Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (32 page)

Rather than randomly laying IEDs, the Taliban began to plan their ambushes to second and third levels. For example, IEDs would be planted not just along a track but also on all possible casualty extraction routes and on likely helicopter landing sites. Furthermore, the Taliban began to follow up IED strikes with ambushes – as in the attack on 5 October 2009. With Taliban fire raining down on the soldiers, the heliborne medical teams were unable to land close by and were forced instead to land inside the company headquarters. Back at the ambush site, the troops loaded the injured onto the Mastiffs, while the gunners in the vehicles’ turrets laid down a heavy weight of fire. At one stage Guardsman Josh Shelton was suppressing four different Taliban firing points.

It took thirty minutes for the soldiers to fight their way back to the base, by which time Jamie’s vital signs suggested that he was probably dead. The fact that he had survived for so long was testament to his inner strength and to the incredible work of the combat medics who accompany every patrol. ‘Is he alive?’ asked Major Green as he helped carry the wounded soldier from the Mastiff to the waiting helicopter. The look on the medic’s face showed no answer was needed. Major Green was horrified by Jamie’s injuries but kept telling him to ‘hold on’. The reality, however, was that Jamie was already dead. His brain had stopped functioning and the flickers of life which the medics had identified were his vital organs closing down.

Within seconds Jamie was on board the helicopter and in the hands of a surgeon and a team of paramedics. As the dust storm kicked up by the departing helicopter began to settle, the exhausted soldiers began to arrive on foot back at FOB Waheed. They were shattered, many were covered in blood which was not their own, and others were carried to the medical centre for the treatment of their wounds.

No one spoke because there was nothing to say. Jamie hung on for a few minutes longer before his shattered body could fight no longer. An hour later No. 2 Company were told the news they had expected: Jamie was dead, and everyone in the company was devastated. There were many tears and many questions, and company morale took a beating. But the platoon was back out on patrol the next day and the day after that. Now wasn’t the time to mourn; that would be done later, in the Guards Chapel in London, after the soldiers had returned home. And so life continued for No. 2 Company at a steady pace; steady for Helmand, that is. Every day or so they would be attacked by the Taliban, sometimes twice a day, and then on 3 November news began to filter into their base that five members of the battlegroup had been gunned down by an Afghan policeman.

Within a few hours of the deaths at Blue 25, Major Green decided to press ahead with the IED ambush. The orders for the launch were sent to Lieutenant Craig Shephard, who was charged with ironing out the finer points of the operation before its launch. Later that night, sipping instant coffee in the secure confines of Crossing Point One, Lieutenant Shephard, Sergeant Dean Bailey and Company Sergeant Major Pete Downes put the finishing touches to the plan. The murders at Blue 25 and the death of Guardsman Janes had dented morale. Both events had shocked No. 2 Company, but especially the nature of Guardsman Janes’s death. And there was sheer outrage at the murders of the five members of the battlegroup and at the gloating propaganda of the Taliban, who later claimed that the rogue policeman was a Taliban agent.

Lieutenant Shephard was not cast from the same mould as the average Guards officer. With his close-cropped hair and muscular arms, he took pride in his physical appearance and harboured an ambition to join the Guards Parachute Platoon, which forms part of 16 Air Assault Brigade.

‘It was a case of thinking out of the box,’ he explained to me during a period of relative quiet between operations. ‘We knew the Taliban would not be able to resist attacking a casevac, so it was a case of, how do we exploit this?’ In the weeks in which 5 Platoon had been based in Luy Mandah, the soldiers had managed to gather a great deal of intelligence about the Taliban’s routine, number of fighters, favoured firing positions and location of IEDs on Route Jupiter, one of the main transit roads through the area. Every time there was an explosion, intercepted Taliban radio chatter revealed that the insurgents assumed an IED had been detonated. All intelligence suggested that the best way to ambush the Taliban was to set up a fake IED strike. There was also a need to blow a hole in a wall which ran alongside Route Jupiter as it was providing the Taliban with cover during firefights. So a decision was taken to kill two birds with one stone: blow a hole in the wall and attempt to lure the Taliban into the ambush.

Lieutenant Shephard prepared the plan, then briefed Major Green and the rest of the platoon. One of the key concerns was the prospect of locals being caught up in the ambush, so Major Green insisted that no phase of the operation was to be launched without his express approval.

At 6.30 p.m. on 4 November troops began the first stage of the operation when the FSG set off on a night patrol. The soldiers had ditched their desert-pattern uniforms, opting instead for the green camouflage, which was considered more appropriate for the time of year. Everyone had been briefed on the plan and both night and day-time rehearsals had been undertaken. Section commanders had also planned a series of contingencies to cover, for example, what action soldiers should take if someone triggered an IED during the operation or how to respond if part of the patrol was ambushed by the Taliban. Every eventuality had to be accounted for so that every man would know how to react should the mission be compromised.

Using excellent field discipline and barely making a noise, the troops managed to get into the area of a building known as Compound 26 without being seen. Other elements of the FSG – the machine-gunners, snipers and Javelin anti-tank missile operators – moved into position. Once the fire base was established, Sergeant Bailey set off with his team and moved into a position of overwatch on Route Jupiter, while Lieutenant Shephard’s team moved beyond them into another location. While passing through the garden of one of the compounds, Guardsman Rose, a member of Shephard’s team, spotted a potential IED. It was a moment of tension but everyone was aware of the need to keep the momentum of the operation going, so the IED was ‘identified and avoided’.

‘We continued and began to head south,’ said Shephard. ‘We reached an overwatch position on a bank south-east of Compound 50. I left Sergeant Roderick Tracey with the bulk of the multiple on overwatch to the south and south-east. Guardsman Peter Shields, Corporal Harry Noorhouse, Corporal Ronnie Parker, who led the engineers’ section, and his assistant and myself moved south into the open field adjacent to Jupiter. Shields Valloned up to Jupiter and with the four of us using optics we observed the surrounding area from a very exposed position. It took Shields seemingly for ever to Vallon a route across Jupiter. We knew it was riddled with IEDs, so we had to be extremely careful. In reality it took Shields about ten minutes to clear 20 metres, but it felt like an eternity.’

Once the route was cleared, Corporal Parker moved across the road and began to prepare the explosive for the fake IED strike. Meanwhile Sergeant Bailey’s and Lance Sergeant Tracey’s teams monitored the surrounding area for Taliban activity. But there was a problem. Corporal Parker had only 25 metres of detonation cord, which effectively put him well inside the explosion’s danger area. To survive he would have to face away from the blast, eyes closed and mouth open. Corporal Parker was unconcerned about the risks, but Lieutenant Shephard was worried.

‘I checked with Corporal Parker and he assured me he would be OK. I then checked with Rich [the company commander] and he was happy,’ Shephard said. ‘Twenty seconds later … bang, a massive explosion, which felt powerful enough to wake up the entire province. Corporal Parker upped and ran to me. Lance Sergeant Tracey and my group linked up with Sergeant Bailey. We threw red cylooms [luminescent markers] onto an obvious location to simulate the casualty evacuation. It was then a case of a quick head check to make sure that we had everyone together, and then it was best speed to Sergeant Bailey and back to our base. Sergeant Bailey was directly behind us and we were back in the base within fifteen minutes. Everything had gone like clockwork. By this stage the FSG were receiving Icom chatter. The plan was working. The Taliban were planning to move up what they described as a “long-barrelled weapon” – the game was on, the Taliban had taken the bait, and it was a case of watching and waiting for the time to strike.’

The turbaned Taliban figures, AK-47s and Dragnov sniper rifles at the ready, emerged into the failing light of dusk on the hunt for injured British troops. Back in Compound 26, the snipers steadied themselves and waited for their targets to appear. Each sniper had a spotter using night-vision equipment – the night-time battlefield offered no hiding place for the enemy. Four hundred metres to the front two snipers spotted two armed men moving towards known fire positions. The snipers brought the cross-hairs of their telescopic sights to bear on the now stationary targets. Both snipers went for head shots, and the two insurgents fell dead. Their rifles were fitted with sound suppressors, which dulled the sound of the shots and so caused fear and panic in those who saw comrades fall.

The time was now 8.30 p.m. and Lieutenant Shephard moved onto the roof of Crossing Point One, where Sergeant Dave Claxton and Sergeant Thomas Loader were watching and waiting, armed with highly accurate Javelins. More insurgents moved into known firing positions but the Grenadiers were waiting. Shephard went on, ‘When the Taliban showed themselves, Sergeant Claxton and Sergeant Loader began to do what they do best. There was a whoosh, followed by a cheer – all the soldiers knew that a rocket was on the way. Two Javelins were fired, killing four enemy. Sergeant Claxton fired another missile through a murder hole, killing at least one more. Back in Compound 26, a sniper killed another insurgent. It was now the turn of the guns [heavy and medium machine guns] to join in.’

Red tracer fire from 7.62-mm and .50-cal machine guns streaked across the night sky, with flares and the occasional explosion silhouetting insurgents against compound walls. There was no hiding place for the Taliban. Those who hid inside compounds risked being blown to pieces by Javelin missiles, while those who chose to stand and fight or run were cut down by machine-gun and sniper fire.

‘By the end of the evening we had accounted for ten enemy dead, W even managed to shoot through the hole in the wall caused by our fake IED blast. Everyone made it back to XP1 [Crossing Point One] safely. It was a fantastic result. Ten enemy killed and two IED finds. We were all suitably chuffed. It was the best possible response to the dreadful events of just a few hours earlier. You could see by the look on the soldiers’ faces that this was the best possible response to what had happened at Blue 25. It was a case of “roll on tomorrow”.’

When the men of 5 Platoon eventually made it to their beds, they slept well, exhausted by the fears and excitement of battle. But, unknown to the men of No. 2 Company and especially 5 Platoon, it was not the end but just the beginning of one of the most intense periods of fighting of the entire six-month tour.

At that stage, in early November 2009, a large force of Taliban, al-Qaeda, Chechen and English-speaking south Asian fighters had come together in the Luy Mandah area with the aim of disrupting the second round of Afghanistan’s presidential elections, but when these were cancelled the insurgents turned their attention to the British.

Initially No. 2 Company had occupied two checkpoints in the area, Crossing Point One and Checkpoint Luy Mandah, both of which had been attacked several times earlier in the tour. Major Green decided to close down Checkpoint Luy Mandah because it served little purpose, and the troops from 6 Platoon would be more useful bolstering the force at FOB Waheed. But that was not how the insurgents viewed the development. As far as they were concerned the decision to abandon Checkpoint Luy Mandah was the result of Taliban attacks. So now Crossing Point One became their target instead.

On the morning of 5 November, after what the soldiers called ‘the night of nights’, Lieutenant Shephard and Sergeant Bailey set off at 8 a.m. on a short clearance patrol into the southern area surrounding the base. The Grenadiers were still buoyant from the previous evening’s success and were keen to get back on the ground. The patrol moved out in two groups of nine, one led by Shephard, the other by Bailey. As the soldiers left the safety of the base, the Taliban Icom chatter started. Somewhere in the surrounding countryside the insurgents were watching and reporting the movements of the British troops. The patrol’s route led south across a deep irrigation ditch and into the fields beyond. It was a warm, sunny morning, there was little wind, and the birds were singing as the soldiers pushed south. Without warning, the firing started and cracks of RPGs and machine-gun fire tore the air. The fire was heavy and accurate. The tables had been turned and it was the Grenadiers who now had unwittingly walked into an ambush.

Shephard’s team dashed for cover and took up fire positions in a tree line as Taliban bullets sliced through the air around them. The platoon was now split, with Bailey’s team hiding in cover some 150 metres to the west. Before the attack the soldiers had seen what they had assumed to be three farmers working in one of the fields, who had abandoned their trailer when they saw the British moving into the area.

‘I remember thinking, we were observed moving out, so is this the start of some sort of planned retribution for last night?’ recalled Shephard. ‘Sergeant Bailey was fixed in a ruined compound, taking fire, so I moved my team back 150 metres towards him with the idea of creating all-round defence. So we had Sergeant Bailey’s men facing east and south-east and my guys facing west and south-west.’