An Ordinary Soldier

Afghanistan: A ferocious enemy. A bloody conflict. One man's impossible mission

Doug Beattie MC

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781847393999
• eBook ISBN: 9781847398925

On 11th September 2006 - exactly five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers - a modern day Rorke's Drift was played out in the town of Garmsir, known as the Taliban gateway to Helmand Province. 40-year-old Capt. Doug Beattie of the 1stBattalion Royal Irish Regiment was charged with the mission to help retake Garmsir from the Taliban. His commanders said it would take two days; it actually took two weeks of exhausting, bloody conflict in which at times he would be one of only a small unit up against a ferocious enemy in impossible conditions.For his repeated bravery Doug Beattie was decorated with the Military Cross. AN ORDINARY SOLDIER offers an extraordinary insight into the mission in Afghanistan and, crucially, the relationship between British troops and the Afghans they serve alongside. Above all, it's Beattie's personal story of being what he modestly calls 'an ordinary soldier' - someone who balances being a loving father and husband with that of fighting in the world's most hostile place. It demands to be read.

ONE

SUICIDE BOMBER

12 DECEMBER 2006

When it came, the explosion sounded rather insignificant. Muffled, rumbling, it could almost have been a roll of thunder. But there was nothing ordinary about its effects.

Shattered glass covered me as the windows blew in, drumming against my back, showering my hair, going down my neck.

The blast forced me towards the floor, bending me double.

Dust engulfed the room and everyone in it.

Everything happened so fast, chaos coming out of nowhere, scrambling my mind. I could see and feel what was going on, but couldn’t make any immediate sense of it, my brain trying frantically to catch up with events.

An instant earlier and everything had been normal, as expected, routine even. I had been having lunch, sharing a meal with local members of the Afghan security forces, in the compound of the Governor of Helmand Province in Lashkar Gah, southern Afghanistan. I had already been feeling out of place, a long way from home, sitting there on a matted filthy carpet, next to men whose faces portrayed a lifetime of hardship and low expectation. Now it was as if a million miles separated me from my family and friends left behind in the UK.

With the others I had been digging into a communal pot of rice and meat–was it goat? lamb?–scooping out handfuls of food and piling it on the flat circles of bread balanced on my lap, adding fresh tomatoes from another bowl, talking as I ate.

Now the meal, like everything else, was strewn all around. Not that you could easily tell what was food and what wasn’t; a layer of grey covered the contents of the room.

I fumbled about for the handset of the radio, all fingers and thumbs.

‘Topaz Zero, this is Topaz 40. Contact explosion. Wait. Out.’

It was a struggle to keep the panic out of my voice, the words calm and coherent. I had to swallow back the fear.

The message flashed to the British base in the town. After five months serving in Afghanistan this was far from the first time I had made a contact report, but never before had the bland wording hidden such a catastrophic event.

I pushed the mic towards the signaller who was with me and shouted at him to get his helmet on and grab his rifle. He should have been the one who made the radio call, but he sat there stunned, rooted to the spot, his face painted with dirt, just his eyes visible behind the mask. I’d only worked with him on a couple of other occasions. I wasn’t even sure of his real name. Everyone else called him Chilli. So I did, too. He never objected. Chilli was just nineteen years old, with a soft youthful face, yet his hair was already receding. This was going to do nothing to stop that.

I groped for my own gear, trying to steady my shaking hands, snatching hold of the SA80, struggling to pull on the body armour. Forcing my helmet down on my head, I stumbled upstairs to find the epicentre of the blast.

I didn’t have far to go. Just ten small steps.

Emerging through the wooden door into the glare of daylight, the sight that met me was wretched.

I looked around the elongated courtyard trying to take in what I was seeing. An eerie silence hung over the scene as the dust cloud finally settled like a curtain falling on the last act of a hideous farce.

I stood there watching, a witness rather than a participant. To my left two men crawled–no, dragged themselves–slowly, pitifully into a flowerbed, seeking some shelter amongst the stunted shrubs. I couldn’t make out any of their wounds, but there was little doubt they were fatally hurt, the blood that drenched their white robes telling its own story. With barely a murmur they both curled up amongst the withered plants to die.

Diagonally across the yard, perhaps twenty metres away, two more were already dead. Their contorted remains lay sprawled on the dirt, huge chunks of flesh missing from the bodies, fluids seeping into the Afghan earth.

Directly in front of me, by the main entrance to the compound, were parked a pair of open-backed pickup trucks, their bodywork peppered with holes, the windows smashed in by the blast. Hesitantly I walked over towards them, wanting to help if I could, but frightened of what I might find. In the first, behind the wheel, sat a young bearded man, as still as a statue, he too, far beyond help. His complexion gave it away; where it should have been dark, swarthy, it was pale, the life and colour sapped from it.

I turned my attention to the second vehicle. There were two people in it: one was propped up against the tailgate, facing away from me, seemingly unscathed; the other was on the floor of the truck squirming about in a crimson, sticky mess, seeking some sort of comfort from the metal beneath him, scratching and scraping, trying to dig his way out of pain, looking to ease the agony.

The silence had started to lift and screams, shouts and moans were beginning to fill the void. The movement of the second man slowed and stopped as he too succumbed to his injuries, his weak grip on life easily prised away, the blood already settling and congealing around his corpse.

I grabbed hold of the other Afghan by the arm and tried to turn him towards me. As I twisted him round, I recoiled in shock, letting go. The majority of the front of his body was missing. Much of the skin on his face had been flayed away; what remained hung limply, looking as if it had been peeled back with a paring knife. The eye sockets were empty. I stared, mesmerised, at the vacant holes. His jaw had been wrenched from its anchors, resting now on his neck, forming a huge, ghastly, gaping grin. Innumerable fragments of the bomb had ripped through his smock and then into his torso, puncturing the chest and stomach, hacking away big swathes of skin, bone and tissue.

He must have borne the brunt of the explosion; been almost nose to nose with the suicide bomber when he blew himself to kingdom come.

The effects of the detonation assaulted all my senses. For a quarter of a century I had been a professional soldier. At various times I’d seen some horrible things, many of them in recent weeks. But here, laid out in front of me, all the possible horrors of war had come together in a nightmarish scene. It was as bad as you could imagine and then some.

The competing smells of burnt flesh, singed clothing, charred metal and flaming petrol mixed and swirled, contaminating the air. And there was something else–the unmistakable coppery odour of human blood. You could taste it on your tongue.

Other Afghans were now running about, trying to bring order to the aftermath, trying to help their friends, pouring out their anguish for the victims. Urgent voices came from all quarters of the compound but I couldn’t understand anything of what was being said. The noise invaded my head and yet I felt completely alone and disengaged. Nothing of what was happening seemed to have form or direction. I was like an impotent speck caught up in a vortex of frantic activity. The noise was building to a crescendo; it was like the sea roaring in my ears. I managed to pick out some identifiable sounds, sirens in particular, probably from ambulances arriving from the nearby hospital, but the rest was just a jumbled mess.

Then a cry in English cut through the maelstrom: ‘Captain, we have to go. Now!’

I turned to face Namir. My interpreter was just twenty-two but already married with two children. He was excellent at what he did–speaking Pashtu and Italian as well as English–and by Afghan standards he earned a good salary, but his job wasn’t one to be envied. Many of his friends and neighbours hated that he worked for the British forces. Already he had received death threats because of his choice of employer. Namir was always nervous. Now there was a look of panic on his face. Or was it bewilderment?

With Namir close behind, I headed back to the main building and down the steps into the half-basement where we had been eating to send another sitrep (situation report), telling whoever was listening that at least eight people had died–including the bomber–and at least eight more were injured.

As I relayed my message it became clear that Namir, Chilli and I were on our own; the whole contingent from the Afghan Protection Force–whose job it was to guard the section of the Governor’s compound where we worked–were long gone. The Governor remained upstairs in his second-floor office, shielded by his personal bodyguards, but we weren’t going to feature on their list of priorities.

From outside came more shouting. Through the jagged shards of glass framing one of the broken windows I could see uniformed men frantically waving their arms.

‘Namir, what’s going on?’ I demanded.

‘They think there’s another suicide bomber in the compound.’

This was not news I wanted to hear.

I got back on the radio. I could hardly believe what I was saying. ‘Topaz Zero this is Topaz 40. Do not send the Quick Reaction Force. Repeat, do not send the QRF. Chance of another suicide attack.’ My mouth was as dry as a desert, a result of nerves, and the dust I had ingested in the blast, and I struggled to get the words out.

The company commander in Lashkar Gah came on the radio network from our base at the HQ of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) four miles away. I confirmed with him that the QRF was to stay put. It’s funny how things turn out. Just that morning he and I had had a conversation about how unsafe the town was. He urged me to call for help if we ever got into a tight corner and said he would come running. Very much in that corner, there I was trying to stop him carrying out his promise. But if I had allowed him to keep it, it would only have resulted in more men being endangered.

Reluctantly he accepted what I told him, before adding: ‘If things get worse, if you change your mind, we’ll get you out.’

If things got worse? How much worse could it be?

An insurgent had just got through two security checkpoints and blown himself to bits. Seven others were also dead. And now there was the very real possibility of another would-be martyr adding to the carnage. I was without Afghan backup and had just one British military colleague with me as support. How could the situation get any fucking worse?

I was terrified. My stomach churned and my heart raced.

What I really wanted, what I was desperate for, was to be overruled and for assistance to get on its way. I had an overwhelming sense of helplessness. This was now a game of chance, with the odds stacked against me, my fate out of my hands, my future left to the whim of some fanatical bomber who might or might not use the opportunity to meet his maker and take me with him. I could only imagine it was like being on a plane about to crash. You are alive, but know with utmost certainty that death will visit shortly and there is absolutely nothing in the world you can do to influence the outcome.

I want to say I felt a sense of paternalism and responsibility towards Chilli and Namir–God, I was old enough to be their dad–but most of all I was scared for me. I did not want to die.

There weren’t many options open to us. Going back into the courtyard would only bring us face to face with any other bomber. Even going out through the shattered window would lead us to the same place. And anyway, where could we go from there? We had no transport and the environment outside the compound was probably as hostile as within it, with much of the local population not well disposed towards the British.

The only thing that stood between a second bomber and us was a glass door. I pointed my rifle at the entrance, double-checked that the safety was off and put my finger on the trigger, ready to shoot anyone who appeared through it.

Even before that moment, before my conversation earlier that day, the job of working in the compound and liaising with the Afghan National Police (ANP), the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the government’s intelligence branch, had been recognised as important but high-risk.

All across Helmand Province, coalition commanders with the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) were nervous. Their men rarely travelled off-base unless in large groups with heavy weapons and medics.

In Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, being somewhat out of sight and hence out of mind, the arrangements were a bit more flexible. They needed to be or else we would never have got anything done. But the bulk of the British contingent still wouldn’t move without strength of numbers. However, I generally made my own ad hoc arrangements. If I had not then I would never have got to where I was supposed to be going. It was the reality of life on the ground.

When I first arrived in Lashkar Gah, transport was provided by the men of 21 Air Defence Battery Royal Artillery, who were based in the town. We also came to rely on assistance from foreign coalition colleagues serving with ISAF and this worked fine for two or three months. But ISAF became increasingly reluctant to help. The commanders were worried our movements were setting too regular a pattern and hence making us especially vulnerable to attack from the Taliban. So Chilli and I were forced to improvise by thumbing lifts. Luckily there were some people who were happy to oblige. The keenest was the man who ran the US-sponsored Poppy Eradication Programme (PEP) in Helmand, Charles Bennett. A jovial Irish Catholic from County Tyrone, he had served for many years in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), leaving only when it disbanded. In his early life he had spent time living in Rhodesia. Charles was the epitome of the well-read, well-travelled adventurer. Some would say he was also well dressed, though in my view his sartorial style was more eccentric than fashionable. Certainly you could always see him coming. He insisted on wearing an old-style pith helmet that lent him a colonial air. This was no shrinking violet.

The PEP was a civilian organisation, protected by private security. The guards were mainly non-English-speaking Nepalese; not English or Indian Gurkhas, but soldiers from the Nepalese Army whose operational experience came from fighting the Maoist insurgency in their homeland. They were always extremely willing to help but, given the language barriers, communication was haphazard. However, we had no real choice but to grin and bear it. We needed them to get around.

Suicide attacks were not merely an academic threat. During each month of my Afghan tour, there had been at least one such incident in the region we operated in, the worst claiming the lives of twenty-six Afghan civilians.

And the Governor’s compound had also been hit before, suffering collateral damage in a blast aimed at a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) representative being driven past at the time. Fifteen Afghans had died, though there were no British casualties–at least not physical ones. A woman called Rachel was amongst the FCO group. She was in her late twenties, slim, with long brown hair cascading down, framing her face. We used to meet most days. She lived with us at the PRT. On this, her first foreign assignment, she was the interface between the Governor and the FCO back in Whitehall. The attack left her completely overwhelmed; shaken to her roots. She would only emerge from the safety of the camp once more–on the day she left the province and then the country. For her it had been a stark introduction to the reality of our country’s foreign policy.

But despite Rachel’s lucky escape, there had been British fatalities in Lashkar Gah. In October a suicide bomber managed to kill Royal Marine Gary Wright whilst he was patrolling the outskirts of the town. A second commando was injured. Two Afghan children also died, their deaths barely mentioned, just another brief footnote in Afghanistan’s desperate recent history.

Such was the threat background to our little operation in Lash, the Governor of Helmand’s supposed stronghold, but despite it we needed to get out and about on a daily basis to meet with our counterparts in the Afghan police and army, and the NDS. Food was often the icebreaker with th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Preface
• 1 Suicide Bomber
• 2 James Bond and Trying to Kill My Best Friend
• 3 Bully Boys, Rudolf Hess and Me
• 4 Big Blue Wing Commander
• 5 From Fun to Fighting
• 6 Old Enough to Know Better
• 7 Where Did It All Go Wrong?
• 8 Up Close and Personal
• 9 Taking Casualties
• 10 A Call to Prayer
• 11 A Question of Ethics
• 12 The Horrors of War
• 13 Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• 14 Ambush
• 15 That Was Close
• 16 Going Under
• 17 Pulling Out, Going Back
• 18 Going Home, Going to the Palace, Going Back Again
• Epilogue Citation
• Glossary
• Picture Credits
• Photographic Insert