later that morning we had a walk-in, a local elder. He was dressed in a flowing white robe topped off with an orange-beaded skull cap, and he had real attitude.
His finger stabbed the air as he jabbered away excitedly to Naji, our terp.
I saw Naji smile. ‘He’s saying that Commander Jamali was killed last night by the big bomb. The twelve men on the rooftop who died with him were the bodyguard team. Jamali was the top enemy commander in the area. A very important enemy leader.’
The last resupply convoy had brought in a stack of sausages and bacon from FOB Price. It was vacuum- packed, so it was still mostly edible. From somewhere Sticky had scavenged an enormous iron flying pan that was stained coal-black from long years of use. He hoofed the kettle off the stove, got the frying pan on, and threw in a big lump of lard. He got the fire stoked up with some scrap wood and hexamine, the Army-issue fuel blocks. And in no time the wonderful smell of frying sausage and bacon was drifting across the compound.
The funniest thing was how the terps seemed to love the fry-ups just as much as we did. Naji couldn’t get enough of Sticky’s burned sausages. Maybe he kidded himself that they were beef, or something. I reckoned we could get Naji on the ale, if only we had some.
None of us could get Naji’s name right. In full, it was Naquibullah, which was a bit of a mouthful for us. So we’d nicknamed him ‘Alan’. I guess we chose the name Alan ’cause it was about the most boring-sounding English name we could think of. Apart from Brian, and none of us were cruel enough to call our terp Brian.
Anyway, Naji didn’t seem to mind being called Alan, so that became his name. Sticky and him were the best of buddies, and Sticky liked to think of himself as being matey-matey with all the terps. Sticky also reckoned himself a bit of a Pashto speaker. He’d natter on in what he thought was their language, but the terps would just stare at him blankly — which was the perfect opportunity to rip the piss about what a load of bollocks he was talking.
Most of the terps were a great crack. Even those who didn’t tuck in to the fry-ups would get some local bread, dip it in the leftover lard and pork fat, and tuck in. But there was one terp, a real loner, who just didn’t seem to fit in. He was a shifty bastard if ever there was one. We decided to keep a close eye on him.
The fry-up was followed by a big cricket-off. One of the few things I had done well at when at school was cricket. Coming from the north-east of England, my Redcar school was big into the game, and I’d been a bit of a star batsman.
Chris was another big cricket fan, and he was a fine all-rounder. Sticky had never played before, but it didn’t take him long to get in to it. As for Throp, he was a big, well-built lad and he could proper slug the ball. We’d have fifteen to twenty fielders scattered around the compound, and whenever Throp was batting they’d move right back to the HESCO walling.
But it was Butsy who was the real cricket-head. The OC had played at a reasonable level, so he was a big competitive dad. The rivalry between the three of us ‘oldies’ — Butsy, Chris and I — was far fiercer than anything with the young 2 MERCIAN lads.
Butsy would be out there in his camo shorts and flip-flops, just like the rest of us, and whenever he was playing he was pretty much sure to win. But if the OC was otherwise occupied, it was usually between Chris and me.
Somehow, a proper cricket bat had made it out to PB Sanford. It probably came to Helmand in a Help for Heroes parcel, and got shipped to the base on a resupply convoy. We’d spray-painted some cricket stumps on one wall, and stuck three tubes full of mortar rounds into the dirt, to form the other wicket. We’d cobbled together a rock-hard ball made of rags wrapped round and round with black nasty. The most fun was to be had hurling that ball at the bare legs or torso of whoever was in to bat. If you got hit, it really did chafe.
We’d scratched a line in the sand around the perimeter of the compound, which was the boundary. If your ball rolled over that it was a four; if you whacked it clean over, it was a six. We’d have two innings, and everyone would get two bats. And after the first innings we’d have a break, so everyone could get a brew on.
We’d play for hours on end until there was a contact, and then we’d run around like lunatics getting in position to mallet the enemy. The terps used to stare and stare whenever we were having a big cricket-off. It was like we were insane or something. Whilst they were up for having a laugh, the terps just did not get cricket.
I had no air that day, and so I proceeded to have a cracking good time in bat. Eventually the burning sun drove the lot of us over to the well for a good dousing. After that I made for the bedroom, got my bracket down and tried to doze through the heat of the afternoon. Eventually, I drifted into a deep sleep.
Some time later I shot bolt upright, my world exploding all around me. My heart was thumping like a jackhammer, and my eyes were like saucers. I was shitting myself. There’d been a massive blast right where I was lying, and my ears were still ringing from the boom.
It sounded as if the base security had been breached, and the enemy were chucking grenades in amongst us. I struggled out of the bloody mozzie netting, grabbing for my SA80 with the one hand and the TACSAT with the other. I slammed a round into the assault rifle’s breech, and flicked the safety to the ‘off’ position. As I turned to face the enemy, I became aware of a circle of familiar faces at the arched doorway of our ‘bedroom’. I couldn’t hear a thing, for I’d been deafened, but I could see the lot of them pointing at yours truly and pissing themselves laughing.
For a second my confused and scrambled mind tried to grasp what was going on. Then I noticed that the underside of my camp bed was soaking wet, and that there were shards of plastic bottle scattered all around the floor. This was no enemy attack. I’d been MRE-bombed, and I didn’t find it the slightest bit funny.
‘Fuck off,’ I mouthed at Sticky, Throp and the other lads. I was yelling, but I couldn’t hear a thing. ‘Fuck off and let me sleep, or I’ll knack you.’
I clambered back inside my baking mozzie-tent and collapsed on to the camp bed. I tried to get my heartbeat back to something like normal. I cursed Sticky, for it had to be him. The MRE-bomb was a simple enough device, and one of my favourites. I reckoned it was class whenever I got the other lads, but it was never quite so funny this way around.
Our Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) Army rations came complete with charcoal sticks. If you wanted some hot nosh, you’d throw the stick into a pan of water, drop the bag in the pan, and the chemical reaction would get it cooking. But if you took an empty water bottle, stuffed the charcoal stick inside, added a little water and screwed the lid on, then you had a DIY bomb. You’d have to sneak it under someone’s bed without waking them, and before the thing exploded. It’d go off like a rocket, and the victim would wake with a real flap on, just as I had done. Those bombs were truly, seriously loud, and nine times out of ten the victim would come piling out of his room with his weapon locked and loaded.
The best time to do it was just after stand-to, when the young 2 MERCIAN lads were trying to get a bit of extra kip. But this time it was me who’d been MRE-bombed, and I just couldn’t get back to sleep. Eventually, I gave up trying and wandered over to get a brew. I did my best to ignore Sticky and Throp’s smirking, and went to check in the radio room if anything was cooking with the enemy.
Busty came to join me in the shade of the ‘radio shack’, a canopy of camo-netting slung between the FST Vector and the main, mud-walled building of the base. We had a good natter about the previous day’s fighting, and how the air war had worked alongside the ground war, and how winning that battle might have altered things in the Triangle.
The OC reckoned we’d hit the jackpot, taking out Commander Jamali. He figured we’d cut off the enemy’s head, and left them running round like the proverbial headless chicken. Not a thing was happening anywhere in the Green Zone, and for sure something had knocked the fight out of the enemy. For days they’d been building up to this massive attack, which had clearly been aimed at taking Alpha Xray. Instead, we’d hit them again and again and again, and ended up killing their top commander.
I guess Jamali was their equivalent of the OC. I wondered for a moment how us lot would have reacted, had Butsy and his HQ element been taken out. It didn’t bear thinking about.
The OC reckoned it would be fairly quiet until they got a replacement commander into the Triangle. Once they did, they’d start trying to probe our positions, as they had been doing before. They would try to establish the boundaries between our bases, and also any weaknesses they could exploit. And they would try to get behind our lines, so they could attack from all sides with us sandwiched in between. But for now, we should enjoy the quiet after Commander Jamali’s killing.
