One young soldier had told the OC about an enemy fighter who had simply refused to die. He’d shot the enemy fighter three times, but still the guy was trying to press home his attack. Eventually, the young lad had bayoneted him to death. It was clear the enemy were pumped up on drugs, for nothing else could have kept them going like that.
After stand-to I had the A-10s ripped by a pair of F-15s, call signs
I got chatting to the pilots, and it turned out that one was a woman. Emma proved to be a friendly type, as the American girls often are.
‘I haven’t spoken to a pretty lass in weeks,’ I told her. ‘What you wearing up there?’
‘I’m flying in my suspender set and bra,
‘I’m minging,’ I told her, truthfully. ‘I smell like a damp dog. And I haven’t brushed my teeth for six days.’
She laughed. ‘Gee — I guess that’s what I can smell from up here then.’
The Intel coming down from the Rahim Kalay elders was that forty-one enemy had been killed, not to mention the wounded. Plus at least thirty-six enemy fighters were missing. We’d also taken out a full mortar team with mortar tube, and a further mortar team without the tube.
As if to confirm what the elders were telling us, the F-15 pilots spotted scores of tractors on the village outskirts, hauling out the dead and injured. We let them go about their grim work unmolested.
We would respect the enemy dead, and for sure they had enough of them right now.
Thirteen
THUNDER RUN
Two days later I was back at FOB Price, en route to Camp Bastion. For the next week at least my war was over. I’d been ordered to return to the UK, for — of all things — an AIDS test.
I was gutted to be leaving the 2 MERCIAN lads, especially as they were poised to take Adin Zai and occupy a swathe of the Green Zone. And I was pissed as hell to be leaving my FST, and handing over my JTAC role to a stand-in. But I had no option. Orders were orders.
Two months earlier I’d managed to stab myself in the leg with a discarded needle. The enemy often drugged themselves up before battle, shooting up with heroin or amphetamines. Their positions were littered with syringes, and of all the places I’d chosen to take cover I landed on a druggie’s needle.
I’d been just six days in theatre, and the soldiers of 42 Commando had been ordered to take Sangin town on foot. They’d been on their way back to the UK at the end of their tour, when they were told to do one more mission. I got embedded with the commando, as the JTAC for the Sangin operation.
In briefings we were told this was going to be the biggest op of 42 Commando’s entire tour. I’d never done a live drop before — controlling aircraft with live ordnance over a battlefield. I guessed this was going to be my baptism of fire.
Only three of us from the FST could go on the mission, and Sticky had drawn the short straw. We were embedded with Juliet Company, a bunch of kich-arse Commandos. There were 120 Marines in the company, and I was the JTAC in charge of the air. A lot of these lads were big, ugly, grizzled bastards, and I didn’t think they’d take kindly to me dropping a bomb on their mates by accident. One of the commando’s own JTACs came to have words with me. He was at the end of his Afghan deployment, and he was a qualified JTAC instructor.
‘Bommer, when we go out on this op you’re the JTAC heading it up,’ he told me. ‘Everything that’s going to happen you’re going to lead it. I’ll listen in, and only intervene if I have to. You need to find your feet and find them fast. You OK with that?’
I swallowed hard. ‘If there’s anything, can I ask you the question, boss?’
He shook his grizzled head. ‘No, mate. I’ll step in if needed. I’m giving you your head, Bommer. You’ll do all right, and if you don’t I’ll be on to you.’
So be it. I was in at the deep end.
We drove up to Sangin via the desert. The night before the assault we laagered up in the open, just short of the 611, the main road into town. We had C Squadron of The Light Dragoons — my parent regiment — in Scimitar light tanks doing overwatch of the road, to stop the enemy from planting mines or IEDs, or setting ambushes. The enemy knew of our intentions, and they were coming to join the party. Half a dozen top Taliban commanders had arrived from their northern stronghold of Musa Qaleh, each bringing sixty to eighty fighters with them. We were two companies of Royal Marines — some 240 men — up against several hundred enemy fighters.
The CO of 42 Commando gave us the final mission brief in our desert laager: ‘Secure Sangin centre through shock action, moving from inside to out to secure. Gain positions with or without force; deny enemy firing points. Hold all until relieved by Task Force Fury.’
Task Force Fury was troops from the US 82nd Airborne’s 4th Combat Team. They would be inserted in a massive heli-borne
operation to the west of Sangin, with us coming in from the east in a pincer movement. At the same time units of The Light Dragoons would move in from the open desert, conducting a highly visible feint, in an effort to fox the enemy.
The CO finished his brief with these immortal words. ‘Not all of you will be coming out of Sangin’. That drove it home: there were going to be a few lads getting whacked in there.
The airspace above Sangin had been formulated into a High Density Air Control Zone (HIDACZ), which was akin to an enormous ROZ broken down into individual sectors. We had a ‘king JTAC’ in control of the HIDACZ, and orchestrating the air from FOB Robinson. His call sign was
I got the alert via Chris that our forward unit had spotted an enemy mortar team setting up under cover of darkness. I got a description of the target, then radioed for air.
‘
‘
I had a B-1B semi-stealth bomber inbound. The American pilot came up on the air.
‘
‘
The B-1B pilot read the coordinates back to me and confirmed the attack details. As we began the talk-on, I had to put myself into the mindset of the pilot in his cockpit. It felt just like being at JTAC school, only this was for real.
‘This is what you’re looking for,’ I told him. ‘There’s a rectangular compound to the north of the 611. Just to the east of it is a small track leading north-east to south-west.’
‘Visual with the compound and track,’ the pilot confirmed.
‘On the track directly to the west of the compound — one times white pickup parked under trees. Next to that, at nine o’clock: three times male pax, setting up mortar base plate.’
‘Searching… Visual on the white pickup. Visual male pax. Preparing my attack run: what d’you want on target?’
‘I want a GBU-38. Nearest friendlies four hundred metres south.’
‘Affirm, one times GBU-38. Tipping in.’ A pause. ‘Sixty seconds to target. Call for clearance.’
As the giant bomber arrowed through the darkened sky, I heard a voice cutting in on my frequency.
‘Break! Break!
