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how comradeship helped a platoon of the Grenadier Guards to survive a terrifying night in Afghanistan

A soldier’s wealth

B y a L E X a n d E r T U r n E r

CRED I T

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“There was a blinding light—unbelievable. Gravel was sliding across my face like when you fall off a bike as a child, except

I was travelling through the air.” Pitched into the muddy base of a nearby bomb crater, 30-year-old Lance Sergeant Scott Roughley struggled to regain his senses. Thick dust

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invaded his nose and mouth, whilst his ears delivered only a hollow ring. Weakly he fumbled for the night-vision goggles attached to his helmet, only to find they had vanished. He felt alone in the darkness. “What the hell has just gone on?” As curiosity drew him back up the earth bank, his sensory numb-ness was penetrated by a sound that haunts him still: the agonised screams of a grievously wounded comrade

Hitherto, the 24 men of 3 Pla-toon, Number 3 Company, Grena-dier Guards had felt confident: well trained and trusting in one another. They outgunned the Taliban insur-gents and had prevailed in every skir-mish since arriving in Afghanistan’s Helmand province eight weeks be-fore. Recently the Company had been deployed to the district of Garmsir in southern Helmand.

On the night of 25 May, 2007, 3 Platoon were ordered out of the Company’s well-fortified Forward Operating Base (FOB) on a mission to destroy a Taliban outpost cen-tred on three mud-walled farm com-pounds about half a mile to the south. From this location, the Taliban were able to threaten the FOB with rocket-propelled grenades.

The Platoon Commander was

Lieutenant Andrew Tiernan—“Tea Urn” to his men—a 26-year-old pro-fessional soldier with many similar operations behind him. His plan was to infiltrate through the local irriga-tion ditches and rush the Taliban po-sition with an aggressive assault. A small fire support group (FSG) armed with machine guns and lightweight missiles would parallel their advance to the west.

The platoon ate their evening meal in good spirits. At around 2300hrs,

they noiselessly exited the FOB and crept southwards. Progress along the ditch was steady. The Taliban also used such rat-runs, so the lead de-tachment fixed bayonets just in case. But the approach passed without in-cident and within an hour the platoon were fanning out in preparation for the break-in to the first compound.

it was around this time he registered they were under fire—bullets zipped and cracked over his head

Andrew Tiernan minutes before an attack

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Lieutenant Tiernan detached one of his three sections to provide added fire support from a collection of un-inhabited farm compounds to the north-east. The attack was initiated by the simultaneous detonation of an

Shoulder to shoulder: Andrew Tiernan (left) and Scott Roughley in Garmsir

and others around him were blown off their feet. Those further away were winded. Nobody knows what caused the blast. Most likely it was a large mine buried in the bund by the Taliban to ambush assailants. What-ever the origin, somewhere within the pall of dust was the source of in-

human screams, shrill and persistent. This was Guardsman Scott

Blaney, 20. “I got chucked on my side [by the blast] and tried to feel my leg. I lifted my hand and there was blood everywhere. I started screaming with intense pain. The lads say it was the worse thing they’d ever heard.”

By now Scott Roughley had crawled over to Blaney, hissing “Be quiet!” because his cries were be-traying their position. Blaney recalls that he gritted his teeth and “stopped straight away”, but it was a Herculean effort. At his right elbow “there was bone everywhere; it was in tatters.” His right eye was full of shrapnel. In the darkness, Scott grabbed Blaney’s

anti-tank missile into a Taliban sen-try position, and mortar fire directed at bunkers well to the south. Scott Roughley’s section led the sweep through the first two compounds. Their world was bathed in the grainy green hue of night-vision goggles as they cleared through the farm build-ings, the flat hammering of machine-gun fire punctuated by the deep bass crump of hand grenades detonating in cellars. There was no opposition yet. The Taliban had pulled back as the platoon approached.

Scott emerged and spread his men along a five-foot high earth bund, from which he planned to cover 3 Platoon’s third section for its attack into the final compound...

Suddenly, the whole area was filled with incandescent white light. Scott

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right leg at the ankle to find that there was only bone going into the boot. As he felt towards Blaney’s knee, blood “flowed like a tap” over his hand. He found the thigh—cold to the touch—and struggled to apply a tourniquet.

It was around this time that he reg-istered they were coming under fire. Bullets zipped and cracked over his head as he worked flat on his stom-ach. A nearby Guardsman, 19-year-old Daniel Langridge, shouted “We’ve got another one over here!”

The second wounded man was Lance Corporal Nick Davis. Scott Roughley slithered up to his prostrate form. With extraordinary aplomb Nick sat up, as if roused from a siesta. “Alright Roughers, what’s going on?” Scott marvels at the recollection. “His leg was just a joint of meat…there’s rounds flying…it was surreal”. Nick was in shock. His buttocks were “blown off; in bits.”

Andrew Tiernan determined to get a grip of the situation. He shouted for Corporal Paul Morgan, the section commander, to close in and report. “I can’t see,” was the matter-of-fact reply. Daniel Langridge was close to Paul. “His eyes were all swollen and bloody. He was walking on a broken leg.” The mortar fire controller, how-ever, had mustered a few able-bodied men to return fire. This gave Andrew time to absorb his surroundings and adjust the plan.

In looking about, Andrew noticed a body lying face down, partially bur-ied in the dirt. He and Scott Rough-ley could not find any metal identity

discs, but the tattoos were unmistak-able. Guardsman Daniel Probyn—”Probes”, 22 years old—had been killed instantly.

Andrew called to Lance Corpo-ral Andrew Thomas—nicknamed “Alpha” because he was the senior of two Thomases in the Company. “Alpha. This is Probes. He’s dead. We’ve got to get him back.” Alpha’s voice cracked as he looked down. “Oh my God; what a waste.” Before the deployment, Alpha and Probes had been on holiday together.

Andrew grabbed him by the shirt: “Alpha! I need you now”. The emo-tion evaporated: “Yes Sir.” Alpha readied himself to assist.

The gravity of 3 Platoon’s situ-ation hit home to Andrew. “This was perhaps one of the worst situations you can be faced with as a Platoon Com-mander—under accurate fire, with a section effectively wiped out.” Each pa-trol deploys with a scanner that moni-tors Taliban radio traffic. With laconic indifference, the interpreter reported: “They’ve got you surrounded. They’re going to ambush you when you move to the river.” Andrew acknowledges a momentary wave of panic. Scott heard the operator too. His inner monologue echoed Andrew’s: “We’re going to die here tonight”.

But the fighting spirit soon re-turned to Andrew . George Barnett, the unflappable mortar fire control-ler, was raining bombs onto Taliban positions. Alpha found a ladder to move Nick Davis, and the remaining

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Scott Blaney relaxes in 3 Platoon’s base

what troubled them most were the empty bed spaces where their comrades had once been

drew decided to strike across open ground and rendezvous with the FSG, by now critically low on ammunition. Here they would wait for relief from the reserve platoon already spilling out of the FOB.

The bedraggled withdrawal did not resemble military textbook en-tries on the subject, but it proved ef-fective enough. As soon as contact was made with the FSG behind the cover of the river bank, the reliev-ing platoon arrived on the scene. A quad bike was brought up to trans-port the wounded. Before long all of them were being triaged by doctors at an emergency helicopter landing site—within 75 minutes of the initial explosion. It was only at this stage that Guardsman Ashley O’Sullivan reported his injuries. Not wanting to be a burden to his comrades, he had ignored the slug of shrapnel in his

casualties were being carried by Scott Rough-ley’s men. They took stock once more.

There was too much enemy fire to risk direct extraction by helicop-ter. It was impractical to drag the casualties back down the ditches. An-

lower back and the fragments in his left arm, opting to help with carriage of Nick Davis on the ladder. The men swapped sides as their limbs tired, so at times Ashley was even lifting Nick with his damaged arm.

Here the platoon was separated. Daniel Probyn and the other casual-ties were loaded onto a Chinook heli-copter. The remainder of 3 Platoon returned to the FOB—and within days were back on patrol. “It was nerve-wracking going out again,” ad-mits Alpha. “Anyone who tells you it isn’t is lying.” But what troubled them most were the empty bed spaces where their comrades had been.

Shortly after this operation, An-drew Tiernan was due a posting back to the UK. “I missed my family, which

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was the boys, and I didn’t really relax until they came back as well.” Recov-ering in hospital, Blaney felt the same: “It’s your family; you’re all brothers.”

Paul Morgan and Ashley O’Sullivan made full recoveries but Scott Blaney and Nick Davis each had a leg ampu-tated. Blaney reflects their mood: “I love the Army. This injury—I’m not going to let it get to me. I’m still here. Life’s about highs, not lows.” He feels an enormous debt to the comrades who saved his life, and wants “to go back [to Afghanistan] to repay it.” He is still serving.

The Grenadier Guards are being deployed to Helmand again in October 2009. All the men interviewed talked positively, if guardedly about their return, but Daniel Langridge takes it further. He feels more at home with his platoon in Afghanistan than he does in the UK. “People here just live for a Friday night out or whatever. Out there you know your job. You know you are doing something good”.

Both Daniel and Andrew Tiernan

feel a sense of guilt at not being among the injured. Andrew confides that in advance, “I prayed if someone should be killed it be me”. He realises now that perhaps his survival was for the best: his decisions may well have averted further loss of life. But his sentiment exposes the depth of 3 Platoon’s selflessness.

The merits of international in-volvement in Afghanistan do not pre-occupy any of these men. There is a universal instinct that they are fight-ing for worthy goals, but intellectual opinions are a luxury they don’t feel they can afford. To survive, they must surrender individual concerns and entrust their lives to one another. In doing so, they draw strength: the re-spect and affection of true comrade-ship. That is a soldier’s wealth.

The author has donated his fee to The Colonel’s Fund, a charity that helps grenadier guardsmen (including those featured in this article) scarred mentally and physically by battle. you can make a donation at thecolonelsfund.com.