Troops come home with tales of heroism

The first troops to return from a summer of intense fighting in Afghanistan came home last night after some of the toughest battles the Army has seen in 50 years. The simple count of ammunition expended, 450,000 rounds of small arms fire, 4,300 artillery rounds and 1,000 grenades thrown – told its own story of the enormous gun battles.

A senior commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "We went there to carry out reconstruction and we ended up fighting a war."

For the past four months the 3,500 troops of the Helmand Task Force, based around 3 Bn the Parachute Regiment, have been fighting with an intensity not seen since the Korean War. They lost 16 dead and 43 wounded.

For the first time in decades, artillery fired their guns over open sights, military policemen were turned into streetwise infantry fighters and Chinook pilots watched as rockets and bullets came within inches of downing their aircraft.

Some soldiers talked of frontline fighting akin to the First World War, others nonchalantly accepted "becoming accustomed" to incoming fire.

"If anybody tells me that the youth of today cannot hack it then that is complete bloody nonsense – they showed courage in spades out there and done us all proud," the senior commander said.

"These guys have faced an intensity of combat we have not faced for generations. It's been quite hairy but the guys pulled through."

A unit of the Para's elite Pathfinder platoon who had gone to the town of Musa Qala for a six-day operation ended up spending 52 days in the town, in combat for 26 of them.

The tactic of pushing out into Taliban-held towns in northern Helmand using platoon houses of 50 to 100 men to protect the areas had worked because it acted as a "breakwater" that kept the enemy away from more central areas.

Some patrols in the town of Sangin left their base knowing that there was a 90 per cent chance of contact with the enemy.

"It takes a special kind of courage for anybody to go out day after day to know what they are up against particularly when they have seen their friends killed on previous operations," the officer said. "RAF have also given us some of bravest flying I have ever seen or heard of.

"But I think more could have been done to prepare the public for the type of mission we were about to undertake."

The initial role of the Royal Military Police, carrying out routine investigation duties, changed into one of fighting pitched battles, standing shoulder to shoulder with Paras they would more normally have been separating in bar-room brawls.

With the severe lack of infantrymen, the RMPs were among several units called to fight. For the first time, the soldiers were asked to use heavy machine guns, mortars and grenades to fight off waves of Taliban attacks.

The night before his death Cpl Bryan Budd had talked quietly to RMP L/Cpl Matt Carse about his wife and the joy of becoming a father for the first time.

By the next day, after a fierce fire fight to recover a Para listed as "missing in action", L/Cpl Carse had reverted to police duties of photographing Cpl Budd's body and conducting a forensic examination.

The military policeman had been sent to Sangin to investigate the death of a soldier crushed by a British light tank but soon found himself in a pitched battle.

"A patrol had been ambushed with machine guns and there was a Para missing," he said.

"We formed a quick reaction force and with a Para sniper we went out to find him. We ran out through the gates of the platoon house under fire. We took a lot of fire as we got into a cornfield where the soldier was and then we had to fight our way back to the platoon house with Cpl Budd.

"He was one of the best and bravest soldiers I had met – he had taken on the Taliban virtually on his own."

He described the paratroopers he fought alongside as "awesome troops". "But we also had to become fighting troops for our own self-preservation," he said.

For the first time in almost 50 years the Royal Artillery fired over "open sights". In a tactic redolent of the Napoleonic era, the gunners of I Battery 7 Royal Horse fired their 105mm shells from close range at a Taliban machine gun nest during one engagement. Overall the battery of six light guns fired an extraordinary 4,300 rounds of mostly high explosive ordnance.

As desperate battles raged around the platoon houses with wave after wave of Taliban attacks, the infantry called in the bombardments with the artillery at times landing them "target close" – about 100 yards away from friendly positions.

Major Gary Wilkinson, 37, the battery commander, had to give up a troop of 30 men to become infantry. After one two-week operation, in which the unit had fired 10,000 rifle rounds, they had 20 hours to ready their cannons and return to duty as gunners.

"It was hugely demanding, exciting, difficult, dangerous and rewarding," the officer said.

Fire on Pakistan, and the Taliban are history. Play footsie with Pakistan, and Allied soldiers will be dying in Afghanistan for 100 years.

I'm so f***ing tired of these ragheads in my life and in my world. Americans used to hate "Jesus Freaks" because they'd try to communicate their world view which includes the Bible and Jesus Christ. Particularly, the left, found a young Christian girl or guy with a paper tract in one hand and a Bible in the other to be oppressive. The Muslims only want to rape our women, kill our men, and seize our property and lands as spoils ... all as a blessing to their god Satan (a.k.a. Allah).

When Bush said that the world was either with us or against us, and put the fate of those against us in no uncertain terms, I followed him and supported the battle and the war. Unfortunately, Bush forgot to add "..until the next election..". My son was 13 when 9/11 hit. Now he's 19 and potential grist for the war mill, with no end in sight. Of course, it's due in part to the Democrats non-stop, treasonous, anti-American "anti-war" campaign, which has reinvigorated the enemy. However, it's also because Bush got the politics bug. When his establishment GOP Senators and Administration advisers told him the war was bad for GOP politics, we pulled in the talons and fangs, and went back to the Clinton-Democrat mode of war making. We set about "nation building" rather than "war making". The leftist-Democrat DOMINATED State Department call the plan and made every decision after our kids won the war. America has been running the Democrat play book in Iraq ever sense. We rebuilt Iraq instead of winning the war in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and on the borders of Israel.

The damn Muslims will never give up, and we can't win the war unless we FIGHT the war.

SFS

We have an all VOLUNTEER military. Your son is only "grist for the war mill" if he VOLUNTEERS to serve.

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I'm not quite certain what your point is. If my son does not serve, he'll be the first in my family not to do so since the Revolutionary war. I put in 15 years active and reserve, and another 10 as an inactive reserve. As a military veteran, I respect my son's right to volunteer, or not.

However, it does not change the fact that my son's generation is being asked to fight a war that could have been over a couple of years ago. But we would have had to go through Syria and Iran to end it. If the President, who I generally respect, had meant what he said, he would not have allowed Iran to ship military explosives into Iraq along with "revolutionary guard" explosive experts, without paying a price. He would not have accepted both the Hezzie's and Sunni's using Syria as a willing conduit and "rear supply area", without Syria paying a price.

Yes, the President has backed off, and I will not absolve him or the GOP just because they started out well. He let Powell and Armitage run a lefty anti-war campaign out of State, and totally corrupt the WAR in Iraq, turning it into a Jimmy-Carter-style-Peace-Corps "nation building" exercise. I have no problem being the generous Americans we are, AFTER the war is over and our guys are no longer in harms way. But to put them INTO harms way, a target on every young man's back, and NOT FOLLOW THROUGH with prosecution of the war; that's unacceptable. It's an insult to every kid who fought in that war, and the GOP will probably lose the House and Senate this year, and the White House in 2008 because of it.

Yes, my son is in fact, in "harms way". So is my wife and daughter, and so am I. As long as the Muslims feel that they are winning, the body count does not matter. They will fight on and they will attack us and they will kill civilians on U.S. soil.

The Democrats are treasonous, to be certain. The Republicans are a cross between feckless naives, opportunists, and incompetents. The GOP had it all, the Senate, the House, and the White House, plus an unparalleled opportunity to lead when the war was thrust upon them. Bush led for about 12 months. After that, Powell's State Department ran the "rebuild Iraq" campaign, and Bush was no where to be found.

There is a cost to "not winning" a war. This war will not be won unless we hit Iran, Syria, and probably Pakistan. After the past five years of "nation building" as a way of war, is there any political will to do this? You know there is not. Absent a million dead Americans or MILLIONS of dead Muslims, this war will not end; we will be attacked again and again, for decades. It didn't have to be this way. Just because the opposition are treasonous bastards, using the war for political gain and cheering secretly for every body bag returning from the theater, does not entirely the Republicans to be spendthrifts with the lives of our young men, our national treasure, and the national good will. The GOP is so out of touch, including this President, that they feel the American people "own" them perpetural, unquestioning support, just because they showed up on 9/11 to start a war. I've been supporting the GOP for 32 years; what a waste.

SFS

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