Attack State Red Read online

  9

  Rose and 3 Platoon led the company back towards the DC, along the route marked and secured by 2 Platoon. The enemy, decimated by A Company’s ferocious fire, still tried to harass the Royal Anglian soldiers by cracking off the occasional wildly aimed shot as they moved through the deserted town, along rough alleyways flanked by 3-metre-high mud walls.

  Every time the Taliban fired, 2 Platoon soldiers would reply with a withering rate of machine-gun or rifle fire to allow the other soldiers in the company to move back in safety.

  Up on ANP Hill, the fire support group, or FSG, under Colour Sergeant Faupel, were supporting the company’s movement by firing long bursts from their GPMGs and .50 cal heavy machine-guns at any enemy they identified, and at possible enemy fire positions. And the three barrels of Biddick’s mortar section continued to slam in high-explosive 81mm bombs at every sign of the enemy.

  From the air, the Apache gunship that had arrived with the MERT Chinook strafed the Taliban positions, trying to kill any surviving enemy, and make sure they were unable to interfere with the company’s movement.

  All of this needed to be deconflicted, or it was more than likely that a mortar shell would hit an aircraft. That was the job of Captain Charlie Harmer, the FST commander, who, as he moved, was working skilfully to make sure that air and indirect fire support was maximized against the surviving enemy.

  When he reached one of the RV points, secured by the two company WMIKs, Second Lieutenant Rose realized that Moore was still with the platoon. He had lost a lot of blood, and continued to bleed, but was determined to see out this patrol with his men. Rose had other ideas. He had no intention of getting to the point where Moore collapsed with blood loss. ‘Billy, get on that WMIK over there and get back to the DC, you can’t stay out here with that wound.’

  Moore was about to protest, but just shrugged when he saw the look on Rose’s face and realized that at this stage argument was not a good idea.

  Second Lieutenant Denning’s 1 Platoon followed behind 3 Platoon, with Sergeant Holmes bringing up the rear. Holmes reached a small river and saw Biddick moving with Corporal Daz Bonner, his radio operator. Biddick looked at Holmes. ‘Hello, Sergeant H, I see you managed to survive that little skirmish, then?’

  ‘Skirmish, sir? That was a full-on war, sir. You should’ve been there.’

  A burst of machine-gun fire landed a few feet away.

  ‘That’s you, Daz,’ said Holmes, looking at Bonner’s antenna, ‘your aerial’s attracting enemy fire. Why don’t you put it down?’

  ‘It’s not an aerial, it’s an antenna. Aerial is a type of washing powder. You should know that, Sarge,’ said Bonner with a smile, automatically reciting the signallers’ standard response to the ignorance of the technically uninitiated.

  ‘I couldn’t care less what it is, Daz, you might as well put a Union Jack on it if you’re going to keep it up.’

  ‘I can’t put it down, the OC will kill me if I can’t get comms.’ With an even broader grin he added, ‘Anyway, I notice you were having problems communicating earlier, Sarge. Maybe a bit of refresher training when we get back in?’

  ‘If you weren’t the OC’s signaller I might just give you a bit of corrective training right now, Corporal Bonner,’ laughed Holmes, realizing this was a foretaste of the kind of stick he would be getting from the company for a long time to come.

  ‘OK, gentlemen,’ said Biddick, ‘we’ve got work to do. If your argument is complete, perhaps we should catch up the rest of the company.’

  Biddick held out his arm, gesturing across the river, as though casually waving him through the door at a mess dinner. ‘After you, Sergeant Holmes.’

  As 1 Platoon moved along the route, Goodey collapsed the 2 Platoon security operation behind them, ordering his sections to break off and follow the company back towards the DC.

  Goodey moved behind his lead section, with his signaller, Private Craig Fisher, Private Hassell, the sharpshooter, Lance Corporal van der Merwe and the interpreter, Ahmad. As Goodey’s group moved along an alleyway between two compounds, the FSG on ANP Hill spotted Taliban on the other side of the compound wall. They engaged with a long burst of GPMG fire, killing the fighters.

  Fisher, moving right beside the wall, felt a thump against the side of his leg. He stopped and cried out, raising his leg to look at it. He thought he had been hit by a rock kicked up by the gunfire.

  Goodey said, ‘Fish, stop messing about, keep moving.’

  Fisher tried to walk but his leg gave way under him. It felt as if it was on fire. He turned to Goodey and said, ‘Boss, I think I’m hit.’

  Goodey and van der Merwe ran over and dragged him into a ditch on the other side of the alley. Crouching over Fisher, van der Merwe said, ‘Where are you hit?’

  ‘My right calf, I think.’

  Van der Merwe took Fisher’s knife from the sheath on his belt and cut off the right trouser leg. There was a small hole where a bullet had entered the middle of his calf. No blood, the bullet had cauterized the wound. Van der Merwe checked for an exit wound. Nothing, the bullet was still inside. He said to Goodey, crouched beside Fisher, ‘Must be a ricochet from the wall. If it had hit him direct it would have torn his leg open as it came back out.’

  Van der Merwe checked for any signs of broken bones. It seemed OK, but he couldn’t be sure. ‘Reckon the bullet must be lodged between your tibia and fibula,’ he said in his South African drawl, ‘pretty lucky.’

  Van der Merwe took Fisher’s first field dressing out of his map pocket and applied it to the wound in case it started bleeding and to keep out dirt.

  ‘Is it painful? Need some morphine?’

  ‘No, just burning a lot.’

  Sergeant Butcher arrived and said to Goodey, ‘I’ll get a stretcher party, give me a couple of minutes.’

  ‘I don’t think I need a stretcher, Sarge, I reckon I can walk back, it’s not too bad,’ said Fisher, not wanting to force four of his mates to have to struggle back to the DC in this heat with their own equipment plus his body, weighing in at 80 kilos.

  He stood up and took another step, but his leg gave way again and he cursed as he hit the dirt for the second time.

  ‘I’ll get that stretcher party,’ said Butcher, jogging off to muster some men.

  While he was doing that, van der Merwe pulled off Fisher’s webbing and daysack, which contained his heavy Bowman HF radio and spare battery. Without being asked, Ahmad immediately picked up all of Fisher’s equipment to carry back to the DC. The ‘terp’ was saving a considerable extra burden from the already overloaded soldiers, with whom he had struck up a close relationship even in the short time they had been in his country.

  They loaded Fisher on to a field stretcher and four 2 Platoon soldiers started the nightmare journey back towards the DC. One was Private Illsley, who had fired twenty-one rounds into a Taliban fighter a short time earlier. As they sweated their way towards the DC, one of the other soldiers said to him, ‘Heard about you killing that Taliban, Ills. Well done, mate. Bit ironic that the most Christian member of the battalion should get one of the first kills, though.’

  All the way back, Fisher was cursing his luck. As the adrenalin began to wear off the pain was increasing. But that wasn’t his real concern. He knew that getting shot meant he would be sent back to the UK. This had been the first battle he had been involved in and he had been hoping for many more. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was to leave his mates in Afghanistan at this early stage of the tour.

  As the company made their way back to Nowzad DC, Gray had already arrived in the field hospital at Camp Bastion, twenty minutes flying time by Chinook. Biddick, one of the last men back into base, was informed at the gate that the battle group commander was on the phone for him, and went straight to the company ops room.

  Biddick was super-fit, among the fittest men in the battalion, but even he was shattered by the physical and mental exertions of the battle they had just fought. Dripping with sweat,
still wearing his helmet and equipment and carrying his SA80, he said to Company Group Operations Officer Captain Paul Steel and the ops room staff, ‘Well done, all of you, and thanks for all the back-up out there. The CASEVAC worked well, really came together.’

  ‘Here you are, sir,’ said one of the signallers, handing Biddick the phone.

  Biddick took off his helmet, carefully laid his rifle on the floor and put the phone to his ear, ‘Hello, sir, Dominic here, how are you?’

  Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Carver, the Royal Anglians’ commanding officer, was speaking from his headquarters in Camp Bastion. ‘Dominic, it’s about Private Gray.’

  10

  Word went round the DC that the company was to assemble in front of the ops building for a debrief by Biddick. Nowzad DC was a shabby, dusty compound the size of five tennis courts, surrounded by 3-metre-high walls with sandbagged sentry positions on each corner. The outer walls, and many of the building walls inside, were pock-marked with bullet holes and shrapnel craters, reminders that the DC had been besieged many times by the Taliban. The ops building, like the others in the DC, was made of plaster and solid, baked mud. On the roof was a sandbagged observation and firing position as well as satellite dishes and radio masts.

  Everybody was in high spirits. Many knew they were lucky to be alive. Most had been in the first battle of their military service and had finally had the chance to prove they could put into practice the combat skills perfected during long and arduous training sessions.

  Private Duffy was elated. Someone had told him that Chris Gray was in a stable condition when he had been put on to the Chinook, and that meant he had a very good chance of pulling through. As they waited in the baking heat for Biddick to arrive, Duffy wondered what he would say to Chris next time he saw him – that would probably be when they got back to England. The tour would be over, and Chris would be long out of hospital by then. Or hopefully he would be able to see him when he went back to England during the tour for his R and R.

  Biddick came out from the ops room and, squinting in the intense sunlight, stood in front of his men. He paused, and his face had a pained expression.

  ‘What I am about to tell you all,’ he said, ‘is the hardest fact that I have ever had to relay in my life. I have just spoken to the CO and I am very sad to have to say that Chris Gray is dead. He didn’t make it.’

  When he heard these words, Duffy stopped listening. He was still wearing the shirt and trousers that were covered in his best mate’s blood, and tears welled in his eyes. He thought about Chris’s sister, Katie, whom he saw just before the tour. Then he thought about a video of Chris’s little brother, Nathan, beating him up, which he kept on his phone and had showed Duffy a few days before. And Chris’s other little brother, Liam, and his mum, Helen.

  Duffy thought, They don’t know what’s happened. They don’t know any of this. But in a few hours there will be a knock on their door…

  Unheard by Duffy, Biddick continued, ‘But Corporal Moore and Private Fisher are going to be OK – let’s not forget about those guys. We always knew something like this was going to happen, and this was part of the deal that we signed up for. It was inevitable that we were going to face this challenge this summer. Regrettably we knew in our hearts that at some point this moment would come. It is just tough that for us it has come this early on. What we have got to do now is put this into context and what you have just achieved out there is a tactical victory. We have gone out and gone into the Taliban’s backyard, where he has been unchallenged for months. We have taken them on at a time of our choosing and we have taken the initiative and we are going to build upon that momentum.

  ‘There is no getting away from the fact that this is a real kick in the teeth to lose Chris Gray. But let’s give meaning to his death and meaning to his life. The way to do that is to carry on the mission and see it through and not take a path of least resistance. As a company group this is a test of our mettle. I can tell you now we are going to retain the aggressive approach and be the dominant force in Nowzad. As the company commander, I am going to continue to make sure that I can justify every risk that we take. I will make sure that every risk is balanced both intellectually and tactically against a tangible outcome and legacy. I am not going to put anyone’s life on the line unnecessarily.’

  During the battle, A Company had fired 16,400 GPMG rounds, more than 3,000 5.56 rifle and Minimi bullets and hundreds of mortar bombs and grenades. The company had sustained a total of three casualties, including Chris Gray killed. They had killed at least twenty-two enemy fighters, all confirmed. Lieutenant Colonel Carver insisted that the Royal Anglians avoid the temptation to inflate body counts and laid down a rigid system for checking and confirming enemy dead. In reality it is likely that many more had been killed, but this could not be confirmed. Whatever the figure, it represented a major blow to the enemy – the elimination of a large proportion of the Taliban grouping that had spent many months intimidating the local population.

  When Biddick finished speaking the men silently headed back to their accommodation to continue checking and cleaning equipment, replenishing ammunition and reloading magazines, preparing for the next task – which they all knew could come at any moment.

  The company medical officer spoke to Duffy. ‘I am so sorry about what has happened. I did my best with Chris Gray when he got back here, but we couldn’t save him. You did an outstanding job treating him out there. You did everything you could to keep him alive and give him a chance. Nobody could have done more for him than you did.’

  But Duffy was not listening. All he could think about was Chris Gray and his poor family.

  Map 3. The Longest Day

  The Longest Day: 21–27 April 2007

  1

  A Company’s encounter with the enemy on 13 April was the first serious battle of the battalion’s deployment to Afghanistan. Major Dominic Biddick’s A Company was one of the three rifle companies of The 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment. The battalion had arrived in Helmand province, in the south of Afghanistan, in late March and early April 2007.

  A Company initially deployed to the town of Nowzad, 50 kilometres north of the main British base, Camp Bastion. Bastion was a sprawling, ever-growing desert camp in the middle of Helmand. It was here that the battalion’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Carver, had his headquarters.

  Carver was a graduate in international relations, with twenty years’ military experience and had taken command of the Royal Anglians in December 2005. He was married with two young daughters. His grandfather had fled Poland in the Second World War, and had fought the Germans with a Polish brigade on D-Day. His father, a Belfast man, had flown Lightning fighter planes in the RAF. As a service family, they had moved around a great deal, but Carver’s home for much of the time before joining the Army was Saffron Walden, Essex.

  Carver was a hugely experienced operational commander, having served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo and the Falkland Islands. He completed a tour in Afghanistan in 2003. In 2004, he had worked in Baghdad on rebuilding the Iraqi police force. In addition to other appointments in the regiment, he had a strategic planning role in the MOD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, from where all British military operations are commanded.

  Carver took command of the Royal Anglians following their return from a six-month tour in southern Iraq in 2005. He immediately recognized the intensity of the fighting his men were likely to face and the extraordinary demands of the environment and climate. He drove the battalion hard in their year-long preparation for the tour, training them thoroughly in every aspect of infantry combat and emphasizing physical fitness, battle shooting and first aid.

  As the situation unfolded before the tour began, Carver and Brigadier John Lorimer, who would be his superior commander in theatre, were determined that the battalion was going to go on to the offensive against the Taliban. Carver prepared his men to take the fight to the enemy rather than defend.


  Despite his aggressive stance, he also knew, and ensured his officers and men understood, that the underlying purpose behind the deployment was to protect the civilian community in northern Helmand, to work to improve their security and prosperity and to win their trust. He constantly hammered home the need for this to be a major planning factor in every activity the battalion undertook.

  The full title of Major Biddick’s company was A (Norfolk) Company. Each of the four fighting companies in the battalion was named after its affiliated county, and this represented links to the county regiments from which the Royal Anglian Regiment was formed in the 1960s. Not every soldier went to the company linked to his home county, although where possible the battalion tried to assign its new recruits in this way.

  Like the other companies, A Company consisted of an HQ element and three thirty-man rifle platoons, usually led by a lieutenant or second lieutenant. When additional assets were allocated to a company, such as a fire support group, a Royal Artillery fire support team, a Royal Engineers detachment or a Royal Marines armoured troop, it officially became known as a company group. Each element was interdependent, together representing a potent fighting force, often totalling up to 200 troops.

  At the start of the tour, B (Suffolk) Company, commanded by Australian Major Mick Aston, operated from Camp Bastion and Forward Operating Base, or FOB, Robinson, 30 kilometres to the north-east.

  C (Essex) Company, under Major Phil Messenger, was a further 35 kilometres north-east of FOB Robinson, in Kajaki. Their role was strategic – protection of the hydroelectricity project that was a central component of the plan to bring security and prosperity not just to Helmand but to much of the rest of southern Afghanistan. It was in Kajaki that the first Royal Anglian soldier had been wounded during the tour, four days before Chris Gray was killed and Corporal Moore and Private Fisher wounded. Corporal Lee Gayler, attached from the Royal Anglians’ Territorial Army battalion, had been working with Fire Support Group Charlie and was shot while moving into a fire position. He was evacuated back to the UK and treated at Selly Oak Hospital near Birmingham.