‘They were obviously very good at guessing what we were going to do and bugging out,’ said Captain Mike Thwaite, the company second-in-command. The bunker was impressive, just like the ones they came across when training on the mock battlefields of the Brecon Beacons. It was well dug in with overhead cover, small firing slits that gave the occupiers good fields of fire and tunnels that led out the back into zigzag trenches allowing them to escape from it unseen, as they appeared to have just done.
The Paras set off again, towards the Hobbit’s last known location, about 450 metres to the west. By now there was little expectation of finding him, however. When they reached the target compound it too was empty. There were a few old men near by who watched them carry out a search. Loden went over with an interpreter and started talking to them. They were dignified and courteous, as the soldiers found the Afghans usually to be, but had no information they were willing or able to pass on. It was nearly 1 p.m. The sun was high and the Paras were hot and thirsty. The silence was heavy and, Loden thought, eerie. Abruptly it was split by a deafening cry of ‘Allahu Akhbar’ as the loudspeaker on the minaret of a tiny mud-walled mosque burst into life with the call to prayer. The recorded voice of the muezzin was immediately overlaid by the ripple of automatic fire coming from behind. Loden had left the Fire Support Group to his south to provide cover, and they now joined in, firing at the flashes lighting up the foliage with their General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs). Eventually the exchange died out and Loden took stock of the situation.
It appeared that, contrary to early indications, the Taliban were not interested in a stand-up fight and did not feel that anything they may have hidden in the area was worth the losses involved in trying to force the Paras out. The search of the initial compounds had turned up some bomb-making components, such as car batteries and circuit boards. On their journey north the Paras had recovered an RPG launcher and destroyed it with a plastic explosive bar mine. All this was easily replaceable. The real object of value in the area was the Hobbit, and it looked as if he had got away. The Taliban seemed content to harass the Paras while minimising their own exposure to danger.
It was now getting on for 2 p.m. Time was running out. The helicopters were due to extract everyone at 4 p.m. from a new landing site on the far side of the canal from Gold compound. That was nearly a kilometre away, a fair distance when you had to cover it on foot, carrying a ton of kit, over soggy, obstacle-cluttered ground, manoeuvring to protect yourself as you went. Any further delay now meant they would have to stay the night. They had enough rations to last them, and if they ran out of water they could drink canal water treated with purification tablets. Loden’s main concern was radio batteries. They were heavy and used up power fast. If he decided to stay they would have to switch the radios off to save electricity, turning them on only when, as seemed likely, the Taliban launched a night-time attack.
As he was deliberating there was another burst of fire from behind as another gunman popped up, sprayed bullets in their general direction and disappeared. The search continued a little while longer before Loden decided they were going to try to make the rendezvous. He led the two platoons with him back to the mortar position, just by the field where they had landed six hours previously. The quad bikes were useless in the boggy ground; all hands would be needed to carry the unused mortar bombs, packed in plastic ‘greenies’, to the new HLS.
As Loden and his HQ team reached the mortars it seemed that the end was in sight. ‘I think we were slightly lulled into a false sense of security’ he said. ‘We’d had these fleeting glimpses of the enemy that hadn’t really materialised into anything.’ The Taliban, however, were saving their best effort for last. ‘They had looked at where we were, seen where we’d gone, worked out where we were going to have to come back to and set up an ambush.’
The insurgents opened up just as the last element of the company arrived at the mortar position. It was a fortunate mistake on the insurgents’ part. If they had attacked early the company would have been split in two, with 8 Platoon bringing up the rear. The soldiers dived flat as bullets whipped in low, shredding the poppies a few inches above their heads and kicking up mud.
The fire was coming from a compound 200 metres to the north. Instead of another ‘shoot and scoot’ this contact was a determined, sustained attack with machine guns and rifles. 8 Platoon were belly down in the mud with little scope for returning fire. Lev Wood was in the middle of the line. He raised his head to see a ruined storehouse in the middle of the field and made for it. ‘It was quite convenient for me but not so convenient for the rear section,’ he said. The rear was being brought up by the platoon sergeant, Danny Leitch. He brought his men forward in a crouching run while his comrades battered the firing point with rifle fire and underslung grenades. Among them was Private Ollie Schofield, who had volunteered for 3 Para after hearing about their previous exploits while in training. Now he was ‘living the dream’. He found the experience ‘kind of scary’, but at the same time he was feeling ‘the biggest buzz you will ever get. You can’t match it anywhere.’
The Paras paused for a few minutes then scrambled forward again another 33 metres, heading for a drainage ditch at the edge of the field. They tumbled in, gasping for breath, while the rounds continued to crack and buzz overhead. There was fire coming the other way now from the sniper team left to protect the mortars, who were also engaging the compound, and the fields echoed with the thump of heavy 8.6mm Lapua Magnum rounds. Loden had run forward with his mortar fire controller, Corporal Pete Preece, to get better ‘eyes on’ the Taliban position. They took cover in a ditch, but for a while the weight of fire was too heavy for Preece to get his head up long enough to obtain a precise fix on the location. Eventually he was able to work out the coordinates and brought in smoke rounds on the compound, which covered the Paras’ withdrawal.
Corporal Wailutu watched the contact from the mortar line. She had learned a lot during the day. At one point she had been ordered to fire warning shots over people approaching their position. As the latest fighting flared up, her first instinct was to join in. ‘It was very exciting,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t wait to use my weapon.’ With so many friendly forces spread around there was less chance of hitting an insurgent than one of her own side, however, and she held her fire.
Loden now asked Wood whether he thought it was possible to assault the compound head on. It was, undoubtedly, ‘a big ask’. It meant charging over more than two hundred metres of open ground through thick, slippery mud in full sight of the enemy. ‘As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t [on],’ said Wood. He told Loden it was ‘pretty suicidal’ to go straight at the compound but suggested approaching it with a right flanking movement instead. Loden accepted his judgement, declined the offer and told 8 Platoon to stay put, ‘watch and shoot’.
As they waited, the firing from the compound stopped. It was replaced by shooting from the south. The Canadians had come under fire and were replying with everything they had. Loden had an hour and a quarter until the rendevous with the helicopters. The aircraft would soon be taking off and if they weren’t going to make it he should tell Kandahar immediately. By now there was air cover overhead to suppress any further attempt to slow their withdrawal. He decided to go for it. They picked up the ‘greenies’ mortar round containers and began hobbling back across the fields, covered by the snipers, who were the last to ‘collapse’.
The helicopters arrived at 4 p.m., putting down in a wadi south of the canal. It had been a day of mixed results. They had missed the Hobbit and failed to uncover his cache of materiel. The Taliban had avoided the temptation to come out and fight, as they would certainly have done a few years before. To the veterans of 2006 it was becoming clear that the days of pitched battles were probably over.
On the other hand, the Paras had performed skilfully and professionally and, most importantly of all, had come through without a single casualty. It was a good feeling. ‘The company got back to Kandahar