Spoken from the Front Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Acknowledgements by Andy McNab

  Introduction by Andy McNab

  Chapter 1 Introduction: Operation Herrick 4

  Chapter 2 Introduction: Operation Herrick 5

  Chapter 3 Introduction: Operation Herrick 6

  Chapter 4 Introduction: Operation Herrick 7

  Chapter 5 Introduction: Operation Herrick 8

  Epilogue by Andy McNab

  Glossary

  Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in three books: the phenomenal bestseller Bravo Two Zero, Immediate Action and Seven Troop.

  He is also the author of the bestselling Nick Stone thrillers. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK. He is a patron of the Help for Heroes campaign.

  www.andymcnab.co.uk

  SPOKEN FROM THE FRONT

  www.andymcnab.co.uk

  Also by Andy McNab

  Non-fiction

  BRAVO TWO ZERO

  IMMEDIATE ACTION

  SEVEN TROOP

  Fiction

  REMOTE CONTROL

  CRISIS FOUR

  FIREWALL

  LAST LIGHT

  LIBERATION DAY

  DARK WINTER

  DEEP BLACK

  AGGRESSOR

  RECOIL

  CROSSFIRE

  BRUTE FORCE

  SPOKEN FROM

  THE FRONT

  Real Voices from the Battlefields

  of Afghanistan

  Edited by

  Andy McNab

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409091363

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  A Random House Group Company

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2009 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Andy McNab 2009

  Andy McNab has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs

  and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

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  ISBN: 9781409091363

  Version 1.0

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Prologue

  April 2008

  Ranger Jordan Armstrong, The Royal Irish Regiment

  I joined up to go to Afghanistan – just as our boys were starting to go to Helmand province. I wanted to experience the fighting. I saw it as a challenge. I knew before signing papers in the careers office that I would go to Afghanistan. I had seen videos of the boys in Afghanistan. It definitely looked mad but I still wanted to try it. I always got a nervous feeling just thinking about it.

  We flew to Afghanistan for my first tour on 25 March 2008. I had been abroad once before – to the South of France for holidays and that was it. We flew out from [RAF] Brize Norton [in Oxfordshire] to Kandahar. I was thinking: This is it. I'm going to do whatever I have to do and hopefully I will come back. I had butterflies when we were on the runway at Brize Norton. I thought: I have a long six months ahead of me. My first impression when I arrived in Afghanistan was of the heat and dust – and how flat it was. It was flat in Camp Bastion. I'm an LMG [light machine-gun] gunner. That is my weapon. I'm trained to fire it. I was in Corporal Harwood's section. There were eight of us in it.

  April 7 was a bad day. The ANP [Afghan National Police] came back from a patrol to Sangin DC [District Centre]. We were supposed to go out at the same time that they came back in – around three [a.m.]. But the FSG [fire support group] boys were firing off Javelins [anti-tank missiles]. One got fired and instead of going off into the distance it actually landed in the camp [Sangin DC]. But it didn't explode so they cordoned it off. This meant our patrol was delayed. It was good for us because we were then still at the base to deal with a major incident.

  An RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] being carried in a bag by the ANP went off inside the camp. I think it was dropped by mistake. They had been carrying the RPGs in a bag on their backs. It blew up seven of them. Two of the men were killed, others lost limbs. It had gone off at the back of the base – Sangar [small fortified position] Two. It was an ND – negative discharge. I don't know if it was bad drills or bad luck.

  We were nearby unloading. I ran over with the others. I saw a lot of boys with their guts hanging out. There was one being carried away with both legs blown off above the knees. He wasn't screaming. He was quiet. We got them [the injured] on stretchers and took them over to the med centre. I had to pick up one of the dead boys. His back was blown out and I had to throw him up in the truck. It sounds a bit rough to throw him in the back of a Land Rover but that was what I was told to do.

  I hadn't seen anything like that before [Armstrong was then just nineteen and only two weeks into his first tour]. I was actually all right when I saw them [dead and maimed bodies]. I wasn't sure whether I was going to be sick but as soon as I saw them I was all right. I thought I would have been faintish, but I wasn't. We had a good platoon sergeant. He took control and said: 'Get a grip, boys. Just get the job done.' Some boys were sick, though – they couldn't handle it. You don't know how it's going to affect you until you see it.

  Acknowledgements by Andy McNab

  It's easy to know where to begin my thank-you list. I'm grateful to all those servicemen and women who have contributed to this book. Without their offerings – and their time and patience – there would have been no book. I am indebted to those who provided the outstanding raw material that I have simply had to edit.

  More than twenty people have contributed three or more stories to this book. Each has a potted biography detailing his or her life and career before the first story they tell. In addition to these servicemen and women, I would like to thank two soldiers for their single, but nevertheless significant, contributions.

  The first is Captain Kate Philp, whom I met and interviewed during my visit to Afghanistan late last summer. She was charming and fun and I would have interv
iewed her again, but on 15 November 2008, the Warrior armoured vehicle she was travelling in was blasted by an improvised explosive device. Her left foot was so severely shattered that it had to be amputated. I salute her courage as she recovers from her injuries and I thank her for allowing me to publish her interview from last year. The second soldier I would like to thank is Fusilier Daniel Wright, from 1 Battalion The Royal Welsh, who has allowed me to publish the poem he wrote while serving in Afghanistan.

  A big debt of gratitude is owed to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the way it has embraced this project so fully. The MoD provided me with unparalleled access to servicemen and women in Afghanistan. In particular, I would like to thank Captain Dave Rigg MC for his commitment to the book. Before leaving the Army last year, Dave helped gather together those who were willing to contribute their stories. He is one of the 'voices' in the book and he also sat in on several of the interviews. Sam Harrison, from the MoD's press office, also helped me greatly in the later stages. Many other senior military personnel have assisted in numerous ways, and I thank them all.

  This book highlights the courage of those on the front-line. My thanks go to Mark Lucas, my literary agent at LAW, and Bill Scott-Kerr, the publisher at Transworld, for being so enthusiastic about the project from the start and, more importantly, for bringing it to fruition so quickly.

  Last but not least, I would like to thank Tony Lynch, my business partner in our media company Spoken Group, who accompanied me to Afghanistan last year. Tony kept me 'on message'; otherwise I would have sat about with a brew, waffling on to the troops and going on patrol without asking them a single question.

  Introduction by Andy McNab

  Real Voices

  This is a book about modern-day heroes fighting a modern-day war: a conflict in Afghanistan that has so far claimed the lives of some 200 British servicemen and women. Spoken from the Front shows the courage of British servicemen and support staff as they faced the unique difficulties posed by ongoing conflict in a country ravaged by war.

  Last year I had the idea of producing a book based on the stories of our men and women who have served on the frontline in Afghanistan. I didn't want to tell their stories for them: I wanted them to give their own accounts in their own words. I was fortunate: the MoD liked my proposal and gave me access to soldiers (of all ranks), pilots, reservists, engineers, medics, Royal Military Police and a host of support staff. Their action-packed, moving and, at times, humorous testimonies are told here through interviews and diaries, along with letters and emails written to family, friends and loved ones. These men and women come from different backgrounds and have various motives for telling their stories, but they have one thing in common: they have risked their lives serving their Queen and country on the front line.

  Spoken from the Front is not a definitive history of the war in Afghanistan. I will leave that to the historians. What I think and hope this book provides is a fascinating snapshot into life in the most dangerous war zone in the world. I believe the strength of this book is its simplicity: some accounts are raw and horrific, others more matter-of-fact and reflective. But they are all told by people who were there and witnessed incidents with their own eyes. Spoken from the Front captures the preparation for battle, the battle itself and its consequences. The horrors, cruelties, drudgery, excitement and 'banter' of modern warfare become apparent from eyewitness accounts.

  Rather than tell the story of the war through hundreds of largely anonymous characters, I decided to tell it through the voices of around twenty servicemen and women, who appear several times throughout the narrative. This, I hope, will give you a real feel for what their lives are truly like in this deadliest of war zones, and will enable you to follow their adventures – with their trials and tribulations – as they unfold. The first-person accounts are told chronologically, starting in the spring of 2006 and going to the end of 2008. The date given is when the incident took place – rather than when the interview was carried out. When the interview was conducted some time after an event, every effort has been made to pinpoint the date of the incident as accurately as possible.

  As I write, some of the men and women featured in this book are back in Afghanistan to embark on new tours of duty.

  The War in Afghanistan

  In early 2006, the 'war on terror' took on a vital new phase, particularly for Britain. The level of commitment required and the difficulty of the tasks taken on by the UK government were significantly 'upped' from previous years. As part of the West's determination to confront the Taliban after 9/11, Britain had joined the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. With the help of the Northern Alliance, an organization of mostly mujahideen fighters from northern Afghanistan, the Taliban was quickly defeated.

  The first UK troops were deployed in November 2001, when Royal Marines from 40 Commando helped to secure the airfield at Bagram. A 1,700-strong battle group based around 45 Commando was subsequently deployed as Task Force Jacana. For the next four years, Britain maintained a force in Afghanistan but, with the Taliban having seemingly melted away, the extent of the fighting was limited. The West was determined that Afghanistan would not return to being an ungoverned space that could be exploited by the likes of al-Qaeda and where the Taliban could regroup.

  On 7 December 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The National Assembly was inaugurated on 19 December 2005 and, in contrast to the days of the Taliban, women were given a prominent role with a quarter of the seats held by females. However, the government's remit did not extend across the country, much of which was still detached from Kabul and in danger of falling back into Taliban hands. It was imperative to persuade the Afghan people that the new government was a power for good and that, with the help of the people, Afghanistan could become peaceful and prosperous. The reconstruction of the country was a vital step in that process. After more than twenty-five years of conflict much of the civil infrastructure was barely identifiable. The people lived in squalor, many without clean drinking water, and sanitation systems were reserved for only the most affluent. Afghanistan had plunged beyond third world: in large parts of the country, it was medieval.

  On 26 January 2006, John Reid, the defence secretary, announced that 3,300 British forces would be deployed to southern Afghanistan in support of Karzai's new government. It was left to 16 Air Assault Brigade to form the backbone of the task force and they were to be deployed to Helmand province. Reid expressed optimism that 'we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot'. But history, the terrain, the climate and the possibility of a Taliban resurgence meant that it was unlikely to be so straightforward. The British mission was to act as a stabilizing force and to assist with the reconstruction process, which had failed to make any real impact in the south.

  The first troops to deploy to Helmand were Royal Engineers from 39 Engineer Regiment, with a security force provided by 42 Commando Royal Marines. Their task was to construct a camp for the incoming troops. Camp Bastion was built in the desert of central Helmand, the biggest military base built by Royal Engineers since the Second World War. In May, the troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade began to arrive.

  If, on paper, a 3,300-strong force seemed substantial, the reality was that it was wholly inadequate to enforce any sort of law and order in Helmand. The British commanders had just 700 infantry soldiers to play with. Dispersing the force across the province, as the Afghans wanted, would have resulted in a precarious dilution of the brigade's combat power. But keeping the servicemen in the relative safety of Camp Bastion would achieve nothing. A middle way had to be found.

  The scale of the task was truly daunting. Helmand province is some 275 miles long and 100 miles wide – a total of about 23,000 square miles. The majority of the country is flat desert but there are vast mountain ranges too. Then there is the Green Zone: a thin strip of irrigated land no more than five miles across at its widest point, which provided a perfect hid
ing place for the Taliban. The Green Zone stretches along each bank of the Helmand river, which snakes its way the entire length of the province. Helmand province shares a southern border with the unruly tribal region of north-west Pakistan.

  The climate is not for the faint-hearted. At the height of summer, it is unbearably hot with temperatures soaring to 55°C. In the depths of winter, temperatures in the mountains plunge as low as –20°C and the area is prone to some of the loudest and most terrifying thunderstorms in the world. Previously dry wadis (riverbeds) become raging torrents in a matter of minutes.