a good couple of klicks away from the safety of the base, but only 400 metres from enemy territory. Above us, I heard the distant hum of the fast air as it circled, waiting for the order to unload its bombs on the compound. Apart from that, and the urgent whispers of the command team around me, there was a deep, threatening silence. The sort of silence that can only be a prelude to something worse.

  As we waited, however, on the outskirts of Mazdurak, we received some good news. Taliban chatter had been intercepted: our enemy was bragging, and along with the fact that twelve men had just been identified in the area, it was possible to predict an ambush and pinpoint its location. They say that careless talk costs lives. With a bit of luck, in the Taliban's case, this was going to be true.

  I wondered how the enemy knew we were coming. Specifically, I had a suspicion that the Taliban had been tipped off by the members of the ANP stationed above Kajaki. Major Tony Borgnis didn't seem to think so. The enemy knew we hadn't patrolled into Mazdurak since the blue on blue, so they knew it would only be a matter of time. Now, though, they had given away their hand.

  The morale boost this gave the troops was immense. As Tony put it, unable to stop the smile showing on his face, ‘We should kill more Taliban this morning than we might have done.’ What was more, we had the equipment to do it. The fast air was still nearby and in the light of this new information, the plan changed. They would still drop ordnance on the compound where the blue on blue had happened; but first they would bomb the hell out of another compound – the one where the Taliban were waiting in ambush.

  6 Platoon advanced. By 05.46, in the grey light of dawn, we were just 300 metres from Mazdurak. The only thing that separated us from the village was a patch of open ground and the knowledge that the Taliban were lying in wait. But not, if everything went according to plan, for much longer. Tony Borgnis made a final ch
eck that the pilots circling overhead were aware of 7 Platoon's position in the neighbouring village of Barakju; once that was done, the order was given and the jets cleared to attack.

  The drone of the planes grew louder as they approached.

  The bombs were dropped and the aircraft receded.

  The length of time it takes for a bomb to hit its target is always a surprise. You hold your breath; you feel the tension all around you. I suppose at the back of your mind there is the constant, nagging worry that things can – and do – go wrong.

  I heard someone announce fifty seconds to impact.

  ‘Thirty-five seconds.’

  Splash.

  When it hits, the relief is immense. And on this occasion, it was unerring. The ground shook and in the distance the familiar huge cloud of dust mushroomed into the sky. It was followed immediately by the booming sound of mortars back at Kajaki as the FSG fired on the enemy position while the fast air approached once more, this time to drop a bomb on the blue on blue compound and deny it to the Taliban.

  The explosion seemed to light up the morning sky. It was our signal to advance.

  To get into Mazdurak we had to cover about 250 metres of open ground. The only way to do this was on foot. The Taliban ambushers might have been hit, but we didn't know how many of them had been killed. Moreover, there was probably still a sniper in the region. The only thing we could do was put our heads down and run like hell.

  We made it to the halfway point, where we took shelter behind the wall of a compound. We caught our breath, and then received news over the net that eight Taliban had just left the ambush position. Whether the others had been killed or not we didn't know. It made the remaining 150-metre sprint into Mazdurak edgy to say the least, but we couldn't stay there in the open ground. In our hurry to get to the village, we started bunching – something I knew we should never do because it meant we presented an easy target to the enemy. But once it happens, it's difficult to sort out. We were lucky to reach the entry point of Mazdurak unscathed.