Sniper one (10 page)

We ran at the alleyway at full sprint, sparking a crescendo of noise. I could feel the air parting as the rounds whizzed past my head, with a zipping and a slapping sound. Puffs of brick and dust kicked up when bullets hit the walls and the ground around us.

Luckily, Iraqis aren't very disciplined with their fire. They think nothing of emptying a whole magazine at you in one go. You can't aim properly on automatic. They also think it's very uncool to shoot from the shoulder, so they all blast away from the hip like Rambo, which reduces their accuracy even more. In that moment, their overexcitement was the only thing that saved our lives.

Thank Christ that three metres down the alley on the side we needed was a door. I kicked at it manically and broke the lock. All seven of us all pretty much piled through it at the same time. Inside it was a small single-storey house.

Nobody was inside. A good job too, because being confronted by seven sweating blokes, eyes bulging out on sticks with adrenalin would have given them a heart attack.

It was pitch dark and we couldn't see a bloody thing. Every window was covered by drapes or boards. And the
whole squalid place stank of piss. Chris and I cleared the house's three rooms. I fell arse over face on a coffee table in the first room, so we did the rest of the place on our hands and knees.

'Clear,' I shouted, after the second room. Chris crawled into the third, ripping at everything on the walls in the search for light.

'Fucking hell,' he shouted. 'There's no fucking way out of here. Fuck it.'

It was a dead end.

We had no choice but to go back out into the alley of death and try again elsewhere. But the thought swiftly came to me that it could take us hours to find a successful way through that maze of shit holes.

Meanwhile, the enemy was getting closer. We could hear them shouting commands from the nextdoor compounds. If we didn't keep moving, they'd be on to us in a few seconds. Don't think any more. Just do.

'Fuck it, lads, we're just going to have to leg it the 100 metres to the end of the alleyway. We'll do a right, then a right again and that will take us back to the Argylls.'

If they were still there, that is.

'OK, Danny, whatever. Let's just fucking get on with it then,' said Chris.

I switched my SA80 to automatic. It was trench-clearing time. I led off out into the alleyway again with my index finger already semi-depressed on the trigger. The first person that appeared at the other end of the alleyway was going to get the full mag and no mistake.

As I sprinted down it as low as I could, I could hear gunmen chattering on the other side of the alleyway wall. They could hear us too. Halfway down, two hands and an AK poked over the lefthand wall just in front of me and
squirted a burst down into my path. I threw myself tight against the wall and the rounds narrowly shaved past me.

I heard the bolt go in the bloke's rifle. Dead man's click – his mag was empty. I returned the compliment, and gave a similar burst back over to his side of the wall also without looking at what I was firing either. There was a groan. Then nothing more.

I carried on running. The closer we got to the end, the more I felt we were going to make it. It was foolish optimism.

'Come on lads, we're almost on the road.'

And with just 20 metres left to go, we saw it. It was obvious it would be there. Only the most deluded of all wishful thinking had persuaded me otherwise.

Straight in front of us, on the other side of the road from where the alleyway ended, was an RPK medium machine gun. It was set up on a bipod underneath a red Toyota car, and it was pointing straight at us. Two gunmen with AKs raised were standing either side of the vehicle.

They had waited until we were close enough to be sure they could hit us. Then all three opened up at once.

'Contact front! Contact front!'

Immediately we were down on our knees and aggressively returning fire. Then, we slipped into pairs. The years of training took over. While one bloke got up and sprinted ten feet back up the alleyway, the other emptied all the rounds he could in the direction of the gunmen. Then, the pair swapped roles. Fire and manoeuvre, fire and manoeuvre.

It was just like the bank robbery scene in
Heat
. It's amazing how well you remember it when you need to. But still the RPK poured lead at us. A whole burst went straight between my partner Smudge's legs just as he was stopping to turn and cover me. We looked at each other in amazement.

'Average,' I said, and we carried on. 'Go.'

It was working. They weren't hitting us, because our fire was causing so much havoc they were screwing up their aim. And it felt awesome. So we did it all the way back up to the top of the alleyway.

'Go,' screamed Smudge for the umpteenth time, adopting the cover position again. And I spun round to see 33 beautiful tonnes of Warrior sitting right there a few metres in front of me.

The methodical thumping sound of the Warrior's chain gun was slapping a target good and hard on the other side of the road, and its heavy diesel engines were still ticking over with a permanent growl.
Yes please, I'll have some of that if you don't mind
. The battle group QRF had turned up at last, and were waiting to extract us.

Colonel Gray was crouching down beside the Warrior, waving frantically and shouting at us to jump in.

'I need to get my other blokes in there first, sir.'

'Don't worry, Sergeant, they're all in already. Jump in quick.'

I did as I was told.

'All in,' someone shouted to the driver, and the door closed automatically with a heavy metallic clunk.

An overwhelming and incredible relief rushed through me like a drug. There were ten of us fully tooled up in a space built for seven with bodies everywhere, but I couldn't have cared less. I then realized how thirsty I was, so reached for a two-litre bottle of water and drank most of it straight down.

After what felt like a lifetime with RPGs still whooshing by overhead, as well as a lot of foul abuse to the driver from me, we finally chugged off. The Warrior tore up the hot tarmac streets with its giant tracks as it moved over them.
Ten deafening minutes later, we ground to a sudden stop. What was the problem? Who was attacking us now?

The back door began to open up again. As soon as I saw daylight through it, I piled out with my three fire-and-manoeuvre lads following me close behind. We all jumped straight into a square-shaped ditch, the first cover we could see.

'All round defence, lads!' I ordered, scanning desperately for the next target. The only people near us were calm clusters of men wearing British Army combat fatigues. They were just standing around chatting. Among them was Ian Caldwell and his QRF team. What the fuck was going on? Why weren't they taking cover, the idiots?

With a broad smile on his face, Colonel Gray calmly strolled over to us.

'Stand down, Sergeant Mills. This is the new Iraqi Army's training camp on the town outskirts. You're safe enough in here, I assure you.' As he walked off, he added, 'Good drills all the same.'

It was over.

We were surrounded only by what looked like the entire battle group. A huge fleet of Warriors was in the last stages of preparation before going into Al Amarah again to establish law and order. But we'd done our bit. And another fleet of Warriors arrived shortly to run us back to Cimic.

There was one final 'fuck you' lying in wait for us from the OMS. Just as the lead Warrior in our convoy got to within 100 metres of Cimic's front gate, an IED hidden by the roadside exploded right beside it. It was an old Iraqi army 155mm artillery shell. It made an almighty bang, but none of its shrapnel got through the vehicle's armour. Instead, it just covered it in shit.

Daz had already been flown in a medivac helicopter down
to a field hospital in Basra by the time we got back. He went down in the same chopper as Kev Phillips. They'd both live, we were told.

That night, we were treated differently by the rest of the company. Word had got round like wildfire what we'd been through. We had done our jobs, and we had done them well. That won us a fair amount of respect, and even a little awe. Of course it didn't last for long; they'd all get their turn soon enough.

Personally, I was just pleased as punch for my lads. The patrol had ten enemy kills that we could confirm. But, for all we knew, the real tally could have been triple that. We'd hardly had much of a chance to check many bodies for pulses. The guys had been fantastic and followed me everywhere I had asked them to go. Apart from retrieving the sensitive radio kit maybe, but that was certainly no bad thing. They'd fought like lions together, and I couldn't have asked for more. And as scary as it was at times, for all of us the adrenalin rush had been unbelievable.

After getting some scoff, I sat down alone to think it all over. I ran through the afternoon's events in my mind again and again. I wanted to work out what I'd done wrong to get us into that mess. I came to the conclusion that there was really nothing I should have done differently. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nobody had told us that the very building we'd dismounted in front of was the OMS's Al Amarah headquarters. Also, the OMS weren't stupid. They'd seen all the movement around Cimic over the last few days, and they would have spotted our different berets. They knew there was a new regiment in town, and they would have wanted to test our mettle. Today's events gave them an opportunity to give us our first workout.

Then my thoughts turned to the sneaky OMS fighter I'd slotted climbing over the wall.

In the movies, you're supposed to feel sorrow and remorse about having taken life. You're supposed to contemplate the tragedy of man, and all that. But the truth is the only feeling it gave me was satisfaction. That, and a bit of curiosity answered. This man along with a lot of his pals were trying to kill us. They meant my men and me serious harm and they had already badly hurt my good mate Daz. We had got them back and that felt good. I felt not a single second's guilt, neither then nor since. It was quite simply him or us, and I'm far gladder it was him.

The honest truth is I didn't give a shit about him. He was the enemy, and all I gave a shit about was that he was dead. He's wasted. Move on.

There was one more thing to do before I went to bed. I went to see the company quartermaster.

All quartermasters are tight as a gnat's chuff when it comes to giving out kit because they get good marks for saving money. Ours would give the very tightest a run for their money. While we had been stuck down that alleyway today, grenades would have come in very handy indeed on more than one occasion. I felt the day's events had earned me the right to dispense with pleasantries.

'I need grenades, and I need them fucking right now,' I told him.

It was deeply disappointing. He didn't even put up a word of argument. He just meekly pushed over a big box of the things, and I stuffed as many as I could into every pocket I had.

The next morning, Major Featherstone called an O Group. They were normally held in the evenings, but that day it was first thing. There was urgent business to be discussed.

Every company and battalion has a regular O Group. O stands for orders. You can do it anywhere, on the battlefield or with your feet up in barracks. It doesn't matter. It's when the head sheds all get together during an operation to discuss – or be told – how the unit is going to progress. For Y Company, it meant all four platoon commanders and their deputies, the sergeant major, and the company 2i/c.

Featherstone's O Groups were more relaxed than most. Wanting to be a man of the people, he liked to hear our opinions.

That day he began with an apology.

'First off, guys, I'm sorry we didn't have any idea the big white building at Yellow 3 where Sergeant Mills was contacted is the OMS's headquarters. Unfortunately, battle group HQ in Abu Naji hadn't seen fit to tell us that. We know now. We've got no idea how long they will want to fight us, but we do know that there's no sign to any end of the standoff in Najaf.'

Moqtada al-Sadr was still hiding out in a large Shia shrine in Najaf. He was being protected by thousands of fanatical supporters who had barricaded themselves into the shrine with him. The US military were encamped on the outskirts of the city. If they wanted al-Sadr, they would have to go in
and get him. That would mean a massacre on both sides, and both sides knew it.

Featherstone continued his speech. As he spoke, he chucked a karabiner from one hand to the other in a purposeful gesture.

'What we do know though, thanks to yesterday, is that the Al Amarah OMS have made their intentions towards us very clear. The CO is adamant that we must be able to do all we can to protect ourselves while this whole business lasts. That means we're going to stop pretending we're having a picnic here and everything's nice and dandy. Cimic House is the centre of law and order for this province, and that's the way it's going to stay – even if it has to become a fortress to do that.

'We're also going to start giving some of it back to these bastards if they want it.'

It was what we all wanted to hear. The gloves were coming off. We could stop smiling like clowns everywhere we went and start doing a soldier's job.

The mood of frustration in Cimic hadn't been helped by the RPG attack on the front sangar in the middle of the night. There is an alley directly opposite it only 60 metres away on the other side of the main road, from where the compound is most vulnerable. Without the sangar's sentries spotting him, an OMS fighter had crawled into it just after 2 a.m. and opened fire. He scored a direct hit. The grenade's explosion blew the sangar's three occupants clean out of it and onto the ground 20 feet below. All three blokes had to be medivaced out with blast injuries and broken limbs. From that night onwards, it became known as RPG Alley.

The previous day's events had also put an end to the bold prediction that only one in five of the battle group would see some proper action at some stage of the tour. It was
only Day Two, and the majority of us had already been caught up in an ocean-going-sized contact. There were still officially 173 days of it to go. But if they did want a war, we were going to be ready for them.