Spoken from the Front by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online Page A

started to get a little bit braver. Or we were
perhaps setting one too many patterns – they started to learn
what our routine was. The first ever RPG attack was in the
early hours of the morning – one or two a.m. It was pitch dark
and I was doing my rounds, walking around the base. And a
guy with an RPG had literally just walked up to the fence and
fired it at a sangar. It missed the sangar and the RPG just went
on, like a rocket, straight over the camp and outside again. He
had completely missed us from twenty-five metres. How that
happened I don't know. I rushed into the sangar, where there
was one of my lads, a young Scot named Ted. He had only
just come out of training and he was just sat there in amazement
saying: 'Did you just see that?'
    I said: 'Yes, but are you all right?'
    He said: 'Yes, but did you just see that?'
    I said: 'Yes, I did. It's OK. It's fine. There's no point dwelling
on it.' It was just like a bang and a rocket, like a firework, going
off. The RPG just hit some derelict ground on the outside and
that was that. But from that point we realized we needed better
torches – dragon lights in the sangars – because what we were
issued with was not good enough. You could not see out, which
meant this guy had just walked up to the fence and fired at us.
11 June 2006
    McNab: A British soldier was killed and two were seriously
wounded in a fire-fight. Captain James Philippson, aged twenty-nine,
of 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, was the first British
serviceman to die after the deployment to Helmand province: his patrol
was ambushed by Taliban fighters outside Sangin. The servicemen
were in Land Rovers when the attack happened. Anthony Philippson,
the victim's father, said his only consolation was that his son had died
in 'the job he lived for'. Apache attack helicopters were called in to
support the troops following the ambush. Several Taliban fighters
were killed.
July 2006
    Flight Sergeant Paul 'Gunny' Phillips, RAF
    Flight Sergeant Paul 'Gunny' Phillips, RAF, is forty. He was born
and brought up in Dundee, Scotland, and is the eldest of three
siblings. He left school at sixteen and began on a Youth Training
Scheme (YTS), rebuilding car engines. He joined the Royal
Marines in 1985, but left in 1990 and worked in various jobs on
'Civvy Street'. In 1993, he joined the RAF and spent seven years
as a storeman, serving three years at RAF Lossiemouth and four
years on Tactical Supply Wing at RAF Stafford. In 2000, he began
retraining to become a member of the air crew and joined 27
Squadron in 2003. He did tours of Northern Ireland and Bosnia
as ground crew and later, as air crew, two tours of Iraq and four
two-month tours of Afghanistan. He is based at RAF Odiham in
Hampshire.
    I hate to use the term but I am a jack-of-all-trades, really. My
role is probably the most multi-skilled job in the air-crew
world. To run down my duties: I am responsible for the on-and
unloading of passengers and cargo, responsible for
voice-marshalling the aircraft by day and night in confined
spaces, voice-marshalling the aircraft for underslung pick-up
and drop-off, air navigation assistance, radio work, limited
search and rescue capability, and air-to-ground gunnery. I can
field service the aircraft but not in nearly as much detail as
engineers.
    My tours of Iraq were an absolute breeze compared with
Afghanistan. Iraq was just a bimble around the desert enjoying
the view. I didn't fire one round in anger. But Afghanistan
was a massively different kettle of fish. My first detachment
to Afghanistan was with the Dutch Air Force from February
2006 to May 2006 [where Phillips received a general's
commendation for his work]. I wasn't involved in any enemy
contacts whilst with the Dutch. Then I went back out with the
RAF in July [2006]. I had been in theatre for three to four days
and there was a big op on called Op Augustus. We were
trying to grab some high-value [Taliban] targets in Sangin. It
was planned as a five-ship