29th December
What a fucking quality day that was, big fucking contacts all day long nonstop smashing Taliban, nearly got shot 4 times and I mean fucking close, but we got the prick that was shooting at us and confirmed 2 dead enemies as well. So sit back and have a brew this is going to be a long one. 1120 we left Qudrat and made our way straight to C32 M1T, and had a chat with the bloke that had been moving back in there. So the boss goes up to the bloke and says, ‘why the fuck have you moved back into a Taliban firing point?’, and that if we are fired upon from his compound we will be firing back at the enemy, so ‘keep your head down if the rounds start coming in, or tell Taliban to fuck off and we’ll do our best to help him in the future’.
So after this I got the message to take the patrol down to C12 M1T, but en route the boss decided a quick route change and we headed down towards the shooting gallery, spot 27 M1T. I made sure that we moved quick across the open ground making sure not to expose ourselves for any longer then we had to, and we made it to the gallery, past the mullah’s compound, and I got a message from the boss which kind of shit me up a bit ‘Burt stay up on the road and patrol down’, ‘Roger that boss’, as my ass was going 5p 50p I started patrolling down the shooting gallery, something that I never thought we were going to be able to do at the start of the tour because it was like a Taliban highway. Patrolling down we pushed down to C11 M1T, ( where I dropped that UGL over the wall a few weeks ago), again we were taking back more ground, and I thought at the time, this is so being set up for an ambush, if they can take the gun’s from the sanger’s out of the equation and just fight us.
Me and S….., my cover man pushed down to the SE corner and I Valumed a ditch around the compound for the lad’s to take cover and then came back to join S……, Not 30 second’s being back in that ditch I had time to put the Valum away and just spark a bine when, ‘POP”POP”CRACK”SMASH’, ‘CONTACT’, and the rounds were smashing off the wall not 10 inches from my face, and we both kind of fell back in the ditch on top of each other in the ditch rounds starting whizzing over our heads, so we clambered back up and I stared smashing UGL HE into the firing point around 200m away and S……., started smashing it with the LMG. Luckily the super sanger had eye’s on and was still able to put round’s in with the GPMG, so watching UGL HE, LMG and the GPMG on top of the other lad’s riffles smashing this position was nothing less them impressive.
So at this point it was all about taking the fight to the enemy no smoke screening just doing what Para’s do best and take the fight forward. We split down into two fire teams, Myself, J.., S…., TJ and L….., were the forward team and the other lad’s, The Boss, The Turp, the ECM men and the medic were the rear fire team. So we started bounding to compounds, we pushed to C8 100m away cleared the compound and called up the boss’s team. Again me and S….., pushed to the SE corner of C8 where we had eye’s on C30, 29, 28 and 21 M1T, J.., pushed up with us on the corner, when we realized we had a blind spot just round the corner, so we pushed round to cover that spot, clear it then moved back as we realized we were fucking exposed to every angle possible. As we were all looking, Me and J.. were talking, and decided that the best firing point to where we are now would be from a gap in the wall in C21, so we kept eye’s on it and saw 2 dickers hanging around that area looking at us constantly. Call sign UGLY was hanging further north out of earshot of everything, but still having eyes on.
10 minute’s past the ‘POP”POP’CRACK”CRACK’, me and S….. were shot at again from C21, so I put two HE into in C21, bringing the patrol onto target and everyone just went Winchester into that compound, then a second firing point from C30 round’s whizzing past me and S….. again narrowly missing us, I shouted ‘FUCK ME DO WE LOOK LIKE FIGURE 11’S OR SOMETHING’, the fire from us brought on UGLY to C21 and C30, and as we were bounding up to C21 with the second fire team covering us all I heard was a FFFFFSSSSWWWHHHH! UGLY had fired a hellfire and we all hit the deck in case the UGLY miss judged who was who and that was headed for us, but the round smashed just next to C30, so we jumped back up and ran to C21. Again the 2nd fire team followed suit once we cleared the compound.
The boss got a call from UGLY that, ‘confirmed dead enemy’, so we started to push further south towards C30 to exploit this information. After clearing the compounds around C30, we got into all round defense and found the body of a Taliban fighter. Mid to late 20’s, with a ruined PKM next to him, a half box of ammo and an i-com radio. This was the prick that nearly slotted me and S….. twice earlier, and it was good to see the prick face down in the dirt. We bagged and tagged the PKM, radio, took his DNA and left his body there for the local’s to bury. After this we were all running a bit low on ammo after having 3 separate contacts and we were over 1.5k from Qudrat, so we had to collapse back to Qudrat as this has been a successful day.
On the way back the boss stopped to talk to some elder’s that were out looking, so a good chance to tell them what happened and build some heart’s and mind’s. I can’t remember what compound it was we were at, but we got into all round defense and had a chance to have a bine some water etc. The boss got a call from UGLY and reported to us, ‘Lad’s a Taliban fighter is laying an IED in a ditch around a kilometer to our north so if you hear an explosion don’t worry’, then FFFFSSSSWWWHHHH, the hellfire came flying over our heads and,’BOOOM”FUCKING BOOOM’, the explosion was around 100m away and a secondary explosion from the IED, all of us got our heads down and the explosion was just immense and I think I felt some of the shockwave I wasn’t sure, but I definately saw a half a torso flying through the air! ‘So I take it UGLY got his grid ref wrong!’, as we were the closest call sign we were told to again go and exploit the situation. So we pushed up and found the body, well I say body, use your imagination the human body Vs. a hellfire, was 60m from the explosion. Again DNA was taken and some of the raw explosives were taken for evidence, then we headed back to Qudrat after 6 hour’s out on the ground.
So a good day all in all, I was nearly shot on 3 separate occasions, two confirmed dead Taliban I got down 15 HE UGL’S plus a mag, and now I’m fucked, what a fucking day.
