This was it. There was no doubt we were facing a clear and concerted attempt by the enemy to completely overrun us, and with everything they'd got. They seriously meant business. Cimic had always been their prize. Now they were coming to get it. There was no doubt either that they thought they could do it. OMS mortar crews had landed a shitload of incoming right on us in the last sixty hours, let alone the last three weeks. Surely these British infidel dogs have had enough. They're getting mortared to fuck, they've been on their own for ages; they'll be a pushover. They'll run away or surrender. If they don't, we've got enough men to force our way in.
If you want to gain access to Cimic, there's only two sides to do it from: Tigris Street and the dam in the south, or straight over from the alleys in the east. So they hit us from both. Dozens of small teams steadily approached, firing and manoeuvring just like we would. On the roof, we got bullets and mortars, while the front and back gate sangars got never ending RPGs. They were good.
If only Spectre gunships flew in daylight. They'd be in Shangri-La with this lot.
Nor could we expect any help from the battle group either right then. It would take hours to assemble a column big enough to have a go at getting through all those lunatics. We didn't have hours. Got to suppress them and slow them up. It was our only chance.
Showing big balls, Louey was the first to scamper over to the western wall.
'Watch out, watch out,' shouted Des, as the whistle of a descending mortar round grew rapidly louder. It landed just long in the river as Louey poked his SA80 over the wall's edge and began to squeeze off second-long bursts at whatever he saw.
A dozen blokes from Recce Platoon then joined us on the main roof. Another four with Minimis piled up the ladder double quick time to Rooftop Sangar with Des and Oost, and Dale now too. The L96s were abandoned. They couldn't put down enough fire. Showing considerable pluck, the blokes followed Louey's lead and started to get their heads up long enough to spot targets, and share them out.
Once the enemy started to get within range of their own mortars, their crews were ordered to silence their tubes. That allowed our spotting to pick up.
'Gunmen running out of Baghdad Street now.'
'Enemy at 500 yards, the river road.'
'OMS grouping behind nearest tree to the dam crossing.'
They were the cues for anyone who could to concentrate their fire in the target's general direction. Eventually we began to drop a few of the attackers.
A whoop went up from a young Recce lad who wasted an RPG man the second he emerged from behind the Pink Palace to fire.
'Fucking get it! Whooooh!'
His four mates all cheered just as loud and air punched as the adrenalin of the tiny success hit them too.
'Oi, keep the fucking noise down,' Dale shouted. He was trying to listen in to the frenzied radio chatter to bring guns on to the closest enemy positions first. He also knew the importance of everyone keeping in control. Let the rush of blood go to your head, you lose concentration, you get shot.
I darted around the roof shouting out 'covering fire' as I moved; spotting, bringing lads on to targets, and letting rip on my SA80 when I could too.
After the initial twenty minutes of chaos, we began to find a good battle rhythm. The battle engine was ticking over nicely.
Another four gunmen began a sprint across Tigris Street in the direction of the dam. Reloaded now, the Rooftop Minimis were on to them in less than a second and cut the last two down right in the middle of the road. Then they slotted a third, who was stupid enough to go back for his mates.
Next, a black saloon car with an RPG sticking out the back window swerved out of an alley on to Tigris Street right by Front Sangar. Just as the RPG man leant forward to fire at point blank range, the sangar Gimpy filled the car full of holes. The driver swerved sharp left and away hurling the RPG man backwards into his seat. His warhead shot off high into the sky instead.
'Out of rounds,' yelled Pikey on the GPMG in Top Sangar. A second later someone sprinted over from the roof door with half a dozen fresh belts.
Rob Green's call of 'Minimi ammo' was met by another young lad dashing a few metres forward from the stair block to skid a full tin of 5.56 along the floor at him. The moment it left his right hand he nimbly changed direction for Rooftop to deliver a second tin in his left hand for the gunners up there.
As the tin arrived against Rob's thigh, the two blokes either side of him leant round to tear it open with greed.
'If you need oil, it's over here', shouted someone else.
Soon Dale's fears turned from not enough outgoing fire to too much.
'Disciplined fire, boys. Disciplined fire.'
It was still his job to keep one eye on the ever depleting ammo pile. We were using it up fast. But there was a more pressing problem than that.
'Enemy at 200 to the south west,' screamed Des with renewed urgency.
I ducked down beside Louey on the western wall and poked my head up over its lip. Dozens of them were over the dam on our side of the Tigris now. They were gathering behind the huge piles of hardcore from the waste ground's building site. It gave good cover, and an even better position to shoot at us. RPGs on target from there would do us some proper damage.
Smudge, Longy and Pikey all popped off grenade after grenade from the UGLs on their SA80s into the building site, but to no avail. The grenades had too small a bang to have any real effect.
Bloody hell. We were dropping them, but no way near enough to put the rest of them off. No matter how accurate our shooting was. The sheer volume and blinding fanaticism of the attackers made that irrelevant. They were getting nearer and nearer. We were at full stretch, everyone was battling their bollocks off, and we still weren't halting the advance.
'Look, Sergeant, man, see them guys behind the iron poles? They're even wearing body armour and helmets.'
Jesus. Louey wasn't wrong. Probably all nicked off the Iraqi police. These guys aren't fucking around. Their number was also growing all the time.
I had an idea. Time for the 51.
'Right. I'm going to get some HE on these bastards.'
We'd been ordered only to fire high-explosive rounds off the roof from the 51mm mortar as a last resort. This was a last resort. Soon, they'd be at the walls. The whole city was blown to pieces anyway, it wasn't as if there was anyone who'd care any more.
'Ops Room, Danny. Permission to fire the 51.'
'Danny, Ops. Yes. Go.'
I chose a spot behind Top Sangar to give myself a little bit of cover from the direct fire from the dam and Tigris Street. On my knees, I rammed the mortar's base plate deep into a couple of sand bags so they would absorb its kick.
'Want a hand, Danny? I'll feed you the rounds.'
It was Corky the medic. This was no time for him to be waiting around for business in his dressing station, and he knew it. It was all hands to the pump. He squatted down beside me and ripped the lid off a brown tin of ten dark green HE mortar rounds cushioned in plastic casings.
As he carefully passed me the first, he pulled the pin out of its tail fin, making it live.
I slid it down the tube. Holding the barrel by its leather grip with my left arm, I pointed it towards the dam and studied the ranging spirit level in an attempt to angle it for a correct trajectory on to the target. It was educated guesswork at best as I'd never fired HE from a mortar before. Hell of a time to learn. When it felt about right, I grabbed hold of the firing mechanism, a piece of rope at the mortar's base.
'Firing 51.'
'Firing 51,' came the refrain from Rooftop Sangar so everyone knew the next big bang wasn't incoming, and then I gave the lanyard a firm yank. Boom. It was just like firing an enormous shotgun. It was a good job I kept a firm hold on the tube too or the huge kick of it would have bounced the thing right back up into Corky's face.
'One hundred metres too long and 50 too far to the right,' called out Chris, spotting for me in the sangar in front of me. The round had landed in t
he middle of the river just behind the pontoon bridge. Getting the bastard on target was clearly going to be an art form.
I popped the second round down the barrel, turned it a little to the left and straightened the barrel a fraction.
'Short by about 50 metres, Danny.'
Bugger. Maybe third time lucky. The third's explosion was a lot louder.
'That's good, mate, that's good! That's target on!'
It had impacted on a harder surface, meaning its shrapnel wouldn't just absorb into the ground and it could do more damage. The mortar would have to land within 15 metres of the enemy to be fatal.
My third touched down just on the lip of our end of the dam, where enemy fighters were massing. So I popped three more over on exactly the same heading. Big cheers erupted from the two roof sangars.
The shells dispersed or killed one big group. Their positions would be filled soon enough by reinforcements though; there seemed to be no end to the enemy's available manpower. The 51's tube was red hot now, so I doused it down with almost two full two-litre bottles of water. I took a swig from the second for myself. I was gasping with thirst in the intense heat of the glaring sun. We all were. No time to worry about sunburn now.
'Right, give us some more, Corky.'
Then, the unmistakeable deep crump of an 82mm OMS mortar tube. The enemy were replying.
'Mortar incoming from the east!'
Everyone ducked down and hugged their helmets tight. The round whined just over the roof and dropped on the compound driveway no more than 50 metres away. Jesus Christ. The enemy were insane. Unless their rounds were incredibly accurate, they were just as likely to kill their own men as us. They didn't give a shit.
It was an unbelievably close shave. Every one of the twenty-odd soldiers on the roof behind the three-foot walls had their backs fully exposed to a blast anywhere on the roof. Dale wasn't impressed.
'Right, you lot,' he bellowed. 'The second you hear incoming, you're straight in the fucking sangars.'
Pointing at the series of scorch marks left on the roof from earlier barrages: 'You can see where they land. They do that again, that's it. You're fucking dead.'
27
But there was a new drama elsewhere. An urgent report crackled over the PRR.
'Ops Room, Back Sangar. We've got a rocket down here. It's fucking facing right at us.'
A clutch of enemy used the latest mortar barrage to break cover and run out into the river road 50 metres east of Back Sangar. There, they dumped a homemade firing frame loaded with a 107mm Chinese rocket – a projectile big enough to do away entirely with Back Sangar and the five men in it. It was all set and ready to launch on a ticking timer. It would go off in seconds; no longer.
Captain Curry didn't waste any time.
'Back Gate Warrior, Ops Room. Get out there quick and give it some pedal.'
The moment the OC's order was given, the Warrior's engine revved up and its clumsy tracks began to grind over the driveway's paving stones. Two sentries ran to the back gate to pull it open.
As soon as the 30-tonne beast's gunner had a direct line of sight through the opening gap, he stamped on the foot pedal and opened up the chain gun with an enormous thirty-second burst. The hailstorm of pinpoint accurate rounds demolished the threat completely; the frame first in a shower of sparks, then the rocket eventually went up where it had fallen on the road with a boom and a large puff of grey smoke. Just as quickly as it opened, the back gate slammed shut again.
Then a yell from Smudge inside Rooftop.
'Shit! Target on the civilian gate!'
He'd been duelling with enemy snipers on the rooftops above RPG alley, when movement caught his eye below. A gunman had sneaked across the road and behind the compound wall in the blind spot between the two gate sangars while the rocket drama had been going on. He was followed by a second. The first man climbed up on top of the iron gate used as an entrance to Cimic by civilians.
Sixty metres from Back Sangar and just five feet tall, it's the weakest point in the compound's perimeter because it has no sniper screen. The man had already got one leg over the gate when Smudge spotted him. Jumping up on the sandbag wall to get a better aim, Smudge raised his Minimi to his shoulder and began blasting away with well-aimed three-second-long bursts until he ran out of ammo. He killed the first man, and hit the second trying the same thing in the arm.
It gave the soldiers on the ground enough time to turn their fire on the threat. Five seconds later, half a dozen Minimis and SA80s plus a Gimpy were hurling everything they had at the gate, riddling it from top to bottom. More troops sprinted round to it and engaged the enemy from over its top, driving that attack back.
Unfortunately the rocket and the civilian gate had been just a sideshow.
'Enemy to the west at 100.'
Des's urgent shout refocused all our attentions in a second.
'They're moving up and down like jack rabbits.'
One hundred metres away was too close by half. The wasteland after the dam and its dozens of piles of earth presented the perfect ground to approach on. The enemy were using it like seasoned infantrymen. At least fifty SA80s, Minimis and Gimpys were hosing down anything that moved on it now with furious vigour. But they were too quick for us to nail any more than a handful.
Fuck, could we do with a dirty great F16 right now. Screw Danger Close, just slap a 1,000 pounder right on them.
I grabbed at the 51 again.
'Corky, give us some more HE.'
'We've done the whole tin already, Dan.'
'Well, crack open another, then. Quick.'
I raised the 51's barrel still higher towards me, and slid a round down the tube. The things would be practically going straight up and down now. If I wasn't careful I'd mortar us.
After we threw a few out, Fitz in Top Sangar in front of me spotted an opportunity. A long, deep pile of jagged shale stretching 30 to 40 metres sat right in front of the advancing fighters' path.
'Danny, if you can get a few rounds in the shale, it'll give you a million secondary projectiles.'
'Roger that, Fitz. Where is it?'
'Starts about 20 metres short and 30 metres to the right of your last.'
'Got it.'
Boom.
'Still 10 metres too long, Dan.'
Boom.
'That's 20 too short now.'
Bugger it.
Boom.
'Good length now. But 15 metres too far left now.'
Fucking bloody thing. I was ready to hurl it off the roof if the next one didn't work.
Boom.
Fitz didn't need to say a thing. Red hot shrapnel and shards of shale tore through the enemy's ranks like meat through a grinder. Because of their proximity, I could hear each and every one of their screams.
Good. Now you wankers know what it feels like to get mortared up the arse. Des started to cackle in his maniacal high-pitched laughter. Another very positive sign.
'Keep 'em coming, Corky.'
I held the mortar tube in precisely the same position. Another full tin on exactly that trajectory should do the trick. The next load of shells sent the Mehdi Army fighters running around the wasteland like headless chickens. As they were forced to expose themselves, the boys cut them down.
One bloke clutching a badly bleeding right arm made it 75 metres to a waiting car on Tigris Street. Sadly for him, the back door he tried to pull open was still locked from the inside, so to buy time he gave us another burst with the AK still in his right hand. Silly. He was riddled with a dozen rounds on the spot. As the driver got out to help, he popped away at us with a little pistol. So the boys killed him too.
The rate of small arms incoming we were receiving began to drop considerably. Means nothing though. Dale knew that instantly too.
'Keep sharp, lads,' he boomed out from Rooftop. 'They'll just be flanking away from the dam to have a go at us on the gates. You four Recce boys, get over to the south wall.'
Crump. Crump. Crump.
/> 'Mortars incoming from Zinc! Three possible base plates!'
Everyone dashed for the sangars again and curled up into foetal positions.
Silence. There were no explosions. Eh?
'Where the fuck did them things land then, Des?'
'Two on the dam, one on Tigris Street. They were smoke rounds. I can't see a damn thing behind them now, just white smoke all over the shop.'
What the hell was the smoke for? It made no sense. If we couldn't see them to shoot at, they certainly couldn't see us. The small arms incoming suddenly stopped too.
Dale was the first to realize what was going on.
'Cease firing!'
'Why, sir, what if we see targets through the smoke?'
'You won't, lad. They're withdrawing. The smoke's to cover their retreat.'
Nobody could really believe it. All of us stayed stood-to in our battle positions until long after the last smoke cleared. The only enemy fighters to be seen were the dead and dying, scattered around the wasteland, the end of the pontoon bridge and Tigris Street. The only sound was the odd pathetic groan.
It was over. The enemy had had a damn good crack at us; they'd given everything they had, they'd got as far as our walls, and they weren't far from success. Yet just as they'd reached their closest point to overrunning us, they ran out of men. Dozens of their number were killed, many more again wounded.
I looked at my watch. 4 p.m. The battle had lasted four hours. It felt like twenty minutes. Just after five, more than an hour after the last round was fired, came the tired message over the PRR.
'Charlie Charlie One. Stand down.'
To a man, the whole company was exhausted. After such a long hit of adrenalin, we were all now totally drained of it; way too tired even to celebrate. Anyway, nobody said it was all over yet. If they had surprised us so badly by mustering that many fighters for an assault, who's to say they couldn't do the very same thing again with more? We'd beaten them, but for how long?
The roof was littered with debris. A carpet of empty brass casings, water bottles, sand and stone shards lay under our feet. The remnants of the Light Infantry's original half-sangar wooden frame had been blown totally upside down, and every sandbag in our sangars had rips and tears in them. It had been too dangerous to clear any of it up, or do anything but fight up there for days.