Life on Mars
I was so brutalised by battle, coming home felt like...
LAST week former Army officer Johnny Mercer revealed how he and his comrades fought for their lives after being ambushed by the Taliban. Here, he tells how the tours in Afghanistan left him feeling broken – and why he embarked on another mission… to become an MP.
DO YOU ever wonder what we’ve become?’ asked my mate Corporal Shaun ‘Baz’ Barrowcliff. ‘Not really,’ I lied, and scratched another mark on the board where we recorded our ‘kills’. ‘Don’t feel bad, mate. They choose the fight, not us.’
Moments earlier, I had asked the artillery to fire a smoke shell during contact with the enemy in Afghanistan. It malfunctioned, landing on an enemy fighter. We watched on a TV monitor as he burned alive. I knew there was nothing I could do except hope the guy met a quick end.
‘F*** it, he’ll have to burn,’ I heard myself saying. I think Baz was taken aback. I had come a long way from the choirboy of my strict Baptist youth to racking up kills. The summer of 2006 had been a brutal one for the British Army. For months, 3 Para Battlegroup fought valiantly to stay in Helmand, waging battle after battle against an enemy determined to drive them out.
Troops from my regiment, 3 Commando Brigade, replaced them. The soldiers and officers we were replacing were dispirited after some extremely high-intensity warfare. This concerned me – British soldiers moan and whinge; they do not get dispirited. They had endured some horrendous experiences. It was clearly unbridled chaos across the British area of responsibility.
Sure enough, we found the Afghan Army had no concept of warfighting beyond gang violence. Teaching them how to look after each other, about fire and movement, command and control, was futile; they were a group that had diminishing respect for life, whether their own or the enemy’s. The size of the task – building up an army capable of bringing a degree of security for the next 50 years – was beyond most of our comprehension, even at this early stage.
It’s hard to believe it now, but on that first tour we deployed in Cold War-era stab vests, with a plate inserted over the heart, to conduct high-intensity war-fighting operations. These vests were worn because they would keep your body in one piece following an explosion. They were otherwise useless.
THE Snatch Land Rover was already considered a coffin on wheels after the Iraq War. We stole Kevlar body armour from the Americans and we had run out of ammunition for the 0.5 calibre machine guns. Yes, the proud British Army of 2006.
Regrettably I, too, became disillusioned on my first tour of Afghanistan. My friend Jim Philippson had been killed in a piece of epic disorganisation before I’d arrived, yet many were treating the war like a game. We had wandered into yet another conflict unprepared.
I wasn’t sure it was worth the sacrifice. Our intelligence was so poor, and our foresight so woeful, we were placing our people in desperate situations. It seemed madness to put a handful of soldiers in an isolated, exposed compound, and ask them to hold off the enemy while simultaneously making friends with them. When our troops were inevitably attacked, the only way to avoid a massacre was to shoot our way out.
The scale of the violence served to turn a population against us. The harsh truth is that they came to prefer the Taliban.
The only intensely rewarding
period I had there was when I served as part of a Special Forces task force on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. We were up against some of the very worst evil in mankind. We would sometimes capture individuals with paedophile material on their phones, or personally filmed beheading videos.
We conducted operations with a relentless pursuit of the enemy, working our way through the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership networks on intelligence-led, violent night-time visits. I wanted to operate with these teams for the rest of my career, but I was ‘non-badged’ and returned to the regular Army.
Back with 3 Commando on later tours, there were days when the fear was suffocating, usually after someone had been hit and suffered an injury, or worse. It would creep up and fill your veins with what feels like aerated blood, tingling into your fingertips. All of a sudden, with the thoughts completely uninvited, you vividly recall seeing that lad get shot and the bullet tearing into his arm, breaking the bone in an instant and releasing a jet of sticky, warm blood. You remember the taste of it hitting your face and a drop resting on your bottom lip as you shouted that he would be OK. It tasted like iron, and if you didn’t lick it off it became congealed.
You worried how much it was going to hurt when it came to your turn, which seemed a matter of when, not if. And ‘the test’ – would you pass the test? Or would you die crying into the dust, beating the ground in pain? Would you fight hard enough to get your own tourniquet on to stem the blood before you passed out, or lie back and accept the inevitable theft of your life?
Then I would grit my teeth. If you could park those thoughts – put them in that part of your brain that doesn’t get opened except in extreme moments – you could control fear, or at least keep a lid on it. It was all about compartmentalising. And keeping busy.
I had many lucky escapes. In July 2010, an improvised explosive device (IED) went off at the rear of the vehicle in front of me. On another occasion the detonator went off under my vehicle but the main charge did not explode. Another time it happened just behind me and I was not caught up in the blast. Being hit by an IED is a strange experience. The blast is a deafening bang, followed by darkness as the mud and smoke falls around you. The next seconds are horrible, as you call out to see who has been hit, and what carnage you might have to get involved with. These things change you as a person. How could they not?
When I flew home after my final tour in October 2010, my fiancee Felicity met me at the airport. I did not want to talk about me, or explain anything that had gone on. I wanted to forget about it. I felt like I had landed on Mars.
It didn’t help that many in my regiment did not know how to treat me, and seemed very wary of me. It seemed my tour had been rather extraordinary, simply because of the sheer amount of time spent in contact with the enemy. I had fired more high-explosive rounds than the rest of the fire support team commanders in Helmand put together. The CO said I was ‘probably the most combat-experienced terminal controller in the Army today’. It wasn’t much to be proud of. Once you leave the men you have been fighting with, there is an all-pervading sense of loneliness that engulfs you like a dark cloud.
I felt my soul struggling to come home from theatre. I kept telling myself that home was the real world, that theatre was exceptional. There were a lot of tears, in random places and at random times. I found this embarrassing.
Yes, I was happy to be home; away from the heat, the s***, the blood and the smells of southern Afghanistan. But from here, Afghanistan all seemed so pointless. We had sacrificed so much of our bodies and minds, but it felt like no one in my village even knew where Afghanistan was. And my closest comrade Bing – Mark Chandler, an NCO and good bloke who had courage and resilience in spades – would never be coming home. He had made the ultimate sacrifice. For what?
I remember the exact moment I lost it. It was December 18, 2010, the night of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. David Beckham dedicated his Lifetime Achievement Award to those serving our country in Afghanistan.
I burst into tears and went to my bedroom. What the f*** was going on? David Beckham had made me cry? I wasn’t crying for Mark; I wasn’t crying because of guilt; I wasn’t crying for myself. I think I was weeping for our generation. Nothing really prepares you for the reality of repeated visits to war.
AND I felt decimated, destroyed inside. I felt that I had nothing else to give. I used to be a good man. I had found a family and a home in the Army that I was content with. But now the ride was going too fast, and I wanted to get off. This Afghan stuff was getting out of control.
I had become totally brutalised; I was ashamed of what I had done, ashamed of what I had become, and wondered how life would ever be the same again. Now, with a family of my own, the scales had, after 12 years, finally tipped. No longer could I justify putting Felicity through another combat tour. I had to find another mission. And it was right there in front of me.
I felt strongly that the Government had failed our Servicemen and women. It was not something I could let lie. When it came to foreign policy, you had to look pretty hard at what was going on to find a strategy. Our foreign policy was based on one thing only – the election timetable. How could officers achieve results on the ground if political leaders were so naive as to specify when wars would end, to appease a domestic audience?
I knew nothing about politics. I had never voted before, but I felt I could change things for people who needed it. I believed in the system of Parliament, and I believed in some core causes. And I wanted to help end the unacceptable stigma and lack of genuine commitment to mental health. My mind was made up. I was going to leave the Army and become an MP.
Abridged from We Were Warriors: One Soldier’s Story Of Brutal Combat, by Johnny Mercer, published by Sidgwick & Jackson on June 1 at £18.99. Order your copy for £14.24 (25 per cent discount) at mailbookshop. co.uk or call 0844 571 0640.