Fire Strike 7/9

knew it. I knew it. And the two of us were left staring at each other with eyes like bloody saucers.

We moved out and pressed onwards into the bush. A few minutes later a long burst of gunfire tore apart the tense silence. It was the rattle of an AK-47, and it was answered an instant later by an SA80. Suddenly, there were RPG rounds smashing into the bush all around us, as all hell broke loose.

I dived for the cover of a ditch. Sticky, Throp, Chris and Jess landed next to me, as we tried to work out where the enemy were firing from. Then, an all-stations call went out on the company net:

‘Man down! Arsenic Two Zero, man down!’

Arsenic Two Zero was the call sign of 2 Platoon, on point. We’d been ambushed at close quarters and the boys up front were getting smashed. I felt that horrible, sickening feeling of knowing we had a man lying out there somewhere in the bush injured or dying.

‘Get 2 Platoon’s fucking grid!’ I yelled at Sticky. I was having to scream to make myself heard over the battle noise.

‘Dude One Three, Widow Seven Nine,’ I radioed the F- 15. ‘Sitrep: under assault. Contact is raging hot, and we have a man down. I need you visual with the lead elements of our patrol, so you can find the enemy fire positions. Stand by for grid.’

‘Roger. Standing by.’

I scrabbled around in the pocket of my combats and pulled out my battered map. It was ‘Fabloned’ — coated in a plastic film — but still it had taken a real beating. I spread it out in the shadowed damp of the ditch. I tried to block out the battle noise and the red mist of anger, as I searched for our location.

There would be time for rage and fury later. We had a man down, and we had to get him out. I glanced at my wrist GPS, and traced the coordinates on the map. We’d pushed so far east we’d fallen off the right-hand edge of my regular map — OP AREA 1 Ed2. I grabbed a second map, and found us. We’d gone beyond Golf Bravo Nine Six, with Golf Bravo Nine Seven to our south. Our objective, Golf Bravo Nine Eight, was a hundred metres to our front.

Sticky cupped his hands and yelled the grid of the lead platoon in my ear hole. ‘5-9-3-6-8-2-1-9.’

‘Dude One Three, Widow Seven Nine,’ I screamed into my TACSAT. ‘Patrol is strung out between Golf Bravo Nine Six and Golf Bravo Nine Eight. Most forward grid is: 59368219. Readback.’

The pilot confirmed the grid. He was having to yell to make himself heard too. ‘Visual muzzle flashes all around your lead platoon,’ he reported. ‘Enemy has your lead friendlies surrounded danger-close on three sides. They’re maybe ten, twenty metres away from your guys.’

‘Roger. Stand by.’

What the fuck! My mind was racing. We had our point platoon surrounded to the north, south and east, danger-close. Fuck danger-close — it was ten metres away. There was no way on earth that I could use the air.

‘OC! Chris!’ I yelled. ‘2 Platoon is surrounded ten metres on all sides but our own. I can’t use the fucking air!’

For a second the three of us stared at each other, as the full implications of what I’d said sunk in. Then the OC was on the radio.

‘Charlie Charlie One, all stations. Orders: full platoon assault to relieve 2 Platoon and extract casualty. Fix bayonets. Advance on my order.’

It was the only decision to have made. We’d do a fighting advance to reach 2 Platoon, and get the casualty out that way. All around me there was the sound of steel blades rasping on steel barrels, as the lads slotted their bayonets on to their weapons.

Nothing could ever bring home how desperate the fight had become more than the order to ‘fix bayonets’. When it came to hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters, the air was of no use at all. I gathered up my maps and shit and stuffed them into my pockets, then rammed the razor-sharp dagger of my own bayonet on to the barrel of my SA80.

‘Charlie Charlie One, all stations: platoon assault go!’

Butsy gave the order and we surged out of the ditch. Chris took point as we pounded ahead in an adrenaline- fuelled charge, kicking through the dust and rocks ahead of us. As we surged, the section to our front put down a savage wall of fire on to the bush to either side.

We charged ahead for fifteen metres, went firm, and started blasting away, as we gave cover for the section behind to come rushing forward. Up ahead the track hit a dense wall of trees strung with vines and thorns, and there it died. It was fucking carnage.

We piled into a rat run, a stinking, shallow ditch full of God only knows what. We crawled along it on hands and knees, as the rounds tore across above. We hit a flooded section and we were up to our waists in thick, foul- smelling black water and shit. We struggled ahead, staggering over submerged boulders and rotten posts in the shadowed half-light. For fifty metres we fought our way forward, each step taking us closer to 2 Platoon and our casualty. And then we stumbled into a solid wall of fire.

Rounds shredded leaves and branches all around us, and RPGs exploded on top of our position. In an instant I hit the deck, but I hadn’t done so voluntarily. I’d been slammed down like Mike Tyson had thrown his biggest ever punch at me. The impact had smashed me in the top of my back, hurling me on to my face.

I came to my knees spitting out mud and dirt. It felt like a bloody great big mule had kicked me in the shoulder. I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened. I wasn’t dead and no limbs were missing, or not that I could feel. I groped around the top of my body armour at the back, but I didn’t seem to be pissing out blood from anywhere.

I shook the confusion out of my head, raised my rifle and started cracking off rounds. No time to worry about it. We were in the fight of our lives. I’d landed in a shallow ravine, and a storm of bullets was slamming over the top of us. All around me the lads were hunkered down in cover, and trying to return fire.

There was a cry on the radio net: ‘Man down! Man down! Arsenic Two Zero, two more injured! But still fighting!’

Oh shit! We were three men down now. We’d stumbled into the mother of all ambushes, and we were getting smashed. I felt a desperate, insistent tugging on my left arm, the one that was cradling the front-grip of my SA80. It was Alan, the terp, and he was yelling something at me. I guessed it was a vital bit of Intel.

‘Bommer, we have to get out of here!’ Alan screamed. ‘The Taliban — they are everywhere! All around us! They will…’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ I yelled back. ‘Get a bloody grip, Alan. Get a grip!’

His eyes were wide with fear. I didn’t blame the poor sod. He was a civvie, not a soldier, and this is what we had led him into.

All of a sudden it went deathly quiet. One moment the enemy had been blatting away, the next they’d ceased firing. With nothing to aim at, our lads stopped shooting. The blue-grey smoke of RPG rounds and of burned cordite hung thickly in the air. We glanced at each other, wondering what the fuck was happening now.

A cry rang out from the bush just to the north. There was an answering cry from the south. These were enemy voices, and they were moving past on either side of us. They would know every ditch and treeline here. As we blundered about like the proverbial bull in a china shop, so their fighters were slipping by unseen.

This was the moment when they went to outflank and surround us. At the same time they were getting beyond danger-close with the patrol, so we couldn’t use the air.

‘Dude call signs, Widow Seven Nine: we have enemy all around us.’ For some reason I was whispering. ‘Tell me what you see.’

‘Stand by,’ the pilots replied.

Then: ‘Dude One Three: I’m visual with at least a dozen enemy moving in from the north-east of your position. More coming from compounds to your north — all armed.’

‘Dude One Four: I’m visual with large numbers of pax moving in through the treelines. Your forward platoon is totally surrounded. They’re fucked.’

I felt like saying Thanks for that, you dumb Yank twat. But instead, I passed the F-15 pilots the instructions that I never thought I’d hear myself saying as a JTAC.

‘Dude call signs, Widow Seven Nine,’ I rasped. ‘We’re in a Broken Arrow situation. Repeat: I’m calling a Broken Arrow.’

‘Affirm: you are Broken Arrow,’ the pilot replied.