OPINION:
On Veterans Day a decade ago, I was with Task Force 2-2 of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division—the Big Red One—as it stormed Fallujah. Its men fought house to house rooting out insurgents, some up of whom were pumped up by amphetamines that gave them an almost superhuman ability to keep on coming even after being shot.
Five years ago, I had just returned from Helmand, where I had been embedded with the British Army, who were suffering terrible casualties as they held the line while the U.S. Marines arrived to boost NATO force in the killing fields of Sangin, Nawa, and Garmsir. That summer, I had become a naturalized American citizen.
These were two different wars, five years apart, being fought by two different armies. And they were connected by much more than my presence or dual citizenship. In both conflicts, the armed forces of my two countries fought side by side, battling the same enemy and spilling their blood together in the same dirt.
In the Battle of Fallujah, a Royal Marine called Color Sergeant Matt Tomlinson, on an exchange posting with the U.S. Marine Corps, commanded a landing craft that assaulted the city from the Euphrates River. He turned his vessel towards a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) position in a maneuver that the Ministry of Defense in London said “unhinged the enemy.”
For that engagement, he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for “sure, aggressive and decisive actions throughout [that] saved the lives of many in his U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) patrol.” Five years later in Helmand, Tomlinson was commanding a Royal Marine convoy of Viking armored vehicles when a Taliban mine blew one of them up.
Under fire from bullets and RPGs, Tomlinson helped free troops from the burning vehicle—and performed life-saving first aid on the driver—before running forward to help the turret gunner, who had unfortunately been killed instantly by the blast. Those actions earned Tomlinson the Military Cross. As the recipient of the equivalents of the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, he is one of the most decorated troops in the British military.
While in Helmand, I spent time with snipers from 4th Battalion The Rifles (4 Rifles), the unit descending from the storied Royal Green Jackets. As I arrived to meet them, sprinting from a Mastiff armoured vehicle into their isolated outpost, there was the sound of incoming gunfire followed by two distinct shots and then silence.
“Yeah, that was two just now,” Rifleman Mark Osmond told me a few minutes later. He was referring not to the brace of shots he had fired but to his 43rd and 44th Taliban kills in just 40 days. Perhaps his remarkable marksmanship had saved my life—who knows?
Osmond registered 51 kills in Helmand (along with 23 in Iraq). His partner killed 43. In Helmand, they and their comrades operated with U.S. Marines from an Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company (ANGLICO)—a fire support and liaison unit of the USMC that supports non-Marines forces.
Two ANGLICO forward air controllers were in a patrol base north of Marja—along with a 4 Rifles sniper—downloading information from an American drone onto a Toughbook laptop. A British patrol was spotted by the Taliban and sniper Lance Corporal Chris Fitzgerald (also a pseudonym) took aim as the U.S. marines gave him positions supplied by the drone.
The insurgents were beyond the range of Fitzgerald’s rifle so he was working on experience, judgement, and a dash of luck. He killed the first insurgent, carrying an RPG, at a distance of 1,764 meters—well over a mile. In less than a minute, he killed three more, including a junior Taliban commander who had been directing his men via a Bluetooth device. Afterwards, the marines called in a U.S. Army Black Hawk to recover the bodies for intelligence analysis.
Fitzgerald’s tally was 37 kills in Helmand. The 131 kills recorded by the three marksmen in 2009—told for the first time in my book Dead Men Risen—represent one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of modern sniping.
American and British troops have carried out countless joint operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are together in Iraq right now. There is integration at every level. In Baghdad, the deputy commander of the Big Red One is a British brigadier-general.
Just as Britons marked Remembrance Sunday this week, Americans will pause to reflect on Veterans Day. Ours is a shared sacrifice and a shared commitment to protecting the ideals of freedom and democracy of our two nations.
For those who have returned home after serving in our recent wars, the battle is not over. Lance Sergeant Dan Collins, a Welsh Guardsman I knew and who served with great heroism under fire, suffered from severe PTSD and took his own life on New Year’s Day 2012.
A soldier in Tomlinson’s convoy in Helmand who witnessed the Viking being blown up also killed himself. Osmond, one of the most accomplished snipers in the British Army, was discharged—against his wishes—because of PTSD. At least one of his fellow snipers is similarly traumatized but has kept quiet, suffering in silence so he can remain in uniform.
Fallujah is currently under the control of the Islamic State, which has beheaded American and British citizens as well as Iraqis and Syrians. U.S. and British troops have just departed Helmand, handing over to Afghan troops who show some of the same weaknesses as their Iraqi counterparts when U.S. forces left Iraq entirely in December 2011.
The telegraphed withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan, dictated by an arbitrary political timetable rather than a conditions-based military plan, could lead to a situation as disastrous as that in Iraq. Many of our Afghan allies in Helmand could soon, as its provincial governor Gulab Mangal put it in 2010, “be hanging from the nearest tree.”
As we remember those who have served, we should also consider what they fought for in concrete as well as conceptual terms. After Iraq, our troops were let down by their governments. Gaps in the medical care of veterans and the treatment of PTSD should be filled. So too should the gaps in the attention spans and the spines of our policymakers.
In Afghanistan, troops from the U.S., Britain, and other allies have done the hard part. Our nations honor them this week. Now our governments need to do their duty and work to ensure that our warriors’ sacrifices are not squandered.
Toby Harnden is a veteran war correspondent and the author of “Dead Men Risen: An Epic Story of War and Heroism in Afghanistan”.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.