No Worse Enemy Read Online Free Page A

move around.
    ‘I was given this money for the martyrs but it means nothing to me. I wouldn’t give one person for all the money I’ve been given. I’m grateful that the president has paid
attention to us but if you gave someone the whole world it wouldn’t bring a person back.’
    He was in tears by the time he’d finished speaking. I couldn’t ask him any more questions.

 

    A week later, I awoke at 5.30 a.m. to go on a reconnaissance patrol with the Grenadier Guards into the upper Gereshk valley. The valley is part of what’s called the
Green Zone, a narrow strip of some of the most fertile land in Afghanistan. It follows the Helmand River from the Hindu Kush all the way to Iran. In contrast to its fortified Baghdad namesake, the
Helmand Green Zone is where most of the fighting takes place. Its irrigation ditches, hedgerows and high-walled compounds are perfect for guerrilla warfare and the Taliban had created a network of
trenches, tunnels, booby traps and weapons caches. The American Special Forces called it the ‘Heart of Darkness’ but its neatly arranged green fields, thick bushes and hedgerows make it
look oddly like the English countryside.
    The patrol was to a village, Zumbelay, from where six families had recently fled, saying they’d been forced out by fifteen Taliban fighters. After walking less than a kilometre, we saw
other villagers running away. This usually means they know there are Taliban close by and there will soon be fighting. Suddenly, a single shot ripped the air around us. Then came dozens more, so
loud and so fast that it felt as if we were being attacked from every tree and bush in sight. I lay down in the grass next to Glenn Snazle, whose bulk, tattoos and cleanly-shaved head made him look
like a classic sergeant major. An awful burst of popping filled the air above our heads. That isn’t the sound of guns being fired. It’s the noise of bullets breaking the sound barrier.
It’s a sound you’re never supposed to hear, because it means you’re far too close. I gripped the earth with both hands as if it that might lessen the impact of being shot.
    Four or five RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) whooshed over our heads, sometimes exploding, sometimes sinking into the wet mud around us. We ran to one side and crouched next to a wall. An RPG
exploded on the exact spot where we had been lying. Some of the Afghan and British soldiers charged towards the direction of the gunfire and soon there was so much noise it was impossible to tell
who was firing what and at who. Two bullets hit the wall next to us with such velocity that we instinctively flinched. I heard someone report a casualty over the radio; an Afghan soldier, with a
three-inch hole in the back of his neck, staggered past supported by two of his colleagues.
    The Taliban were attacking from three positions and trying to get another group to move west, to surround us. (‘They draw you in, then the horns of the bull come down on either side of
you’, is how one soldier described the tactic.) We heard a series of howls, followed by deep thudding booms. I was told these were Chinese 107 rockets, being fired from yet another position.
There was an awful wait as the rockets arched through the air, then landed hundreds of metres beyond where we crouched.
    After almost an hour, I heard an F16 fighter jet roaring towards us. ‘That is the sweetest sound in the world’, said the heavily-sweating soldier next to me. I saw the underside of
the plane, white like a shark’s, as it passed overhead and fired missiles into a building a hundred metres or so ahead. Everyone went quiet as they waited to see if the missile strike had
been accurate. The Taliban were also quiet, either because they were desperately trying to find a ditch to dive into or because they’d been killed. Air strikes were called for with few
restrictions, so the mere presence of planes or helicopters in the air – a show of force, as it was called –