Dirty Deeds Done Cheap by Peter Mercer Read Free Book Online Page B

will work, all different tactics. All you can do is react with disciplined professionalism, give them all you’ve got and, should you get hit, do as much damage limitation as possible. Then take them out. Period. If they know this they are more likely to go for an easier target, maybe some sectarian murder or something similar.
    The way 90 per cent of attacks happened was that first there would be an improvised explosive device (IED), which could be anything from a dead dog packed with explosives on the side of the road to a similarly packed parked car. The insurgents had even started removing kerbstones on the side of the road, putting 105mm high explosive shells behind them and packing in nails, bits of metal (basically any sharp object that could maim or kill) and replacing them so that you couldn’t tell they’d been tampered with. You must admit, it’s pretty ingenious. Then, after the IEDs exploded, the insurgents would follow up the ambush with RPK machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles. Mayhem. So if you were caught in a blast you had to be on your toes – if you survived it, and a lot of our guys didn’t – because the blast was so powerful. And that was normally just the start of an attack. The insurgents ran their operation like a military campaign, they would have people spotting for them on the edge of town, giving them exact locations of Coalition forces, so they knew to be at just the right place at the right time. This was the reason we drove so fast through town: our company’s policy was that (hopefully), because we drove as fast as we did, by the time the insurgents had seen us and been able to trigger their device, we’d have already gone past it and they would miss us. This often worked, but sometimes they saw us coming too soon – as they often posted lookouts – and sometimes it didn’t.
    If we had to stop for any reason we would debus (get out of the vehicles) and get behind cover. If there were other local cars around, we would get in between them and crouch down. Even the insurgents were reluctant to kill their own, so you were pretty safe mingling in crowds. Once we were under attack and had identified our targets, we would try to blow the crap out of them, if possible. If it was in town our gunners were disciplined: we opened up only with M16s, M240s and M249s. If we’d opened up with the M19 grenade launcher or the .50-calibre we would have blown houses away and taken towns apart, but our guys were professionals and none of us wanted to harm innocent civilians – none of us.
    I know some people will think it is wrong but we weren’t arsed about taking prisoners. We were just looking after our own butts. If you don’t agree with this philosophy I’d put this book down now. I was just looking out for my lads and comrades. It was a deterrent, one of the main reasons for the insurgency not to take us on. The insurgents would rather take on the US military than us because they knew that we were unable to take them prisoner. Not for one minute am I suggesting that we would ever have executed them, but they would be disarmed and maybe get a beating and then be told to fuck off. If we could hand them over to the Iraqi police we would always try to do that, but this was not always possible, as it would mean going static in a potentially hostile situation, which was something we would always try to avoid.
    As we drove through towns we could hear gunshots a lot of the time, some far away, some close, some hitting us and our men. I could see scorch marks and craters everywhere where IEDs had gone off, and sometimes you couldn’t help wincing when you were coming up to a position that was renowned for IEDs – but we always tried to avoid those locations if we could. Every time we came through towns, we tried to take a different route but, unfortunately, coming up to our camp there were only two roads and two entrances, so you were limited when it came to this point. As we approached our base