My dad was worried, but I told him and my mum that soldiering was my job, and that I had to go. I hoped, with a happy birthday phone call from Helmand, I could put all of that to rights. Sure enough, Dad was over the moon to hear from me. The life insurance thing wasn’t mentioned. I guess he’d reconciled himself to the fact that his son had chosen to go into harm’s way to get a job done.
There was no way we could let a bunch of medieval lunatics like the Taliban take over an entire country, less still to use it as a base for global terrorism. That was what we were fighting to prevent. The hard-line Taliban hate our way of life. They want the world to be like Afghanistan under their rule. The Afghan people deserve more. We all do. I’d fight to the last man to prevent my family and my fellow countrymen ending up in a world like that. My dad hated me risking my life, but at the same time he understood what I was doing.
Sticky, Throp, Chris and I joined a resupply convoy heading out to the Triangle. We arrived at PB Sandford at night, after a hard day’s driving through hostile terrain. We’d made painfully slow progress, as we checked for IEDs and ambushes all the way. Upon reaching the darkened base, Butsy told us we’d have our first briefing after stand- to.
And I felt like I was home again.
Fifteen
THE KILLING BOX
The only change about Major Butt since I’d last seen him was his weeks-old stubble, and he was noticeably thinner. The well at PB Sandford was infested with bloodworms, and bottled water was too precious to waste shaving. By default, battle dress in the Triangle was going to be big beards all around. In his usual, gruff manner, the OC got down to business.
Butsy indicated a section of terrain on the map that he’d spread before us. ‘Lads: we kept mowing the grass, and it kept growing back again. We’d push the enemy out of here, and they’d creep right back in. So, now we’ve pushed the enemy out once and for all. The feature we can easily recognise as our front line is the Adin Zai road. That’s here.’
The major traced a thin line on the map snaking through the Green Zone.
‘The operational concept behind our bases is as follows.’ The OC glanced in my direction. ‘Since you were last here, we pushed out from Rahim Kalay and took the Triangle. We pushed out of Rahim Kalay, using a double hook: B Company in the north, and soldiers from the Afghan National Army in the south. We hit massive resistance, and it was there that we lost Guardsman Hickey.’
The OC paused. ‘The ANA lads did well, and were supposed to remain with us. Unfortunately, they were pulled away. So whereas it was supposed to be two companies holding the Triangle, we are now one. I’ve had to work out how best to use B Company to dominate the area. Our brief is to hold the terrain, and block the enemy out of Rahim Kalay and Adin Zai, enabling reconstruction and security in the areas we’ve secured.
‘We have four platoons: one at Alpha Xray, one at Monkey One Echo and a platoon-plus here at PB Sanford. The platoons are on four-day rotations around the bases. In any of the three we are effectively surrounded. We’ve been taking hits just about every night, and at times we’ve been under threat of being overrun — especially down at Alpha Xray. I’m going to start using good old fighting patrols at night, to keep the enemy on their toes. We have to take the initiative, and the battle, to the enemy.
‘FST ops are unchanged,’ the OC continued. ‘You’re to use the air, guns and mortars in support of the lads, to smash the enemy. We faced fierce resistance getting in here, and we’ve been very busy since. You will have your hands full. It’s the same-old same-old.’ He glanced up and gave us his tough smile. ‘And Bommer — you’re to do whatever you want with the air to look after the lads here in the Triangle.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I was back in action as B Company’s JTAC.
I was on a steep learning curve. Before leaving FOB Price Damo Martin had got me into the Fire Planning Cell (FPC) tent and handed me a bundle of new maps. The GeoCell had done a sterling job of compiling mapping that could be passed to the pilots on disk, and uploaded on to their weapons computers. The same maps were provided to us JTACs.
Most importantly, those maps had just about every known enemy position marked on them, with a codename. Enemy positions in the Triangle had been given the Golf Bravo prefix. So, for example, a tree-line might be Golf Bravo Nine Three. In theory, all I needed to do to talk the air on to target was give the pilot the GeoCell codename. It was a great concept: I wondered how it would it work in practice.
As I glanced over the OC’s maps, the strategy behind the three bases in the Triangle began to make sense. Alpha Xray was a simple, mud-walled compound reinforced by rolls of razor wire, and with sandbagged rooftop positions. It was located in the heart of Adin Zai — in what had recently been prime enemy territory. It was the bait to lure them out to fight us.
PB Sandford was set a kilometre back from Alpha Xray, on the ridge line. It was a large compound, with thick mud-brick walls reinforced by HESCO barriers. From the base, the platoons had eyes on the Green Zone rolling out below, including Alpha Xray (AX). AX was linked to PB Sandford by two small dirt tracks that snaked their way through the bush, enabling convoys to fight their way through and resupply the base.
Monkey One Echo was 800 metres due east of PB Sandford, and set on the lip of the high ground. It was thrust against the limit of known enemy territory, and was our second provocation. The thick bush of the Green Zone ran right up to the walls, so it was almost as vulnerable as Alpha Xray. From Monkey One Echo a huge swathe of enemy terrain was visible, and the base was linked to PB Sandford by a dirt track, enabling resupply. The three bases formed a kill-box, in which to trap and smash the enemy.
After Butsy’s brief we moved down to Monkey One Echo (MOE), our home for the coming days. MOE was another, massive compound with thick mud-walls. It was owned by a wizened Afghan elder who refused to be cowed by the Taliban.
Trouble was, we weren’t to go inside the compound. We knew if we did the Taliban would really start to target the old boy’s family. Instead, the lads had made a camp against the outside back wall. That wall was high enough to provide cover for our Vector. With a camo-netting lean-to slung against it, at least there was some shade. The more fortunate lads had US Army camp beds — a fold-out aluminium frame with canvas covering. Those like me without dossed down on the dirt.
From the vantage point on top of the compound wall the view over the old boy’s compound was spectacular. In the foreground there were the dome-roofed buildings of his family home, complete with a sculpted mud arch like a half-doughnut. That arch led into a massive, three-storey square tower, with spyholes. It looked like something out of
To the west of the compound lay PB Sandford, and to the southwest Alpha Xray. Everything to the south and east was bandit country. To one side of the compound was a concealed observation position (OP) — little more than a crater scraped in the hard dirt, with some camo-netting slung over it. It was large enough for the FST to crawl into, and keep eyes-on below.
Once we’d set up camp, I had a chat with the JTAC who’d stood in for me whilst I’d been away, a guy called Stu. He briefed me on what had been going on in the Triangle. I was itching to get the handover done with, and get back in the hot seat with ‘my lads’.
Stu talked me around a new bit of kit that he’d been using — a Rover terminal. It was the size of a small laptop, and it enabled the JTAC to see what the pilot was seeing, in real time. It fed off a live downlink from the pilot’s sniper optics, which beamed down the video images. He passed me the Rover terminal as part of the handover.
‘It’s a top piece of kit, mate,’ Stu reassured me.
‘Oh fuck aye,’ I told him. ‘If it does what you say, it’s mint.’
Stu talked me through my ASRs — I had air booked at first light and last light for the next three days. Those were proving to be the enemy’s favourite times to hit us. And that was pretty much it: handover done. Stu got a lift back to FOB Price with the resupply convoy that we’d come in on, and we were back in action.
I got my first chance to use the Rover terminal that evening, when I got a lone F-15,
