Talking, Waiting, Joking, Killing.... Ten days in the talebans sights
As Nato begins its biggest offensive in the country since 2001, two Times journalists report from a risky mission into the insurgents’ heartland in lawless Helmand province. The Royal Marines of J Company, 42 Commando, sometimes sat down with local Pashtuns and sometimes skirmished. Then they fought them in pitched battle.
Day 1
Hidden eyes count out the patrol as it leaves J Company base in Geresk.
There are few places in which the marines can escape the gaze of the Taleban in Helmand. The watchers will have noted the armoured Vikings, the .50 calibre machineguns on the Land Rover weapon platforms, the recovery vehicles, the two 105mm field guns. They will have seen the J Company emblem on the turret cupolas — a grinning death’s head in a jester’s cap. There are nearly 200 Marines in more than 30 vehicles.
They carry with them thousands of litres of fuel and water, artillery shells, mortar bombs, boxloads of grenades and hundreds of thousands of rifle and machinegun rounds. Carried too are “consent-winning packs”: kites, footballs, pencil cases and coloured pens. The aim is to split the insurgent from the local population. The Marines are prepared to talk of peace, to express goodwill, to bid for hearts and minds. They are also ready for war.
The mission sounds simple. J Company has the task of searching out, disrupting and destroying the Taleban. But the enemy is expert at blending in with the local population only to emerge and fight later: morning’s friend can be afternoon’s foe. Furthermore, in a province in which the Taleban have fielded fighting columns several hundred strong, the patrol could find itself ambushed and cut off, even outnumbered, far from the nearest Nato base. British forces are already in an invidious position in northern Helmand. In Sangin they are encircled by the Taleban. In Naw Zad, another Taleban stronghold, they have only a limited ability to move.
In Musa Qala, last autumn’s cease-fire deal resulting in the withdrawal of British troops is in a precarious balance. While efforts to reconstruct parts of central Helmand have had modest success, in the north the condition remains one of war.
I travel in the back of “Beowulf”, the Viking belonging to Corporal “Tug” Wilson’s section. The 12-tonne, all-terrain vehicle with two tracked cabs is eulogised.It has survived strikes by mines, rockets and machinegun fire. Its weight displacement is supposed to be the equivalent of a Marine on skis carrying a laden rucksack, allowing it to cross ice as well as desert.
Yet it is tiny. There are seven of us in the back cab. In near darkness, to the dull roar of the engine, we rattle, lurch and sway towards Naw Zad, a human sardine-pack of weapons, ammunition, body armour and helmets, in a fug of dust in which the occasional fart drifts. I see nothing of Helmand’s deserts, mountains and fields until we stop and open the rear door. Standing on a barren plain are two tiny children, staring at us as though we are creatures from a distant planet.
Day 2
The Marines’ first contact with the Taleban is like a gentlemanly duel.
Major Ewen Murchison, the company’s commander, deploys his Vikings just beyond the outskirts of Naw Zad. An engaging, wilful man, nicknamed “the General” by his brother officers because of his company’s freewheeling enterprise, he hopes to lure the Taleban into combat, alleviating pressure on the British garrison inside.
“Basically it’s a waiting game,” Sergeant-Major Marty Pelling says as the Marines disentangle themselves from their Vikings. “We just wait here and see if we can annoy them enough to shoot at us, then we give them a good spanking.”
At first, the two sides regard one another in silence. Women and children flee. After about 40 minutes, once most civilians are clear, the Marines’ 105mm field guns fire smoke shells into a meadow to the west, as if signalling the commencement of hostilities. Minutes later, from a clearly visible position, the Taleban fire a mortar bomb, which drops short. The Marines fire back with their own mortars and a .50 machinegun. The Taleban retaliate with a rocket.
It streaks over our heads in a bolt of red and skids across the top of Major Murchison’s Viking, to explode just beyond, leaving the vehicle’s turret gunner staring in astonishment at the crater of his near-nemesis.
“Jesus, just like a commando comic,” Sergeant-Major Pelling remarks, as he lights a cigarette. He stopped smoking 16 years ago but started again soon after arriving in Afghanistan. “Only under fire though.”
He has smoked a lot recently. Major Murchison expresses his frustration at the inconclusive contact. A small, mobile force, the patrol relies on drawing the Taleban out so that they can be killed by its superior weaponry.
But that evening, from their ridge-line observation post high above Naw Zad, Tug’s men watch nine armed Talebs gather in a compound below them, alerted to the Marines’ presence by local shepherds. The marines call in mortars and artillery, with negligible effect. Next a jet drops a 500lb bomb. It fails to explode. As the jet comes in for a second run a South African Marine, a sniper, shoots one of the Talebs at a range of 1,200 metres with his .338 rifle. Two more 500lb bombs finish off the others and destroy the compound. Death can be as cheap as a bullet or dear as a smart bomb.
Day 5
“Blimey, they don’t even know about Rocky IIhere, let alone Rocky VI,” Tug says with a bulldog smile as he surveys a group of nomads who have set up camp in distant foothills to our flank. Far to the north of Musa Qala, the patrol is operating in a remote wilderness of plain and mountain, allegedly used by the Taleban as a principal supply route to the Sangin valley. The Marines move warily. It is the first time British forces have reached the area.
As they move slowly northwards, a young Marine does much of the talking with the villagers. Marine Dominic Williman, 19, is one of four men in the company trained to have a working knowledge of Pashtu. He also carries his section’s medium machinegun. He has spoken with locals, as well as firing a few thousand rounds their way.
“I’m not saying that I’ve made a difference,” he says, “but it may help for them to see their enemy — a young boy in their eyes — speak their language and offset the perception of the Brits given to them by the elders who haven’t seen a foreign soldier since the Russians.”
The villagers appear wary but not hostile. Their message is always the same: they have not seen the Taleban, they do not know any Taleban, their Government has done nothing for them, they want nothing from the British but to be left alone.But then the patrol reaches Tizni, which local intelligence sources have suggested is a rest and administration centre for Taleban fighters. It is apparently empty. As Tug leads his six Marines into the village, men start pouring out of the mosque. Within a minute more than 70 have gathered. They are turbaned, bearded, and of combat age — “Panini-sticker Talebs”, Tug calls them.
Mohammed Ali, his Hazara interpreter, agrees. “Taleban, all of them.” As the Afghans stare at Tug, he calls the rest of the patrol and seems set on searching every Afghan and the entire village. But then Major Murchison arrives. He takes off his helmet and sits down. All the Afghans sit down too. They talk for a while. The major tells them that they have nothing to be afraid of. British forces are not here to eradicate their opium poppies. They are not an occupying force like the Russians. They are here to provide security so development can take place.
That can only happen if they tell him where the Taleban are.
The men tell the major that they are frightened of the Government, whose police have robbed them. There are, of course, no Taleban in the area. They are upset because two women and two children were killed in crossfire between Nato and the Taleban last year. They want to be left alone.
The atmosphere is more wary curiosity than tension, though on a different day the same men may well see one another down a gun barrel. The meeting ends amicably enough, neither side having given anything away.
Tug still wants to search the whole place, starting with the mosque, but is ordered not to. As the major turns to leave the Afghans push a mentally handicapped man toward him.
While he grins inanely the laughing crowd turn his coloured cap upside down and ask for some money to be given to him. The major’s interpreter hands over a few dollars. The patrol leaves Tizni, benefactor to the single fool.
Day 6
“We are as afraid of you as we are of the Taleban,” the elder tells the Marines. He has just walked out from his village to parley with the patrol. After insisting that there are no Taleban in the area he walks back towards his home, a small settlement of compounds north of the Naw Zad valley. He is lying. Less than an hour later, in the empty compound of a neighbouring village, Tug discovers nearly 12,000 rounds of Kalashnikov ammunition stored in sealed green packages. Further searching reveals some 107mm rockets. Near by, farmers are weeding their fields. All deny any knowledge.
“The thing that gets me,” Tug muses, “is that we find a huge cache in a hut and some bloke doing the lawn ten metres away says he knows nothing about it. Yeah, right.”
The next proof of Taleban presence comes quickly. As the company approaches a village barely a kilometre from the cache, rockets and machinegun fire erupt. In an instant, the Marines inside Beowulf are galvanised. They all want to get out and into the gunfight.
“Get us in there, get us f***ing in there,” they murmur, as the interpreter reads a prayer from the Koran.
Another troop gets the assault task. As they pile out of their vehicles to the crash of gunfire, we hear over the radio the desperate call denoting a British casualty, “man down, man down”. In the confusion a Viking has rolled over a Marine. Both cabs — 12 tonnes — right over his torso.
Immediately, the emphasis switches to saving the man. The South African leaps out of the back with Marine “Geri” Halliwell and starts pumping 51mm mortar rounds into the Taleb positions to cover the casualty’s removal. The helicopter-borne response team of medics and doctor, on permanent standby in Camp Bastion, arrives within their target of 45 minutes, the “golden hour” in which most injured men can be saved. The fighting intensifies as the marines cover the Chinook’s arrival.
And then it’s over. Everyone is back in their Vikings. And in Beowulf, Tug’s men fall asleep. They can go from full-on fight to fast asleep in five minutes.
That night Major Murchison walks over with news of the casualty. Not only is the Marine alive, but his bones are unbroken and his insides uncrushed. The weight displacement of the Viking is more than just myth.
He explains his decisions to halt the fight. “It’s my responsibility to take you into places and bring you out alive,” he tells them. “I wasn’t prepared to push that bit further, go in, take casualties, only to have to leave it at the end of the day.” Artillery could not be used as its shells would have risked the death of innocent civilians.
“These Pashtun people here all lie to you,” Mohammed Ali tells the Major. “You should shoot two men from each village, and their cattle, and then they will tell you the truth.”
“I know they all lie to me,” he replies. “But we’re not the Russians and we don’t execute people.”
Day 7
The Talebs get a result of their own. The Marines are on the way back towards Naw Zad to raid a Taleban concentration. The Talebs hit them early.
Before the move, Tug gave a set of orders for the operation so rousing that they would have mobilised a conscientious objector to ardent militancy. Then he took Marine Gregg Packham aside. Packham has only just arrived and has not yet been in a hard fight. “OK mate, this is what it’s all about now,” Tug told him. “This is what you are here for. And we’re glad to have you with us. Stay close. You’ll be all right. Let’s get stuck in there.”
As we move off Packham is sitting opposite me. His legs shake and I don’t envy him. Only a fool laughs in the face of their first battle.
Then it all goes wrong. As the lead vehicles cross through a pass east of Naw Zad they come across an explosive device. The company halts short of it. It partially explodes. A bigger device detonates just beyond it. Next, between five and ten Taleb gunmen, concealed in rocks high above them on each side of the pass, open up.
The men cannot identify the Taleb positions. Their heavy machineguns cannot be raised to strafe the peaks. The 105mm field guns and mortars fire without effect. Two Apache helicopters arrive but would have to fly over an area suspected of containing an antiaircraft gun. So they bottle out. “Great,” remarks one of the troop commanders on hearing this. “Imagine us not getting out of the vehicle because we were worried someone would shoot us.”
All the time the Taleban are firing on the Marines, who now cannot move forward because of the likelihood of further mines. Eventually the company manages to return without casualty. For all their armour, their technology, their airpower, they have been thwarted by no more than ten men in high ground with just two bombs and some Kalashnikovs.
I never encounter a sense of personal animosity towards the Talebs from the Marines. If anything they respect them, even identify with them. “I’ve listened in on their sentries at night in the cold saying ‘it’s crap’, just like we do,” Marine Williman tells me. “Or complain that some idiot has brought them up the wrong bit of kit.”
The South African sniper adds: “They have their score and we have ours. Taleban aren’t just fighters: it’s a way of life for a lot of people here. Calling them Taleban is probably wrong too. It implies everyone who wants that way of life is a terrorist or going to shoot at you, when they’re not.”
Day 9
In many ways fighting the Taleban is the easiest part of the Marines’ war.
There is a darker side. Civilians have been wounded and killed during some operations. One Marine told me of rushing into a house from which he just been fired upon. A door slammed in his face. He put a long burst of gunfire through it and kicked it down.
Inside were were two dead, a man and a teenage boy. Neither was armed. Guns were later found in the house.
On another occasion, during a heavy engagement, he kicked in the door of a house the Marines had fired on to find seven women, children and old people inside, all badly wounded.
He dragged them into a yard and with another Marine bandaged every casualty. Two died. But the wounded six-year-old girl sticks in his mind. One of her legs was torn open by gunfire.
“People said to me afterwards, ‘Don’t worry about it’,” he tells me. “But that girl, she hadn’t been shooting at us. She was just in a house where someone else was shooting. And now she’s going to be scarred for life.”
Day 10
Rip, roar and havoc. Not a fight. A battle. Fire from the front. Fire from the flanks. Rockets and bullets scything through the air. Up to 30 Taleban in 12 different positions have opened up from close range before we are out of the vehicles. The rear door swings open and we pitch out from the warm womb of the Viking into sudden light, chattering machineguns, explosions and whipping lead: nought-to-ninety in a second on an adrenalin high. Hit the ground. Run. See an empty trench.
Dive into it. To our left one of the open-deck Land Rovers, a mobile machinegun platform is firing withering bursts at Talebs shooting from dunes beyond. Tug is to assault the position with his six Marines. They peel out of cover and take a long run leftwards.
The air zips and zings. I can see “Tommo”, the Rover commander, coolly sitting astride the lip of the ridge, in clear view of the Talebs, fire off a Javelin rocket, then jump back into his vehicle and blast away again with the machinegun. From all along the ridgeline around us Marines are firing and being fired upon.
“Let’s go, let’s f***ing go,” Tug yells and the section is up and moving into the shingle dunes as the Taleban run down a slope the other side. The Marines take cover at the edge, and fire upon targets in the village below. The nearest house is less than 100 yards away. They take fire from it and Tugs pumps a grenade through a window. A wounded chicken flaps out.
“Oh Tug, you wounded the poor little bird, finish it off mate!” Marines are laughing and shooting.
But there are more than little birds out there. I see a running black figure stop and turn, rifle up and glittering as he shoots at us. And above the automatic fire I hear the smacking retort of South African’s sniper rifle.
As artillery and mortar bombs thump into the low ground, Tug and the last three Marines become pinned down by a Taleban sniper. I see a round smack into the shingle barely 2ft from Tug’s head, the latest very close call of a heavy 3½hour fight.
Though the Taleban are pushed off their forward positions quickly enough, they regroup below and target the company with rockets and mortar bombs. I see a rocket explode right beside the section accompanied by Richard Mills, perhaps 15 feet beyond them. I do not wonder if they are hit. I am sure of it. Yet none is.
The Taleban are still shooting as the Marines return to their Vikings. As many as 20 insurgents are believed dead, but their rocket fire continues as J Company leaves the ridge. Inside Beowulf, the men assess the fight to have been in the “top five” of those they have had since arriving in Afghanistan last autumn. Then they stop talking, and begin to doze off.
Most are still asleep as the patrol returns to base. They have only two days before another long patrol in northern Helmand.
“Yeah, that was hoofing in the end,” Tug says cheerily, as his men wander away to their tents. “Another good trip courtesy of Tug Wilson Travel.”
And I wonder whether J Company’s luck will hold, whether they will all come back from the next mission.
By the camp’s gate, mounted on a blast-proof wall, the company’s death’s head jester grins and winks fixedly, as if guardian of the answer.
Follow the link to the article at the times where there is also videos of J company on this particular 10 day operation.
