on leave. ‘They were pretty much a joke really,’ said Timms. ‘The moment we arrived they said, “We are glad you are here, we can sleep now,” and took no further part in defending their district centre.’
Corporal Chris Prosser of Support Company, who went with Timms’s men, felt some sympathy for them. They were, at least, ‘trying to do something for their own country’. The Paras built six sangars. They put Afghan policemen alongside them on the front gate so the people of the town could see that this was a joint effort. Despite the apparent normality, there was an undercurrent of sinister activity in the town. Intelligence reports warned that the Taliban were watching the new arrivals. ‘They were basically dicking us,’ said Prosser. ‘Trying to work out the layouts, how many people we had, what sort of weapons, basically the general set-up in Now Zad.’
One night there was a report that an attack was imminent and the garrison was ordered to stand to. But nothing developed, and on 2 June the Paras handed over to a small force from ‘D’ Company of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Gurkha Rifles. Now Zad was to turn out to be a much hotter assignment than the Gurkhas’ original task of protecting Camp Bastion. When ‘B’ Company returned later that summer, the place was unrecognisable. ‘It was a complete war zone,’ said Timms. ‘Nobody was there any more. The shops were shut. A lot of the buildings had been demolished by air strikes.’
By answering the Afghan government’s distress signal, the British were now committed to the defence of Now Zad. Tootal’s intention was to support the Afghan forces rather than to do their job for them. The day after ‘B’ Company’s deployment, despite the established risk of ambush, an enormous seventy-six-vehicle convoy was put together to deploy a fresh company of ANA soldiers to FOB Robinson near Sangin and take out those who were there. It was led by the CO of 7 RHA and boss of the OMLTs, David Hammond.
The job of screening the convoy along the 70-mile route from Bastion was given to Mark Swann and Patrols Platoon. ‘It was quite a tricky task because the vehicles kept getting stuck and it took twenty-odd hours to get up there,’ he said. When they finally arrived at FOB Robinson, Swann was handed another task. The Canadians ordered Colonel Hammond to press on the extra few miles to Sangin town itself. Once again, the Afghan government was claiming that disaster was imminent. The district centre, the administrative compound that was the symbol of its flimsy authority, was supposed to be under siege.
Hammond asked Swann to carry out an old-fashioned recce, probing forward to establish whether the Taliban were present, and if so, where exactly they were. Effectively, this meant driving around until they were shot at. After the long journey chaperoning the lumbering convoy, Patrols Platoon were exhausted. ‘My boys were absolutely chinned at this point,’ said Swann, ‘but we had to do it.’ The platoon was mounted in WMIKs, modified Land Rovers. The acronym stood for Weapons Mount Installation Kit, a reference to the rig that allowed a heavy Browning .50-calibre machine gun to be bolted on to the back. The man on the gun could swivel the weapon through 360 degrees and lay down a devastating stream of fire that could rip up anything short of a tank at a range of 1,300 yards. The firepower was further boosted by a 7.62mm GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun), which was operated by the vehicle commander from the passenger seat. The Rover’s 4.2-litre engine made it fast and powerful and its manoeuvrability was impressive if it was not too heavily laden. The WMIK looked like the descendant of the Vickers gun-toting jeeps driven by the Long Range Desert Group which operated in North Africa and was the precursor of the SAS. Swann and his men saw themselves as belonging to the same tradition.
It was the middle of the night when Patrols got their orders. The cover of darkness would be welcome. But it also increased the risk of running into one of the unmarked minefields left behind by the Soviet army. It was wiser to wait for first light, and the platoon took the very welcome opportunity to get their heads down for a few hours.
As they set off at dawn, intelligence warned that the Taliban were preparing an ambush. Swann altered course and set off on a dogleg, diverting from the straight route to town. They arrived at Sangin District Centre unharmed and called Lieutenant Colonel Hammond and the Afghans, telling them to follow the route they had taken. Swann had been impressed by the incident. He said later: ‘This was the point when I thought that this was not going to just be a few stray rounds being fired at me by some young lad trying to prove something. These people are organised.’
Hammond and the Afghans occupied the district centre and toured the police checkpoints. The local security forces denied that they were facing any serious threat from the insurgents. That did not mean that the Taliban were not there. The atmosphere seemed tense to Swann as he drove around Sangin. ‘People ran away when we approached. Through our optics we could see people in the distance getting down into what could only be described as firing positions. We couldn’t see the weapons so we didn’t engage … you saw people prowling.’
One of their Pinzgauer carriers broke down. The edgy atmosphere persuaded Swann to order his men to strip it and rig it with explosives. ‘We thought if we are attacked now we are going to have to leave this vehicle and we can’t leave it to them.’ These were the sorts of procedures associated with war fighting. At dusk a Chinook flew in to lift the ‘Pinz’ out.
The Paras were beginning to get a practical understanding of the sort of enemy they were facing. The Taliban had shown that they were determined. They were also tactically cunning and used their knowledge of the terrain to mount well-thought-out ambushes. Furthermore, they could count on a degree of support from local people. Some of this was extracted through coercion. But some, as the shoot-out on Route 611 suggested, was given willingly. All this gave the insurgents a robust self-confidence. The realisation was growing that they meant it when they boasted of driving the British out.
Back in Bastion, Stuart Tootal was growing increasingly concerned at the direction the mission was taking. The Now Zad diversion was unwelcome. It meant fixing troops that needed to be mobile if they were to function properly in one location. The need to resupply them would place a further strain on the helicopters. The battle group could not function without support helicopters. Helmand had few roads, which made land movement predictable and vulnerable to roadside bombs and ambushes. The troops would have to rely on the Chinooks to transport them around the battlefield, supply them with food and ammunition and get them back to the base hospital when they were wounded.
The Chinook was developed by Boeing as a heavy-lift aircraft and came into service in 1962. It is still in military and civilian use all over the world. The variant used by the RAF – the CH-47 – dated back to 1966. It is a big, blunt beast, nearly 100 feet long with twin engines and two 60-foot rotors throbbing in tandem. It can fly high, with a ceiling of 18,500 feet, which made it especially useful in mountainous Afghanistan. It can carry thirty to forty men depending on the weight of kit or 28,000 pounds of cargo. All in all it is a fine machine. ‘Chinooks are the ultimate battlefield helicopter,’ said Flying Officer Chris Hasler of 18 Squadron RAF, who won a Distinguished Flying Cross piloting them. One of the squadron’s ships was over twenty-five years old and had seen service in the Falklands. Age hardly made any difference. Fixed-wing aircraft have a main spar running through the fuselage and wings that have a limited lifespan. Choppers go on and on. ‘Helicopters are almost like Lego sets,’ said Hasler. ‘You can bolt things on, take blades off, put in a new engine, but you still have the same frame. You can make a [Chinook] pretty new just by replacing some bits.’
The trouble was there were not enough of them. Seven were assigned to the task force, of which only five were serviceable at any one time, while the rest were in for maintenance. The heat and dust of Helmand made it a tough environment for rotary aircraft and regular checks were essential. The number of flying hours was restricted for safety reasons. In order to get the most use out of the helicopters, Tootal suggested that they be moved forward to Bastion from Kandahar where they were based. From the beginning the pilots spent most of their time at Bastion, accompanied by a small engineering detachment who lived in a tent alongside the machines, permanently caked in the dust that was kicked up
