side of the main gate, where I could keep good watch on it. I had my TACSAT ready and I did a weapons check.
I had six full mags on my chest-webbing, and one in the SA80 — so that made 210 rounds in all. That should keep me going for a while. I carried a Browning 9mm pistol as back-up weapon, with three, thirteen-round mags. Plus I had two fragmentation grenades, one in a chest pouch and one in my backpack.
I kept an eye on the sangars, and the Afghans did have a sentry in each. Trouble was they kept strolling between the towers, to have a natter. Whenever they did so it left one side of the triangular fort unguarded. I resigned myself to a long and restless night, for no way was I going to sleep in this place.
At last light the Toyotas returned. It seemed they’d been on a bread-run, and not selling me out to the Taliban. The fresh bread actually smelled gorgeous, so I went and got some scoff. But there was about as much crack as a one-inch whip, for we couldn’t talk.
Once I’d stuffed myself I got under my cam-net with my loaded rifle, and resumed my position and state of watchfulness. The attack came at 2100.
From out of nowhere a barrage of fire hit the sangar on the southeast corner. I was on my feet and up to the top like a rat up a drainpipe. Two of the ANA soldiers came pelting after me, so we were three Afghans and me in the sangar, facing however many were hitting us.
‘Taliban try break in!’ one of the ANA lads yelled.
I flipped my night-vision monocle down over my right eye, pulled my rifle into the aim, and got on the TACSAT. I’d managed to scrounge a TACSAT headset from the Danish contingent at FOB Price. It clipped on to my helmet, and I could speak into it handsfree, so I could talk and shoot at the same time.
‘
Two of the attackers were in the bush fifty metres below, and one of them was hefting an RPG. Muzzle flashes sparked eerily in the green fuzz of the night-vision, the tracer rounds smudging limecoloured slugs across the distance between us. I watched my own tracer chew into the dirt just short of the RPG-gunner’s head, and ratcheted up my aim.
‘
‘Sitrep: TIC PB North,’ I yelled. ‘Need immediate CAS.’
‘Roger that.
I had a Dutch F-16 six minutes out. In the meantime I was going to have to try to stay alive and kill some of the bastard enemy. Rounds were slamming into the sangar thick and fast. An RPG hammered through the darkness just above our heads.
I adjusted my aim on the RPG-gunner who was darting about like a madman, but as I went to fire one of the ANA lads tried to shove me out the way.
‘No one shoot you today!’ he yelled. ‘I die! I die!’
He tried to get between me and the enemy bullets, as he loosed off what seemed like an entire AK-47 mag with barely an attempt to aim. Nine out of ten for showmanship, but nowt for killing the enemy.
‘This is how it’s done, you nugget,’ I growled. ‘Watch my tracer!’
I steadied my aim, got the needle sight on the RPG-gunner’s head, and fired. I saw a round plough into the guy’s face, and an instant later he was laid out flat and unmoving. All the ANA lads were blatting away, so any one of us could have dropped the RPG-gunner. But in my head I claimed the kill, for their sense of aim was haywire.
As the enemy’s gunner’s mucker tried to drag the bloodied body away, another leapt forwards to claim the RPG. I readjusted my aim, and fired again and again. The noise on the sangar was deafening, but mostly it was the ANA boys loosing off wild bursts. They had no night-vision, but that didn’t prevent them from aiming at the enemy muzzle flashes. Generally, if you aimed just below and to the right of the flash, you’d hit the gunman in the chest or even the heart.
‘Listen, fucking calm down!’ I yelled at the ANA lads. ‘Do as I do. Nice, aimed single shots, that’s the way to nail ’em.’
I had a horrible feeling it was going to be a long night’s fighting. As we traded fire with the enemy, I gave the ANA boys an impromptu lesson on fire discipline, and how to conserve their ammo.
We hadn’t killed that many when the contact died down. I didn’t know if the enemy had called it off, or if they were regrouping to try another line of attack. I didn’t like the situation one little bit. There were nine of ‘us’ and god only knows how many of them.
Had I been with eight 2 MERCIAN lads, I’d have happily defended that base all night long. As it was, this was the worst moment of my entire tour. I had dark visions of the enemy battering down the gates — or being let in by some traitorous ANA bastard — and of capture and torture or worse. Well, no way was that going to happen. I vowed to keep a last bullet for myself. If it came to it, I’d put the last round in my head and blow my brains all to hell.
I got
By now the ANA were staring at me, wondering who the hell I was talking to on the TACSAT. I guess they suspected I wasn’t your average chef. They could hear the jet whizzing about overhead, but I had no idea if they’d connected it to me or not. I hoped they hadn’t. I’d much rather remain a cook in their eyes. I asked the pilot to make his run from east to west, so he came in right across the Green Zone. And I asked him to achieve sonic boom as he passed over us, just to wake the ANA up a little.
They were gabbling away nineteen-to-the-dozen about the attack, when the jet appeared over the eastern sangar, almost kissing the top of the HESCO. It loomed out of the pitch black like some monster alien spacecraft, and pulled up into a screaming climb, spitting cartwheels of fire.
The ANA lads were in a right flap. The three sentries abandoned their sangars, and I watched in utter amazement as one of the lads sprinted out of the gate, haring off into the Green Zone.
So there I was in PB North with no sentries, seven Afghan soldiers cowering in the centre of the fort, and one AWOL somewhere in the Green Zone. Smart. I sat up straight, back to the wall, and cradled my gun. I was in my position beneath the camo-net, and I wasn’t moving or sleeping. If anyone came through the gate with hostile intent, I’d kill them. I laid out some tabs before me, and sparked up the first. I inhaled deeply, and settled down for a long night.
I had a lot of time to think. I reflected upon the guy that I’d just killed. It was unusual for a JTAC to see your round tearing into the face of the enemy. Normally, you’d be dropping the big munitions at a distance, not killing up close and personal. The death of that RPG-gunner had been graphic, and the image was burned into my mind.
I asked myself if it bothered me that I’d whacked that guy? Killing that enemy fighter didn’t really worry me; it was either him or me. I’d first knowingly killed a man in Iraq, back in 2003, at the height of that war. I was out in Al-Amarah with a patrol from The Light Dragoons running a Vehicle Check-Point (VCP).
It was 0300, and I was the gunner on the Scimitar light tank. One of the lads, a softly spoken South African, called Rob Deery, stopped a car. He asked the driver to open his boot, but the driver refused. He asked again. Again the driver refused.
I jumped down from the wagon and faced up to the Iraqi. ‘Open your fucking boot.’
The guy gave me the evil eye. ‘No open.’
I forced him to hand over the keys. I cracked open the boot and it was crammed full of AK-47s. I told the guy if he came to the base and produced permits for the weapons, we’d return them to him. For now, we were confiscating the lot. The guy drove off, and a couple of minutes later we were engaged from three hundred metres away. The fire was coming from the Al-Amarah football stadium, where the Iraqi police had a checkpoint. It was clear as day that it was the police who were engaging us.
I dropped to the deck and returned fire with my SA80. One of the lads, John Hunter, asked me what the hell I was doing. I told him I was winning the bloody firefight.
‘But they’re Iraqi coppers,’ he objected.
The Scimitar was acting like a bullet magnet, and that’s where the rounds were hitting. I ran around the back dodging fire and jumped into the gunner’s seat. As I did so, I cracked my head on the turret. That was it: I was
