Sniper one (40 page)

My platoon was the very last to leave. With Bergens on, we huddled by the front gate awaiting our cue. Yet still there wasn't much sign of the much feared enemy attack. A little harassing fire on the sangars, but nothing on the waste
ground and, even more rarely, no mortars either. It was mighty bizarre, and unnerved me.

'Right lads, normal drills. As soon as the rounds start coming in, dump everything straight away and then get into a decent covered fire position.'

Daz led off. Dale was coming out with us; he and I would be the last of Y Company to leave. He grinned at me as the rest of the boys filed by.

'You're gonna miss this place aren't you, Danny boy?'

'Yeah, like a hole in the head.'

Then it was just the two of us.

'Right, you jammy git, let's get the fuck out of here.'

Out on the wasteland, we could hear gunfire in the distance where the Challengers were still slapping the odd chancer back at Red 11. As I walked, I couldn't help tensing up to prepare myself for the first incoming mortar. That would be when it would all go horribly wrong, and right at the last bloody minute knowing our luck.

It never came. Sooner than I thought, we were on top of the brightly lit dam. If only Major Tait had shot out its fucking street lights too. Then we were over it, and on the home stretch.

Figures in combats and helmets waiting for us on the main road frantically beckoned us to hard-target the last 200 metres, then bundled us into the nearest Warriors with space.

The automatic door clunked closed. A minute later, the giant column juddered into motion. Every few minutes, our vehicle's chain gun rattled out a few rounds at some target, but there was less than half the opposition on the way out than the convoy had faced on the way in.

Then the chain gun stopped completely. We were out of
the town, and rumbling full speed through the last few kilometres of the dark arid desert before Camp Abu Naji.

One of the dismounts handed over a set of headphones. The Warrior commander wanted to talk to me. Turned out it was a sergeant who was an old mate of mine.

'Know why you had to hard-target the last 200 metres, Danny?'

'No. Why?'

'Surveillance report came in from the Lynx 2,000 feet above Aj Dayya. They spotted hundreds of enemy on rooftops and street corners. By the looks of it, that's where they were setting up for us. Stupid arseholes never once realized what was going on at Cimic before it was way too late.'

'Really? Gleaming.'

'Yeah, isn't it. Don't you love it when a plan comes together?'

Four things came together in beautiful synchronicity to make the night work like clockwork: enormous firepower, slick timing, smart tactics and a decent dose of luck. As we came to learn, luck was the most important of the four.

Only then did it dawn on me what a fantastic triumph the battle group had just pulled off.

The siege of Cimic House had been relieved. Fresh fighting troops were in there now, with enough supplies and ammunition for them to fight alone for a month. The physical blow this was to our enemy was bad enough, after all the losses they'd suffered trying to wear us down. But the psychological one was far more devastating. The battle group had proved it could go in and out of the town when it needed to. We were still the true masters of Al Amarah, and Cimic would never be taken. The OMS and Abu Hatim could all go fly.

We finally pulled into Abu Naji at 4.30 a.m., just as the sun was rising again. It was a nice feeling to step under a shower and get some fresh clothes on. I hadn't done that since I'd last left Abu Naji almost four weeks ago. Then we had breakfast, and got our heads down. Most of the platoon slept until after sunset. Chris didn't wake up until the next morning. That was OK though. We'd earned a lie-in.

For the next few days, the OMS alliance kept up a steady flow of mortar and sniper fire on Cimic. It meant the Royal Welch Fusiliers got the chance to get some scrapping under their belts. But after what we'd been through, it was hard to see it as anything more than keeping up appearances for Moqtada.

The enemy never attempted another proper assault on the compound. They either no longer had the men for it or no longer had the will; or both. Our all-out defence coupled with the resupply had broken the back of the insurgency in Al Amarah. They knew it, and we knew it. It gave everyone who'd been in Cimic House in August a tremendous sense of pride. We had stood up and been counted, we were tested to the extreme, and we had won.

When the ceasefire finally came a few days later, it must have been far more of a relief to them than it was to us.

Again, just as events in Najaf had started it, it took the final play of the game in the holy city to bring the August uprising to a final close.

Where the interim Iraqi government had failed after weeks
of fruitless negotiations, the most influential cleric in Iraq succeeded. As the Shia's equivalent of the Pope, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was a very powerful man indeed in the south; probably the most powerful. Luckily for the Yanks, the 73-year-old preacher with a long white beard was still a moderate who generally gave the coalition his support. The Americans' masterstroke was to coax him into the fray on their side.

On 25 August, he was flown to Basra on an RAF C17 jet from London, where he had been undergoing heart surgery. A hospital bed abroad for three weeks had conveniently left Sistani without having to choose sides. From Basra, he set off to Najaf by road in a heralded 'peace convoy' to call a halt to the uprising.

Faced with having to defy the great man's word and take him on too, Moqtada blinked. Tactically, though, he was already in deep trouble. According to CNN, the Marines had finally come up with a way of taking the Imam Ali mosque without exploding Muslim sensitivities. Elite Iraqi Army troops had been trained to storm it with the help of US special forces disguised as Arabs. The operation to capture or kill Moqtada was just hours away from being launched.

After twenty-four hours of frenzied talks, Sistani brokered a new deal. If the Mehdi Army would disarm and leave Najaf, the US Marines promised to do the same. Again, there'd be no recriminations on either side. It was a compromise that suited everyone by that stage.

Moqtada sent out a proclamation asking all loyal fighters to put down their weapons. He even agreed to rejoin the political process and take part in the elections in five months' time. His loyal defenders in the mosque were escorted out of it by jubilant worshippers. The home of their belief system had been saved.

On 28 August, the Al Amarah OMS also declared a ceasefire, pending, of course, the outcome of their negotiations with the town's security forces, which really meant our CO. In other words, their murdering swine wanted immunity too. With orders from above, Colonel Maer reluctantly accepted the deal, which came into effect at midday.

With the quiet, the company finally got a chance to add up the statistics. They made terrific reading. During that 23-day period of concerted attack, we'd taken a total of 595 incoming mortar rounds on the compound during 230 different bombardments, 57 separate RPG attacks and 5 barrages from 107mm rockets. We'd fought 25 different firefights out in the town, and repelled 86 enemy ground assaults on Cimic itself.

In return, we fired back 33,000 rounds, countless Challenger, Warrior and mortar HE shells, and even managed to persuade the US Air Force to drop a 500lb bomb right into the middle of a built-up city.

We'd never had the time – or the opportunity – to properly count up all the enemy dead. During the siege alone, it must have been somewhere in the mid-hundreds. Thanks to a rough Ops Room estimation, Sniper Platoon alone accounted for 40 per cent of all of Y Company's kills.

The siege's fighting had certainly taken our platoon tally for the whole tour to over 200 confirmed kills; double that unconfirmed. We all knew how many of them we'd hit, but you don't often get the chance to take the pulse of some fucker you've just slotted when you're in the middle of the shit.

As for the company's casualties, we suffered one dead and six seriously wounded. How we didn't lose dozens rather
than just Ray will remain the world's greatest mystery to all of us.

The locals in the houses surrounding Cimic had not been quite so lucky. A total of twenty-two had been killed by mortars intended for us dropping short or long.

The next day, I radioed Ads from Abu Naji to ask him to check up on the people in the corner house. They'd been playing on my mind. If any of them were still alive, I still wanted us to apologize for zeroing on their wall. Miraculously, they were all still there, albeit in little more than a pile of rubble now. They had all survived, and they had nothing but thanks for us for defeating the OMS. Amazing. Our presence next door had fucked their lives, and they still said thank you.

This time, the ceasefire held firm all over Iraq. Moqtada was well and truly a spent force now; for the rest of that year anyway.

The CO shared an anecdote with Captain Curry in the back of a Warrior on the way back to Abu Naji after the ceasefire signing ceremony in the Pink Palace.

'Well, Charlie, I take my hat off to you and Major Featherstone. The OMS told me they thought Cimic was being defended by an entire SAS squadron. Of course, it was a misapprehension I was comfortable to leave them with.'

The greatest irony of all had come a week into the peace. Chris heard the news first and couldn't wait to tell me.

'Guess what, Danny.'

'What, mate?'

He grinned. 'You'll love this. We're handing Cimic House back over to the Iraqis tomorrow. All UK forces are moving out for good.'

It had been all part of the long-term strategy to give the
place back to local government control as soon as it was feasible. It was about the Iraqi security forces taking on an ever greater lead. After all, we weren't going to stay in Maysan for ever. The handover had originally been planned for midsummer. Then the uprising had begun again and everything was canned.

In peacetime, our priorities had changed again. We could hand it over now while looking all magnanimous – most importantly, at a time of our choosing, not theirs. A final fuck you to the OMS.

We knew the logic behind the decision full well. Yet Chris and I couldn't resist a wry smile about it all the same. It was hard for us, the grunts, to not feel a little bit of Hamburger Hill syndrome after everything we'd been through there. One of our men had even died for the right to call that place British. Two weeks later, the Grand Old Duke of York had decided the hill wasn't needed any more so we marched all the way back down it again.

In the end, nobody was really that massively bothered. We didn't actually give a fuck about the place. A poxy few lumps of concrete in the middle of Al Amarah; they can shove it up their arses for all we cared.

The only thing that mattered was we'd done our jobs when we were really needed. That would never be taken away from us.

With nowhere else to go now but Abu Naji, the platoon spent the rest of the tour chasing camel spiders up and down the corridors of its giant tents. There was the normal dull routine to keep us occupied: guard duties, Land Rover patrols, escort trips and admin days.

The only violence we ever witnessed was the odd mortar attack. In the Abu Naji cookhouse, you could spot the people who'd been at Cimic House in a flash. At the first sound
of incoming, we were the only ones to stay at the tables calmly finishing our food. The rest of the battle group scrambled under the tables and lurched for their body armour.

At the end of September, I got posted. It had come sooner than I'd expected. I was being promoted to Colour Sergeant, and sent to the Infantry Battle School in Brecon as an instructor. My leaving date was in just one week's time, three weeks ahead of everyone else.

Truth be told, I was happy to get out of Iraq by then. The ceasefire bored us all to tears just like it had in July. Life also moves on. My priorities began to change; I was looking forward to my new job, seeing my kids again. By then, I'd done my bit for the place and the battalion. I'd also proved myself to everyone I'd needed to – most importantly, me.

Despite all that, leaving the platoon was always going to be hard. Having fought with them so hard for so long, we'd developed a bond the likes of which I'd never experienced before. Half of them had become men on the tour, and all of us had become soldiers. We'd also had the time of our lives.

On the afternoon before I left, I handed over command of the platoon to Daz.

'It's all yours now, mate. Take good care of it.'

'Roger that, Dan. We might, but somehow I don't think the QM will miss you.'

That night, Major Featherstone got special dispensation to throw a small party for a handful of us who were leaving the company the next day for good. It meant a barbecue, and a couple of beers each.

The OC gave a small speech, followed by an even smaller one from me. But I meant every word of it.

'I just want to say cheers, guys. The last six months have been the pinnacle of my career. It's been a privilege to serve in Y Company, and an ever greater one to command Sniper Platoon. Even on a boring peacekeeping tour like this. I never thought I'd have the chance to do even a tenth of what we've done. You're the best soldiers I've ever met, so here's to you.'

The OC was straight back on his feet.

'Before you sit down, Dan, the snipers have got something for you.'

A couple of the boys came forward and presented me with the Iraqi flag that had hung from Cimic and defied everything the OMS had thrown at it.

'This is for you, Danny. We thought it would make a fitting souvenir after all your close shaves.'

Every one of them had written a little good luck message on it. It was a very touching moment.

It's amazing how long you can make two beers last when that's all you've got, and we gassed the rest of the night away as a full platoon for the last time. Each of us retold the full stories of our own individual escapades. Then we relived all the fantastic stitch-ups. Smudge even admitted he was finally over Natalie.