very long way away now. It was more than a few thousand miles away. It was a different world.
Despite that, I did miss her. I was desperate to tell her all about what we’d been up to; the excitement, the amazing highs and the grim lows. ‘Guess what I’ve been doing, love?’ and all that. When it actually came to it, I told her absolutely nothing. I just couldn’t find any words that she would understand.
‘Hiya, Dan. Wow, it’s really good to hear you.’
‘Yeah, you too. You OK?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry about me. What about you? Some place called Nafaj is on the news a bit, something about a fat Muslim priest. That anywhere near you?’
‘It’s Najaf. No, love, it’s not that near us.’
‘I’m so worried about you, Dan. Are you sure you’re nowhere near the fighting? We never hear anything about your regiment. Please tell me everything is OK.’
It felt like talking to someone in a foreign language. If I even began to tell Sue any of it, it would have come out all wrong and scared the hell out of her. How do you even begin to explain what it’s like to watch a bloke get his leg torn off and then pick it up and put it under his arm? How do you then say you weren’t actually that bothered by seeing it? Yes. Best to just say nothing.
‘No, don’t worry, love. It’s all quiet here, nothing much going on. Tell my mum everything’s fine and not to worry either.’
With my kids it was easier, because I just turned the conversation round and asked about them. But I kept the phone calls home to a minimum after that.
Chris was on the satellite phone just after me. He came back up to the roof looking puzzled.
‘What did you tell your bird then, mate?’
‘Nothing, Danny. I had all my tales lined up, but I didn’t tell her a fucking thing. I just didn’t think she’d get it.’
Towards the end of May, I started to push for more and more freedom for the platoon. We’d proved what we were capable of over many hard weeks of fighting already. All we wanted was the liberty to do the best soldiering we could; it’s all good snipers ever want. We’d keep up with all our regular company tasks, but we yearned to take the fight to the OMS whenever we could too. It was far better fun than waiting for them to hit us, and the only way we thought they’d ever be beaten. So we started to do just that.
I’d plan all our own patrols. We went into areas of town where we knew we’d come across the bad boys. That meant an inevitable exchange of rounds for a bit, before they usually lost their bottle and fucked off. We worked as one seamless unit, and we had total confidence in our own abilities. We took the view that if we wanted a fight, we should be allowed to go looking for one. And we got damn good at fighting them too. We began to live for it.
Sooner or later, our enthusiasm was always going to lead us into conflict with the company’s two senior officers, Major Featherstone and his 2i/c Redders. The more kills we notched up, the more nervous they got. No matter how legitimate they all were, or how we’d always get back in one piece.
Officers worry a lot about things like that, because they’re the ones who get the heat from the politicians when the bullets start to fly. Whitehall always gets very cross whenever it emerges that, bizarrely, Iraq isn’t a Garden of Eden. Luckily, as regular soldiers we didn’t have to worry about the bigger picture — just doing our jobs. That meant killing the enemy before they killed us.
With Redders, it was always more of an unthinking gut reaction. He was the only one of the two commanders who ever challenged anything we did on the roof.
As a person, Captain Peter ‘Redders’ Redgrave was a very friendly and sociable guy. He was everyone’s mate, and would always call us by our first names; a nice touch from officers. But he had a bit of a nervous disposition, and it came out worst when we were under fire.
This was bad news because he was responsible for running the company’s Ops Room. It’s not an easy job at all. As well as knowing what all your blokes are up to, it also means you’re the link between the company and the battle group Ops Room in Abu Naji. That’s like playing two games of chess at once. It’s vital to have a cool and calm head at all times. Unfortunately, sometimes Redders flapped. He wasn’t a bad bloke, and perhaps any 25- year-old in his highly stressful position would have done the same. It just didn’t help much.
One night after I’d left the roof, the lads thought they’d got another fix on a mortar team. Redders heard the rounds go down from the Ops Room and legged it up to the roof to find out what they were shooting at.
‘A mortar team, sir. We’re putting down some harassing fire, it will get them to move on.’
‘Yes, well, that’s not the point. From now on, you ask the Ops Room for permission to open fire. Is that clear? Good.’
Chris waited until Redders was halfway down the stairs.
‘Don’t forget your stick, sir.’
Redders had made an appalling call.
One of the most important principles of sniping is having the ability to take the shot when you can. You might not get another chance. All of my guys were fully qualified, very well versed in the rules of engagement (ROE), and excellent soldiers. It had to be their call, or we’d be no better than the sort of robots that Saddam forced his army to be.
When the boys told me the next day, I was livid.
‘Hundred per cent bollocks, lads. We ain’t ever going to fucking do that. If you get a legitimate target, then you destroy it. I don’t want you ever to ask for permission. If Redders tries to have a go at any of you again for that, you come straight to me and I’ll fucking sort it out.’
I was shouting so loudly Redders probably heard. He didn’t mention it ever again. It was just typical Redders in an unthinking moment. In fairness, everybody knew he was under a lot of pressure and he probably regretted making the call the moment he said it.
My problems with Major Featherstone were different. The tension was slow boil. It wasn’t just an enemy bodycount thing with him. It was the fear of ours too. As the boss, a lot of casualties would — rightly or wrongly — look very bad for him. I was convinced that’s what dictated his cautious calls. That way he could remain in control.
Sometimes he was right. Even I knew I could be a bit gung-ho at times. But at the same time I was convinced that our cautiousness was starting to seriously hinder the effect we were having on the enemy.
One night, we went out on a patrol to the bus depot on the north bank. It was a popular spot for OMS fighters to gather. They’d chat there, plan an attack and move off.
We set up a covert OP (observation post) nearby in some rough ground to monitor any activity that there might be there. Around midnight, about a dozen shady-looking characters with weapons turned up. Unfortunately, right at that moment some idiot on the Cimic roof decided to throw up some 51mm mortar illume. The OMS men spotted us immediately and opened fire.
We were in good enough cover to hide until the illume went out. Then I threw together a quick plan for a snap ambush on the fighters. If half the patrol dog-legged round to the left quickly, we’d catch them on their flank and kill them.
I told the Ops Room my intention. After a short pause, Featherstone came on the net.
‘The answer is no, Dan. I want you to come back to camp.’
I couldn’t believe it. We had to sit there and wait for a Warrior to come and extract us instead.
A week later, I had taken a multiple of about ten blokes over to the north bank again one morning to investigate three large Katyusha rockets that were all wired up and ready to fire at Cimic. We were about to destroy them with a 30 mil round from a Warrior.
Suddenly, peels of gunfire erupted from the big road junction at Green 5. It was one of the boys in black’s favourite ambush points. A look through the binos revealed one of our fuel convoys in the shit. Three Snatches driven by Royal Fusiliers had been escorting a couple of petrol tankers down Route 6. The tankers had managed to drive through it, but one of the Snatches had been disabled so the other two stopped to help it out.
It was some distance from us, but the Fusiliers were clearly in a lot of trouble. And anyway, it was a good chance for us to get involved in something.
We ended up having to run across 900 metres of waste ground to get there. As we jogged, I got on the radio.
