By the Spring of 2012 the war being fought by British soldiers and their allies in Helmand Province, Afghanistan was claustrophobic. British forces were arrayed in a ‘hub and spoke’ model; around the big main operating bases were the smaller patrol bases, and around the patrol bases were the check points.
Patrol Base Rahim, in the Nahr-e Saraj district was typical. It was based in a large, adobe compound that had been occupied by British troops for several years. I was deployed there to be the medical officer supporting No. 2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. The population of the base was around 100 but could swell to nearly 200 if a big operation was planned. A few hundred metres in either direction were two checkpoints. There, between fifteen and twenty soldiers lived, in a constant rotation of patrols, sleep and guard duties.
The small area around the three bases was considered our ‘safe bubble’. The roads were relentlessly patrolled by the troops and were watched over by sophisticated surveillance assets mounted on a blimp that floated high above the patrol base. We believed it was almost impossible for insurgents to move undetected within the bubble.
To move beyond the safe bubble was usually to invite a fight. PB Rahim sat just outside the Green Zone, the highly fertile area beside the Helmand River that is fed by an elaborate network of canals and ditches. The Green Zone harboured insurgents.
View over the green zone
The enemy was therefore never more than a few hundred metres from where the British soldiers lived, slept and ate, and the transition from safety to combat zone was abrupt. That transition was also marked by belts of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). These IED belts needed to be safely negotiated to get into Taliban territory.
The war had been going on for so long that it had taken on its own seasonal rhythm. There was little fighting in the Winter. In the early Spring, the opium poppies would bloom and be harvested. Once this was done, the foreign fighters from places like Chechnya and Saudi Arabia would arrive in the area and the Taliban would be ready to fight. They would announce their intention to fight with the ‘Spring Offensive’ - a co-ordinated series of attacks on British positions.
In 2012 the Spring Offensive took place on 4th May. At Rahim, we took some inaccurate mortar fire and no-one was hurt. Other bases were not so lucky and took heavy casualties. But from that day, the step change in violence was remarkable.
On 5th May No. 2 Company mounted an operation into the Green Zone from PB Rahim. One Guardsman lost a leg as his patrol crossed the first IED belt and became the first serious casualty that the company had suffered. He was evacuated back to Rahim and then onto the main British base, Camp Bastion where a highly developed field hospital could treat severely wounded men and women. Fighting went on sporadically throughout the day. Another soldier broke his ankle jumping over a wall to evade contact, another received frag wounds to the face from an underslung grenade, and a little Afghan girl was caught in the crossfire of battle and shot in the foot.
Tensions in the area continued to mount throughout May. We were aware of insurgents moving into the area, of IEDs being seeded and, increasingly, patrols were coming under fire.
With hindsight, it was on 28th May that we had the first hint of the trouble that would lead to the award of a posthumous Victoria Cross a little over two weeks later.
A long operation that day had ended with an Apache helicopter coming overhead and killing four Taliban insurgents with a Hellfire missile. For this operation I had moved forward to one of the check points. In general, if I moved around the area I would move in armoured vehicles or helicopters because a medical officer is usually more of a hindrance than a help in a fire fight and so best kept out of the way. It is also generally considered bad form to get the doctor killed - the Army consider it a criminal waste of the financial investment made during their training.
But moving between the bases within our bubble was considered safe so, on this occasion I patrolled back to Rahim on foot. PB Rahim sat on the top of a scree hill, known to the chain of command as Infantry Hill but to the soldiers as ‘The Travellator’. It was a slow, hard slog that had to be undertaken at the end of every patrol.
Patrol Back to PB Rahim
As we climbed up towards the base, I began to feel like someone was shooting at us. This will sound like an odd statement to many people, but a sniper rifle at distance doesn’t make much noise, and it was just a sensation of disturbance in the air that made me suspect we were under attack. But no-one else had reacted so, keen not to look like a hysterical non-combatant, I kept my head down and kept moving. It wasn’t till we got through the gate that other soldiers on the patrol started asking one another whether anybody else had thought we were under fire. The idea was immediately dismissed - it seemed preposterous that we could come under attack just yards from the base and so deep within the safe bubble.
Subsequent events were to show that we shouldn’t have been so dismissive.
Adam Staten is the author of the novel Steadfast: Band of Brothers based on his time serving as a medical officer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His second novel, Blood Debt, is a historical novel set in the lead up to the Battle of Hastings.
