Fire Strike 7/9

changed, which meant we could only fire on the enemy when they were firing at us.

We were holding the front line in the Green Zone, but we were forbidden from engaging armed enemy fighters unless they were actually in the process of firing at us. In practice this meant the enemy could gather for an assault on one of our bases, and we couldn’t hit them until they opened up on us. It was like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. It felt like a right kick in the knackers, but we tried to shrug it off. The one consolation was that we were nearing the end of our tour: ten more days of the Triangle and we’d be out of there.

After months under siege, the strain was more than starting to show. We all of us had that wide-eyed, mad, glazed stare — the look that comes from day after day of adrenaline-pumping combat. Plus the lack of sleep was really starting to nail us. I guess I was particularly badly hit, as I was always getting allocated air in the middle of the night.

Barely a day had gone by when the enemy hadn’t whacked the base with something — either 81mm mortars, 107mm rockets, RPGs or rounds. It was all mud here at PB Sandford: mud walls, mud floor, mud roofs and mud- filled HESCO barriers. Most of the incoming had smashed apart the mud a little more, but so far we’d been insanely lucky and no one had got splatted. Not yet, anyway. I guess the enemy were getting a bit frustrated at not killing us, and that was why they’d shipped in the mother of all weapons.

It hit us first at 1000 hours, in the midst of a big cricket-off. There was this distant, muffled bang, and then Mikey Wallace was screaming like a mad thing from his bunker.

‘FUCKING INCOMING!’ He hit the air horn: ‘BWAAAAAAAAAARP!’

From Mickey’s tone of voice I guessed this was something different. By now Throp and I had moved into a sandbagged bunker, which we used as our ‘bedroom’. As we dived into the darkness, the howl of the incoming was like a bloody great big spaceship coming down to land on top of us.

Whatever it was slammed into the dirt fifteen metres to the front of PB Sandford. A massive explosion tore across the base. Even down in the bunker it was deafening. I felt the punching wrench of the shockwave tearing over us, the air being ripped out of my lungs, and then this thick cloud of smoke and dust came billowing down the stairway.

I forced myself to do the opposite of what instinct told me, and legged it for the Vector. I could barely see where I was going, but I fought through the burning smog. My TACSAT and all my kit was in the wagon, and I needed to dial up air. Whatever it was that had hit us Mikey would have the grid, and now was the time to find and smash it.

As I dialled up CAS, I could hear the crump of our own mortars firing, as they sent a counter-barrage on to the enemy’s grid. Plus Chris was on the radio, dialling up a barrage from the 105mm howitzers. With the guns thundering away, I was told I had two Harriers — Recoil Four One and Recoil Four Two — inbound ten minutes.

The guns and mortars roared and snorted for five minutes straight, pounding the enemy grid, and then they ceased fire. Thirty seconds later Mikey was yelling again, and thumping his air horn.

‘BWAAAAAAAAAARP!’

A second monster projectile was inbound. No one had a clue what it was yet, but it sounded like a bloody great thousand-pound JDAM. Throp and I legged it for the bunker, as the incoming screamed through the burning blue right on top of us. It tore across the base, smashing into the desert twenty metres beyond the back wall.

Throp and I locked eyes. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Now they’ve got us bracketed.’

That was one warhead just outside the front wall, and one just over the back. They’d split the difference with the next, and it’d be bang on. We dashed for the Vector, and I dialled up the Harriers. I gave them the grid, and told them to get over it pronto looking for some kind of massive gun or rocket launcher.

The Harrier pilots got overhead the grid but there was nothing moving. There was a pizza slice-shaped stretch of woodland, alongside which was a thin treeline, which corresponded to the grid. I got the Harriers searching up and down that woodstrip, but not a thing was to be found. Where the fuck had they hidden that weapon?

For forty-five minutes the Harries scoured the grid, but nothing. I was forced to close the TIC and lose the air. A few minutes later Mikey let out a yell, and hit the air horn. We knew then that we had a third projectile inbound, and that we were bang in the centre of its path. As we sprinted for cover, I saw one of the radio operators come haring out of the radio shack with his canvas chair stuck to his sweaty arse. Another of the lads came pelting out of the shitters, with his trousers down around his ankles. It would have been funny, were this monster weapon not so terrifying.

The killer warhead snarled out of the empty sky and slammed into the mortar position at the rear of the base. It erupted in a whirlwind of shock and pain, smashing great chunks out of the HESCO and flattening a steel fence, before the last of the blast ripped into the tented medical centre. It was pure luck that no one was in there and that the mortar team had made it into cover. There would have been nothing left of anyone under that blast. A second round was fired directly after the first, and this one hit fifteen metres from the Vector, tearing the shower block to shreds.

Luckily, the projectile buried itself in the sand, which kept the frag down. But it was as if a thumping great earthquake was tearing the base apart. Even from the bunker, Throp and I heard the jagged chunks of steel whistling through the air. The trajectory of the thing meant it must have missed the Vector’s roof by inches.

Throp and I came out of the bunker giggling crazily — but it was more from fear than good spirits. Fuck, that heavy weapon was horrible. And whatever it was, they had it zeroed in on us now.

If I couldn’t nail it from the air, then it was going to tear us to pieces.

Twenty Seven 199 KILLS

Chris and the OC went for a walk and a quiet chat about what to do about that heavy weapon. They came back with a jagged chunk of metal the size of a dinner plate, which they’d found in the mortar compound. From that they ID’d the weapon: it was a gigantic 120mm mortar.

The lads from our mortar team handed around that chunk of shrapnel, staring at it weirdly. They just kept shaking their heads, and going fucking hell. It was then that I realised what a truly heavy piece of shit it was. The looks on their faces said it all. Everyone was shit scared, and with good reason.

A 120mm mortar is a brute of a thing. The biggest mortar the British Army uses is the 81mm, and most of the lads had never even seen something as big as a 120mm. It fires a round the same calibre as that of a Challenger II main battle tank. It was like having one of those sat outside the gates of PB Sandford and tearing the base apart.

Normally, a 120mm mortar comes mounted on a chassis with car-like wheels, so it can be towed into battle behind a truck. The barrel itself stands taller than the operator, and it can lob its finstabilised rounds over seven kilometres. How the enemy were managing to fire off those monster mortars whilst hiding the launcher from the air was mind-boggling.

Being under that 120mm was hell. Whenever the banshee howl screamed down on us, it was like a lottery with death. It drilled into our heads, everyone running like mad for a bunker. But whatever cover you found, if a 120mm landed on your roof then you were a dead man. All that would be left of you was a shredded, bloodied pulp: that’s if your mates could find anything. And the forty-five seconds the round took to arc through the air, all the while howling like a ghost train, felt like a bloody lifetime.

One of those giant shells landed next to the bunker that Throp and I were sharing. Luckily, neither of us was in there at the time. Jagged chunks of shrapnel ploughed through the roof and slammed into the dirt floor, tearing our mozzie nets to shreds, embedding themselves in the wall where I had a few photos of the family pinned up. Well, that was it. It was personal with that enemy mortar crew now. It was time to even up the score a little. Whatever it took I was going to fix them. I was going to nail those bastards. From then on each time the air horn went off I’d sprint in the opposite direction of any proper cover, and dive into the Vector, closely followed by Mikey Wallace.

The first time we tried to hold the wagon’s hatches shut, as the shell screamed down on us and we mumbled our prayers. Trouble was I couldn’t shut the one hatch, for the TACSAT antenna cable was sticking out of it. For a