It was supposed to be a straightforward operation. A Taliban commander was
apparently holed up in a mudwalled compound just outside Naw Zad in northern
Helmand province, and about 100 paras and Gurkhas were sent in to cordon it
off and seize him. The plan was for the Gurkhas and Patrols Platoon to drive
in from opposite sides and secure the outer perimeter, then A Company would
be dropped in by helicopter, search the compound, grab him and get away.
Supervising from the air was Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Tootal, commander of 3
Para, the first British battle group to go into Helmand in southwest
Afghanistan. As he peered from his helicopter to see the three Chinooks
bringing in A Company, he felt a glow of satisfaction.
“I thought, it’s all going like clockwork,” he recalled. “We’re going to move
in, surprise the guy, might even catch him. Then I heard, ‘Contact, contact,
contact!’”
The Gurkhas had been ambushed in a wadi, or desert valley, as they drove in
from the north. At the same time Patrols Platoon had come under attack in
the south. Vicious firefights were under way.
“The plan had all gone to rats,” said Tootal. “We thought there might be one
or two Taliban. In fact there were 70. We were being attacked on three sides
and all my vehicles had been ambushed.”
The supposedly simple Operation Mutay turned into a six-hour running battle.
“I was circling round in my helicopter and all I could hear was ‘Contact,
contact, contact’ and it was ‘what do I do, land in this confused situation
and get my helicopter shot up or go back to Bastion [headquarters] and get
reinforcements?’”
“Then my pilot said, ‘Colonel, we’re five minutes to bingo on fuel’, which
means just five minutes flying time left, so I followed my intuition to
land.”
Before deploying to Helmand, the soldiers had been trained to operate in the
desert. “But this was close country with patches of orchards, irrigation
ditches, high compound walls so you couldn’t see more than 50m, and there
were Taliban popping up all over the place. I did think, we’re not going to
get out of this.”
It was evening by the time Tootal and his paras got air support from an
American A-10, which flattened a line of trees with cannon fire, enabling
them to get out. They had killed more than 20 Taliban and taken no
casualties, but it had been close.
Tootal identifies that moment on June 4, 2006 as the time he realised that his
masters in the Ministry of Defence had underestimated what British forces
would face in Helmand. “I always knew it would be a challenge, but this was
the real deal,” he said. “Everything changed after Mutay. Every time we went
out was potentially going to be like that and it often was.”
By the time 3 Para left Helmand four months later, 15 of his men would be dead
and 46 badly wounded. Far from the hope of John Reid, then the defence
secretary, that “not a single shot” would be fired, Tootal’s men fired
479,236 rounds in their six months in Helmand. That figure does not include
rockets, cannon rounds, missiles or bombs from supporting aircraft.
This week Tootal starts a new life as a civilian after 20 years in the army. A
wiry 42-year-old with grey hair and piercing blue eyes, he spoke to The
Sunday Times in his first newspaper interview since dramatically resigning
from the service.
Last month Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of defence staff, warned that British
armed forces were “very stretched” by fighting on two fronts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Tootal, a high-flyer who had been told he was in line to be
made a general, reveals the mounting frustration of commanders on the ground
about lack of equipment, poor pay and conditions for his men and their
families, and “shocking” treatment of the wounded.
Looking back, Tootal is angry at what he describes as “wishful thinking” about
the Afghan mission by senior military and politicians. “They weren’t really
thinking it through,” he said. “If you read about the battles faced by the
Russians in Helmand only 20 years ago, we should have been ready to face
that level of opposition. Yes, they were different conflicts, different
rationales, but . . . there’s this pattern of tenacious resistance. It
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be there, but we should have thought more about
what we were getting into.
“We confused ourselves – and the public – that this was a peace support
mission but that presupposes parties signing up to a peace deal. The Taliban
had signed up to nothing. This was counterinsurgency.”
As fighting intensified in Helmand, with the controversial strategy of sending
soldiers to hold district centres such as Sangin, Naw Zad and Musa Qala,
Tootal says his forces were “stretched almost to breaking point”. Something
else was becoming clear. “I always knew we didn’t have enough helicopters.”
There were just seven Chinooks for his 1,200-strong battle group in a theatre
where it was highly risky to move by road.
“The lack of helicopters meant I had to make some very hard decisions,” said
Tootal. At times he was left playing God, particularly during heavy fighting
in Musa Qala when he had to organise eight casualty evacuations in just six
days. Musa Qala was the most dangerous place to land, and each time Chinooks
approached to collect wounded, they would almost be shot down and would have
to abort.
“I would then get my doctor in Bastion to talk to the medic in Musa Qala and
get advice on how long the casualty had to live,” said Tootal. “If the
doctor said four hours, I’d say he has to wait four hours because I needed
time to plan, and arrange supporting fire-power to create a safer window.
“My biggest fear was we’d lose a helicopter – I thought it was a question of
when not if. One of my men was left for nearly seven hours with his throat
ripped out, but the doctor was telling me I had that long. I had no choice –
I was balancing 16 lives against one life.”
Tootal believes that kit has improved and progress has been made in places
such as Sangin and Musa Qala. However, despite the addition of a few more
aircraft, he points out there are now far more troops, making the lack of
helicopters even worse, and the Taliban are taking advantage by increasingly
using roadside bombs. “We had seven Chinooks for a battle group of 1,200;
now there are only eight Chinooks for four battle groups. If you’re not
flying you’re driving, and if you’re driving when you should be flying
you’re vulnerable to roadside bombs. That’s one of the reasons the Taliban
are doing that; they know we don’t have enough helicopters.”
Figures released by the government this year suggest that only 17 of the 26
Chinooks that comprise the total “forward fleet” of operational aircraft are
“fit for purpose”. Eight new Chinooks bought from Boeing in 2001 will not be
ready to fly for a year or more because of software problems.
Equipment shortages aside, Tootal thinks the greatest mistake in Helmand was
the failure of government agencies – particularly the Department for
International Development – to carry out reconstruction. He says he could
have achieved far more with money than weapons.“I was allowed to spend just
$250 a month [on reconstruction], then I even lost that, but I could expend
millions of pounds’ worth of ammunition in a single day. Just one Javelin
missile cost £60,000-70,000,” he said.
“While I think there was a need to do some fighting, had I been empowered to
have that money in bags of gold to put on the table and known who to talk
to, we could have brought over some of the guys who ended up fighting
against us.”
The task of motivating his troops became difficult for him after he visited
wounded men in Selly Oak hospital, Birmingham, while home on leave. “I was
shocked to my core by what I saw,” he said. “I’d expected
to see a military ward with military staff and patients, but instead they
were mixed with all sorts of civilian patients, young paras next to
80-year-old geriatric women.”
One para sergeant major had been shot through the arm leaving it shattered in
14 places. When Tootal asked how he was, he replied: “Pretty shit, sir.”
“He motioned to a civilian patient next to him who couldn’t control his
bowels, he was urinating and defecating, no one was clearing it up,” said
Tootal. “It got so bad my warrant officer would get out of bed and clean it
up with his hands.” A para with a damaged back had been waiting days for a
CT scan, and nobody had told him that the machine was broken. Another
soldier whose lower leg had been amputated was left, unattended, in agony.
Tootal was horrified. “It was those stories that I had to carry back to
theatre with me, knowing I was about to lead people back into combat. It
filled me with foreboding every time we flew on a helicopter, thinking if
one of my guys gets hit they’re going to go back to that.”
Since returning from Helmand, Tootal has created a charity, the Afghanistan
Trust, to look after the more seriously wounded and next of kin. “I’ve heard
other regiments are doing the same, which is really disturbing – we
shouldn’t be having to set up charities to look after our people.”
He also found he was losing a number of promising soldiers because of the poor
pay and conditions, particularly the accommodation for families. “We
definitely lost some good soldiers who said, ‘I love the regiment but I
don’t want to be divorced.’”
His personal experience confirms a Ministry of Defence survey this month which
found that 47% of servicemen regularly think of resigning. Tootal recently
lost a good man to the Post Office because his take-home pay would be £1,000
a month more. “We can’t ignore the fact that for the risks they take and
return we get, our soldiers are not paid enough,” he said.
Despite a recent 9% rise for the 13,000 most poorly paid, the basic wage for a
trained soldier is only £16,000. Operational allowances can push pay up to
£20,000. “For that he’s on call 24 hours a day, being shot at, living in a
hole, not washing clothes for weeks on end. Compare that to a fuel-tanker
driver who earns £32,000 and no one shoots at him.”
Afghanistan left Tootal with great pride in his men, as well as disturbing
memories such as having to cut the burnt-out bodies of some of his soldiers
from a vehicle after an ambush. This makes him infuriated by reports from
the Foreign Office that it was a mistake to send an aggressive force such as
the paras first into Helmand.
“[We] did not go looking for trouble and anyone who thinks we did has never
been in sustained combat, never risked life on a daily basis, never had to
make possibly the last phone call home to loved ones, never had to pick up
the body parts of one of your friends, never spent the day covered in the
blood of one of their men. You don’t go looking for trouble when you know.”
Last November after long discussions with his girlfriend and with no job to go
to, he decided to put his concerns in a letter to the army chief and resign.
“I had been promoted and told if I stayed I had every chance of making
general and commanding a division and going further. But I felt being a good
soldier was not just about rank but about how you treat people and look
after them.”
For all that, he insists, “commanding 3 Para was awesome – if I was 18 I’d do
it all over again”. He firmly believes Britain should be in Afghanistan,
though with more troops – and more helicopters, but he warns we need to be
prepared to be there for decades. “Ten years, 20 years, 30 years . . .
Northern Ireland took 30 years. But it’s an investment that’s worth making.”
www.afghanistantrust.org
Dirty laundry
“My biggest regret about Afghanistan is over a washing machine,” says Stuart
Tootal. The machine in question was in a hospital in Gereshk in the south of
Helmand and was discovered by Tootal’s men on their first patrol in May
2006.
“The hospital sheets were filthy and the doctor said they couldn’t wash them,”
he explained. “But we said, ‘You have an industrial washing machine sitting
there in cellophane.’”
The US aid agency that had donated it withdrew when the British arrived so it
had never been installed.An engineer with Tootal said that could be
rectified, but they had not reckoned with the Department for International
Development. It saw aid as its area and disliked “quick impact” projects.
“They didn’t want the military going into hospitals and they said we would
tread on the toes of an aid agency even though it wasn’t doing anything,”
said Tootal. “I said, ‘It doesn’t have to be done under the cloak of 3 Para.
We can dress ourselves up as Afghans, do it at night. We just need to fix
it.’”
The government officials refused, so for the whole of 3 Para’s six months in
Helmand, the machine sat there in its plastic wrapping.
Tootal believes failure to carry out such “hearts and minds” operations has
cost Britain in the long run. “It would have made us stand apart from the
usual Afghan experience of foreigners constantly promising and not
delivering,” he said.
I don't know what we're doing there either. Where is British Gain? The adult in me realises that no Govt. spends gold or spills blood on noble causes. The likelihood that there's no payoff for Great Britian PLC is just ludicous.
Where's the profit for us?
Paul, Liverpool, UK
Respect where its due people. Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Tootal,you have done your duty & beyond. Your men will never forget you,nor will the local afghanis themselves. You & our boys fought everything that came your way and won,while underequipped and outnumbered . Utrinque Paratus indeed friend.
Robin, Coleraine, N Ireland
I cannot fathom why the British Army persists with Chinooks. They are not cost effective and never have been, in the British or the US military.
Why not Blackhawks or some other cheaper choppper?
The UK needs to give their soldiers some hardware to work with.
Bob Murphy, Guildford VIC, Australia
I think the UN must find out a new agreement for the taliban in Afgahnistan.
This report says clearly that talibans never were understanding with coming under to the new government in 2001.
giovanni, Berlin, Germany
My only concern is that a 'leader' like Stuart Tootal did not install the washing machine there and then. Leadership? Bureaucracy? It might have upset a few people but at least it would have done some good.
John Land, Saltash, UK
What the hell are we doing there US pipeline +CIA drug scam?
WE are the invaders. THEY are the defenders of their homeland.
The Russians at least were invited in. Previously against the British, they virtually destroyed us.
Quizzed by US army colonel I predicted then 40 years. He estimated 25yrs.
John Bayldon, Harrogate,
Hodgson, Pensacola, USA _ Sound like nothing has changed since your stint in Malaya. We keep saying that we should learn frim history but we keep electing idiots both in the US and the UK. Very soon we'd learn that armies are only needed on the home front and wars will be "fought" by suits!
Glynn, Kingston,
there will always be war,bad pay ,injustices. that is why 'warrior code' 'regiment pride' ' elan' were discovered.army is not about career and the wrong types should not join, men will die of gangrene while others dance.wars should be ;'just cause' 'too caring' -no war , 'indifference'-no soldiers
ajit, lucknow, india
I quit the British Army after 8 good years including a two year
stint in Malaya, Conducting " Anti terrorist " operatations
against the Chinese who we had previously armed to help fight the Japanese in WW2 ( sound Familiar ).
I emigrated to the USA in 1957 and have lived happily ever
Hodgson, Pensacola, USA
This is not an isolated incident; the British Army is losing outstanding Officers and Soldiers as a result of this lack of investment. The British government should take full responsibility and acknowledge the neglect of its most prised asset and make every effort to amend. Whilst it is clear that some efforts has been made due to the current CGS forcing the issue it is not sufficient.
A dramatic increase in cash is required to address the imbalance or this appalling degradation, failure to act will not only continue to erode the to capability but render the longer term effectiveness of the forces to near non existent. Our forces deserve more from the Government and a substantial increase in pay, in particular whilst on operations is something that should be considered along with far better welfare support.
Act now or suffer the consequences
Martin Ness, Perth, Australia
I worked with DFID in Iraq and I agree with the Colonel. They were totally useless and inefficient. Front line DFID work was often done by tired, worn out old hacks who were "consultants" and intellectually incapable of the scale of the task. It was rare to see a real DFID staff member anywhere.
Joe, London, UK
A remarkable statement when a skilled military professional like Col. Tootal says he could have "achieved more with money than weapons."
John Booke, Longmeadow, MA, USA
I have a son who is on his 2nd operational tour of Afghanistan and also as a tour of Iraq under his belt and is a carrear soldier and this weekend was hit with an IED whilst on patrol and is lucky to have survived and gets less than £50 a day, I used to work in security for more.
Mick Pepper, Londonderry, N. Ireland
What a shame that an article like this depicts the value system applied by the MOD to the entire theatre in Afghanistan. you should hang your heads in shame when reading this article. Money pours outof coffers for the under budgeted olympic games fiasco(which everyone knew would happen) . disgusting
Aron, JHB, S.Africa
When the Soviets were in Afghanistan the senior officers and politicians simply didn't care about the deaths of their grunts in the field. It's the same now with NuLab's nomenklatura class. The contempt they feel for those "too stupid" to fight for a place aboard the gravy train is palpable.
MM, London, UK
Of course, there's also "overstretch" in Government these days.
Hence the need for a Joint Secretary of State for Defence and Secretary of State for Scotland - "Two Jobs" Des Browne...
Indra Gurung, London,
I've been emailing my MP about funding and other issues including kit but he doesnt reply any more. Just like Des Browne they simply dont care anymore. I'm 56 any I'd love to go and sort out the politicians and cant do sorts but no one listens. We are wasting our time we should revolt.
mike, leeds, uk
DFID are an embarrassment. They refuse to even send anyone to Helmand as it is 'too dangerous', despite the fact that they never left the base when they were here. Typical of their attitude & lack of cooperation with the army - one DFID person last year referred to all military as the 'baby-killers'
VC, Lashkar Gar, Afghanistan
How about a new sitcom -
Blackadder Goes Up The Khyber.
They could have Stephen Fry as a Colonel Melchet type figure, ordering our brave troops into unwinable battle from the comfort of an armchair miles behind the battle lines.
Or to be more accurate - from No. 10 Downing Street.
GJB, Slough, Berkshire
The Taliban 'refused' Bush's ultimatum to hand over Bin Laden so the coalition of the dummies followed Bush in to 'find Bin Laden'.
So many years later, so many bombs, so many 000s dead /wounded innocent Afghans and still no Bin Laden. Deliver us from Evil, but most O Lord deliver us from Fools.
lydia, Brisbane, Australia
Good for Stuart Tootal.The Paras have lost a good leader who has more moral fibre that all the posturing politicians put together.Its about time the Labour Government showed some backbone and sorted out their departments and REALLY supported those at the front end.Fiddling while Rome burns!
Peter , Heathfield, UK
If the West does not change its policies in Afghanistan, they will still be there in 10 or 20 years time, facing the same issues with the soldiers being killed or maimed, not including the countless civilian casualties that go unreported, but are always termed as Taliban so no one pursues it anymore
John Taylor, London,
What makes the British think they are better equipped than the Russians were to fight in Afghanistan? Kidding yourselves wont help. All the modern firepower will come to nought - remember the Ruusians were a superpower when they had to leave tail between their legs. The Americans in Vietnam?
Peter Casie Chetty, Liverpool, England
I think its ashame Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Tootal left for he could have done so much more to help our troops had he kept his position or been promoted. Now they have no one on the inside who cares enough to speak out and be heard,
Ken, Devon,
Offering troops £2000 to go away to war for 6months doesnt make them want to stay in the job. Many still buy their own kit from Army & Navy stores. I shuffle papers for the NHS and get £30,000 I dont risk my life or kill others. Fight one last battle Tootal and stand up for the Para's and all troops
Reynolds, SouthWest,
Nothings changed. Troops get 2 weeks leave from being in the theatre for 6months. They are in danger 7 days a week 24 hours a day for £16,000 I recently picked my son up from the airport all the troops on that flight came through the arrivals lounge, not one smiled all looked thin tired and stressed
Kenz, SW, UK
A very good article. It goes a long way into helping people understand just how neglected the Forces are by the Labour Government and, for that matter the Tories when they were in power.
Phill, The Wirral, England