me, as I did my first controls using jets dropping live ordnance and firing live rounds. By the time I was done, Cuff had become a true mate. I was his creation, his JTAC, and he’d moulded me in his image. When I passed out, there were 178 combat-ready JTACs in the entire British military. There were precious few of us to go round.
With JTACs being in such short supply, I’d been immediately posted to 2 MERCIAN for the six months of their Afghan tour. 2 MERCIAN were a tough infantry regiment, whose soldiering ethos relied on taking the fight to the enemy on foot and at close quarters. I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of lads to be fighting with.
And we’d need to be at the absolute top our game for the next mission. We’d be going deep into the Green Zone, where we’d not only be taking enemy territory, but holding it.
Few if any British soldiers had occupied territory this deep in the Green Zone. We were going into the unknown.
Eight
BUM LOVE TUESDAY
A couple of days after my low-level stunt with the B-1B at FOB Price, Chris returned from a briefing with the OC, and told me the good news. Intel reports had the enemy reoccupying their positions at Adin Zai. They’d reinforced the place with hundreds of fighters from their base further east, at Siurakay. They were making a stand at Adin Zai, and we were going back in to take them on.
This time round, the OC’s plan of attack was markedly different. At first his orders were to take the company back into the Green Zone on a full-frontal assault, but he had refused to do that. The enemy had learnt well the lessons of our first battle. Butsy was convinced they would allow us to advance, then surround us at close quarters so we couldn’t use the air.
Instead, he planned to strike first at the village of Rahim Kalay, to the east of Adin Zai. From there we’d hook back round, taking Adin Zai from the opposite direction and by surprise. He demanded and was given full air cover for the entire duration of the mission.
He also had an elite Czech Army unit placed under his command. Butsy was well pleased: we’d worked with the Czechs before; they were crack soldiers and they’d never let us down. They were a force multiplier par excellence. He’d used the Czechs to harass the enemy from the flanks, as the company went in to attack.
There was one other crucial difference in the coming battle: once we’d taken the ground, we were to hold it. There would be no pulling out. We were to take enemy territory deep in the Green Zone, and make it our own. Adin Zai — and Rahim Kalay with it — was going to be B Company’s stalking ground for the remainder of our tour.
We began the mission to retake Adin Zai by throwing out probing patrols, to test the enemy’s forward lines. We were returning in convoy from one such patrol, when we got a radio message: I was to be dropped at Patrol Base North (PB North).
Two fortified patrol bases (PBs) had been constructed a kilometre back from Adin Zai, on the desert high ground. Intel reports had the enemy massing for an attack on one of those bases.
It had been a bad day already. Earlier I’d got news that we’d lost a Danish JTAC. I’d never met
The news that I was to be left that night at PB North made it a total shit of a day. PB North was occupied by eight Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English. Some British Army lads were supposed to be joining us, but it was 1300 and there was no sign of them. I wasn’t the slightest bit happy.
There was no sense in leaving a JTAC alone in a base occupied by soldiers with whom he couldn’t communicate. Orders were that I had to stay to coordinate the air, but if that was the case why didn’t I have a couple of lads with me? Why didn’t Sticky or Throp get to stay? I’d feel a whole lot better that way.
It was a load of bollocks dumping a lone British squaddie in a base populated solely by Afghan soldiers, for there were also plenty of tales about how bastard bent they could be. But the order that I was to stay had come direct from the top, for the patrol bases needed a JTAC. As our convoy pulled away from the base leaving me behind, I felt pissed as hell.
I glanced around PB North — the place where the lads had abandoned me. It was a triangular structure build from massive HESCO Bastion walling — rectangular, wire-framed cages filled with rock and earth. On each corner of the base was a sangar, a fortified firing point. Just one, gated entrance led into the base.
It wasn’t so much the fortifications I mistrusted, it was the guys that I’d been left here with. No one was saying a great deal, for we didn’t have the words to communicate, but the Afghan soldiers did offer me some local unleavened bread. As I took a token nibble, they asked me what I did as a soldier. I pointed at the bread and mimed kneading a loaf. They were staring at me like I was totally cracked.
‘Chef,’ I told them. ‘Army chef. Cooking. I bake bread and make scoff for the lads.’
I reckoned if I told them I was a JTAC, that would only give them a bigger incentive to sell me out to the enemy. I was paranoid I was going to end up with a new uniform — an orange boiler suit, like those poor bloody hostages in Iraq.
I’d noticed that there were two Toyota four-wheel drives parked up in the base. I wondered whether I should nick one and do a Mad Max and drive the half-mile down to PB South, for I knew there was a British Army contingent down there.
Before I could make a decision either way, the Afghan soldiers mounted up, two to each truck, and without a word they roared out of the gates. That was that, then. I wouldn’t be stealing a Toyota any time soon. Maybe they were heading off to have a chat with their Taliban mates, to ask how much a fat British chef was worth.
It was a sticky, sweaty, burning hot afternoon and I was in a foul temper. I’d spotted a well in a deserted compound to one side of the base. I decided to go and have a wash and a cool down. I grabbed my rifle, my spare mags and my JTAC kit, and wandered over.
I was stripped naked and tipping the cool water over my head, when I felt a presence behind me. I didn’t give a fuck that I had my three-card trick out: I spun around, making an instinctive lunge for my SA80. Standing there were two soldiers from the base. They’d obviously been having a good look at me stark bollock naked, and lathered in soap.
I noticed that they were holding hands. I also noticed that they were both wearing bright red nail varnish. No British soldier who’d spent more than a few days in Helmand could fail to have heard rumours about our Afghan colleagues’ reputation for manlove. Apparently some of them were about as straight as a bloody roundabout.
We’d all of us been told about ‘Bum Love Tuesday’ — or was it Thursday? — the day of the week when they’d get it on with each other. With my rifle levelled and a few choice gestures, I made it clear that wasn’t my bag. They were to fuck off and leave me alone.
They turned and left for the main base. But I was boiling now. I was fuming. As I rinsed off I just kept thinking:
I finished washing, returned to the base and got on my TACSAT — the only means I had of communicating with FOB Price. I dialled up Damo Martin, the captain who ran Fire Control Planning (FCP) cell — the JTAC’s ops room back at FOB Price. Damo was a fellow JTAC and a down-to-earth kind of bloke. I’d never been one to mince my words, and I gave it to him straight.
‘
No one could explain why I’d been dumped at the base on my own, without even an interpreter. It was all a mix-up of communications and planning. Butsy was massively pissed off that I’d been left here, and that he’d lost his JTAC. The bad news was that no one was able to come and fetch me today, so I’d have to man it out. A patrol would come to relieve me first thing in the morning.
I bedded down under a sheet of cam-netting that I’d rigged up against one wall. I positioned myself to one
