‘Roger that. We’ll do a BDA by going in on foot. I’ll let you blokes know all about it afterwards.’
‘Right, we’re out of here. Good hunting,
As the Apaches banked away from the battlefield and set a course for Camp Bastion, I asked the F-15 to do one more attack run. Two of the four caves had been hit: I wanted the third taken out, leaving the one for us to explore on foot. I got
The F-15 was ripped by
The OC’s orders were to get the entire company in to Rahim Kalay by last light. As the foot soldiers advanced, Throp fired up the Vector and we drove in alongside them. There was nothing else moving apart from us lot. We reached the centre of the villages passing by the shredded remains of the white saloon car, which was still a raging inferno.
The OC split the company into smaller units, each tasked to check out enemy positions. The main compound had been totally flattened. It reeked of burning, death and scorched flesh. I’d never known that bone could burn, but it had blazed and vaporised in those airstrikes. There were corpses and bits of unrecognisable, bloody mess everywhere.
Along with Jason ‘Peachy’ Peach, the B Company sergeant major, I crawled into the one remaining cave entrance. The others had been hit by the GBU-38s and collapsed. By the light cast from our head torches, we could see there were two dead bodies in the far recesses of the cave. Both the enemy dead were still clutching their weapons. I guess they’d crawled in here after being hit by the Apache’s cannon fire, and this is where they’d died.
There were cases and cases of ammo in the tunnel, plus dozens of sleeping positions and boxloads of food. The enemy had prepared a real stronghold here, from where they could have withstood the longest of battles. At the far end of the tunnel there were side entrances, which had to connect to other tunnels and rat runs. But with the entire cave system having been pounded from the air, neither of us fancied taking a crawl further inside.
With the battle well and truly over, the OC ordered the Czech unit down from the high ground. The lads took their vehicles over to the south side of the canal. There they did a walk-around inspection of the woodstrip — the enemy position that the Apaches had malleted with cannon fire and flechette darts.
There they found an interlinked trench system with cleared arcs of fire, plus sleeping gear and caches of food and ammo. There were fourteen bodies in the woods, including one guy who appeared to be fixed to a tree trunk. He had tiny red stains all over his robe, and an AK-47 slung around his neck. He’d been peppered with flechettes, the tungsten darts nailing him to the tree.
Towards the western edge of the village one of the lads found the sniper point from which Sandy most likely had been shot. The enemy sniper had been firing through a tiny aperture. It was completely hidden from view, and we’d have had little hope of finding the gunman. There was one hole for the rifleman, and one for a spotter, just as our sniper units tended to operate.
A series of interlinked defensive positions were strung across Rahim Kalay. The OC had chosen this as the ‘easy’ route of advance into Adin Zai, as that’s what the Intel had told him. In fact, this had been a fortress manned by hundreds of enemy fighters — complete with underground arms stores, bunkers, sniper holes, trench lines and a series of hidden tunnels to move around in, unseen from the air.
Had the Apaches not discovered that first compound position, and flushed the enemy out, we would have advanced on foot into the mother of all ambushes. Our attempt to take Rahim Kalay would have been met by a wall of death. It didn’t bear thinking about how many of the lads of B Company would have been smashed in there. We would have lost far more than we had already that day.
As darkness crept into the silent village, we manoeuvred the Vector between two compounds that provided a little cover. We were to the north-east and on the far side of the village. To the north lay the open desert, and to the east stretched the Green Zone. Whatever enemy had survived the onslaught, it was into there that they would have fled.
It was 1900 by now, and for the first time since the day’s battle had begun the company HQ element, the platoon commanders and the FST gathered together. In every soldier’s mind was the same thought: that we’d lost Corporal Sandford, had two other serious casualties, and very nearly lost the battle. It was unbelievable that we hadn’t lost more lads, and largely thanks to the Apache pilots that we hadn’t.
Butsy talked for a while about Corporal Sandford’s death, the way 6 Platoon were holding up, and what to do with Sandy’s personal kit. Then he spoke of the assault plan, and what we might have done to prevent losing anyone. The OC was clearly gutted at losing one of his own. He took this very personally, almost as if it was his own failing.
‘This is my analysis of what happened today,’ the OC said. ‘We stirred the hornets’ nest. We stirred and we stirred and suddenly it erupted. What resulted was a long and intensive massive firefight. Air assets were made available as we needed them, and we couldn’t advance until we’d neutralised pockets in that hornets’ nest, and that’s what we did.
‘For an hour or more there was that massive, pitched battle,’ the OC continued. ‘Air, artillery and mortars were pounding the enemy positions, and back on the ground we still had troops in contact who needed water and ammo. We captured two-thirds of the village, and 4 Platoon were in the north trying to link up with the Czechs.
‘That was today’s battle.’ The OC paused. ‘Throughout all of this, the ‘‘what if” is could we have done anything to prevent Sandy’s death? The only way to have avoided it would have been not to do the mission. And bear in mind the worst-case scenario: losing more soldiers during the initial firefight, which would have made it harder to get out.’
The OC took a thoughtful pause. ‘Then, we would have come back in on foot and hit all of what the enemy had prepared for us here. It would have been a modern-day Rorke’s Drift. We’d have been sucked in with no way out. We’d have been forced to fight our way out, taking massive casualties.
‘We may have thought we were up against a rag-tag enemy,’ he continued. ‘We are not. Their ferocity and their ability to coordinate fire is clear. They have front-line trenches with cleared arcs; reserve trenches set fifty metres back, with sentry positions out front with RPGs. Their tactic has been to hit us, engage, fall back and draw us in to an ambush-and-surround position. We’ve been very, very lucky today.’
The OC gave orders that we were to consolidate our positions into all-round defence, and remain in Rahim Kalay that night. In the morning we would patrol out towards Adin Zai. And we would stay on the ground and dominate the territory.
After the briefing Major Butt did a walk around the company’s positions. It took him two and a half hours, and he got to say a few words to every one of the men. He knew how that would boost their morale. He came back via our position, and Sticky doled him out a cup of coffee, which was the OC’s chosen brew.
‘Fantastic,’ he remarked, as he took a sip. ‘Just what I needed. Bloody fantastic, lads.’
I glanced at my watch. It was 0200 hours. I’d been curled up on the dirt next to the Vector, dozing, my TACSAT propped against my ear. I had no air, but I was scanning whilst I kipped, just in case I got anything unexpectedly.
We fully expected to get hit again that night, but I’d only get air if the enemy launched a full-on attack. In a way it was a good thing. I was totally exhausted, and all I wanted was to get my bracket down. As Butsy chatted away to the others, I drifted off into the sleep of the dead. Overnight, I kept getting woken by the odd crackle of gunfire, or the crunching explosion of grenades. I’d do a quick scan of the airwaves, but with no warplanes on station I’d drift off to sleep once more.
Dozing fitfully in between the worst attacks, I shook myself awake proper at 0400. I had air for the company stand-to. I got a pair of A-10s, and had them flying low-level shows of force over our positions. That way, if the enemy were planning anything major they could see that we had Warthogs on hand to smash them.
It was then that I learned just how fierce the fighting had been overnight. The OC described it as a night of ‘enemy in the wire’, with close-quarters fighting in the pitch darkness. Butsy hadn’t slept a wink as he’d kept doing the rounds of his lads to bolster their morale. The enemy had probed us from every direction, and the lads had spent the dark hours wired, and wondering from where next the enemy were going to try to hit us.
