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IRAQ - Op Telic
Bn Sit Rep |
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LOOK!
New sections have been added . . . . . Pictures
from recent Welfare Office Events have been added
and the picture board section has been updated, plus
lots more . . . . . |
Welcome to the
OP Telic 6 (IRAQ) Section
Battalion Articles
The following information has recently been
submitted for the next edition of the Guards
Magazine
A FIST FULL OF DINARS
By
2Lt L E WHITE
Coldstream Guards
The morning of the 1st August 2005 saw the first
major Recruiting Day for the Iraqi Army in Basra
City since the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards
deployed in April 2005. However this Recruiting Day
was a far call from the civilisation of an English
summer’s day with marquees set up on The Queens
Parade in Aldershot full of recruiting teams
promising to let people see the world, experience
endless adventure training and, in the case of the
Royal Signals, fly Apache Helicopter Gunships.
Instead the central feature of this Day was a single
wooden table on a street corner with hopeful
candidates crowding round in the blistering Iraqi
heat. Never the less somehow the word had spread and
some 3000 soldiers in waiting from as far away as
Najaf, Fallujah and Al Amara as well as Basra itself
had congregated around Al Mina Port in the north of
the city with an undisclosed sum of money as a
‘deposit’ to secure their place in the reformed
Iraqi Army. Indeed, it would appear that a Fist Full
of Dinars is the only qualification required to join
the Iraqi Army. Unfortunately for the vast majority,
the Army only had around 100 places to offer the
3000 would be recruits; someone somewhere had
managed to get their wires well and truly crossed.
At around 0730 hrs it started to become rather
apparent in the Number Two Company Ops room that the
patience and general karma of the crowd was
deteriorating rather rapidly. It was at this stage
that Major J R Mayhead, Number Two Company
Commander, made the easy and obvious decision to
call upon the ‘Magnificent’ Number Seven Platoon,
commanded by Second Lieutenant L E White, to deploy
with the Rover Group in order to help start calming
the situation. The decision was made not to deploy
with public order equipment but to get on the ground
immediately and start trying to sort out the chaos.
Number Six Platoon, under Second Lieutenant F G C
Johnston, had just completed a long night patrolling
the streets, but were nevertheless equipped with
public order kit and sent back out onto the ground
to give depth protection and support if necessary.
The Company Commander’s Rover Group were the first
to arrive on the scene and found utter chaos. Whilst
Major Mayhead tried to establish an initial picture
of the situation, Number Seven Platoon moved in to
the area in two separate Multiples. What was
normally a busy road running through Al Mina and Al
Maqil was completely crammed with a mixture of
various Iraqi units and several thousand
increasingly angry wannabe soldiers. In my mind, and
those of several others there, there was every
likelihood that this would soon escalate into a
fully fledged public order serial.
However Major Mayhead soon realised that the crowd
were in fact quite friendly towards our callsigns
and to a degree co-operative to our demands. This
was not so much the case with regard to the Iraqi
Army, who were using the somewhat overzealous tactic
of firing their weapons on automatic into the air in
order to move people around the area, a method which
I am sure does not appear in many pamphlets on
public order – perhaps the Iraqi Infantry Battle
School teach things differently. At this stage it
was decided that we would intervene and split the
crowd up into more manageable sizes, which, with
some gentle persuasion they allowed us to do. Once
we were happy that the situation had calmed down
slightly and that the crowd had become more
manageable we pushed the Iraqi Army forward to take
our places as we stood back, thus keeping in tune
with the constant theme of encouraging the Iraqis to
take the lead in security.
Once we were content that things were settling down
we took a much needed water break and started
rotating through the back of the Snatch vehicles in
order to gain some respite from the sweltering heat.
Unfortunately our work was far from over at this
stage as once again the Iraqi Army began panicking
when the crowds moved, triggering one or two
soldiers to open fire into the air, which had the
domino effect of making every soldier on the ground
join in. This happened several times and each
occurrence required us to step back up to the front,
calm the situation down and then push the Iraqi Army
and the Tactical Support Unit (TSU) of the Iraqi
Police back to the fore so maintaining, at least in
appearance, Iraqi primacy.
The Iraqi Army had placed numerous machine gun
equipped vehicles in what can best be described as
gun lines both to the north and to the south of the
crowd, and on one occasion the soldiers manning them
decided to join their dismounted comrades in firing
indiscriminately into the air. The sight and sound
of numerous PKM and RPK Machine Guns all firing at
dubiously low angles over the heads of the crowd and
our Guardsmen caused us all to take cover, make
ready, and try to desperately to scrape away some of
the tarmac so as to get even lower. After the
initial excitement, a good Coldsteam gripping was
issued to the Iraqi Army to the effect that they
should stop firing, make safe and not fire again
under any circumstances.
Over time it had become painfully apparent that
there was little or no form of command and control
within the Iraqi security forces on the ground and
this left Major Mayhead with no choice but to make
the Iraqi Army close down its recruiting drive,
allowing us to start the long process of convincing
the crowd to call it a day and go home. With a lot
of shouts of “Ma salama” (good bye) and “Shukran”
(thank you), backed up by some obvious growls from
Company Sergeant Major Sheard and Sergeant Morrell,
and an awful lot of patience and professionalism on
the part of the Guardsmen, the crowd was gradually
dispersed leaving a sea of discarded flip flops,
empty ice cream pots and spent cases.
With a heavy weight of gunfire in close proximity
for over three hours and a total lack of
co-ordination from the Iraqi Security Forces this
was a new experience for all, including the veterans
of Northern Ireland. It was no doubt especially
memorable for Guardsman Hawksworth, who was starting
only his second day with the Company having passed
out from ITC Catterick only a few weeks previously.
He, along with the remainder of the Company,
performed admirably, preventing the episode from
escalating into what could have been a much more
serious and bloody day on the streets of Basra.
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>More images are available in the
OP TELIC 6 PICTURES
section.
>More info is available via the
THE BASRAH BULLETIN |
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