Free A Million Bullets: The Real Story of the British Army in Afghanistan by James Fergusson

machine-guns, the so-called '.50 cals' which weighed nearly forty kilos each and were mounted on tripods, were too large to set up behind the cover of sandbags and had been positioned just to one side. The incoming fire was so intense and accurate that the Gurkhas' best weapon now had temporarily to be abandoned. Rex, crouching in the Control Tower and surrounded by maps and radio equipment, saw sparks as rounds ricocheted off the barrel of the .50 cal there.
    Sangar 3, the tallest of the corner towers and the location of the platoon's other .50 cal, was even more heavily engaged. The fiercest fire came from the eastern tree line – the target area of Operation Mutay the previous month – and from a conspicuous two-storey building 200 metres to the north-east that the defenders had nicknamed the 'Smugglers' House'. Rounds were landing inside the sangar, sending up spurts of dust and pinging off the ammunition boxes. As on the Control Tower, the occupants were quite unable to reach their most effective weapon.
    The tide was turned by a twenty-year-old recruit called Nabin Rai who volunteered to go to the reinforcement of Sangar 3. Carrying quantities of heavy ammunition, he sprinted for the base of the tower and made his way up the first and then the second rickety ladder that led to the roof. This in itself was a brave thing to do, for the ladders were desperately exposed, but after a climb that must have felt endless, Rifleman Nabin tumbled breathlessly into the sangar, unscathed. His arrival was followed by a slight lull in the incoming fire. Catching his breath, Nabin moved quickly to the .50 cal and began to fire it at the Smugglers' House.
    The response was ferocious. Several rounds glanced off Nabin Rai's gun, until one round, passing through the gun sight, struck him in his right cheek. With blood pouring from the wound he crawled back into cover, although the safety of this position was only relative: another Gurkha, Rifleman Kumar, who was suppressing the area with a GPMG – a general-purpose machine-gun, known as a 'Jimpy' – felt a round strike his weapon's bipod from where it ricocheted into the sangar roof. The sangar commander, Lance Corporal Shree, took one look at Nabin and ordered him down to the medic. Nabin, reaching for a field dressing, flatly refused: his injury, he insisted, was not serious. Fifteen minutes later, when Sangar 1 announced that it had at last identified a precise firing point in the Smugglers' House, he was back in action again, this time armed with the Minimi light machine-gun. He could have peeked over the edge of the sandbags, but Nabin chose instead to stand up. 'I couldn't see properly because of all the smoke and dust,' he explained. Lance Corporal Shree saw three rounds thud into the sandbag immediately in front of Nabin, and then a fourth that passed through the bag and struck him in the helmet. Only then did Nabin drop back into cover, where he grinned at his comrades and smoked a cigarette, before returning to his position once again. It was a further two hours before he could be persuaded to come down from the roof.
    Despite such bravery, it was not the Gurkhas but air power that repelled the attack that night. Forty minutes after it began, a pair of American A10s arrived on station along with a Predator drone. For twenty minutes the planes made low passes over the town to attack a heavy machine-gun position and two other targets with rockets and 30mm cannon. For the soldiers watching from the sangars – and especially for Sergeant Charlie Aggrey, the joint tactical air controller (or JTAC, pronounced 'jaytack') on secondment from 7 Para Royal Horse Artillery whose job it was to guide them in – this was an anxious time. Although capable of great accuracy, the slow-flying 'tank-busters' were notorious for their involvement in several friendly-fire tragedies in Iraq. 'Beware the A10', according to Aggrey, remains an unofficial rule of thumb among the British JTAC community.