Max_Tab
10-21-2008, 16:51
I hope you've taken your blood pressure medicine...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3223963/Afghanistan-The-night-I-was-killed-in-action-by-a-Taliban-ambush.html
The convoy started with a line from a second-rate war film. "I've got a bad feeling about this mission," said Major James Becker, as his unit of National Guardsmen - the US version of the Territorial Army - and Afghan National Police set off through the chaotic traffic of Kandahar city.
The sun was setting in front of us behind the sharp mountains that lie just off Highway One to Helmand province. Easyrider, a company of part-time soldiers who had been in Afghanistan for six months, was on a routine trip from Kandahar to its base in Helmand where it was training police.
It was a route they had taken many times and, although they expected to be attacked, they were confident they could handle whatever the Taliban threw at them.
"We'll get shot at, I guarantee you 100 per cent," Becker, a prison officer back in the United States, had said when I had joined his unit half an hour earlier. He had a dreadful Mohican-style army haircut that made me think of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.
"But this vehicle has the strongest armour in the US military," the major continued. "You couldn't be safer than in this baby."
His baby was a Cougar, a massive armoured truck built to withstand the roadside bombs that have wrought such carnage in Iraq and are now doing the same to British and US troops in Afghanistan.
The Cougar was meant to clear a way along roads where bombs or mines are laid, and it was leading the convoy, with Becker commanding from the passenger seat.
At the wheel was Mitch Chapman, a young New Yorker who cheerfully told me that he had never driven the 13-ton monster before. He apologised in advance for his driving and told me to strap in tight with the racing driver's harness. His advice was to save my life.
On top, manning the heavy machine-gun, with his head poking out of the vehicle's hatch, was Scott Dimond, a 39-year-old father of four. I didn't talk to him before we set off, which in a way I am now grateful for. Less than an hour later he was dead.
Dimond was busy scouring the road ahead for signs of bombs, so he didn't join the banter much. "Chappie" did most of the talking - about a girl back home and his mom, as well as about Afghanistan - as the soldiers tried to force a way through the chaotic traffic, firing flares at drivers who wouldn't move and trying to spot which cars might be driven by suicide bombers. One flare bounced off the windscreen of a lorry driver who came too close.
"You sure see some whacked-out stuff in this country," Chappie said, as an Afghan in a turban went past us clinging to the roof rack of a crowded Toyota car going the other way.
The soldiers talked at one point about how much the Department of Defence paid for a dead or wounded soldier, and how much they hated being in Afghanistan, although before we set off several had said to me, with bright-eyed enthusiasm, that they were sure American soldiers had to stay the course. "They need us here," said one.
The New Yorkers in the unit said they were in Afghanistan because of September 11. Others insisted they were stopping terrorism.
The police training mission given to these Guardsmen was a worthwhile job, they told me earnestly, because the Afghan army and police would be the exit strategy for America one day, when Afghan security forces were ready to take over.
The bomb hit us about half an hour's drive west of Kandahar, after nightfall, when we were deep in Taliban territory in an area of pomegranate orchards and opium fields called Zhari.
There was a boom. The huge vehicle seemed to roll over and I found myself hanging upside down in the harness, with screams in my headphones and small-arms fire outside.
I hung there for a couple of minutes, unable to believe what had happened and waiting for instructions from the crew. As the gunfire outside became louder, I fumbled for the release button, then fell awkwardly.
I groped in my pocket for a light and switched it on. I looked around on the floor among the spilt ammunition, cans of food and bits of clothing, for the little video camera I had carried on my lap. Through a window, I could see lines of red tracer.
For the first time I realised that although we had survived the bomb, we could still be in real trouble.
Chappie and Becker were both injured and in pain. "Where the hell are those guys?" one of them was shouting. Chappie had blood running down his face. "Why haven't they come for us?" There was fear in the voices.
By now there was terrific gunfire and I could hear a heavy machine-gun thumping. It seemed to be some distance away and I guessed it was a Taliban ambush. As we had been travelling at the front of our column, for all I knew we could now be cut off.
I suddenly realised what could happen if we fell into the hands of the attacking Taliban. With dread, I recalled what I'd read about the fate of Red Army prisoners.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3223963/Afghanistan-The-night-I-was-killed-in-action-by-a-Taliban-ambush.html
The convoy started with a line from a second-rate war film. "I've got a bad feeling about this mission," said Major James Becker, as his unit of National Guardsmen - the US version of the Territorial Army - and Afghan National Police set off through the chaotic traffic of Kandahar city.
The sun was setting in front of us behind the sharp mountains that lie just off Highway One to Helmand province. Easyrider, a company of part-time soldiers who had been in Afghanistan for six months, was on a routine trip from Kandahar to its base in Helmand where it was training police.
It was a route they had taken many times and, although they expected to be attacked, they were confident they could handle whatever the Taliban threw at them.
"We'll get shot at, I guarantee you 100 per cent," Becker, a prison officer back in the United States, had said when I had joined his unit half an hour earlier. He had a dreadful Mohican-style army haircut that made me think of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.
"But this vehicle has the strongest armour in the US military," the major continued. "You couldn't be safer than in this baby."
His baby was a Cougar, a massive armoured truck built to withstand the roadside bombs that have wrought such carnage in Iraq and are now doing the same to British and US troops in Afghanistan.
The Cougar was meant to clear a way along roads where bombs or mines are laid, and it was leading the convoy, with Becker commanding from the passenger seat.
At the wheel was Mitch Chapman, a young New Yorker who cheerfully told me that he had never driven the 13-ton monster before. He apologised in advance for his driving and told me to strap in tight with the racing driver's harness. His advice was to save my life.
On top, manning the heavy machine-gun, with his head poking out of the vehicle's hatch, was Scott Dimond, a 39-year-old father of four. I didn't talk to him before we set off, which in a way I am now grateful for. Less than an hour later he was dead.
Dimond was busy scouring the road ahead for signs of bombs, so he didn't join the banter much. "Chappie" did most of the talking - about a girl back home and his mom, as well as about Afghanistan - as the soldiers tried to force a way through the chaotic traffic, firing flares at drivers who wouldn't move and trying to spot which cars might be driven by suicide bombers. One flare bounced off the windscreen of a lorry driver who came too close.
"You sure see some whacked-out stuff in this country," Chappie said, as an Afghan in a turban went past us clinging to the roof rack of a crowded Toyota car going the other way.
The soldiers talked at one point about how much the Department of Defence paid for a dead or wounded soldier, and how much they hated being in Afghanistan, although before we set off several had said to me, with bright-eyed enthusiasm, that they were sure American soldiers had to stay the course. "They need us here," said one.
The New Yorkers in the unit said they were in Afghanistan because of September 11. Others insisted they were stopping terrorism.
The police training mission given to these Guardsmen was a worthwhile job, they told me earnestly, because the Afghan army and police would be the exit strategy for America one day, when Afghan security forces were ready to take over.
The bomb hit us about half an hour's drive west of Kandahar, after nightfall, when we were deep in Taliban territory in an area of pomegranate orchards and opium fields called Zhari.
There was a boom. The huge vehicle seemed to roll over and I found myself hanging upside down in the harness, with screams in my headphones and small-arms fire outside.
I hung there for a couple of minutes, unable to believe what had happened and waiting for instructions from the crew. As the gunfire outside became louder, I fumbled for the release button, then fell awkwardly.
I groped in my pocket for a light and switched it on. I looked around on the floor among the spilt ammunition, cans of food and bits of clothing, for the little video camera I had carried on my lap. Through a window, I could see lines of red tracer.
For the first time I realised that although we had survived the bomb, we could still be in real trouble.
Chappie and Becker were both injured and in pain. "Where the hell are those guys?" one of them was shouting. Chappie had blood running down his face. "Why haven't they come for us?" There was fear in the voices.
By now there was terrific gunfire and I could hear a heavy machine-gun thumping. It seemed to be some distance away and I guessed it was a Taliban ambush. As we had been travelling at the front of our column, for all I knew we could now be cut off.
I suddenly realised what could happen if we fell into the hands of the attacking Taliban. With dread, I recalled what I'd read about the fate of Red Army prisoners.