The world went silent . . . being blown up was too quick to be frightening'

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Spurts of dust kicked up in the field to the left of the US Marines and the clatter of gunfire grew louder. The Marines began to run, their bodies taking on the hunched and wary posture of troops under fire. Shouting into radios, officers were struggling to catch up with the ambush that was beginning to envelop them.

More regular, disciplined shots sounded close by. A pall of ugly brown smoke hung in the clear dawn air several hundred metres away, marking the spot where a bomb explosion had initiated the Taleban ambush. It was 6.45am.

I was in the middle of the first squad of Marines. We pounded headlong towards a mud compound ahead. As we got to about 10ft of the corner of the building, the world went suddenly and inexplicably silent and everything turned white.

Being blown up was too quick to be frightening. Instead, the sensation was one of odd detachment.

The bomb — it was, we later discovered by looking at the debris, two devices strapped together — was buried at the base of the wall on the corner of the compound. As they went off the blast wave completely stopped my hearing, lifted me into the air and spun me through 180 degrees.

Time slowed. I landed staggering, half off my feet, and blinded by a pall of dust; much of it seemed to be in my mouth. Blast-proof protective glasses had saved my eyes from damage and after a period of time that I couldn’t measure but which must have been a few seconds, sound began to return, distorted by a shrill ringing.

Someone was shouting “casualty”. Someone else was yelling with what sounded like pain. As the dust began to thin I realised I was now facing the way I had come. I looked down and found all my limbs still attached — a heavy bulletproof plate covered my chest and Kevlar my abdomen and neck. To my right someone was on the ground. I wondered if he was dead.

When Fox Company of 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine had set out from their base an hour earlier they had already been briefed that a fight was a near certainty. They were on the second day of a three-day operation named Kapcha Kafak — Cobra’s Squeeze — designed to strengthen the Afghan Government’s hold in what, in theory, was newly taken territory south of the town of Garmsir. But in truth they knew that the area they were going to had had a minimal Nato presence and all previous forays had met fierce resistance. While their brief was to support Afghan National Army (ANA) units searching compounds and to engage with local people, the strength of the force they took with them was clearly in expectation of a fight. Forty Afghan soldiers and 70 Marines were supported by two attack helicopters and a pilotless drone.

As the events of the day would show, however, firepower can become meaningless when the enemy makes skilful preparation of the ground and has no scruples about cloaking itself with the lives of the local population.

For the first hour all was quiet. Cockerels crowed and the long, loose lines of soldiers passed a group of boys being taught to recite the Koran in a garden of roses. They watched the Marines’ passage without expression.

By 6.45am the Marines were occupying three positions around their goal, named “Objective Victor”, ready for the ANA to begin their search. It was then that the ambush began.

The thump of the first bomb detonating and sound of enemy small-arms fire was quickly followed by a call for casualty evacuation. Two men were badly injured: one, a Marine with shrapnel injuries to his face and hands, would survive; the other, an Afghan interpreter, would later die.

As they began to run towards the firing the Marine’s commander was already sensing a trap. “Watch right, we could be being baited for another IED [improvised explosive device],” shouted Captain Junwei Sun, 31, Fox Company’s commander.

He was right. The second explosion, the one that would catch the squad I was moving with, had been buried in anticipation of the way the force would move. As Sergeant Tom Williams led his men forward, his instinct was to seek the cover of the corner of the building. When the second detonation occurred it enveloped the whole of 1st Squad of 2nd Platoon — they call themselves the Helter Skelter Squad — and sent a plume of smoke rolling skyward.

The men behind were horrified. With a direct radio link to the helicopters above Captain Brian Hill, 32, the unit’s forward-air controller, called to the Huey helicopter circling above: “Did you see that explosion?” he asked. “I think I’ve got multiple friendlies badly injured in there. Can you be ready to put down for an immediate casualty extraction?”

Behind us the platoon commander, Lieutenant Sam Oliver, 23, lay on the ground, flattened by the blast. “I heard someone yell for a medic,” he said later. “I was thinking, ‘not like this, please God, not like this’ . . .”

As the smoke cleared, 1st Squad was still there and men were clambering to their feet. A piece of shrapnel was embedded in one man’s helmet. As the fact that we were still alive began to sink in we stood and laughed, clapping one another on the back, shaking a little. The battle was still unfolding around us but the world seemed a greener and more beautiful place.

There was a reason for this survival. The Taleban bombers had made several mistakes in the way they had made and buried their devices, the result being to channel their force upward rather than outward. They had also incorrectly wired what was to have been a third bomb. Discovered and destroyed by US combat engineers some minutes later, it was 30lb of fertiliser-based explosive that sat directly under the commanders of Fox Company. Had all three blown correctly it is likely that a dozen or more soldiers would have died or been badly injured.

But despite Fox Company’s escape, the advantage now lay squarely with the Taleban. Somewhere close by we were being watched by the insurgents with what was clearly a spider’s web of bombs stretched around us.

Among some of the Marines there was something like panic. “Get away from the roads, the whole place is f***ing rigged!” screamed one young officer as men moved out into the exposed fields rather than take cover.

The unit’s bomb disposal engineers began to sweep methodically with metal detectors, standing exposed as they did so. They quickly began to find naked, hair-thin copper wires in the soil, trailing towards the treeline and a compound 100 metres away.

The Americans prepared to advance on the compound with ANA soldiers. “If we take contact, peel right — I’m going to light it up,” Lieutenant Oliver said as they prepared to advance. But at the same moment they were forced to halt the attack. A group of women and children were moving into the middle of the unfolding battle and making for the same compound.

There were other signs that the Taleban were using the cloak of civilian innocence as cover. A man suddenly stood up in the treeline; as American soldiers fixed him in their sights he ostentatiously slung a shovel over his shoulder. A minute earlier there had been yet another blast from a bomb buried near the corner of the wall the Marines had begun to move along. It missed its target. “Of course he’s carrying a f***ing shovel,” one soldier spat as the man strolled nonchalantly away. Prevented by the rules of the battlefield from shooting him, the soldiers began to push through the lines of compounds ahead.

As the Afghan Army began to question one middle-aged man, those searching his house found pictures of the man and several others all carrying machineguns and rocket launchers and wearing the bulky white turbans associated with the Taleban. The picture had been taken in the front room of the compound.

The Afghans and the Marines were incensed. “Get your f***ing AK and I’ll put a cap between your eyes,” snarled one furious American soldier. “Do you want to go to jail?” he asked, eyeballing the man from a range of a few inches. “As you wish,” replied the man with a shrug.

“Who planted these bombs?” another American demanded. “I have no idea,” he replied — to derision.

A Marine “accidentally” put his foot through the glass of the empty picture frame on the floor and stormed off. But what proof did the pictures represent? There was no telling their date, and from 1996-2001 the Taleban were the Government. As for the weapons, they are found in every Afghan home. There was little the Americans could do but upload the man’s fingerprints and iris scan on to a biometric data machine and tell him he was being monitored. From the other rooms came the sounds of Afghan soldiers kicking down doors and breaking things. At another compound people told the Afghan soldiers that groups of Taleban fighters patrolled the area every day on motorbikes.

By now the temperature was around 52C (125F) and the Marines were fighting the elements. As they moved forward again the engineers found a fourth bomb, buried in a wall. It was defused. Intelligence reports suggested that the Taleban were massing fighters for an attack. Many of the soldiers were relieved that, at last, they might be able to shoot back.

But if the Taleban were still around they remained hidden, wary of the Cobra helicopters overhead. Instead, the Americans were advancing on to the fifth and largest bomb of the day.

Again, luck and keen eyes would come to their aid. As they traversed a field Private Joseph Helmick, 25, spotted something odd — two stakes buried in the ground. They were a marker for a watching bomb triggerman. The unit halted and as Fox Company’s explosives experts moved forward with their minesweepers, they found a command wire and two separate 40lb cylinders of explosive. These were detonated, scattering earth over a 100m area.

As they pulled up the wire they discovered it appeared to lead to the village mosque. As had been the case all day, none of the locals appeared to know why.