We were pinned down. The heavy fire from the Russian-made DShK “Dushka” (“Sweetie”), machine guns tore through the dried stalks of the poppy plants that loomed above us as the US Marines crouched down and looked for the attackers. They couldn’t find them.
We were in the first hours of Operation Branding Iron, a two-week incursion into the Taliban controlled area of Keshmesh Khan in Helmand province in Afghanistan, which I was filming for National Geographic. We had landed a couple of kilometres away in the darkness of the early hours of the morning, and had walked through the night until we had reached this poppy field just after the sun had come up and the Taliban had activated the ambush they had planned for us. As the machine guns opened fire, I threw myself on to the dry dusty ground of the Dasht-e Margo, the Desert of Death, my heart pounding, but time strangely slowed as the truth of our helplessness under the enemy fire was ripped open in my mind.
I remember falling into a heightened awareness of the smallest things as I scrambled to the ground: the smell of the dust, the shimmering beauty of the morning sunlight, the hard pointedness of the poppy stalks that slightly scratched my forearm. In the midst of my acute distress, I was conscious of the irony of this golden hour just past dawn being filled with such terrifying danger. I didn’t want to lift my head to see what was happening.
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I just kept thinking: “What the fuck am I doing here?” But survival meant that I had to respond to the danger. I fought to keep my wits about me. The machine-gun and AK-47 fire shuddered all around us.
Crouching to my left was a Marine, an immigrant from Liberia, who had chosen to serve in the military, whom I’ll call Smith, and beyond him, a British corporal who had been seconded to our company as an observer. I lifted my head slightly to see what was happening and where my most immediate danger might lie. The Marines were shouting for the machine gunner to come up and return fire at the Dishka.
He was shouting back in a high-pitched voice: “Where? Where?” And amidst the hammering sound of the Russian machine gun, he was not getting a clear answer from his Marine comrades. No one seemed to know where exactly the deadly fire was coming from.
For some long moments there was confusion and suppressed panic, controlled by training and discipline. For most of the men, this was their first experience of combat, but the superb training and centuries-old traditions of the Marine Corps held them firm, even if they were frightened and uncertain within their deepest minds. It was the British corporal who, in this case, was calmest.
I didn’t know much about him. He had been seconded to us for reasons he wouldn’t talk about, and he certainly had significant previous combat experience in Afghanistan. “It’s coming from over there,” he shouted, pointing through the brownish blur of the poppy stalks. Around us, the men fell silent, not sure who would, or should, act on this relative outsider’s confident shout.
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