Fire Strike 7/9

couldn’t help thinking it, and it only served to heighten my hunger to get back on the ground with my team.

I was told that I was leaving the following morning for FOB Price, but I was going by a slight detour. I was to run an Operation Loam resupply convoy to Sangin, some fifty kilometres north-east of Camp Bastion. Every month an Op Loam convoy would set out, a line of trucks with escorts seeking to deliver food, ammo and water to a string of British bases along the Helmand River valley.

The convoys ploughed through the open desert, throwing up a massive plume of dust. They were visible for miles around, and they were forever being targeted by the enemy. Those convoys had earned the less-than- affectionate nickname of ‘Operation Mine Strike’. This month’s Op Loam convoy was short of a JTAC, so muggins here got the tasking. En route back from Sangin I’d get dropped at FOB Price, and link up with my FST.

I did not want to do this, but at least it’d get me back with the lads. I had no gear whatsoever in Bastion, so I had to beg, borrow and steal a JTAC-ing kit. I went to the Signals Compound, and got myself a TACSAT. They filled it up with the crypto for me — the encrypted signals information I needed for it to work, and I blagged myself a rifle and a pistol.

At 0400 the convoy left Camp Bastion. In charge of the convoy was the packet commander — I was riding with him in his Vector. Behind us were fifty-two MAN fifteen-tonne army trucks, with WMIKs, Mastiffs and Vectors in support. It struck me that these logistics boys — the ‘loggies’ — were the unsung heroes of this war. There was no glory in running this gauntlet every month, and it was certainly no fun for anyone but the enemy.

Seven hours after setting out we had our first vehicle go over a mine. A WMIK had been roaming out front, clearing the way ahead. The massive explosion blew a crater the size of a house in the sand, and blasted the WMIK thirty metres or more from where it had been hit. The WMIK Land Rovers have mine protection provided by ballistic matting, and the two guys in the front were pretty much OK. The rear had taken the brunt of the blast. The 50-cal gunner had taken shrapnel in the leg, and his left foot was in a bad way. The convoy medic put a tourniquet around the guy’s shin, but there were thick globules of blood oozing out of the seams of his boot. We had to get the guy back to Camp Bastion, so they could cut the boot off him, and treat the injury. I got on my borrowed TACSAT.

‘Widow TOC, Widow Seven Nine. Sitrep: I’m with the Op Loam resupply convoy thirty kilometres due west of Lashkar Gah. We’ve got a WMIK hit by a mine, and one T2 casualty. I need immediate air, plus IRT. I’m making up my own ROZ: ROZ Bommer.’

I needed a ROZ, so I could be free to control air missions above the convoy. I got allocated a pair of F-15s inbound, Dude Zero One and Dude Zero Two, plus a Chinook with Apache escort to do the casevac. ROZ Bommer was getting busy.

We got the casualty on to the bonnet of a WMIK, so we could drive it up the ramp of the Chinook and into the aircraft’s hold. The medic had the lad’s shins strapped together, to hold the injured leg still, and he’d got some morphine into him to stop the screaming.

First into the overhead were the F-15s, and I got them flying air recces above the convoy. It wasn’t two minutes before they spotted trouble.

‘Widow Seven Nine, Dude Zero One: I have a compound five hundred metres to the south of your position. I’m visual with forty males of fighting age. No weapons visible, but it looks like an ambush.’

‘Roger. Keep a close eye on ’em. Wait out.’

My first priority was to get the wounded on to the Chinook, and the convoy moving. Sat in the open desert like this we made a peachy target. I also had to deny the WMIK to the enemy, not that there was much left of it. I’d get that done whilst awaiting the Chinook.

The wrecked vehicle was way to the front of the convoy. I asked Dude Zero Two to hit it, whilst his wing kept an eye on the compound. The packet commander was a young lieutenant, and he was giving a running commentary on what was happening to his OC, back in Camp Bastion.

I’d just begun my talk-on with the F-15, when he interrupted me.

‘The major says do not at all costs deny the WMIK. We need to recover it to Camp Bastion.’

I stared at the guy for a second. ‘Tell your major to fuck clean off. We’re not recovering it. We’re blowing it up.’

The guy relayed my message. ‘Widow Seven Nine says negative — he’s going to blow it up.’

I heard the major kicking off on the net. ‘Well, tell Widow Seven Nine if he does, I’ll be billing him the cost of a replacement vehicle.’

‘Listen, mate: you brief your boss the following,’ I rasped. ‘We’ve got forty males of fighting age gathering in a compound ahead of us. The Dude call sign says it’s an ambush. The WMIK is totally fucked. We need to get the casualty out, and the convoy moving.’

The lieutenant relayed my message, and the major repeated his order to recover the WMIK. He wanted it lifted on to a truck and taken back to Bastion, so he could check for himself if it was beyond repair.

I grabbed the lieutenant’s radio. ‘This is Widow Seven Nine: I’m no mechanic, but Jim couldn’t fix the bloody thing. It’s fucked. I need to blow it up and get us moving.’

‘I repeat what I’ve said: I want that vehicle recovered.’

‘You want me to jack you up a helicopter, so you can fly out yourself and see how fucked it is?’

There was no response. It sounded like the major had switched off his radio.

So be it. I’d been here before on this tour — when the Vector had been hit by the 107mm rocket, at Adin Zai. Plus we’d had WMIKs hit in mine strikes. In each case any attempt to recover kit or weaponry or the vehicles themselves had been met by savage follow-up attacks. We’d learned the hard way that putting lads at risk for a knackered vehicle wasn’t a clever idea. But somehow, I doubted whether the young lieutenant in charge of the convoy had such combat experience.

I turned to him. ‘Right, I’m blowing it up. You can blame me if there’s any comeback.’

The lieutenant looked doubtful. ‘We can’t do that. There’ll be hell to pay.’

‘Listen, you can just blame me. We’ve got to get this convoy moving.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’m going to get the recovery truck forward to begin lifting it.’

I gave the guy a look, then dialled up the IRT. It was his convoy, but it was a dumb decision if ever there was one. More importantly, he was putting his men’s lives needlessly in danger.

The IRT Chinook was three minutes out. I got one of the lads to mark the LZ. He dropped a green smoke grenade on the patch of open ground. The surface of the desert was covered in a fine, talcum powder dust, and as the Chinook came down we were engulfed in the massive brown-out of a rotor-driven dust storm. We got the WMIK up the ramp, the wounded guy onboard, and the heavy in the air again in two minutes flat. That done, I tried again to persuade the lieutenant to let me blow the WMIK. He refused.

Whilst the recovery truck came forward to lift it, I got the Dude call signs flying shows of force over the compound to our front, firing flares. I had no doubt those were the bastards who had planted the mine, and they were there just itching to launch a follow-up attack. The F-15s flew repeated passes twenty metres above the compound, as the low-loader manoeuvred into place. We had no mine-clearing kit, and without doubt the enemy would have planted more than just the one — so every man engaged in the recovery was risking his life. It took forty-five nail-biting minutes to recover the wreck, every second of which I was expecting to see a vehicle or a bloke go over a mine and get blown to fuck. Thankfully, luck was with us, and we got on our way with no further casualties.

As we pushed onwards we were only making fifteen to twenty kilometres an hour. Trucks kept getting bogged down the whole time, whereupon they had to get towed out of the shit by another wagon. It was a hideous way to travel, and I was mightily pleased to hit FOB Robinson, at 2200.

The packet commander planned to do the run up to Sangin in the early hours, to catch the enemy napping. In the meantime, we had the chance to get some kip.

I awoke at first light to discover that the convoy had left without me and the packet commander. Somehow, they’d managed to get on the road for the run down to Sangin without their commander or their JTAC.

The convoy made it back to FOB Robinson without being ambushed. The plan was to set off at 0600 on a non-stop drive to Camp Bastion. But we’d had Intel come in that the enemy were planning to smash us big time on the return journey. We knew roughly where the attack was expected, and I helped the packet commander cobble together a new strategy.

I got in touch with a fellow JTAC, Sergeant ‘Bes’ Berry, one of the guys who’d trained me back in the UK. He