- The Guardian, Wednesday 15 April 2009
- Article history
The flat roofs of Basra expand before him as Colour Sergeant Andre Pepper looks out from the top of the old Ba'ath party headquarters which are now the base of the city's police joint command centre. Below, cars and pick-ups cut across the road junctions and people go about their daily business. Boys are knocking about a football and small girls play with the shell of an old washing machine lying amid piles of rubbish.
At the edge of the compound there is a car park filled with hundreds of new blue and white vehicles belonging to this nascent law and order force. But Pepper is looking for something else - plots on a map in his memory that turn his mind back to a day in August 2004 that he will never be able to forget.
Over by the roundabout, with its monument in the middle and its nearby minaret, was where the onslaught began. And the fortified gatepost at the edge of the compound was the place where the bullet was fired that killed a young soldier, 20-year-old Private Lee O'Callaghan, who had passed out of basic army training just 10 months before he died. Alongside is the street that came to be known among British troops as RPG alley.
This is the first time since then that Pepper has been here, to the place where O'Callaghan was killed and many of his fellow soldiers seriously injured, as they tried to rescue nine Royal Horse Artillery gunners lost after being attacked in downtown Basra.
On that August day, insurgents loyal to the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had taken over the Ba'ath party building.
Pepper could now see for himself what a terrible and deadly advantage the militia had.
On his third tour of Iraq, Pepper, who is part of the British drawdown force handing over control of the city, last weekend reflected on the attack five years ago, and his feelings about a six-year mission that cost the lives of 179 British personnel. Like other soldiers with whom he still serves, he feels some discomfort over the way the British are pulling out, leaving the American troops to take over security and reconstruction in southern Iraq. But he is also relieved that other soldiers will not have to endure the experiences he had; not in Iraq, anyway. "On my second tour I was relatively apprehensive because things were still happening. I just thought on this tour it would be exactly the same. But it has not been like that. It's much calmer," he says.
For Pepper, things in Iraq have changed, and the scene in front of him suggests life has got better for the Basrawis he was told he had come here to help. From his experience he could not have imagined that he could walk on the streets again with his weapon hanging loose by his side. And, as he does, inevitably, his mind focuses on the ferocious battle that marked the turning point not only for his company but for the British army's fighting in Iraq.
Before the attack on 9 August, their role had been predominantly peacekeeping; afterwards it was combat against insurgency.
"When we got back from that tour we changed. From that day in August we just never could be certain we would get home alive. Your outlook on life changes. Nothing since then has ever been the same again," he says.
On 9 August 2004, the mission for B Company, the 1st Battalion, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (nicknamed the Tigers) was to rescue nine men lost in downtown Basra with no means of communication other than an Iraqi mobile phone. They were holed up in a house but weren't sure exactly where it was.
The Warriors [armoured infantry fighting vehicles] of B Company thundered out of the British camp at the old Shatt al-Arab hotel taking a treacherous road, codenamed red route, which was then out of bounds to British soldiers. Knowing this, but realising it was the quickest way of getting to the stranded men, they headed into town.
It was not long before a barrage of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades met the Warriors. The vehicle of Major David Bradley, their officer commanding, was hit, seriously injuring him and his sergeant major. The insurgents had taken out what the army calls the "head shed", leaving more junior soldiers to continue with the mission.
Pepper points to the roundabout where "suddenly everything changed". He says: "The militia were in random places, sticking out the side of a wall, on a roof, on a balcony, everywhere. I had never seen anything like it before. I had done 14 years in the army and it was a new one on me."
O'Callaghan was on top of his Warrior with a Minimi weapon when he was hit. The bullet missed his body armour by millimetres and proved fatal.
Lance Corporal Martin Hill, who was in the back of the vehicle, saw O'Callaghan fall backwards. "He was dead. You could see his skin changing colour and his eyes were dilated. We went through every emotion possible then. Blokes were screaming out and crying." They withdrew to seek help, but B Company's mission carried on, with the remaining Warriors heading for the Ba'ath party HQ; the missing soldiers had called on the radio to say they were sheltering somewhere in that area.
Sergeant Terry Thompson and Lieutenant Ian Pennells were in charge of two of the remaining vehicles, but their radios had been damaged in the firefight so the only way to communicate was by miming to each other from their turrets.
At one point Thompson got out of his Warrior and ran through the back door of Pennells's vehicle and started tugging at his trouser leg to get his attention. He shouted that he was going to crash through the entrance to the Ba'ath party HQ. "I told him under no circumstances was he to do that or I would shoot him - neither was he taking any troops - and to get back in his vehicle," says Pennells.
But Thompson did it anyway, ramming into the gates twice and eventually taking the barrier off its hinges. "It was like a scene from Black Hawk Down in there. It came from everywhere. There didn't appear to be an angle that they weren't firing at us from," says Pennells.
There was no sign of the stranded soldiers. Thompson pulled out of the compound and told Pennells the men were not there. But back at headquarters they were convinced that they were. Thompson insisted that he and his men were prepared to go back in again but added that if they did he didn't think "we will be coming out".
Pepper decided to try streets around the headquarters. He was immediately confronted by an insurgent armed with a grenade launcher, whom he shot.
"All the time I was thinking: the worst thing that can happen to you is to be captured. There is no such thing as a PoW in this place. You wouldn't expect to get out the other side of that, and we knew if those lads got captured what would happen to them."
One of Pepper's men spotted the helmet of a British soldier. In the back of the Warrior was Corporal Sean Robson, 22, the dismount commander whose job was to lead the fighting on foot. With him were five soldiers, whose average age was 18. "It is hot and cramped in the back of a Warrior, there was the smell of cordite ... mixed up with sweat and the stink of the Basra sewers," says Robson. "You are sat in the back and you can't see anything, all you have is the commander's description and you can hear the rounds hitting the vehicle."
Robson and his men burst out of the back of the vehicle but when they got to the front door of the building there were too many militia to fight off, so they went in the back way to bring out the soldiers who were running out of ammunition. "You could just see the relief on their faces." says Robson. "They were tired and drawn. We put them in the back of the vehicle."
That meant there was no room for Robson and his team. "I told my lads we were going to have to walk out of there. They must have thought I was leading them into hell. We were taking quite a lot of incoming and they knew it was going to get worse. They might not have had a lot of confidence that they were going to get through it."
The distance the soldiers had to cover was only about 500 metres, but in the intense heat, with heavy kit, under constant fire, it was, to them, a very long way to a rendezvous with other Warriors. The soldiers survived, but any euphoria they felt drained away when they heard about the other casualties.
"Quite a few who were involved that day left the army," says Robson. "Not everyone wants to go through that again. It's an experience I am glad I have been through but never want to repeat."
Revisiting the street where the rescue took place, Pepper admits he is shaking. He walks to the gate of the house where the soldiers were stranded, remembering that an Iraqi man, his wife and child, had also been hiding in the basement.
He says he wished he could see them again. "I felt like saying sorry for the damage. What were the people like? Are they OK? It must have been horrifying for them. These are not soldiers and we put them in a position where we were fighting a war around them."
Robson was awarded the Military Cross for his actions. Pepper was mentioned in dispatches and Thompson got the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. All three say the medals were for the men they fought alongside. All three believe that in the streets of Basra now there is reason to think the battles were worthwhile, that their efforts were not in vain.
Pepper says: "It's just nice to see that street peaceful and the young kids mucking around like that. The people seemed positive."
The mother of Lee O'Callaghan is another who needs to have faith that some good came out of the British army being in Iraq. Easter Monday was her son's birthday and after visiting the cemetery, Shirley O'Callaghan lingered at the memorial built for him near the family home near Elephant and Castle, south London. She seemed to harbour no bitterness about what happened to Lee. "Even now I don't think he is gone, I just think he's out there in Iraq. I watch it on television and think I'm going to see him in a minute. I am proud. I don't feel angry. Lee couldn't wait to join the army. He fulfilled his dream and did what he wanted to do."
