Blood & guts: At the front with the poor bloody infantry in Afghanistan

[TacticalPeek]

Blood & guts: At the front with the poor bloody infantry

This is the war they do not want you to see: but while the media are kept from the action, emails and videophone images from the troops tell a terrifyng story. By Raymond Whitaker

Published: 01 October 2006

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Soldiers have painted graphic pictures of all-out fighting amid scorpions and sandflies, with ammunition running out, equipment malfunctioning and reinforcements and supplies failing to arrive. One email described a soldier soiling himself with fear; another said there had been attacks by Taliban militiamen on motorbikes who open fire while clutching children in front of themselves.

"You see the Taliban cutting around on dirt bikes, their weapons in one hand, their kids in the other," said an email reported by The Mail on Sunday. "They think we will not shoot them. There have been some terrible accidents. It is horrible to kill a kid, nothing could prepare you for it."

snip

A less glorious account of a similar engagement was given by a British soldier, however, who reported on an operation to rescue Afghan troops and French special forces who had been ambushed by Taliban. "I could not believe we were going to charge off this helicopter into a wall of lead," he wrote. "Not everyone wanted to get off. One guy actually defecated. He sat rigid with fear inside the cargo hold until we pulled him up and pointed him towards the door.

"We had to manoeuvre across open ground for 200 metres. The scene was like a human abattoir. We fought off the Taliban, but were too late to save the French guys. All of us were shaking when we were flown back to base. One of the Afghan survivors said the French had been tied up, then gutted alive by the Taliban. It was one of the most shocking things I had ever heard."

But one soldier claimed that "scare tactics" were being used against anyone revealing such details, complaining: "It is not fair. The commanding officer said that he would mallet anyone he found was speaking about this."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1777869.ece

[TacticalPeek]

1. Should have read their Kipling.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

[lonestarnot]

2. Be sure and git yer yella magnet fer yer SUV now ya her.

http://kevinswoodshed.blogspot.com/2006/09/stick-yellow-ribbon-on-your-suv-asylum.html