The platoon was up and beginning to cut around (going about their duties) as the sun rose higher in the sky. Each of the lads had their little jobs to do and would carry them out every morning, the drivers sorting and first parading the vehicles which consisted of checking oils, coolants, tyre pressures and the condition of the vehicles as a whole, the gunner removing the night sights for day optics and oiling the .50 Cal (50 Calibre heavy machine gun) that sat on top of our WMIK Land Rovers; my signaller Tommo checking his communication equipment while I met up with the other commanders to discuss the mission ahead. All of the above were priority and our life savers which we considered to be routine in the military. I made my way over to my boss’s wagon at the rear of the fort, a brew in hand. The other two commanders, Ray and Steve, were already waiting at the front of the WMIK. Ray was a tall skinny guy with brown hair and an unbelievably big nose, hence he received the nickname ‘Jew boy’ from the lads. He was a full screw (Cpl) like me and had spent a lot of time in the reconnaissance (Patrols) platoon. Ray was a good soldier and commander. and a down-to-earth guy who I liked and was thankful to have next to me. Steve was another good guy who would normally help you out when needed. I had a good relationship with Steve, we both knew how to take each other.

‘Alright lads, you all get a good head down?’ the boss opened with as he interrupted our small gathering. Our boss was Swanny, a captain and well respected officer. He had been a private soldier in the REME before becoming an officer in the Paras and got the nickname ‘Spanner’ by the blokes due to his previous job.

‘Just a quick warning; orders are in 15 minutes in that building there.’ He pointed to a white building at the rear of the fort that looked like a small classroom.

‘We will leave here at 10:00hrs. Ray, I want you to plan a route and lead us in to this area’, pointing to a track junction on the map.

‘Take a Freddy, boss’, I said. You never use fingers.

‘Yeah, especially with Tough’s sausage fingers’ Steve jumped in. The boss gave me a little glare. He had been up a lot earlier than us, sorting and planning the mission; it was obviously too early for piss-takes but it was still a fair point. This wasn’t a common error for him to make, in fact Swanny was one of the best officers I had worked under, keen as mustard and always at the front. I treated him more as a mate than a CO (Commanding Officer), but like I said, it was early. A finger can cover a whole grid square on the map and that’s why it was never used, whereas a blade of grass can pin-point the exact position that we needed to be.

‘Our Patrols are to hold this area here’, he continued, using his pencil to cover the area on the map.

‘H-hour (a term given to the time we attacked the enemy or made a critical move) will be around 12:10hrs on this target here.’ Again he pointed to an area on the map. ‘OK? A Company will be conducting a Search Op (operation) arriving by helicopter. Any questions so far?’ None of us spoke a word as I continued to sip my morning coffee.

‘OK then, get the guys ready’, he said as he about-turned and headed off to the main building in the middle of the fort grounds. I gave Ray a little nod; it was either me or him who led when we moved as a platoon, and I had led the patrol up here yesterday so it looked like it was his turn. The boss’s call sign would normally sit behind one of the lead teams and Steve’s would bring up the rear. I walked back to my team with a clutch on my mug like a lion on its kill.

‘Gather round, lads!’ I shouted as I parked my arse on the front of my WMIK.

‘OK, fellas, orders in 15 mins in that building. The sketch is we are going to move from here to this position as a oner (whole platoon).’ I pointed to the area the boss had previously indicated. ‘From there we will be breaking down into our teams and covering the west of the target area, which is here, while A Company conduct a search.’ I pointed to a small group of buildings on the map. ‘This is all I have to go on at the moment, lads.’

‘Mega, another day of sitting around’, Tommo said sarcastically. ‘Yeah, when are we gonna get a decent task?’ Lee continued. By this they meant confrontation with the Taliban.

‘I know, fellas, but it’s still an important role here, this place could be crawling with Taliban so we need to hold it and prevent anyone getting into A Company’s position and ambushing them. Let’s just get in there and get this done’, I answered in a half snap. The blokes did not seem convinced. As Patrols platoon, the eyes and ears of 3 Para and the battle group, we were expecting to be conducting reconnaissance missions on targets and the setting of conditions for an attack or strike Op on possible Taliban strongholds. I understood that the boys weren’t happy with some of these tasks, especially the convoy protection which was starting to look more and more likely for us. I wasn’t exactly jumping with joy on this one either, and I was just as eager to get my hands dirty as the rest of them.

‘OK, if there’s no questions then finish off the weapons and wagons and make sure your shit is squared, and get yourselves in there in 10 mins’, and with that I began to sort my own personal kit before the brief.

The first thing we all did was prep our weapons before we sorted ourselves or anything else, just in case. For me this was the ‘gun’. The gun (GPMG (7.62mm General Purpose Machine Gun)) was my primary weapon while moving and patrolling on vehicles, mounted to the front left of the WMIK on a swing arm. A 7.62 belt-fed weapon with a rate of fire of 1000 rounds per minute, it was an amazing piece of kit nicknamed ‘the widow-maker’ for an obvious reason. It was an area weapon, spreading its rounds into a beating zone capable of taking down troops in the open up to a range of 1800m if mounted, and even further in the right hands. Anything in its way would go down. At close range it would tear you apart, literally. I loved this weapon and was glad to be on the trigger again. I brushed the dust that had collected during the night with my paintbrush and off the ammo and the inside and outside of the gun’s body and working parts before giving the barrel a quick pull through and applying more oil. I cocked it several times to ensure it was fully lubricated and working correctly. The last thing anyone needed was a stoppage on this effective piece of kit; it’s like losing your right arm. Then I re-oiled my long (nickname given to a long-barrelled weapon) which I had on the front of the dash and bonnet for quick use in close quarters. My long (SA80) was my dismounted weapon. I had previously put a pistol grip on the front to make it more steady and ideal for CQB (Close-Quarter Battle) situations and then of course I had a short (pistol) which was my sidearm and went everywhere with me.

After that I placed out my map on the bonnet and got a better look at some of the areas in detail while brushing my teeth and arranging my chest rig. My chest rig held the bare minimum. From my furthest left pouch it carried a red phosphorus grenade followed by four magazine pouches, capable of holding two 30-round mags (although for desert use we only loaded 28 rounds) each on Velcro quick release, then an HE grenade on the furthest right pouch. There was a small map pocket that sat behind the mag pouches that held a small head torch, a small pencil Maglight torch, a lighter, an Asherman chest seal (used for gunshot wounds to the lungs and chest cavity), my Silva compass and a sachet of quick clot (medicine used for stopping major blood loss from arteries). Two FFDs (First Field Dressing) were taped to the chest rig harness along with a torque and my PRR (personal role radio) system so that they were easily accessible, along with a karabiner.

I would then wrap around a bandolier that had been tailored to hold five extra 30-round magazines, thanks to a lad called Cheesey who had been my gunner before being removed to work in the stores, but who had managed to get himself out with us on this mission as an extra gunner. Some people have many different ways of loading their magazines. My team loaded their rounds the same as me: three normal ball 5.56mm at the bottom followed by three tracer 5.56mm; this way you had an indicator that you were nearly out of rounds when your tracer starts flying down range, because you never count your rounds when it goes for real. Plus there were too many important things to be thinking about and, unlike in the movies, we don’t have never-ending magazines. The rest was made up of normal 5.56mm ball until the top. Again I put three tracer 5.56mm together with two 5.56mm ball sitting on top to finish my magazine.

In the army there is a sequence on reaction to effective enemy fire: the first being the double tap in the direction of the enemy, which would use the two normal 5.56mm ball rounds at the top of your mag. The drill that followed was dash, down, crawl, observe, muzzle clearance and then fire. As a commander – or anybody who could locate the enemy – the best way to bring any of your members onto the target was called ‘watch my strike’ (a term I have witnessed many times down town on the piss before unleashing on Hats or some gobby civvy) unloading tracer rounds into the target area and therefore clearly identifying the enemy position to your muckers around you. It worked not only for identifying targets but made you aware in the heat of the moment that you would soon be out of rounds, preparing you for a mag change.

The outskirts of the town were crisscrossed with tracks but with no previous recces (reconnaissance of an area) we had no idea what these were like. Our main aim would be to travel cross-country which is fine outside of populated areas but an absolute no-go here or in any built-up area. We had found this out a couple of weeks earlier while conducting small Patrols from Bastion camp to Gereshk (FOB (Forward Operating Base) Price). A small outstation hosted by US forces before PF (Pathfinders), A Company with elements of D Company, Patrols, snipers and signals had taken over on the west of the town. We had found that the ground around all buildings and farmland was a nightmare. Ploughed fields made any movement slow and unpleasant, with deep irrigation ditches all around, making some routes impossible to cross, with high walls and orchard fields, none of which were marked on our maps. I could see some of this being a problem as we moved as a oner to our first position. Speaking to Ray, we agreed that it would be better to split the Patrols in half: four vehicles moving south, then northeast, and the other four or five moving east as originally planned. Not only would this give us a decoy but it would also be safer. Swanny ruled this out just in case something big did come off and I could understand him from a safety point of view; we would have more firepower as one convoy.

The orders were given by a Gurkha officer; he was in charge of the police station fort here in Now Zad since taking over B Company 3 Para. The fort itself was a two-storey mud-walled building with rooftop access overlooking the town from its location on the southern edge of the town. The building was surrounded by high walls with four sangar positions on each corner that had been reinforced with sandbags and manned by Gurkha soldiers that had relieved B Company 3 Para a few days previous. As most officers do, he waffled on about loads of crap before getting to the important facts and details of the mission itself.

It became clear that it was a search and arrest operation east of Now Zad town. The target was a known Taliban leader reported to be in a group of buildings approximately seven kilometres east. Patrols were to move in with our WMIKs and hold and seal the western edge of the target while the Gurkhas who were based at the fort would venture north, then drop south and cover the eastern side of the target, thereby providing a 360-degree cordon to prevent any enemy forces coming in and out. A Company 3 Para had been tasked to conduct the search, flying in by two Chinook helicopters on H-Hour to search the target and the surrounding area. I looked back at my team; their expressions said it all. My team had been assigned to A Company when we first deployed to Afghanistan, acting as a fighting section on an advance party while patrolling a town called Gereshk. It seemed now that some tasty jobs had come up and we had missed out. Or so we thought. As the Lieutenant-Colonel waffled on about – shall I say – less important parts of the mission, I began to study the map and the air photo that I had just been given that was sitting on my lap, paying particular attention to the target building and to where us Patrols would be.

As we wrapped the orders up, our boss held us commanders back to put a little more meat on the bones of our task, giving us more indication where he wanted our teams so if anything did go wrong we knew where each would be located. Ray showed us where he would lead the full convoy and our FRV (final rendezvous) at spot blue 7 before we broke down into our individual teams to cover specific areas. Looking at an aerial photo it didn’t seem too bad. There was lots of greenery and tracks with a few outhouses but it looked crossable; but without a 3D image we were going in blind and had no time to recce any of the surrounding areas. I was starting to feel like this could go tits up before we even started as two hours isn’t too long when you need to get in and be in place in an unfamiliar area.

The Gurkhas had further to travel, heading north to box round the target out of sight before moving south into position, so they would leave the fort first, ten minutes before us, leaving only a skeleton crew stagging on in the fort.

I called over my team and briefed them up a final time, giving them all the details I had on the mission, quickly brushing over a few actions in case the shit hit the fan as well as the ERV (Emergency rendezvous) which would first be the FRV, then the fort unless we were directed otherwise.

As always in Patrols, the banter began flying round as we waited impatiently in the sun for the off; there was always a good atmosphere between us. Just before we left, we took a quick picture on my camera of our call sign 21D, all of us posing at the front of our vehicles, tops off and tatts out. Little did any of us know that minutes after this photo was taken we would be fighting for our lives.

Patrols were a ten-vehicle convoy consisting of seven WMIKs and two Pinzgauer 4×4s. Our WMIKs were open-top 4×4 Land Rover Defenders with a weapons platform on the back; excellent vehicles for long range reconnaissance over hard terrain like this. Each patrol consisted of six men and two WMIK Land Rovers. Each WMIK was fitted with a GPMG on the front left controlled by the commander, and a .50 Cal on the rear operated by the gunner, as well as our own personal weapons and grenades and not to mention two 84mm SAW anti-armour rockets in the back of the vehicles. The .50 Cal was a scary weapon, well, if you were on the receiving end anyway. Its rate of fire was slower than the GPMG but it could hit targets up to a mile away. The force was unbelievable and it could cut through men like a knife through warm butter. The two vehicles were split into Charlie and Delta, Charlie being the primary and Delta the secondary and support WMIK. This was known as a Patrol and each Patrol was six men strong. I commanded the Charlie vehicle and Johnny the Delta. Johnny was my 2i/c and also the team medic; if anything happened to me he would take over the team. Lee was my driver; he was from Leeds and a good mate, new to the Patrols from machine gun platoon, an asset when it came to problems with the heavy weapons and a brilliant driver, to say the least, even though he did think he was still driving his Impreza back home sometimes. Tommo was my gunner and my primary radio operator for the team, a young lad with blonde hair and a dedicated paratrooper through and through. He was disliked by a lot of the Head Shed (battle group, battalion, company or platoon officer’s SNCO in charge) and other company soldiers due to the fact that on the piss he was often a social hand grenade and was constantly dropping himself in the shit while under the influence. However, when it came to being a paratrooper he was a hard working, fit and reliable soldier. He reminded me of myself when I first joined the Paras. My 2i/c, Johnny, was a very good mate of mine who I had known for years. An outspoken and funny character, he always had me in stitches. He had brown hair and a horse-shaped head, although this was a sore point to talk about. I had previously asked him to be my 2i/c when I moved back to the platoon as a Patrol commander; a reliable bloke I could trust and let get on with tasks without having to watch over him. His driver was Brett, a laid back South African lad; in fact if he had been any more laid back he would have been horizontal. Another good driver to have on our team, he definitely earned his money saving our skins later in the tour. The Delta gunner was a little lad called Luke, a young guy from Bristol who had recently moved over from a rifle company and hadn’t spent that much time in the battalion. Luke was a good lad. However, for a new boy he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut in front of the boss and the platoon 2i/c Steve K. Steve hated Luke for it and the feeling was mutual, much to our amusement.

The WMIKs were our transport, our weapons platform and our homes. We moved, ate, slept and fought from these Land Rovers. We inherited the name ‘gypsies’ from the American and Canadian troops due to our appearance. We wore ripped and faded T-shirts, shorts or stained desert trousers, shemaghs (Arab head scarf) or baseball caps and Oakley sunglasses. Our Land Rovers were loaded with kit, enough to last the mission, however long it would be. All our kit and equipment were located on and around the vehicle for practical and tactical use. The floor and sides of the inside of the vehicle were lined with boxes and boxes of 7.62 and .50 Cal ammunition, our bergens were strapped to the outside for quick access and our 24-hour grab bags were within...