Combat Camera (23 page)

19.57 Now Zad

British Apache positively identified 6 x insurgents hiding in a wadi. The wadi is the known location of a weapons cache and
the individuals were also exhibiting hostile intent. Apache fired 133 x 30 mm, resulting in 4 insurgents killed in action
.

20.30 Nahr-e Saraj

Dragoons Mechanized Infantry Company received small-arms fire from insurgents. Returned fire with small arms and heavy machine gun. No friendly casualties at this stage. The enemy has ceased firing. Believed to be a total of 6 insurgents killed in action
.

* * *

The following day was much worse for British troops. A total of nineteen casualties were flown into Bastion, including one fatality. I was able to check Ops Watch in the TFH office at Lashkar Gah that evening. Russ and I had spent the day walking around the base with the camera and tripod, asking bemused soldiers to record messages for Armed Forces Day.
*
It had been a boring, frustrating process – some of them needed up to ten takes just to smile at the camera and say “Many thanks for all your support on Armed Forces Day, from all of us here in Helmand Province” – but at least it was all for a good cause, highlighting the efforts (and the sacrifices) of the troops in Afghanistan.

05.57 Nahr-e Saraj

IED strike: 3 x US Cat B

Lacerations to face

Lacerations to face

Hearing loss

06.36 Nahr-e Saraj

A Coy, 1 Rifles, dismounted patrol: IED strike

2 x GBR Cat A, 2 x GBR Cat B, 1 x GBR Cat C, 1 x Afghan interpreter Cat C

GBR: frag to lower leg, neck and face

GBR: frag to upper and lower leg

TERP: frag to knee and lower leg

GBR: frag to leg and hip, bleeding heavily, slipping in and out of consciousness, possible broken femur

GBR: frag to shoulder

GBR: frag to lower leg

07.05 Nad Ali

Estonian mounted patrol, IED strike: 1 x Cat A. At 08:20, an insurgent threw a grenade at the patrol: 1 x Cat B.

IED casualty: Contusion, fractured right ankle, suspected internal bleeding

Grenade casualty: frag to upper left thigh, lower left leg and head – a lot of swelling in frag area

08.58: Nahr-e Saraj

A Coy, 2 Royal Gurkha Rifles dismounted patrol, IED strike: 1 x GBR Cat A

Shrapnel to right-hand side of body – conscious, bleeding heavily, severe pain

09.57 Sangin

US Marines Non-Battle Injury: 1 x Cat B (hydraulic pressure on GPR panels gave out, panels fell and crushed arm).

Broken arm and lacerations, swelling and light bleeding

12.42 Lashkar Gah

1 x GBR Cat C non-battle injury

Chronic bilateral knee pain

15.43 Nahr-e Saraj

Task Force Helmand Warthog Group, IED strike:

1 x GBR Cat A, 1 x GBR Cat B

Cat A: chest and side trauma

Cat B: possible fracture to right forearm

16.57 Nahr-e Saraj

Task Force Helmand Warthog Group, 2 x IED strikes:

1 x GBR killed in action, 1 x GBR Cat A and 1 x GBR Cat B

A mounted patrol was conducting security operations 500 m north of Highway 1 when a Warthog struck an IED. The strike resulted in 1 x Cat A and 1 x Cat B. At 17:30, reports of multiple IEDs in the area of strike – could be a possible minefield. Another Warthog strikes a second IED, resulting in death. At 19:48, friendly forces discover another 2 possible IEDs. Later detonated – both had 20 kg main charges
.

1st IED: No details on Cat A and Cat B

2nd IED: Lower body amputation – casualty died of wounds
.

Declared dead by ground call sign
.

Death or Glory

On the evening of 17th June we returned to the base on the outskirts of Gereshk, the scene of our previous stay with the Household Cavalry. It was now home to the 9th/12th Royal Lancers, our hosts for the next twenty-four hours. Russ and I would be shooting patrol footage and interviews for BBC
East Midlands Today
, broadcasting in the heart of the Lancers’ recruiting patch, while Ali was planning to target some of the local newspapers –
Leicester Mercury
,
Nottingham Evening Post
– with photographs and home-town stories.

I slept badly that night. We were staying with ten other soldiers in a narrow room under a ceiling thick with cobwebs. An electric fan stood to the side of each camp cot, whirring in the darkness. It was cooler than I had any right to expect, but it was still too hot. I lay awake for hours, naked inside the faux privacy of my mosquito net, sweating about all the usual stuff that goes through your mind the night before a deployment. At one point, just to add to the psychodrama, a cockroach scuttled across my chest. I ignored it, but then, two minutes later, it crawled across my face. Now it felt like I was in a fucking crypt. I switched on my torch and found the shiny little monster underneath my camp cot, sitting on my trousers. I couldn’t be bothered to kill him – he had nothing to do with this war, and I couldn’t face the crunching sound – so I put a mug over him and went back to “sleep”.

The pitiful bleeping alarm on my digital watch went off at 6 a.m. Soldiers stirred in the half-light. Fortunately, I’d managed to get a few hours’ sleep. I got dressed and took my little friend – he seemed happy enough, nestled inside the mug – out into the vehicle yard, depositing him as far away from the living area as possible. He scurried across the gravel, disappearing into some weeds that were growing up against the perimeter wall.

Maybe I should’ve killed him, but that would’ve felt like bad luck. I had less than four weeks to push until my flight home, and I wasn’t about to start tempting fate. Omens were looming up everywhere, and they were impossible to ignore. I walked back into the living area, where the camp dog – a friendly, underweight golden retriever – nuzzled my leg, looking for a pat on the head. I duly obliged, accidentally treading on his tail in the process. He yelped out in pain, triggering an explosion of bad karma. I felt terrible. No matter that he was OK, quickly seeking out my hand for another pat on the head: the damage was done.

We rolled out of camp after breakfast. I was in the lead vehicle, which didn’t bode well, but at least it was a Husky. Russ and Ali were in the Jackal behind me, getting all their shots and footage of life on Highway 1. We drove for twenty minutes before dismounting on the forecourt of a disused petrol station. Three soldiers stayed with the vehicles while the rest of us spread out in single file and patrolled out into the desert, making our way over to a small compound on a ridge overlooking the highway. It was home to one of the local elders, a bearded man in a white robe who came out to meet us. He chatted to the patrol commander for ten minutes, telling him his woes.

“This country has been destroyed,” he said. “There is nothing here.”

“If you keep talking to us, we can help you,” said the patrol commander. “If we know who the insurgents are, we can stop them. We can help rebuild this country.”

We continued into the desert, performing a large loop through a series of compounds. Children stood in doorways, watching us with the eyes of old men. We gave them boiled sweets, and they became youngsters again, smiling for our cameras, asking for
chockalit
.

We got back to the vehicles at midday and returned to base for some lunch, weaving through the traffic on Highway 1. This was the beauty of the cavalry ethos – have wagon, will travel. By 12.45 p.m. we were back in the cookhouse, eating chicken pasta and drinking orange squash.

After lunch I interviewed some of the soldiers in the shadeless vehicle yard. It was roasting hot now – around 43°C – but Russ needed to frame his shots with a decent backdrop. Each of the soldiers took their turn standing in front of a Jackal, telling me all about themselves and their work in Afghanistan.

“I’m from Loughborough,” said the first one, a young trooper called Toby.

“Really?” I said. “I used to go to school in Loughborough.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Actually, I’m from Essex. I just live in Loughborough.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “What do you miss about Loughborough?”

“Uni chicks,” he said. “And getting tanked up.”

“OK,” I said. “We’ll probably leave that out.”

“No worries.”

“So what do you do out here?”

“I’ve got two jobs,” he said. “I drive the Jackal for the boss, and I’m the point man on the patrols.”

“What’s that like?”

“It’s scary being the point man, because obviously you’re the first man into contact, but it’s also quite rewarding. It’s been hairy at times, but that’s what you expect. That’s what you join the army for.”

All the soldiers I interviewed said they were glad to be out here. Some of them even spoke with relish about the opportunities for combat.

“The tour’s been really good,” said Sam, a lance corporal from Nottinghamshire. “It’s been lairy in some places, and quiet in other places. It’s the same with every tour.”

“What’s been the best part of the tour?”

“I like the contacts,” he said. “I like going out, looking for the Taliban. It gets the adrenaline going. And when you get into a fight with them, you feel great afterwards.”

After the interviews, we went out again. I felt much less superstitious than I had done before: the fear of bad omens had worn off. Interviewing the soldiers had been a strangely calming experience, despite all their ramblings about combat. It brought a degree of comfort knowing a little bit more about the men alongside you. So often the Combat Camera Team was just an attachment, stuck onto the side of a patrol for a limited amount of time. Talking to the soldiers at least created a greater sense of belonging, which brought with it a greater sense of security.

We drove in the same formation as before, heading along Highway 1 to another checkpoint. The plan was to interview one of the local ANA commanders, getting some all-important “Afghan face” for the East Midlands piece. After that – somewhat randomly – we were going to film a few of our guys eating rations for
The One Show
. The BBC producers were lining up an interview with the Ministry of Defence gastronome responsible for producing all the different menus in our ration boxes, and they wanted us to provide
some footage of British soldiers tucking into their boil-in-the-bag food while out on the Afghan front line.

It was only a fifteen-minute drive to the checkpoint, but halfway there we were brought to a halt by two Jackals parked across the road. They were part of a security cordon for an IED that had just been discovered by the roadside about a hundred metres up ahead. A team from the Royal Engineers was preparing to blow the device up and get the road open again.

We wanted to film it, obviously. It was going to be a loud explosion. We had no footage of IED blasts on this tour, so it was something we felt we needed to capture. We gave no thought to the fact that this barbarous little device – undiscovered – would’ve blown us off the road. We just set up our video camera on a tripod and happily waited for the Royal Engineers to give us our money shot.

We didn’t have to wait long. A lone engineer crouched over the device for a moment, before retreating back to the safety of his vehicle. We got a thirty-second warning over the radio, then the IED detonated with a ground-shaking bang, throwing up a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust thirty feet into the air. Russ watched the whole thing through his video camera, recording on his tripod, while Ali took her shots leaning against one of the Jackals for support. I captured the moment for posterity as well, taking a couple of hurried shots on my crappy Fuji camera. It had a dodgy lens and a slow shutter speed – it was probably worth about a thirtieth of Ali’s Nikon D3S – but it did at least come with some sentimental value, being a leaving gift from some of my nicer colleagues at Smooth Radio.

By now the ANA commander had turned up on the scene, so we hurried through an interview with him, still standing in the middle of Highway 1 as the Royal Engineers packed up in the background. He’d seen it all before, and was more than a little jaded with the
constant struggle to keep the roadside clear of IEDs. He had the same haunted brown eyes that you found on all Afghan men over the age of forty, and they obviously coloured his view of the war.

“What it’s like working with the British forces?” I asked him.