3 Para
Patrick Bishop
Afghanistan, Summer 2006. This is war.Afghanistan in the summer of 2006. In blazing heat in remote outposts the 3 Para battlegroup is pitted against a stubborn enemy who keep on coming. Until now, the full story of what happened there has not been told. This is it.In April 2006, the elite 3 Para battlegroup was despatched to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. They were tasked with providing security to reconstruction efforts, a deployment it was hoped would pass off without a shot being fired. In fact, over the six months they were there, the 3 Para battle group saw near continuous combat – one gruelling battle after another – in what would become one of the most extraordinary campaigns ever fought by British troops.Around parched, dusty outposts reliant on a limited number of helicopters for food and ammunition resupply, troops were subjected to relentless Taliban attacks, as well as energy-sapping 50 degree heat and spartan conditions. At the end of the tour, the Taliban offensive aimed at driving the British and Afghan Government troops out of Helmand had been tactically defeated. But 3 Para paid a high price: fourteen soldiers and one interpreter were killed, and 46 wounded.‘3 Para’ will tell the stories of the men and women who took part in this extraordinary and largely unreported saga. Best-selling author Patrick Bishop has been given exclusive access to the soldiers whose tales of courage and endurance provide an unforgettable portrait of one of the world's finest and most fascinating fighting regiments, and a remarkable band of warriors. Their bravery was reflected in the array of gallantry medals that were bestowed on their return, including the Victoria Cross awarded to Corporal Bryan Budd and the George Cross won by Corporal Mark Wright, both of whom were killed winning their awards.3 Para’s saga of comradeship, courage and fortitude is set to become a classic.
3 PARA
Patrick Bishop
‘The following account is based on interviews with the soldiers of the 3 PARA Battle Group. Inquests have not yet been held into many of the deaths reported in these pages. The author has made his best endeavour to report events accurately and truthfully, and any insult or injury to any of the parties described or quoted herein or to their families is unintentional. The publishers will be happy to correct any inaccuracies in later editions.
Afghan identities have been obscured in a few cases in order to protect the individuals and their families.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u3e3cf0c3-5935-587f-a06d-b9ada8658045)
Title Page (#u62f316f6-b49a-5fd1-bcc2-5bc6a52d101f)
Dedication (#u851942ab-d0d9-54b3-b44f-d482009dea1f)
List of Illustrations (#u5b50ff55-7ee3-5e73-be60-96ca7cc43a84)
Maps (#ua9edd232-0d94-58a6-894d-5662aeca221b)
1 Day of Days (#u3a388bd2-b80a-50a6-a7fd-caf7ec156c24)
2 Green On – Go (#u32ca5449-8ffe-5afe-8e38-8838b30e69f4)
3 ‘The Lawless Province of Helmand’ (#u25882199-9a04-57a4-b245-986db45d7f98)
4 Afghanistan’s Plains (#u19dd98bd-4e59-5b2c-836a-9b47551a9a99)
5 The Road to Sangin (#u64474681-15d8-5fa7-bae1-e3f14bc00db1)
6 Operation Mutay (#u1a3fcb77-7521-5069-b447-36a2519713ce)
7 Rapid Reaction (#u0ce6173b-ea01-5ae3-acf0-bd3a3f34fe1b)
8 Platoon House (#u8689b8c0-0790-5e72-9b3d-9f4331ef3d80)
9 The Testing (#u6d85e829-10ef-531e-a6d0-638f98de993b)
10 Jacko (#uf80d2515-234b-5d10-ae0f-f6a0ed648cc9)
11 Musa Qaleh (#u0cb7872e-ef30-5536-a712-28996fd3ada7)
12 Operation Augustus (#udb8eb302-08a9-5585-812c-d0adc6ca8a3e)
13 Eating Dust (#u5c16f5bb-3b2c-5396-a106-b2e466d3f516)
14 Hesco (#uc31ce70f-f9d0-55fa-9a07-00fb4b6ed0e9)
15 Attrition (#u86d89da6-966c-54cb-90bb-6f05932fe130)
16 The Musa Muckers (#ue27f45ce-eec5-5deb-9a01-f9dec9edd81a)
17 Peace of Exhaustion (#u54aaa7db-c453-57d3-bbbe-be6685176c32)
18 Going Home (#u1d2f9f3c-a6bf-5334-8ed6-5b2b3898960d)
Acronyms and Abbreviations (#u64ff6d4d-fa6d-5bff-8462-f7a786672c2d)
Honours and Awards (#u2dd109e5-b9fb-5917-a011-59e079790062)
Acknowledgments (#u24c2da53-135b-5556-b7a8-e1eab3ca1e4e)
Backad … (#udf930310-e219-5caf-ab40-6dc1c1a90896)
About the Author (#u24c30959-d8bf-5454-a0da-9f0f2c07219f)
Index (#u1fd9002b-20c5-5268-9b76-050be00c8fce)
Photo Insert (#u8bb27f32-a78e-5806-b7f2-81ae0c3d8bbd)
Copyright (#u0d8eb972-a772-5555-b77b-7cb2adf49fe9)
About the Publisher (#u48f8f098-4465-5a6c-9d6f-d93b29438aba)
List of Illustrations (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
FIRST PLATE SECTION
A Chinook is silhouetted above the Helmand desert.
Taliban fighters. © AP/PA Photos
Now Zad from ANP Hill. © Captain Nick French
Private Damien Jackson during Operation Mutay.
© Private Jamie Stewart Halton
Patrols Platoon during Mutay. © Lance Corporal Lee Hewitson
Looking out over the wadi and bazaar from a Sangin sangar.
Morning for the mortarmen at Kajaki dam.
© Corporal Andrew Evans
Patrols Platoon Commander Captain Mark Swann and Lance
Corporal Andrew ‘Chalkie’ White by their WMIK in Gereshk. ©
Lance Corporal Dave Bradbury
A GPMG gunner engages Taliban fighters from ANP Hill.
© Sergeant Peter White
Private Martin Cork flying back from Mutay.
© Captain Martin Taylor
Captain Hugo Farmer and Corporals Quentin ‘Prig’ Poll, Stephen
‘Hoss’ Cartwright, James Shimmins and ‘Chalkie’ White in the
shade of a stripped-down Pinzgauer. © Captain Martin Taylor
Corporal Tam McDermott on the roof of the Sangin district centre.
© Major Will Pike
Hostile faces in Sangin. © Private Marc Holmes
Private Neil Edwards, Lance Corporal Noel Brooksbank, and
Private Marc Holmes and Alistair Hartley in a Sangin sangar.
© Private Marc Holmes
Lance Corporal Paul Roberts, Corporal Stuart Giles, Sergeant Brian
Reidy and Medical Officer Captain Harvey Pynn.
© Sergeant Dan Jarvie
Soldiers doss down on the floor at the Sangin district centre. ©
Private Marc Holmes
Corporal Mark Wright in the Sangin compound.
© Captain Nick French
Lieutenant Any Mallet leads a patrol into Sangin town centre.
© Corporal Andrew Waddington
Sergeant Dan Jarvie. © Crown copyright
Major Will Pike, OC ‘A’ Company. © Crown copyright
Captain Martin Taylor. © Major Will Pike
WO2 Zac Leong. © Captain Martin Taylor
Captain Matt Taylor. © Lieutenant Martin Hewitt
SECOND PLATE SECTION
Captains Alex Mackenzie and mate Piers Ashfield having a brew at
Sangin. © Lieutenant Martin Hewitt
Corporal Jay Jackson on stag in Sangin. © Corporal Dave Salmon
Regimental Sergeant Major John Hardy.
© Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal
Lieutenant Ollie Dale gets his head down in Sangin.
© Corporal Dave Salmon
The Pathfinders at Musa Qaleh. © Nick Wight-Boycott
Sergeant Major Mick Bolton in front of the Sangin district centre.
© Captain Euan Goodman
A mortar section at Sangin fires in support of patrols on the
ground. © Captain Euan Goodman
A Chinook takes off from Sangin under fire. © Corporal Carl Tees
Private Pete McKinley recovering from shrapnel wounds in the
base hospital. © Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal
Corporal Bryan Budd on patrol in Sangin. © Captain Hugo Farmer
Rifleman Nabin Rai after a contact with Taliban in Now Zad.
© Major Dan Rex
Major Huw Williams, Captain Nick French and a signaller at Musa
Qaleh. © Captain Martin Taylor
A .50-cal heavy machine gun inside a well-reinforced sangar at
Sangin. © Major Jamie Loden
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal in the desert near Musa Qaleh.
© Captain Nick French
Heading out to the helicopter landing site after a successful
resupply operation at Musa Qaleh. © Crown copyright
‘Giving the Taliban the good news’. Watching an air strike go in
outside Musa Qaleh. © Crown copyright
Sergeant Christopher ‘Freddie’ Kruyer. © Staff Sergeant Pete Joiner
Dinner at Bastion. © Crown copyright
Major Adam Jowett, OC of Easy Company, chats with local elders.
© Gaz Faulkner
Captain Hugo Farmer on patrol in Gereshk in full kit.
© Captain Emma Couper
Private Dave Prosser and other members of Mortar Platoon.
© Sergeant Freddie Kruyer
A shura in Sangin.
While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright
material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise
for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing
acknowledgments in any future editions.
List of Maps (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
Afghanistan
Helmand Province
Sangin
Gereshk
Musa Qaleh
Now Zad
1 (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
Day of Days (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
At about 8 a.m. on the morning of 6 September 2006 Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal rolled out of his cot, pulled on his uniform and boots and set off along the duckboard walkway to catch up on overnight events.
The sun was already high and a pale, malevolent haze hovered over the talcum-powder dust of the Helmand desert. He reached a tent bristling with radio antennae and pushed aside the door flap. Inside it was warm and stuffy. The gloom was pricked with little nails of green and red light, winking from stacks of electronic consoles. It was quiet except for the occasional squawk from the radios. This was the Joint Operational Command, the ‘JOC’, where the synapses of the battle group he led came together.
Tootal was slight, wiry and driven. He was as interested in the theory of soldiering as he was in the practice, and had as many degrees as battle honours. His enthusiasm for his job was matched by his concern for his men. There would be much to be concerned about before the day was over.
The 3 Para battle group had arrived in Helmand five months earlier. Its task was to create a security zone within which development agencies could get to work on projects to develop an area barely touched by progress and lay the foundations for a future of relative prosperity.
The plan had always been aspirational. The religious warriors of the Taliban, who were struggling to reassert their power in the province, were certain to oppose the arrival of the British.
Everyone had expected some trouble, but not the relentless combat the soldiers were now immersed in. The reconstruction mission had become a memory. 3 Para and their comrades were fighting a desperate war of attrition. Most of them were besieged in bare mud-and-breeze-block government compounds – ‘platoon houses’, as they had become known – scattered over the north of the province, fighting off daily attacks from an enemy who, despite taking murderous losses, kept on coming. They spent their days pounded by the sun as they took their turn at ‘stag’, crouching in sandbagged, rooftop gun positions, or standing by to run to their posts when the shooting started. They slept on floors, washed rarely and lived off ration packs and sterilised water. They were gaunt, bony and rough looking. Their sunburned faces were fuzzed with beards, just like those of the men they were fighting.
They were on their own out there. Beyond the walls of the compound and the shattered towns lay tawny, sun-baked mountains and vast stretches of desert, ridged with dry watercourses. The mother base at Camp Bastion was far away and they were connected to it by the slimmest of links, the helicopters whose vulnerability to the insurgents’ fire made every sortie heart-stoppingly tense.
The morning started calmly. The previous day, most of the fighting had been around the base at Musa Qaleh, a broken-down fortress in the middle of a ghost town, now inhabited only by men trying to kill each other. It was held by the soldiers of Easy Company, some of whom had been there for thirty-one days. In the morning, the insurgents had lobbed five mortars into the compound from concealed positions in the maze of alleyways and walled gardens that pressed against the walls of the base.
At about 7.40 that evening some of the Royal Irish Regiment soldiers with the 3 Para battle group were on a satellite phone to their comrades at their home near Inverness, discussing the ‘big piss-up’ that was being organised to celebrate their expected homecoming in a few weeks’ time. The call was interrupted by the crash of an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) smashing into one of the sandbagged ‘sangar’ defensive positions ringing the platoon house. The blast knocked the four men inside flat and sent a soldier flying down the stone steps, knocking him unconscious. The soldiers in the sangar struggled upright and got on their guns, scanned the ground in front of them for muzzle flashes, and poured fire into the darkness. Green and red tracer flowed back and forth, and the crack of rifles and the throb of machine guns shattered the air.
The Taliban attack was finally beaten off after forty minutes when British and American jets arrived to bomb and strafe the insurgents’ positions. Intelligence reported ‘many Taliban killed in action’. Before he grabbed some sleep, Corporal Danny Groves, one of the Royal Irish soldiers, wrote with satisfaction in his diary: ‘Today was a very good day for the boys … The Taliban had attempted to overrun us but instead they received a hell of a beating from the mismatched men of Easy Company.’
And now, another day in Helmand was dawning. At 9 a.m., Tootal’s headquarters staff gathered in the JOC for the morning brief. A few incidents had trickled in over the radio net. Just before 8 a.m., four mortars had landed in the base at Now Zad. This was the most remote of the outstations, about fifty miles to the northwest as the helicopter flew from Bastion. Half an hour later, small-arms fire and RPGs were fired at the platoon house at Sangin. This was the normal back-and-forth violence, the metronome tick of aggression and counter-aggression that punctuated every day. There was nothing to distract Tootal from his usual crowded morning of meetings and briefings.
Then, just after midday, the atmosphere in the JOC changed. Reports of casualties started filtering in from Kajaki Dam. The dam was a prize target for the insurgents. The hydroelectric station there generated power for the whole region. The British troops, who lived in sweltering trenches dug out of the stony hills overlooking it, came under regular Taliban attack. But this sounded like something different. The details were sketchy at first. A sniper on his way to spy out a Taliban position had stepped on a mine and was very badly wounded.
Tootal called up his higher headquarters at Kandahar to request a Black Hawk helicopter, equipped with a winch, to lift the casualty out. He was told there would be a long delay. A CH-47 Chinook casualty evacuation helicopter was available. But it did not have lifting gear.
On a patch of barren hillside in Kajaki, a group of men stood rooted to the ground. Beside them lay Lance Corporal Stuart Hale of 3 Para Support Company. The mine had blown off his foot. Corporal Mark Wright was on his position about a mile away when he heard the explosion. He rounded up some soldiers and medics and they ran down the hill to help. They had gone to Hale’s side knowing the potential danger they were in. Now they were trying to get him out. They began prodding the gritty sun-baked ground, clearing a path to a spot where the helicopter could get in, then carried Hale on a stretcher to the landing site. Corporal Stuart Pearson turned back along the cleared path. As he bent down to pick up a water container, there was another explosion. Until now, it had seemed that Hale might be the victim of a stray mine, probably left behind by the Russians who had spent years occupying Kajaki. Now the rescuers were hit by a grim realisation. ‘We thought, fucking hell,’ said Corporal Jay Davis, ‘we are in a minefield now. They are everywhere.’
Pearson was only four or five yards away. But every step risked another explosion. He applied a tourniquet and dosed himself with morphine while they waited for the helicopter. It arrived at 1.30, and landed more than fifty yards away across ground that for all anyone knew was thick with mines. There was no question of carrying the casualties to the Chinook. As it lifted off in a cloud of muck and grit, another mine went off, blasting shrapnel into the shoulder, chest and face of Mark Wright.
A medic, Lance Corporal Paul ‘Tug’ Hartley, moved forward to help. He threw his medical pack on the ground in front of him to detonate any mines in his path. He reached Wright safely. But as he arrived Fusilier Andy Barlow moved back to give him room, treading on a mine that blasted shrapnel into his lower leg. The blast also blew Hartley to the ground and wounded Private Dave Prosser.
All around, men lay bleeding into the dirt. Hunched over the radios, Tootal and his staff had been listening with mounting dismay as the picture grew darker. The only way the wounded and the stranded could escape the minefield was if they were lifted out. Tootal harassed Kandahar for updates on when the winch-equipped Black Hawk would be ready to haul his men to safety. Nearly four hours after the initial request, two Black Hawks arrived. Two American aircrew were lowered into the minefield and, one by one, winched everyone aboard.
When the casualties reached Bastion, Tootal and 3 Para’s RSM (regimental sergeant major), John Hardy, were at the landing site to meet them. As the helicopter touched down, they jumped aboard. Six men were stacked across the floor. Three had stumps where one of their legs had been. One was dead. Mark Wright, who had been chatting and joking with his mates during the two and a half hours they had waited to be rescued, had bled to death on the way home. The wounded were hurried away. Hardy and Tootal zipped Wright into a body bag and carried him to an ambulance.
Tootal had been back in the JOC for fifteen minutes when another spate of emergency signals squawked over the radio. There were more wounded soldiers in two of the platoon houses. In Sangin, three soldiers had been hit by mortar shrapnel as they stood in an orchard within the walls of the base being briefed on their tasks for the evening. Mortar fire had injured two more British soldiers and two of their Afghan allies in Musa Qaleh. There was, however, only one Chinook helicopter available to mount a casualty evacuation – a ‘casevac’.
The helicopter, with the Immediate Response Team of medics aboard, was ordered to go to Sangin first. One of the wounded, Lance Corporal Luke McCulloch, had been hit in the head and looked close to death. The casevac chopper was flown by Major Mark Hammond of the Royal Marines. The flight took twenty minutes. As Hammond began his final approach, the JOC fizzed with tension. This was when the helicopters were most vulnerable to the Taliban RPGs and heavy machine guns. The loss of a chopper would not only be a human disaster. It would be a huge victory for the Taliban, and could lay the ground for a British tactical defeat. There was already talk in London of pulling out of the farthest-flung platoon houses to minimise the risk of a helicopter being shot down.
As the Chinook swooped towards the landing site, Hammond saw green tracer fire flowing towards him from the fields, thickly planted with tall crops that lay south of the base. Reluctantly, he swung the Chinook away and headed back to Bastion.
He and his crew had been on the ground only a few minutes when they were ordered off again, this time to try to retrieve the two casualties at Musa Qaleh. The base doctor there had warned Tootal that he could keep one of his patients alive only for another six or seven hours. Musa Qaleh was the helicopter crews’ most hated destination. The landing site was in the middle of a built-up area full of insurgent firing points. When they reached the town at 8.15 p.m., the Taliban were waiting. One of the escorting Apaches saw two RPGs swish past the Chinook, missing it by 10 yards. To attempt a landing would be suicidal. Again Hammond was forced to return to base. When they arrived at Bastion they found their chopper spattered with strike marks. One round had hit the root of a rotor blade, inflicting potentially lethal damage.
Tootal decided to risk another attempt before the night was over. A replacement was found for the damaged Chinook. Artillery batteries and aircraft were put on alert to batter Taliban positions around the two bases as the helicopter darted in. Hammond, along with his three crewmates and the four members of the medical team, took off for Sangin once more. He brought the Chinook into the landing site low and fast. As it settled in a whirlwind of dust, a Spartan armoured vehicle raced up to the back ramp, where the crew snatched the casualties aboard. The helicopter had barely touched the ground before it was climbing again, chased by streams of green tracer spouting from the Taliban positions. The sound of the engine was drowned out by the ear-battering din as the crew returned the fire from the door guns.
The ambulances were waiting at Bastion to hurry the casualties away to the base hospital. It was too late for Luke McCulloch. The twenty-one-year-old, one of the contingent of Royal Irish Regiment soldiers fighting alongside the Paras, was pronounced dead before he got there.
In the course of the day Mark Hammond had experienced enough danger to last most pilots a lifetime, but he volunteered for a last, risk-laden task. For the second time that night he went back to Musa Qaleh. Tootal had racked up every aircraft available, amassing an escort of Apache attack helicopters, A-10 ‘Tankbusters’ and a Spectre gunship to shepherd the Chinook in. As the chopper arrived, just before 1.30 a.m., the aircraft strafed the Taliban firing points around the base. Despite the barrage, the insurgents managed to launch an attack and bullets cracked around the Chinook as it touched down, picked up the wounded and climbed into the night.
The Chinook finally arrived back safely at 2 a.m. Before he collapsed into bed, Stuart Tootal found time to write up his diary. It had been an extraordinary day, one that those involved in its dramas would never forget. He had spent the previous fourteen hours ‘endeavouring to get our wounded out from three different locations. Two died on the way and three have had legs amputated. Some will return to combat and some will not.’
There had been many times since the Paras had deployed when he had turned to RSM Hardy before heading to his cot and said, ‘That was a day of days.’ But there had not been a day like this one. There had been tragedy, he wrote, but also ‘much courage, both by the wounded and those who went to get them. There has been sorrow, sadness, fortitude and even humour. A difficult day, no doubt, but one to be proud of, having seen the way people have behaved.’
His last thought before he dropped into an exhausted sleep was, ‘I really don’t want tomorrow to be like today but it just might be. It might actually be worse.’
2 (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
Green On – Go (#u0c01a37c-2577-507e-9b05-956815bb76c6)
3 Para had a saying: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ When word got around that they might be on their way to Afghanistan, everyone welcomed the news. There was a feeling that a major operational deployment for the Parachute Regiment was long overdue. It had been twenty-four years since they were involved in heavy fighting. That had been in the Falkands, a campaign that loomed large in the Para legend.
The Paras had returned from the South Atlantic wreathed in glory. There were two VCs to add to their hoard of medals. They won famous victories at Goose Green and Mount Longdon. But in the interval between the Falkands and Helmand they had done little war fighting. They were not sent to the first Gulf War and were given only a subsidiary role in the second. The Kosovo deployment in 1999 was uneventful. There had been the odd exciting excursion, like the mission to Sierra Leone in 2000 when 1 Para helped rescue eleven Royal Irish Rangers held hostage by the rebel West Side Boys militia. But 3 Para’s duties in recent years had mostly involved gruelling but increasingly routine tours of Northern Ireland and Iraq.
By the summer of 2005, when the rumours of a deployment to Afghanistan began to gain substance, everyone was ready for a demanding task that would allow them to measure themselves against the soldiers who had gone before them.
The Parachute Regiment was one of the youngest in the British Army. But in its short life it had developed a strong identity and a powerful sense of its own capabilities and worth. The formation of a permanent airborne force was Churchill’s idea. The new regiment was intended to bring together the fittest, most motivated and resourceful men available. Its purpose was to cause the maximum damage to the enemy with minimal or no support. It was expected to operate behind enemy lines undaunted by overwhelming superior enemy forces. Its spirit was summed up in its motto, Utrinque Paratus – Ready for Anything.
The first British airborne assault took place in February 1941 when a small band of daredevils jumped into southern Italy and blew up an aqueduct. In the remaining four years of the war the Paras built a tradition as illustrious as that of many of the ancient regiments they fought alongside. They were in North Africa and took part in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. They played a key role in the Normandy landings, notably at Merville, where they knocked out a gun battery protected from air attack by 12-foot-thick concrete, which threatened the invasion fleet.
They were at the heart of the most famous airborne operation in history, Market Garden. The Paras, alongside two airborne divisions of Americans and one of Poles, were dropped 100 miles behind the German front lines to clear a corridor across the Netherlands for the advancing Allied armies. The 10,000-strong British 1st Airborne Division was all but wiped out and the key bridge at Arnhem it was tasked to capture remained in German hands. But the episode established an imperishable reputation for courage, resolution and coolness that was celebrated in the film A Bridge Too Far. During the Suez crisis in 1956, 660 paratroopers dropped into El Gamil airport in darkness, securing it in the face of heavy opposition.
Memories of Merville, Arnhem and Suez still colour the Para ethos. New recruits might not know the name of the last prime minister but one, but by the time they finish their training they will be fluent in the history of the regiment. This pride in the past provides a reservoir of spiritual strength to draw on in hard times. ‘We are here to uphold something that has gone before,’ said John Hardy, the 3 Para RSM. In nasty moments in Helmand, when fortitude was flagging, he would remind his men that their performance was under scrutiny, asking them, ‘The blokes who went through the war, through Arnhem – what would they think?’
The path to the Parachute Regiment is long and hard and strewn with obstacles. After an initial three-day selection, would-be paratroopers begin six months’ basic training at the army training centre at Catterick, a sprawl of brick blocks, plonked down in the rolling farmland of North Yorkshire. Inside its gates someone, somewhere always seems to be barking a command. No one walks and everyone marches. A surprising number are hobbling, poling themselves along on crutches. The chances are they are Para candidates whose limbs have failed to withstand the rigours of the course.
The training washes out the unfit and the unsuited. The final selection, for officers and men, is made at Pegasus Company – known as ‘P’ Company. It is designed to sort out whether or not you have the Para DNA. It is a rite of passage that those who have endured still talk about with pained awe years afterwards. It is above all a test of determination. ‘The thing about P Company, which is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t done it, is that it’s not really a physical test, it’s a mental test,’ said Captain Hugo Farmer, who won a Conspicuous Gallantry Cross in Helmand. ‘If you want it and you are determined enough, you will pass it. You have to have a reasonable degree of fitness, obviously, or you will fail early on. But it is people who are mentally tough that are wanted. That’s the most imporant thing.’
P Company lasts three weeks. The first two are taken up with daily battle marches with kit, squad runs and intensive circuit training sessions designed to physically exhaust candidates before the final ‘Test Week’ begins. This starts with a stint on the Trainasium – an aerial assault course over high, narrow walkways and a tower built out of scaffolding and wood. Candidates are ordered to do an ‘illusion jump’, which means running along a plank suspended 30 feet up and launching themselves at a cargo net 15 feet away. In this way, the instructors test whether the candidate can handle heights. It also tells them whether he will throw himself from a height without question. ‘It takes quite a lot to run up to the end of the plank and launch yourself off not knowing whether you will make that net or, if you do, if you will bounce off,’ remembered one survivor.
This is followed by a 10-mile battle march carrying full kit and weapon. The next day starts with a 2-mile steeplechase and three circuits of an assault course. Then comes the log race in which teams compete to carry a telegraph-pole-sized piece of timber over a difficult cross-country course. Anyone who fails to keep up can expect to flunk the course. Day Three begins with a 2-mile best-effort run with kit. The afternoon is given over to ‘milling’. This involves two candidates standing toe to toe, slugging it out for sixty seconds. The fighters are not allowed to defend themselves, only punch. They wear heavy, 16oz gloves and protective headgear, but many still finish the bout spattered in blood.
The candidates get the weekend off to recover. When they return, they are sent off on a 20-mile endurance march with full kit, weapon and helmet. The course ends with another cross-country race. This time the teams carry a ‘casualty’ on a stretcher. About half of those who try fail P Company. Many drop out through injury. Women have attempted it, but none has yet passed.
The successful candidates go next to RAF Brize Norton, where they undertake eight increasingly difficult parachute jumps, the last made in full kit at night-time.
Parts of the selection process seem at first glance to be anachronistic and out of tune with what is required of a modern professional army. ‘Milling’ is a term that dates back to the days of bare-knuckle prizefighting, and the Paras is the only regiment in the British Army to practise it. Arriving on the battlefield by parachute is almost as bizarre nowadays as turning up on a horse. The Paras, however, have an almost mystical belief in the value of jumping. They tried to get permission for a classic parachute drop operation in Helmand. The idea was rejected by higher authority as charming, but impractical.
Their loyalty to these habits is based on the belief that they have an intangible worth far greater than their apparent practicality. ‘When you are on the log race and and you have got 200 metres to go and you are absolutely knackered you do not give up,’ said Lieutenant Andy Mallet, an accountancy executive in his former life. ‘If anything you go faster. When you are in the ring and you are milling someone and they are bigger than you, you don’t give up, you keep milling. It’s that ethos that nobody else has.’
The final test of courage and commitment is the jump. At the end of training ‘your initial reaction is to do whatever you are asked, so when you are standing in the door of the aircraft and you see the green light go on and you are given “green on – go”, you go. It’s that principle that we take forward in everything we do.’
Jumping in the Parachute Regiment is not the same as sports parachuting. It involves, according to Stuart Tootal, throwing yourself ‘out of a perfectly serviceable aircraft at night with a heavy container of equipment often weighing upwards of a hundred pounds strapped to your legs, with another eighty or so people trying to leave the same aircraft … the hazards of doing that are quite significant’.
Whatever its tactical limitations in southern Afghanistan, Tootal felt that the psychological bolstering parachuting provided was a great preparation for what the Paras would face there. The nerves experienced waiting at Bastion to lift off to what might well be a ‘hot’ landing zone struck him as very similar to the low hum of dread that preceded a difficult jump. ‘Parachuting doesn’t allow you to conquer fear, but the experience of doing difficult parachute descents does give you a familiarity with managing it. Lots of people said that and I felt it myself. Regardless of what happened, I was fairly convinced, based on my experiences of parachuting, that I would do the right thing.’
Climbing out of the back of a Chinook into a Taliban ambush, ‘you might be thinking of the implications of being killed or wounded, but I think the biggest concern is how you’re going to perform. Are you going to freeze?’
The ‘green on – go’ reflex was the cure for that. ‘It doesn’t matter if we haven’t parachuted for years in an operational environment … it’s what that training experience gives you – the type of soldier it breeds.’
The toughness of the training and the ruthlessness of the selection create some marked characteristics. One is an intense feeling of camaraderie that blows down social barriers. Class and background seem unimportant. There is a feeling of communal concern and mutuality that is hard to find in life beyond the barrack walls.
Surviving the process, making the cut, also encourages feelings of superiority. Paras love being Paras. ‘They are the best at what they do,’ said Andy Mallet. ‘It doesn’t matter what anybody else says. I know, having served with the Third Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, we are the best regiment in the army without a shadow of a doubt.’
‘You have got the Guards regiments which are hundreds of years old, which can hark back to Waterloo, but that doesn’t matter,’ said Captain Nick French, the Mortar Platoon commander. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to you. We can hark back to victories in the Second World War, Suez, Northern Ireland, the Falkands. Instead of talking about history, the blokes make history. That is why we are so proud. We have proved ourselves time and time again as opposed to relying on some mystique that was created at Waterloo. That’s why the blokes are so fiercely proud of who they are.’
Private Peter McKinley, who won a Military Cross in Helmand, says simply, ‘We are airborne gods. The whole army hates us because we are fucking mega. They hate us for the way we act, the way we walk and hold our heads high.’
To be an elite requires someone else to be crap. In the eyes of the ultras of the Parachute Regiment, such as McKinley, that designation applies to everyone else in uniform. The phrase ‘crap hat’ is used for all who do not belong to the Parachute Regiment. No one knows where it comes from. It is usually abbreviated to just ‘Hat’. Nick French’s mobile phone tone is a recording of an old-fashioned voice declaring, ‘Paras believe in themselves and each other – everyone else is a crap hat,’ lifted from a 1980s documentary.
Para pride was on full display one wintry night at Colchester Barracks in 2007 when the 3 Para boxing team was taking on 2 Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment – the Green Howards – in the semi-finals of an army boxing contest. On one side of the ring sat the ‘Toms’, as the foot soldiers of the Parachute Regiment call themselves. On the other were the Green Howard ‘Hats’. The officers of the two battalions, poured into scarlet bum-freezer mess jackets and tight black trousers, sat facing each other across the canvas. It was a late Victorian scene with only a pall of cigar smoke hanging from the rafters missing from the picture. ‘Drop the Hat! Drop the Hat!’ yelled the Toms. 3 Para’s fighters obliged, winning all but one of the bouts. In the seventh fight, a spectacular knockout within twenty seconds of the first round brought every Para in the hall leaping and cheering to his feet. At the end of the evening the Green Howards trudged out into the dank Essex night where coaches were waiting to trundle them off on a joyless three-hour journey home. The Paras streamed away to the messes for a night of drinking and revelry.
A sense of fun and outrage forms a structural part of the Paras’ image. In this too they regard themselves as superior to the rest. Their attitude is illustrated in a series of cartoons stuck on the wall of a senior NCO’s office in Catterick. The first shows the contrast between a Tom and a Hat in their off-duty down time.
The Tom has a shaven head (‘deters pubic lice’) and is wearing an old bomber jacket and jeans, the knees of which are heavy with grass stains from an illicit, al fresco bunk-up. He clutches a foaming beer bottle in one hand. The Hat is primly attired in a blazer with a bowls club-type crest on the breast pocket. He sports a gelled, tinted and highlighted ‘Take That’ haircut and is wearing ‘gay’ socks. He too is drinking – a bottle of low-alcohol gnat’s piss.
The message is that the Paras are desperadoes, real men in an age of wimps and wusses. They care little about their appearance and detest bullshit. But when it comes to the battlefield the roles are reversed. In the cartoons that follow, the Tom is in immaculate battledress, his gleaming weapon lovingly maintained. Here, clearly, is a man who is overjoyed to be where he is. The Hat, on the other hand, is a shambles. His uniform is wrinkled, his rifle is dirty and his expression suggests he would rather be out clubbing.
The cartoons are, of course, a gross libel on non-Paras. But there is some truth in the picture of the Tom. It is certainly how some of them like to portray themselves to the outside world – that is, in the worst possible light. Some members of 3 Para were well known to the Colchester constabulary. The Toms’ favourite boozer was the Fox and Fiddler, their favourite drink a Cheeky Vimto, an appalling concoction made up of one bottle of Blue WKD with two shots of port and plenty of ice. It could be a recipe for trouble when the pub closed.
‘You will find there is very much a live today, die tomorrow attitude among the blokes,’ said Nick French. ‘They blow their wages, get up to all sorts of antics in town with people they shouldn’t.’ But the fun is rationed. The cartoons are accurate. To the Para mentality, it is the battlefield that matters and everything, ultimately, is subordinate to preparing for it.
Despite the shared beliefs and characteristics, the men who went to Helmand were a diverse bunch. Membership of an elite also implies tolerance towards fellow members of the club. Individualism, the courage to be yourself, was regarded as a Para virtue.
All military units are shaped to some degree by the personality of their commanders. In Stuart Tootal, 3 Para had a leader who was complex and reflective, but also assured and determined to succeed. He took over command in October 2005 from Lieutenant Colonel Matt Lowe, described by one of his officers as a ‘good old-fashioned CO … rather aloof’. Another regarded the two men as ‘two different beasts. Matt Lowe was more considered in his outlook. Stuart is probably a bit more intuitive, instinctive, more aggressive.’
Tootal was forty-one at the time of the Helmand deployment. He arrived relatively late to the Parachute Regiment, and adopted its ways with all the zeal of the convert. He came from a strong military background. His grandfather was in Bomber Command and was killed over Germany. His father, Patrick, was a career RAF officer who ended his service as a group captain. Tootal went through a statutory rebel phase as a teenager. His father remembers him turning up to meet him at the Ministry of Defence building in Whitehall wearing a Greenpeace T-shirt. But he had taken to heart Samuel Johnson’s maxim that every man thinks less of himself for not having been a soldier. He joined his school’s Combined Cadet Force and after studying history and politics at London University went to Sandhurst. He was commissioned in 1988 and joined the Queen’s Own Highlanders. He served in Northern Ireland and was in the desert for the first and second Gulf Wars. On the way to his command he studied for a master’s degree in international relations at St John’s College, Cambridge, and an MA in war studies at King’s College London, where he later spent six months on a visiting defence research fellowship. This made him a very well-educated officer, even in the modern British military, where academic achievement is admired. His main area of expertise was counterinsurgency. He had had a chance to study it first-hand when he went to southern Iraq in 2003 as second-in-command of 1 Para.
At the time of the Helmand deployment Tootal was a bachelor with no family distractions to blunt his appetite for work. He expected the same degree of dedication from his men and worked those under him hard. Yet no one doubted his commitment to his men. ‘When Colonel Tootal came in it was quite clear that he had a human side,’ said one of his platoon commanders. ‘His heart was very much in the right place. He cares a lot about the blokes and their welfare and he wants to look after them. We instantly respected him because he had the right priorities. He didn’t treat the blokes like assets.’
Tootal was supported by a second-in-command who was not afraid to challenge his boss’s thinking. The phlegmatic approach of Major Huw Williams was much appreciated in the many moments of crisis. ‘Huw was a great foil to Stuart,’ said one officer. ‘When he came up with a proposal he would say to him, “Yes, this is plausible, no, that is not.”’ They made a good team and won the confidence of those who had to execute their orders ‘We were all happy with what was coming down from above,’ said one platoon commander. ‘I never heard anyone say, “This is fucking stupid, this is madness.” [They] just came up with good sensible plans … you can’t ask for more than that.’
During the Helmand campaign Tootal would come to rely greatly on the support of his regimental sergeant majors. Nigel Bishop was his RSM for the first three months until he moved on to another posting. He was replaced by John Hardy, a twenty-year veteran known as ‘the Razman’ to the troops, who regarded him as a surrogate father. His relationship with Tootal was a vital element in the battalion’s human chemistry. Tootal was the senior officer. Hardy was the senior soldier. As such, they had a bond that transcended the vertical hierarchy. ‘I bark to one man and that is the CO,’ Hardy said. ‘I don’t wag my tail for anyone else.’ Hardy had many responsibilities. The most important, though, was to act as a conduit between the blokes and the boss – ‘telling the CO how it was’.
3 Para, like all infantry battalions, is configured in tiers. At the top is the CO (commanding officer) and his headquarters staff, who manage and direct the battalion. The fighting soldiers are formed into companies. Each company is divided into two or three platoons and each platoon into sections. The number of men in a company varies, but it can be as many as a hundred or as few as sixty. In 3 Para ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies were the rifle companies, the basic fighting unit. They were sustained and augmented by Support Company, which provided additional firepower in the shape of machine guns, mortars and anti-tank weapons. ‘D’ Company was the ISTAR company providing specialised Intelligence, Signals, Target Acquisition (snipers) and Reconnaissance expertise.
Each company was commanded by a major. At thirty-six, Will Pike, the OC (Officer Commanding) ‘A’ Company, was the most senior. He was the son of Hew Pike, who led 3 Para in their days of glory in the Falkands, and had his father’s strong, square features and thick, blond hair. He had long ago given up worrying whether this connection was an advantage or a burden. ‘In the end I don’t think it makes a blind bit of difference,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that anyone else thinks that either.’ Those under him sometimes felt he was hard to please, but noted he was as tough on himself as he was on others.
‘B’ Company was commanded by Giles Timms, a blunt, cheerful fitness fanatic, who had been destined since adolescence for military life. He joined the Combined Cadet Force of his public school. After learning of the army sholarship scheme, ‘everything I lived and breathed from then on was geared to getting into the army’. He joined 4 Para, the reserves, as a private soldier while at university. The artillery sponsored him through Sandhurst, ‘but my allegiance was really to the Parachute Regiment’. It was only at the last minute that he told his sponsors that he would not be joining them. ‘I got quite a hard time for that, for disloyalty. [But] you have got to be true to your own ambitions and I wouldn’t have been happy in the Gunners.’
‘C’ Company’s OC, Paul Blair, known as Paddy, was a soft-spoken, good-looking Ulsterman with a gentle, courteous manner. He did a four-year business course before deciding that office life was not for him and set off for Sandhurst in July 1995. Cadets are required to put down a first and second choice of regiment they want to join when they pass out. ‘I was very much, it’s the Parachute Regiment or nothing,’ he remembered.
Adam Jowett, who commanded Support Company, joined the Paras from the Grenadier Guards and served with them in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. He was working in a staff job when the word came through that 3 Para were likely to be sent to Afghanistan but wangled his way out of it to go with them. Jowett was the most reserved of the company commanders, but a robust soldier when the time came.
For all their combined experience, in the spring of 2006 there were only three men in 3 Para who could claim to have had real experience of a proper war. These were the last remaining members of the battalion who had served in the Falkands campaign. The intervening years had been spent in worthy but uninspiring deployments that hardly matched the expectations of 3 Para’s members when they joined up. As they prepared to leave their drab headquarters in Colchester for the burning plains, soaring mountains and lush river valleys of Helmand province, the atmosphere was charged with the premonition that things were changing. 3 Para were about to get what they wished for.
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