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30-3-2003 PA News Snipers The following is a pooled despatch from Gethin Chamberlain, of The Scotsman with the Black Watch near Basra. It was the tank crew who spotted them first, four men in civilian clothing jumping out of the back of a pick-up truck carrying a rocket propelled grenade launcher in the heart of Az Zubayr. Corporal Mark Harvey was the first of the snipers to react, dropping to his knee and fixing the man carying the RPG in his sights, one shot, a moving target, the militia man dropping like a stone, dead before he hit the ground. A clean shot to the head. The three others with him stopped in their tracks, grabbed the body of their fallen comrade and pulled him into the bushes by the roadside, then took off towards the nearby houses. But in the Challenger tank, their every move was being watched. As they ran into what they thought was the safety of the rabbit warren of ramshackle buildings, the sniper teams' radios were crackling in their earpieces, guiding them in. Moments earlier they had been sitting in the back of a Warrior armoured vehicle waiting to set out for what looked likely to be another day or more of waiting and watching, covering a small arc of land near the bridge, never relaxing as they waited for a target to appear. Now they were running towards the houses, all thoughts of cover forgotten, racing headlong towards the doorway into which their quarry had vanished. In the lead was Corporal "Pedro" Laing, SA80 rifle in hand. He reached the door and never paused, raising his boot and kicking hard against the woodwork, sending it flying open. Inside an old man looked up startled, found himself grabbed roughly and thrown out of the doorway into the street, past Corporal Mark Harvey and Lance Corporal Scott "Robbo" Robertson, the pair hot on Pedro's heels. Inside the building, a milita man, pulling the pin from his grenade and hurling it at Pedro's head. The corporal ducked, the grenade flying over his head, exploding in the street outside, shrapnel whizzing past his friends outside, fragments hitting Robbo at the top of his legs. As Pedro got back to his feet, he looked up to see that the man in front of him had snatched up his AK47. As he hit the ground again, a burst of bullets whistled over his head. On his feet once more, he saw that the man had now grabbed the RPG launcher and down he went again, diving out of the doorway, the rocket missing him by inches, hitting the embankment on the opposite side of the street, the explosion sending Harvey somersaulting over the mound of sandy soil, landing heavily on the other side. Later, he would realise that the fall had crushed a vertebrae in his back and that he could not stand up, but not now, not in the heat of the action. Jumping up, he fired one shot at the man now standing in the doorway, slotted him, as the soldiers would say, a single round from his Accuracy International L96 sniper's rifle from 20m away, killing him instantly. Then Robbo and Pedro were in through the doorway, throwing grenades on the run, one, two, three, four, exploding in front of them, the tank outside pouring chain gun fire into the roof of the building. As the grenades went off, the pair opened up with their rifles, finishing off the militia men, four lads from a mortar platoon rushing in to help make sure none got away, clearing the building, killing everyone in their way. They could have left it to the tank to smash the place to pieces but there were other houses next door, innocent people trying to get on with their lives, playing no part in the war. For the snipers, it was a rare moment of hand to hand fighting, the closest they had been to an enemy they normally only saw through the telescopic sights bound in dusty rags fixed atop their rifles, the long muzzles masked by more scraps of cloth, the better to prevent the glint of metal which would give their position away. Eight days of lying in the dirt, crouched on rooftops, waiting to pick off the militia men preying on their friends, the militia men who slipped from building to building, emerging out of the dark to fire their RPGs then disappearing back into the mass of houses that make up this troublesome little town. The snipers had feared they would pay little part in the battles to be fought in an open desert war, but as the soldiers threw away their uniforms and ran back into the towns and the militia men became the true enemy, they came in to their own. In this new cat and mouse war, the sniper was king. Eight days and 17 kills. They had arrived in the town, 18 men with one thing on their minds. Days went past as they sat in their observation posts, scanning the arc of land ahead of them, waiting for the enemy to make a mistake. Among their number Vincent Polus, 24 years old, a lance corporal born in Inverness and brought up in Glasgow. For Polus, it is eight days and three kills, the rest of the time spent lying still for hours on end, no chance to return to the relative safety of the rear. Living off cold rations, no chance to light a fire, an empty plastic bottle and clingfilm serving as his latrine. Sometimes they are in pairs, sometimes there are half a dozen of them stretched out across the position they have taken up, a hole in the ground or a gap in a building, a window or a ledge on the rooftops. Nine bullets in the rifle magazine, single shot and bolt action, the favourite weapon of the Black Watch sniper. "Your eyes are on the target area all the time, you keep your eyes on that area," he says. "If a target comes into view you report it to command and ask permission to fire, then you check your elevation and adjust for the wind. "You have to get the breathing right, a couple of deep breaths then you start breathing again normally and as you start to release your breath you squeeze the trigger. That's the moment you are at your most steady." The first time he fired he had been stationary for three hours, sitting waiting in a building near the centre of the town. Three hours in, the frustration beginning to creep over him, no sign of anything moving, trying to keep alert, his colleague at his side, scouring the arc with his telescope. Then the moment they had been waiting for, a group of men dressed in civilian clothes and a bodyguard carrying a folded AK47 and magazines of ammunition in his belt. Six of them in total. Unaware of the two pairs of eyes following them from further down the street, the militia men moved forward, then stopped, half hidden from view. Half an hour went by, their heads sometimes visible, but never a clear enough shot, no chance of taking all six down, no point in firing at one or two and risking the others getting away. Then they were moving again, climbing into a flat bed pick-up truck, the bodyguard crouching in the back. In his hideaway, Vincent spoke a few words into his radio mouthpiece, asking for permission to fire, never taking his eyes from the target for a moment, the muzzle of his rifle fixed on the bodyguard's chest. Permission given, he adjusted his aim, checking the sights. Seven hundreds and fifty metres, no wind. He began his breathing, two short and then one normal, the air beginning to leave his lungs. In the back of the pick-up, the bodyguard fumbled, the AK47 slipping forward in his lap. Vincent squeezed the trigger. "Through the sight I saw him fall back out of the truck and then the truck started to drive forwards. My sergeant put a couple of rounds into it but it was driving away and there were civvies coming out and picking up the dead guy," he says. The truck had disappeared from view, but still Vincent did not move, sure that the sun behind him would have blinded anyone looking in his direction to the muzzle flash. "I just kept watching and then the truck appeared again. That's when I shot the driver. I couldn't see much because of the sun on his windscreen but I knew where I was aiming. I hit him in the head and he fell out of the side of the wagon and went into a ditch." Nearby, Sergeant Mark Cameron was also waiting for his moment. Now the 31-year-old, from Brechin, seized his chance, firing twice at the passengers inside the pick-up, killing both. The others ran away, but four out of six lay dead. Mark Harvey is back in Cyprus now, casevac-ed out of theatre, lucky not to become the third British soldier to die in an RPG attack in the town. He, Pedro and Robbo are in line for a commendation for their bravery. The snipers are climbing back into their Warriors for another day of waiting, another day in the fight to finish off the militia and make safe the town. Mark Cameron is wondering whether anyone back home will really be able to understand what they are going through, day in, day out, hunting down an enemy who can melt away in a moment, putting down his weapon and becoming just another face in the crowd. end
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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