Fire Strike 7/9

‘Bank west, and hit them with a GBU-38.’

I warned Chris and the OC that I was dropping a five-hundred-pounder, and for the patrol to get their heads down. It was a hundred and twenty metres danger-close at night, and a couple of months back I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a drop. But I had my favourite pilot above me, and this was the only way to fight the enemy in Helmand.

‘Tipping in,’ the pilot radioed.

‘No change friendlies. Clear hot.’

‘In hot.’ A beat. ‘Stores.’

In the thirty seconds it took for the smart bomb to come snarling down on us, I had Chris and the OC yelling over the net for the lads to get on their bloody belt buckles. A hollow thump ripped apart the night as the bomb hit, the white heat of the blast throwing angry red shadows across the walls around the Vector.

‘BDA: three pax dead. No further movement around Golf Bravo Nine One.’

The contact had died down to nothing. I thanked the F-15 pilot, and pushed him back across the river to Widow Eight Seven.I got on the air and sent a sitrep to Damo Martin, in the FOB Price air-planning cell.

‘I’ve just done three 20mm strafing runs, and dropped one GBU-38,’ I reported. ‘At least five Taliban killed.’

‘Good work,’ Damo replied.

Then this: ‘Widow Seven Nine, Widow TOC: what platforms were you using?’

‘I pinched a Dude call sign from Widow Eight Seven.’

‘Roger. Wait out. Stay on these means.’

The duty officer at Widow TOC was asking me to stay on this frequency. He’d sounded a bit confused. Maybe even annoyed. A minute later he was back.

‘Widow Seven Nine, what were you doing pinching aircraft?’

‘We had an HVT out on patrol and pinned down in the Green Zone. I needed air.’

‘There’s a set procedure for getting air. You’ve broken every rule you could have broken, as we knew nothing about the contact.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, ’cause there’s no contact any more: I’ve killed them all.’

‘You are not — I repeat not — to do that again.’ The guy on the other end was fuming. ‘Widow Seven Nine, you are to stick to set procedures.’

That was that. End of my bollocking over the air.

That F-15 control was the fastest I’d ever done in theatre. It was eight minutes, from start to finish. I got a brew on, and then we got a call from Alpha Xray. The patrol had got safely in to the base, and the Sky team were bird-happy. They’d got the whole of the contact on film, and were wowed by the speed and power of the airstrikes. Needless to say, the lads under siege at AX were chuffed as nuts too.

Stewart Hill came and found me. He was fuming at what had happened with Widow TOC. As far as he was concerned, we’d had a patrol plus HVT under attack, and his JTAC had pulled a blinding move to relieve them. And I’d been bawled out for doing so. I appreciated the OC’s support. He was clearly 100 per cent there for his lads. But I didn’t really give a shit that Widow TOC had chewed me out over the air.

I had a brew and a fag, and got to bed with Alpha Xray safe as houses, and the Sky crew well happy. What could be better than that? Enough said.

After stand-to the following morning the patrol returned with the Sky crew in tow. Sticky and I were having a chat, when I felt a rumbling in my stomach. I still wasn’t right after my attack of the runs. I warned Sticky I was off for a crap, and made a dash for the shitters.

The thunderboxes were a pretty basic affair — a plywood wall wrapped around with HESCO, with holes cut in a plank bench to do your business. The HESCO was shoulder-high, so you could sit there having a crap and chat to your mates outside.

Being a bit of a petrol-head, I’d grabbed a copy of Auto Trader. I was looking forward to having a good read whilst I was on the throne. I sat on the middle of the three holes, and buried my head in the magazine.

A few moments later I noticed a figure coming towards me from the main compound. It was the Sky reporter, Alex Crawford, and for a moment I was a bit embarrassed. But I thought: I’m only having a crap, and there’s nowt wrong with that.

‘Morning,’ I said.

‘Morning,’ she replied.

Then she walked in, pulled down her hoggers and perched on the hole next to me. There were eight inches on my left separating us, as she proceeded to have a dump right next to me. I had my feet on a sandbag and my combats around my ankles, and I tried desperately to bury my head deeper in the magazine.

She started going on about what a fantastic job I’d done with the air the night before. I felt so awkward I didn’t know what to say. I tried to quieten down my doings, but there was a sudden breech explosion and I let rip. It was like you’d do after having a kebab with chilli sauce and after a night out on the beers.

I could feel myself going bright red in the face. I stuck the Auto Trader higher in an effort to hide my discomfiture. As soon as I could I finished off. I was out of there like a shot, leaving Alex Crawford alone on her throne. No way could I talk to her whilst we were both having a dump and only eight inches separating us.

I went to the chill-out room and threw the Auto Trader on the pile, then made for the privacy of the Vector. Major Hill was standing at the wagon’s open door.

‘Fuck me, Alex Crawford has just had a dump right next to me on the thunderboxes,’ I remarked. ‘And I mean, it’s just not ladylike.’

The OC cracked up laughing. ‘Bommer, she reports from all over the Middle East. She’s hardly going to stand on ceremony if she needs a quick crap, is she?’

‘It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just a dump she was having,’ I complained. ‘It was the way she was trying to have a cosy chat about my air from the night before. Think about it,’ I went on. ‘Some bird you’ve seen on the telly sits next to you and starts having a dump — well, it’s fucking weird.’

The OC and the rest of the lads were killing themselves.

A few minutes later Alex Crawford wandered past the wagon. I could feel myself going red as a beetroot. Chris, Throp, Sticky and Jess were torturing me. Three hours later they were still winding me up, and I was still hiding in the wagon.

All of a sudden there was a yell from Mikey Wallace, followed by a long, deafening: ‘BWAAAAAAARP!’

Mikey was giving a blast on the air horn, meaning there was a mortar round in the air. Mikey Wallace had the worst job in the Triangle. He sat in a bunker about the size and shape of a toilet cubicle, staring into his mortar- locating radar screen all day long. When a round went up he got his moment of glory, and punched the air horn. He was doing a blinding job of it too.

The lads ran around grabbing body armour and helmets and taking cover. Alex Crawford started to film what looked like a live report. She was stood before the cameraman in blue helmet and matching body armour, looking very much the part. I shook my head: I doubted if I’d ever be able to watch Sky News again without blushing.

I can’t remember where the mortar landed. We were getting hit on such a regular basis I’d given up noticing. Anyway, the Sky crew must’ve decided they had enough in the can by now, for they moved off with the convoy back to FOB Price. I wasn’t overly sad to see them go. At least it meant I could stop hiding in the back of the Vector.

Later, I rang home and spoke to the wife. She sounded unusually excited, and it turned out I’d been spotted on TV. They’d been watching Sky News, and all of a sudden there was a report from our base. There was a scene of me in the back of the wagon in my shorts and T-shirt, on the TACSAT talking to some air.

Harry had rushed forward and pointed at the screen: ‘Look! Look! There’s Daddy!’

I didn’t tell Nicola about my toilet troubles of earlier. I preferred the image of me in the back of the Vector looking manly, to me and Alex having a cosy chat in the shitters.

We had two new developments on the Intel front, but it was hard to assess how real they were. We had Intel from elders who’d approached a patrol. Word was that the enemy had brought in a seriously big weapon with which