Helmand patrol; force protection is a dangerous business

[Anth]

Force protection around NATO's main base in Helmand Province can be a deadly business. It keeps men of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers patrolling night and day.

Hot wheels: Fusiliers patrol in well-armed Land Rovers
[Picture: Allan House]

Camp Bastion is situated in the heart of Helmand Province in the middle of an ancient landscape; a hardpan which is baked up to 55 degrees centigrade during the summer, and freezes to minus 40 during the winter. When it isn't obscured by dust haze or ferocious sandstorms, all you can see as far as the horizon is a desert of rocks and a blanket of sand like dirty talcum powder. It is impossible to move around without clouds of it billowing up and covering everything.

It is a severe environment, but there are good reasons why the camp was located here. By helicopter you can reach the Provincial Reconstruction Team's base in Lashkar Gar and most of the forward operating bases in around 20 minutes. And there are no major settlements for miles, which means with round-the-clock surveillance, very little can move without being noticed and challenged. As Sergeant Adam Backhouse of the second Royal Regiment of Fusiliers said, with some satisfaction:

"The capabilities we've got around this camp are awesome. You'd have to be mad to take us on here."

But it seems that there are those who are. The Fusiliers, who deployed to Afghanistan recently, patrol Bastion and provide force protection for operations around the base and to the isolated forward operating bases. Shortly before our visit, a night patrol came under fire near the wadi which doubles as the main route through the area. Tonight they were going back to check out the site:

"To be honest, it wasn't much, four or five rounds, and it wasn't very accurate," said Sergeant Backhouse, who was in command of the patrol. "They reported the incident and a pair of Scimitars was sent out to keep a watch through the night."

And with that, we were off. The wimiks (weapons mounted installation kit Land Rovers) that made up the patrol left the safety of the base, with all lights switched off, and pushed out into the 40 square kilometres of pitch-black desert. Fusiliers stood in the back of each vehicle, their hands gripping loaded machine guns.

"We'll go and have a look around, check out the wadi and be on the look out for people moving around," said Backhouse.

It was going to be a bone jarring three-and-a-half hour ride in which body armour and helmet offered some protection from most of the impacts with ammo boxes, equipment and the Land Rover's roll cage. But the gunner was enjoying himself:

"I think this is great, it's better than day patrols, because you can't really see where you are going, and you can't avoid the bumps."

In minutes, we are slithering from side to side as the driver wills the Land Rover up a talcum powdered incline. It is hard to understand how these guys find their way around at all. Sergeant Backhouse explains:

"We have a number of target points that we go to, how we get there is up to us, but we use GPS and night vision goggles. Here, have a look."

We had stopped briefly near one of the areas to be checked out, and the rest of the patrol had fanned out cautiously. Through the small telescope an eerie green landscape opens up, like a weird undersea world. The other Land Rovers in the convoy can now be seen lurking menacingly, and in the distance Camp Bastion, invisible before, now shines out.

Top gun: A soldier maintains a .5 inch heavy machine gun
[Picture: Allan House]

Radios crackle quietly and conversations about way-points and bearings are whispered. We crack on, making our way to the edge of the wadi. Sergeant Backhouse can see all he needs to from here, and there is no need to risk getting stuck in the marshy ground of the wadi. The top gunner draws attention to headlights in the distance. It's a 'jingly-jangly', as the squaddies call the civilian trucks that occasionally plough across the landscape:

"It's OK. He's turning off across the wadi," says Backhouse.

We push on, this time to a small compound near the camp:

"There's about 30 or 40 people in it during the day and they stand on ramps and look into the camp. It's probably nothing, but I want to have a look."

Nothing seems to be stirring. "I'll get myself in there sometime during the day," decides the patrol leader. A little later, we have reached the area where the patrol came under fire the night before:

"Right, right, right!" shouts Backhouse to his driver. Too late. The Land Rover slides sideways into a ditch and tips over. Silence. "It was all going so well up till then. I thought we were making a good job of impressing you!"

They had been – and they still were. The calmness with which the situation was handled – in the dark, in an area where they had previously come under fire – was impressive. I transferred to another wimik and we sped off back to Camp Bastion. Calling loudly were breakfast and a good kip. After that the Fusiliers would get to do it all over again. I, on the other hand, would be moving on to other slightly safer stories, and that was OK by me.

This article, by Ian Carr, first appeared in the August 2006 issue of Focus - the newspaper for people in defence.

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