A piece of the action!

9:25am Friday 27th June 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

SITTING in the shadows of an armoured Warrior, they were given their orders of how battle would begin.

Swatting away the thousands of mosquitoes while they listened intently and marked grid references on maps, it was to be just a few hours before the enormous operation involving more than 1,000 men would get under way.

Vehicles had to be prepared, weapons checked and rations that would keep their strength up for an unknown number of days carefully packed.

Only when that was done would there be time for a just a few hours of much-needed sleep.

In the back of the tank that I had been assigned to I was shown what would be my bed for what later turned out to be three hours - about 4ft of space made up of tin cans, boxes and a seat cover.

I was one of the lucky ones. Outside, the majority of the guys were bedding down on the grass, some under the canvas suspended from the side of their vehicles, their beds marked by fluorescent lights so they could be seen by a moving tank in the dark.

Major Andy Betts, the man in charge of more than 100 soldiers of C Comp-any of the Tigers - the most decorated company in the British Army and home of Private Johnson Beharry, who received the Victoria Cross for his bravery in Iraq - had said there would be three main points of contact in their bid to take over a town called Topsyville.

To get to where they needed to begin, alongside all the other parts of their battlegroup, we would rise at 3.45am, with a view to moving off in convoy half an hour later.

The remarkable thing about these exhausted soldiers, who have spent more than 20 nights out on the prairie as part of Exercise Medicine Man, is that they appear to be able to sleep just about anywhere, no matter what the noise or how uncomfortable it may be.

They are used to the prospect of being stuck in the back of their moving tin cans, wearing helmets and body armour, for days or weeks at a time and will grab shut-eye whenever and however they can.

As the engines were fired up, leaving a distinct taste of oil in my throat, I scrambled outside to see a hive of activity in the darkness.

There was time to brush my teeth and go to the toilet one last time - I'd been warned it could be a long time until the next chance.

That was the last I was to properly see of the outside world for many hours, as we locked the back doors and our vehicle, complete with gunner and driver, took off at unbelievable speed across the prairie.

Strapped to my helmet I had the latest radio technology just introduced to the Tigers - the Bowman system.

Through this I was able to listen in one ear to the battlegroup messages of how things were unfolding on a broad scale, while in another ear I could listen to the constant vital chatter between the vehicles and their commander as secret call signs were used to make contact.

It was around 7.30am when they first encountered their enemy - some real and some dummy positions that had been put in place to slow down the attack.

The opposition, on this occasion, may not have been real (they were being played by fellow soldiers from different battalions who had come out to help) but the situations they were encountering were about as difficult a test they could ever expect to face.

And that's why what the Tigers are doing out here is so challenging - they are facing an enemy as good as the British Army defence and they would only hope that in a real situation the opposition would not be so well equipped.

In the back of the vehicle, being thrown around by the speed and ability of the Warriors to tear up and down hills across difficult terrain, it's virtually impossible to track where we might be at any one time.

There was only a rare opportunity, as the tin can started to heat up in the scorching sunshine, to peer out of the top hatch that we had opened to get air and see daylight.

As the second sticking point approached - the troops needed to cross a river - soldiers were dismounting from their vehicles and crawling through the grass and across the area to secure it before the drivers followed on.

The casualty calls were coming in thick and fast. Platoons of soldiers wiped out in a single attack, while whole vehicles had been lost and others had been abandoned due to fire.

Fortunately for the men of 1PWRR this was not real this time. They had been fitted with laser equipment on their weapons while their jackets carried sensors and a computer that would sound if they were hit and then tell them what injury they had suffered.

As the final assault took place, nine hours later, I was lucky enough to be able to leap out the back of our vehicle into a comfy, air-conditioned safety car that was to whisk me back to normality.

Their battle, however, was only really just beginning and will continue into next week as insurgents and other threats move in.

It's clear to see how this is about the best and most lifelike chance the British Army gets ahead of deploying to war-torn countries.

For the Tigers it's a taste of what's to come later this year - although they will be relieved to know this bloody fight was as tough a one as they will ever face, having lost a chunk of their force on the first day.