3 Para. Patrick Bishop
Martin Taylor. © Major Will Pike
WO2 Zac Leong. © Captain Martin Taylor
Captain Matt Taylor. © Lieutenant Martin Hewitt
SECOND PLATE SECTION
Captains Alex Mackenzie and mate Piers Ashfield having a brew at
Sangin. © Lieutenant Martin Hewitt
Corporal Jay Jackson on stag in Sangin. © Corporal Dave Salmon
Regimental Sergeant Major John Hardy.
© Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal
Lieutenant Ollie Dale gets his head down in Sangin.
© Corporal Dave Salmon
The Pathfinders at Musa Qaleh. © Nick Wight-Boycott
Sergeant Major Mick Bolton in front of the Sangin district centre.
© Captain Euan Goodman
A mortar section at Sangin fires in support of patrols on the
ground. © Captain Euan Goodman
A Chinook takes off from Sangin under fire. © Corporal Carl Tees
Private Pete McKinley recovering from shrapnel wounds in the
base hospital. © Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal
Corporal Bryan Budd on patrol in Sangin. © Captain Hugo Farmer
Rifleman Nabin Rai after a contact with Taliban in Now Zad.
© Major Dan Rex
Major Huw Williams, Captain Nick French and a signaller at Musa
Qaleh. © Captain Martin Taylor
A .50-cal heavy machine gun inside a well-reinforced sangar at
Sangin. © Major Jamie Loden
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal in the desert near Musa Qaleh.
© Captain Nick French
Heading out to the helicopter landing site after a successful
resupply operation at Musa Qaleh. © Crown copyright
‘Giving the Taliban the good news’. Watching an air strike go in
outside Musa Qaleh. © Crown copyright
Sergeant Christopher ‘Freddie’ Kruyer. © Staff Sergeant Pete Joiner
Dinner at Bastion. © Crown copyright
Major Adam Jowett, OC of Easy Company, chats with local elders.
© Gaz Faulkner
Captain Hugo Farmer on patrol in Gereshk in full kit.
© Captain Emma Couper
Private Dave Prosser and other members of Mortar Platoon.
© Sergeant Freddie Kruyer
A shura in Sangin.
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright
material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise
for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing
acknowledgments in any future editions.
Afghanistan
Helmand Province
Sangin
Gereshk
Musa Qaleh
Now Zad
At about 8 a.m. on the morning of 6 September 2006 Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal rolled out of his cot, pulled on his uniform and boots and set off along the duckboard walkway to catch up on overnight events.
The sun was already high and a pale, malevolent haze hovered over the talcum-powder dust of the Helmand desert. He reached a tent bristling with radio antennae and pushed aside the door flap. Inside it was warm and stuffy. The gloom was pricked with little nails of green and red light, winking from stacks of electronic consoles. It was quiet except for the occasional squawk from the radios. This was the Joint Operational Command, the ‘JOC’, where the synapses of the battle group he led came together.
Tootal was slight, wiry and driven. He was as interested in the theory of soldiering as he was in the practice, and had as many degrees as battle honours. His enthusiasm for his job was matched by his concern for his men. There would be much to be concerned about before the day was over.
The 3 Para battle group had arrived in Helmand five months earlier. Its task was to create a security zone within which development agencies could get to work on projects to develop an area barely touched by progress and lay the foundations for a future of relative prosperity.
The plan had always been aspirational. The religious warriors of the Taliban, who were struggling to reassert their power in the province, were certain to oppose the arrival of the British.
Everyone had expected some trouble, but not the relentless combat the soldiers were now immersed in. The reconstruction mission had become a memory. 3 Para and their comrades were fighting a desperate war of attrition. Most of them were besieged in bare mud-and-breeze-block government compounds – ‘platoon houses’, as they had become known – scattered over the north of the province, fighting off daily attacks from an enemy who, despite taking murderous losses, kept on coming. They spent their days pounded by the sun as they took their turn at ‘stag’, crouching in sandbagged, rooftop gun positions, or standing by to run to their posts when the shooting started. They slept on floors, washed rarely and lived off ration packs and sterilised water. They were gaunt, bony and rough looking. Their sunburned faces were fuzzed with beards, just like those of the men they were fighting.
They were on their own out there. Beyond the walls of the compound and the shattered towns lay tawny, sun-baked mountains and vast stretches of desert, ridged with dry watercourses. The mother base at Camp Bastion was far away and they were connected to it by the slimmest of links, the helicopters whose vulnerability to the insurgents’ fire made every sortie heart-stoppingly tense.
The morning started calmly. The previous day, most of the fighting had been around the base at Musa Qaleh, a broken-down fortress in the middle of a ghost town, now inhabited only by men trying to kill each other. It was held by the soldiers of Easy Company, some of whom had been there for thirty-one days. In the morning, the insurgents had lobbed five mortars into the compound from concealed positions in the maze of alleyways and walled