Spoken from the Front by Andy McNab

Lashkar
Gah, the southern side of the airport. We had recently had
IEDs handed in so we were looking around the airport
making sure there was no suspicious business. Even though
we had got GPS [global positioning system] and maps, it was
pitch black and nine times out of ten you made a wrong turn
– and I did on this occasion.
    In and around a built-up area, I came to a dead end. It was
around midnight. I said: 'It's my fault. U-turn.' Everyone
was giving me numerous shit over the radio so we turned
around and started to come back. But as we'd turned our
headlights had gone over the horizon at some stage, and this
had been picked up by somebody. So we were just about to
drive out of the built-up area, a dead-end alley that I had
gone down, when all of a sudden there was Dushka fire at
our vehicles from the left. A Dushka is a 12.7 Russian
machine-gun. A big, heavy, slow thing. So, obviously, we
stopped, switched our lights off. I was in an open-top
WMIK and we reversed back in. All the lads had broken
cover, contact reports had been sent, etc., etc. As soon
as it happened, I thought: No, they [the Taliban] do not
drive up to you this close in a town centre and have a
pop shot. We were on the south side of them – they
were closer into town. If it had been the other way [around],
they could have escaped into the desert, but they were
not going to escape into town. They wouldn't have done
that because they knew we could call other people in.
    There were three of us in the WMIK: me, a driver and a
gunner on the back. Within a minute, I knew it was a police
check-point that had fired on us. From the position and
knowing where I was, I realized they were ANP. I had visited
the check-point days before. All the lads were getting ready
to fire back but I held them off. I told them to chill out. We put
lots of para illum [parachute illumination flares] up in the air
so they could see us. We were four vehicles – two WMIKs,
two Snatch [lightly armoured Land Rovers]. We did this but
they kept firing at us. We were not firing. The outcome of me
firing or killing ANP at that stage would have wrecked all the
hard work that 16 Air Assault and 3 Commando Brigade had
done. There were about eight of them. It took forty minutes.
Every time we went to move, I was stuck. They were firing at
us, mistaking us for Taliban even though we had lit up the
area. They could see our vehicle. Whenever we moved forward
or back, or put up para illum, or flashed our lights – the
Snatch vehicles had spotlights on the top – they fired at us.
None of the vehicles got hit but we were pinned down. They
were 350 or 300 metres away. Not far. But I couldn't go forward
or back. I let zero – the Ops Room – know. They wanted
to send out more people but I said, 'No,' because it was gonna
cause more chaos. Then they [the ANP] were going to think
they were getting attacked. So our interpreter – he was at the
back of one of the vehicles and his English was reasonably
good – he turned the air blue. He was swearing about these
'poxy, useless police'. So we called them on his loudhailer.
And I said to tell them: 'We are British servicemen.' I told him
that they must stop firing because, if they didn't, we were
going to have to fire on them and we didn't want to do that.
    So he spoke to them. All of a sudden the firing stopped.
You could see the interpreter was irate and I was trying to
calm him down. So I got everyone back on the vehicles, put
our hazard warning lights on and we lit the sky up with the
last of our para illum. Then we drove down. The ANP were
all laughing because they thought it was hilarious. I was
obviously not laughing. I grabbed their commander, took his
name to pass on to the chief of police. And our interpreter
was still swearing. We cleared it up and all came back. Thank
Christ for that. For forty-five minutes they were regularly
firing with their AK-47s, their Dushka. It was a genuine
mistake, but that one was a bit too close for comfort.
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