Just got back in after another two-day patrol down near Shawqat with the Queen's Coy of the Grenadier Guards, hot on the heels of the two-week sojourn to Nowzad with the US Marines...
Even more bizarrely we had more 'contact' yesterday afternoon than in that whole operation...
Sadly, some of the Wily Taleban fell foul of an £88,000 Javelin Missile fired at the compound they were using to pin down some of the lads trying to extricate a US Army mine-clearance vehicle which had fallen into an irrigation canal after another vehicle had it's back wheel taken off by an IED. The narrow canal-side tracks are horribly slippery after the recent rains and it's impossible to stop the slide after a heavy vehicle starts to 'go'...
Including those taken down by heavy machine-gun and sniper-fire from the convoy and the Patrol-Base sangars, we reckon to have assisted in 14 martyrdoms yesterday.
No friendly casualties at all apart from some wet boots of the guys who had to post guard overnight on the stranded vehicles.
I also spoke to a US Air Force radar technician who'd grabbed the Barratt .50-cal sniper rifle when the contact began...
He was looking for a medic to check his ears as the percussion of the damn thing firing had almost blown his left eardrum...
"Did he get the guy?" I asked his mate after I'd pointed him in the direction of the medical centre at the FOB.
"Oh yes..."
"Takes the sting off the tinitus then, I suppose?" we laughed.
And then we all watched 'Back to the Future' and 'Nacho Libre' with Jack Black (which I'd heard bad things about, but which made me laugh my damp socks off) on BFBS in the Shawqat cookhouse while drinking Lapsang Souchong Tea (I have some tea-bags that I travel with).
It's a funny old war...
Even more bizarrely we had more 'contact' yesterday afternoon than in that whole operation...
Sadly, some of the Wily Taleban fell foul of an £88,000 Javelin Missile fired at the compound they were using to pin down some of the lads trying to extricate a US Army mine-clearance vehicle which had fallen into an irrigation canal after another vehicle had it's back wheel taken off by an IED. The narrow canal-side tracks are horribly slippery after the recent rains and it's impossible to stop the slide after a heavy vehicle starts to 'go'...
Including those taken down by heavy machine-gun and sniper-fire from the convoy and the Patrol-Base sangars, we reckon to have assisted in 14 martyrdoms yesterday.
No friendly casualties at all apart from some wet boots of the guys who had to post guard overnight on the stranded vehicles.
I also spoke to a US Air Force radar technician who'd grabbed the Barratt .50-cal sniper rifle when the contact began...
He was looking for a medic to check his ears as the percussion of the damn thing firing had almost blown his left eardrum...
"Did he get the guy?" I asked his mate after I'd pointed him in the direction of the medical centre at the FOB.
"Oh yes..."
"Takes the sting off the tinitus then, I suppose?" we laughed.
And then we all watched 'Back to the Future' and 'Nacho Libre' with Jack Black (which I'd heard bad things about, but which made me laugh my damp socks off) on BFBS in the Shawqat cookhouse while drinking Lapsang Souchong Tea (I have some tea-bags that I travel with).
It's a funny old war...
