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Lit by the fireworks of an artillery barrage, the Gurkhas crouched in the
desert chill, waiting for the command to move. In silence they crept across
a bridge slung over the canal into enemy territory. Dawn came and went
without a sighting. And then the Taleban attacked.
Barely 12 hours into Operation Palk Wahel, or Sledgehammer Hit, the biggest
British military offensive in Afghanistan since the spring, the Gurkhas had
met their enemy. Rifle cracks filled the air, bullets pinging in the dust as
rocket-propelled grenades skimmed overhead.
“Get down,” a commander screamed, and the men scurried to a ditch beside the
poppy field, firing towards the trees where the Taleban were hiding.
Overhead the eerie grunting of fighter jet cannon could be heard strafing
the enemy.
It was the resistance that the Gurkhas had been expecting since they crept out
from the desert under a fingernail moon and into the notorious “green zone”,
the dense sliver of fertile land alongside the Helmand river that the
Taleban have made their domain.
Pushed out by British troops from the towns of Gereshk and Sangin at either
end of the valley, it was here that the Taleban retreated, taking refuge in
the fortress-like mud compounds set in a maze of towering corn criss-crossed
with streams and irrigation ditches.
“It is nothing like the rest of Helmand, it is more like the Normandy bocage,”
Lieutenant-Colonel Jonny Bourne, the commanding officer of the Gurkhas,
said, evoking the beautiful but treacherous terrain that Allied forces had
to fight through after the 1944 Normandy landings. “The Taleban know that in
the desert we can beat them every time. But in the green zone they have the
upper hand.”
British troops have battled through the green zone several times in the past
six months and driven the Taleban out, but each time that they have moved
on, the Taleban have come back, wreaking vengeance on villagers who
cooperated with the foreigners.
This time it is meant be different. Military commanders and civilians have
planned the offensive together. The idea is to hold territory so that
reconstruction can begin, wooing locals away from the Taleban.
“If you drive out the Taleban, you’ve got to endure,” said David Slinn, the
civilian head of the provincial reconstruction team for Helmand. “There have
been lessons learnt.”
So, on their first day on the Helmand front line, the Gurkhas crept across a
metal footbridge into the Taleban stronghold. To the south soldiers from the
Mercian Regiment, nearing the end of their tour, would move northwards to
join them.
The Gurkhas, the legendary Nepalese warriors, were chosen for this role. No
other regiment could be better suited, their commanding officer said, for
this combination of ferocious fighting and winning of local hearts and
minds. “The Gurkhas have a natural advantage here,” Colonel Bourne said.
“They have an affinity with the people here. It’s in that interaction with
the people where we want to make a real difference.”
Before that, however, would come the fighting. “They are the loveliest people
in the world,” Colonel Bourne added. “But when the switch is flicked, it
gets very nasty.”
Pinned down in the poppy field, the switch flicked. “Excuse me,” a Gurkha
machinegunner whispered politely before squeezing past to take his position
and blast towards the enemy.
Before battle Sergeant Tarjan Gurung, a smiling veteran of ten years with “Do
or Die” stencilled on the back of his helmet, had explained the mood.
“Everybody finds it quite exciting,” he said. “You’re going to face a real
enemy who will stand and fight.”
As the battle raged, Captain Jit Bahadur appeared panting in the ditch.
“Nobody here injured?” he asked. “That’s good luck. It is a very heavy
ambush from the enemy.” Minutes before the ambush, C Company had stopped to
rest from an all-night trek, ripping open rations for a quick lunch. “If
they had attacked when we were resting, it would have been a disaster,”
Captain Bahadur said.
The company commander was considering withdrawing. “The resistance is very
heavy,” Captain Bahadur said, shaking his head. Everyone knew, though, that
retreat was not an option.
In the village of Hyderabad the summer fighting had driven out the entire
civilian population, leaving their homes to the Taleban, who used them for
their defences. The Gurkhas found empty compound after empty compound, walls
smashed from heavy bombing and littered with the old rations wrappers of
troops that had gone before them. “I remember this place,” muttered Sergeant
Don Jenkins, a Royal Marine who had taken part in an operation in July. “We
lost Atherton here.”
In another compound they laid a bar mine to blast through the mud wall for
fear of another ambush on the other side.
Captain David Stanhope looked anxious. He had come with the Gurkhas to assess
what reconstruction could be done as soon as the fighting was over. In his
rucksack he carried bundles of dollars ready to be doled out for quick-fix
projects. “But there’s no one here,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do
with no civilians.”
One such deserted compound became home for the night. Running low on water,
the troops filled bottles from a foul-smelling well, dropping purification
tablets inside. Later an order came round to ignore the water and hope for a
supply the next day – the risk that the Taleban might have poisoned the well
was too high. Second Lieutenant Emile Simpson, 24, on his first day of
operations, nursed a painful rib, probably broken, from what he believed was
a bullet that glanced off his body armour.
Major Charlie Crowe, the commander of C Company, examined a map. By Day 3 the
company needed to reach the “Witch’s Hat”, where the Taleban had turned a
medical clinic into a fortress overlooking a lush marijuana field, digging
deep defensive ditches around it. British troops had stormed the surrounding
settlement, known as “Waterloo”, in April, freeing from the Taleban a local
official scheduled for beheading the next day because of his ties to the
Government. But the troops had not stayed, and the Taleban had returned,
bringing punishment to those seen to cooperate with the foreigners and the
Government.
A second dawn came and the company was moving through another bombed-out
compound when it came under fire again. Gunfire erupted for several minutes
until a cry came of “Stop, stop!” Their attackers, it turned out, were from
the Afghan National Army, which, after one of its sentries was hit by
gunfire, began firing immediately on a known Taleban position - the one the
Gurkhas were now clearing.
A similar confusion a day earlier had thrown the second Gurkha company into a
battle with the brigade reconnaissance force for ten minutes before both
sides realised their mistake. That same night A Company had become lost for
four hours on its way to a resupply point.
Two days in and the fatigue was showing - at least for the commanders and
British officers, medics and specialists attached to the company. A third
night would bring little more sleep. As the soldiers dozed, Major Crowe
pleaded over the radio for his troops to be allowed a night’s sleep before
the assault. He was overruled: the company must be in position by the time
dawn came. “I think this is where the battle will really begin,” Captain
Bahadur whispered.
This time, however, the Taleban had already fled. When the company arrived
through the marijuana field at the Witch’s Hat, they found it deserted. The
artillery barrage that lit their passage into the Helmand bocage three
nights before had pounded the building almost to dust. The Gurkhas looked
around, wondering at the desertion. If they were disappointed, they did not
show it. “Seems they knew we were coming,” Major Crowe remarked.
On the other side of the canal Captain Stanhope was talking to a farmer who
had returned to the village that morning. Naimatullah Agha Lala had left
five months earlier because of the fighting and was living with other
villages in the pacified town of Gereshk. He had returned to collect animal
feed after hearing that British troops were retaking the area.
It was not the first time that he had seen the British here: a few months ago
he had even been given a compensation form for the damage that the fighting
had done to his house. “But then you went away and the Taleban came back. We
are caught in the middle here. The Government thinks we have links to the
Taleban and the Taleban think we are with the Government.”
Captain Stanhope handed him leaflets promising reconstruction. The farmer
responded: “It’s not good to take this. If the Taleban see me with it, they
will say we are cooperating.”
This time, Captain Stanhope said, the British would be staying. Mr Lala said
he hoped so. “If you go from this place again, the Taleban will
automatically come back again,” he said, looking doubtfully at his leaflet.
“Can I throw this away now?”
Over the radio the commanders assessed the enemy withdrawal. The Taleban had
either fled south to consolidate or retreated north towards their stronghold
of Musa Qala. The next days would begin to tell.
The Taleban had suffered a bad summer, and the retreat suggested that they
were struggling to replace their fighters, forcing them to sacrifice
territory, instead. Perhaps they, like the civilians, did not believe that
the British would stay this time either, and that if they bided their time
they could soon be back.
“This is our chance now to show we are going to dominate, that we are not
going to allow this place to fall back into Taleban hands,” Major Crowe
said.
Fighters on familiar terrain
— The Hindu warrior saint Guru Gorakhnath named his disciple Bappa Rawal’s
people “Gurkhas” in the 8th century and ordered them to liberate
Afghanistan, then a Hindu-Buddhist nation, from the advancing Muslims.
— In 1879 Gurkha regiments served in the British Army during the Second Afghan
War, clashing with Afghan tribesmen.
— Afghanistan gained its independence from Britain in 1919 after the war for
independence in which Gurkha troops fought for the British. Nepal’s
independence was recognised by the British four years later.
— Nepali and the Afghan language Dari belong to the Indo-Iranian family.
— Gurkhas, traditionally recruited from the lower foothills of the Annapurna
mountains, are able to acclimatise quickly to high altitudes across much of
Afghanistan.
— The Afghan climate swings between extremes. Winters are cold and snowy while
summers are hot and dry. The climate of Nepal ranges from subzero
temperatures in high-altitude regions to subtropical in the lowlands.
Sources: NOAA Satellite and Information
Service ; explorenepal.com ; army.mod.uk
; khukurihouseonline.com
See a gallery of Peter Nicholls's pictures at timesonline.co.uk/world
