Sniper one (15 page)

Not everybody in the platoon had got a kill yet. So there was still a bit of idle banter going about, as soldiers do.

Pikey and Oost were particularly chomping at the bit as they had stayed back on a roof watch the day of our first vehicle patrol. Still crowing from his wonder shot, Ads didn't miss the opportunity to take the piss.

'You never know, boys. You might just get the chance to fire your weapons today. Start catching up with us.'

They did.

The plan for the resupply was to send the Warriors all the way up the Red route past us on the other side of the river, and over Yugoslav Bridge. They would then swing right around the north bank, down the Greens, and over into Al Amarah old town from the east, crossing the bridge at Blue 11. That way they'd avoid having to pass straight by the OMS building and the centre of the enemy's strength, at Yellow 3.

At 1 p.m., two foot patrols from the Mortar and AntiTank
platoons were pushed out from Cimic to meet them. Their mission was to secure the convoy's two major choke points. They were roundabouts either side of the bridge it would cross, at junctions Blue 11 and Green 9. Our job again was to provide overview.

Unfortunately, the OMS had the same idea. They also wanted to control the choke points, as one of just two ways into Cimic. And they'd beaten the foot patrols to it. As soon as the boys turned up, they got taken on by a huge amount of gunmen in doorways, windows or on rooftops directly overlooking them. They were getting cut up pretty badly by small arms fire from all angles. We heard the ambush, but couldn't see it. Blue 11 is just out of the roof's view. There were too many enemy weapons firing to even be able to count them. It sounded pretty bad.

I legged it down to the Ops Room to see what they knew. A few seconds later, the inevitable confirmation came over the radio, called in by one of the platoon commanders, Captain Paul Hooker.

'Zero, this is Alpha Three Zero Alpha. Contact. Wait out.' The first words said over the net in any contact. It clears the airwaves because when anyone hears that they know to shut the fuck up.

'We're getting engaged by around fifty enemy. Multiple positions.'

Then it went from bad to even worse.

'Contact casualty. Wait out.'

A good young private called Baz Bliss had taken a bullet in the side. It tore through his body armour, bounced around a bit inside, and came out his front, taking a bit of his right lung out with it. He had been shot by a sniper armed with a Draganov, the Soviet-made equivalent of our L96s. A seriously nasty weapon. If there was a bloke with a Draganov
out there and who knew how to use it, they were in serious trouble.

Realizing this, the patrols had sprinted for cover randomly, wherever they could. They were totally split up with some having made it over the bridge, and others not. The lucky ones found market stands and a concrete wall to cover them; the unlucky had only the two-foot wall of the roundabout itself.

RPGs had now also started to tear over the roundabout lot's heads too. I could even hear the loud bangs of their explosions from the Ops Room. It sounded totally desperate.

There was no let-up. The longer it went on, the more panic crept into their radio transmissions. You could even hear them losing their tempers with each other over the net.

'Listen, you need to get us the fuck out of here,' said another voice over the net. 'There's fuck all we can do. We can't move an inch. We need some fucking help down here.'

Hearing your mates desperate and panicking is not a nice thing.

'OK. The Warriors are on their way,' insisted Featherstone. 'Try and keep calm.'

I charged back up to the roof to help the boys spot for targets. I hoped we still might be able to see some of the enemy's positions from our vantage point, if not the roundabout itself. By the time I got up there, they were already busy engaging a series of muzzle flashes.
Good work, lads
.

'Keep your eyes peeled for a sniper, boys. We've got a fucker with a Draganov out there.'

They needed no more motivation. The targets were all at distance, so we concentrated on shooting with our longs.
From the roof, we could also see more OMS gunmen as they moved through the streets trying to get to the battle area as well as our Warriors.

Soon after, more heavy gunfire and explosions erupted to our south.

Jesus, must be the resupply convoy.

Sticking to the original plan, the long line of Warriors from Abu Naji was now approaching Yugoslav Bridge on the Red route, and had also begun to take a heavy kicking. OMS fighters were coming out to have a go at the Warriors from dozens of pre-planned ambush positions. There were RPG nests in ditches at the side of the road, others fired from the top of compound walls and some didn't even bother to conceal themselves as they stepped out directly in front of vehicles to loose off whatever they had.

I moved a couple of pairs on the roof's southern wall to see what they could do for the Warriors. At least they had a bit of armour.

Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, the Cimic compound itself began to get attacked. Most of it was hopeful small arms fire from a fair few hundred metres away, but it was coming in from all around us, 360 degrees.

'Right, we don't want these twats thinking they can come too close to Cimic. A pair on each of the four walls. One in Top Sangar, and two in Rooftop.'

It diverted more of our resources away from the foot patrols, and that was a pain in the arse.

A couple of OMS in a crappy old red and white Toyota even attempted a drive by. They screeched round a corner from behind the Pink Palace and gave Front Sangar two full AK mags. The lads in the sangar took cover in time and nobody was hurt. For some reason that escaped us, the Toyota's boot was wide open throughout. We put some
rounds into it anyway as it sped off in case another gunman was going to pop up.

Despite the chaos, the mortaring still remained the biggest personal threat to us on the roof – the OMS teams worked overtime that day. We were hit by a total of nine different barrages, so we were also spotting for the mortar teams every time they fired.

No matter what else was going on, the company's priority still had to be Captain Hooker's men. They were in the deepest shit. On top of the Warriors, Featherstone also dispatched a thirty-strong foot patrol to try to reach them by cutting through the old town instead. They had to fight the whole of the way down Baghdad Street to get anywhere close. Once they'd passed by, the locals put burning road blocks in behind them. The OMS had seen what was happening and the more troops they sucked in towards Blue 11, the more they tried to trap in there. They wanted to kill as many of us as possible.

In response, Abu Naji dispatched the entirety of the armoured QRF which was C Company. Now practically the whole battle group had been sucked into the city. But the more reinforcements we poured in to get to Captain Hooker's guys, the more they got smacked on their way in too.

Hooker's guys finally made some progress at Blue 11. The soldiers stuck on the other side of the bridge had managed to get back across it. It was thanks to the enormous bollocks shown by a big Fijian private called Joe Natameru. In frustration, Joe had jumped up, run into the open, and taken up a highly exposed fire position. He dropped a pair of enemy that had been cutting them off on the other side but he took a bullet through his calf for his efforts.

Being reunited with the rest of the patrol had given the men a much stronger firebase. Then, the Cimic Warriors,
the Abu Naji resupply convoy and Featherstone's fighting patrol all arrived at about the same time. Together, they held the enemy at bay long enough to all extract. The Warriors weren't large enough to carry everybody, so some had to jog back alongside them.
Black Hawk Down
-style, they put rounds down all the way as they ran.

I went down to the front gate to help them in. They were gasping, and there was a lot of 'fucking hell' and 'thank fuck for that'. Blokes had collapsed, and kit and weapons were strewn everywhere. It was a complete palaver and a very sorry sight.

But there was still one sorrier sight to come. Back up on the roof fifteen minutes later, we heard an appalling grating noise approaching from a long way off. The grating noise appeared to attract gunfire wherever it moved. It sounded like a Warrior that had a full bag of spanners thrown into its engine. Swap spanners for a truckload of shrapnel, and that's exactly what it was. Around the corner from the direction of Blue 11 came four truly miserable looking Warriors. Christ knows where they had been. The lead vehicle was in a horrific state. It was the one making most of the racket. There were at least five RPG blast holes in it, smoke was pouring out of the back, and all its hatches were wide open. That included the driver's hatch. Most astonishing of all, the driver had his bonce stuck right out of it – and rounds were still coming in at him. His name was Private Johnson Beharry. Chris saw it first.

'Look at the state of that! What the fuck have that lot just been through?'

'Never mind that. What the hell is Beharry doing with his bonce right outside like that?' asked someone else.

'What a waste of time slapping on all that armour,' I replied.

The battalion's whole fleet of Warriors had been up-armoured for the tour. That meant attaching dirty great big chunks of it to the side to make the things RPG-proof. It had taken hours to do. Judging by Pte Beharry's recent experiences, it hadn't exactly worked.

Because of its state, we didn't think Beharry's Warrior was going to make it all the way to us. It was unlikely he would either unless he pulled his head in. But it carried on creaking its way along Tigris's south bank at just a little faster than jogging pace. When it passed the back gate, it drew the inevitable volley of rounds from the OMS gunmen we had been playing hide and seek with up RPG Alley. But Beharry carried on in spite of it all and the machine eventually creaked to a final halt right outside the front gate.

Beharry's Warrior was, unsurprisingly, full of casualties. There was a mad scramble at the front gate to get them all out and into safety. The snipers did their bit by getting the enemy's heads down. We rammed as many rounds into their positions as we could.

Only when everyone was inside did it emerge what had happened. They were part of the C Company QRF, and had been sent into the city to rescue any one of a series of different call signs they could get to. Like everyone before them, all they had managed was a proper smacking of their own.

Beharry was a shy young lad with a disarming smile from Grenada. He'd been in the battalion for a couple of years, and was driving for his platoon commander. They were hit as soon as they turned on to the Blue route that ran north through the eastern side of the city. The platoon commander and the Warrior's gunner in the turret were both knocked unconscious by a barrage of RPG direct hits. The explosions also knocked out all of Beharry's radios, and destroyed
his periscope. If he wanted to see anything at all from then on, he would have to drive with his hatch open.

Leaderless, the whole platoon of four Warriors were now badly in the shit. They were taking furious incoming, they were boxed in by burning barricades, the radios were fucked and their commander might be dead. In a call that took balls the size of watermelons, Beharry decided he had only one option. He charged the barricades in front of him and smashed a path through for the rest of the platoon to follow. With rounds pinging off all around him and RPGs whooshing over his head, he continued to press on all the way with his swede sticking out until he eventually reached Cimic. When he got there, he then helped evacuate his casualties under the sniper fire until he himself passed out with heatstroke. After they dragged him in, a 7.62mm AK round was found embedded in his helmet.

His platoon reorganized, rearmed and got some much needed water down them. They then evacuated the most seriously injured in Cimic back to Abu Naji. Once the resupply was finished, its Warrior convoy also made a beeline for Abu Naji. Even though the incoming they took on the way back was less it was still plentiful, and every vehicle still got a piece of it.

Beharry's Warrior was going nowhere though. We kept a watch on it by the front gate until it could be moved safely the next day. Fitz put warning shots into the tree beside it every time scavenging teenagers got too close. Like Daz's Snatch a few weeks before, the Warrior still had the same highly classified radio equipment in the back and we couldn't lose that.

Then one of the cheeky little sods crept up behind the Warrior out of Fitzy's sight and tried to scramble up on top of it.

'Want me to put one on the turret to get that fella off, Danny?'

'No, it might ricochet and kill him. Can you do the driver's optics? That's about the only thing that isn't metal.'

'No problem.'

The driver's viewing optics is a strip of thick glass, three inches high by twelve wide. At a distance of just over 250 metres, it was bread and butter to Fitzy. He put a 7.62 straight into the middle of it. It scared the hell out of the teenager, who jumped off the Warrior and sprinted for his life.

When it started to get dark, we also had to shoot out the Warrior's headlights because the power in it had been left on in the rush to debug from it. They were facing right into the camp and screwed up the view through our night vision goggles. They were harder shots. Fitzy took both of them out, and then calmly moved on to its indicators and three identification lights. A total of seven targets, all at over 250 metres, each just measuring a couple of square inches. Like the legend he was, he hit all seven first time.

As the sun dropped down over the horizon leaving a crimson-red sky, Chris slumped down against the sandbags in Rooftop Sangar next to me. He'd been down to the Ops Room.

After a full day's excitement for the OMS, their pot shots on Cimic had started to die down too. But we were still on a sharp lookout for mortar teams. They'd caused us misery all day, and so far they had got away with it. They were a particular concern to us. On the roof all the time, we were the most exposed to their fire.