"What the fuck was that?"
One of my fellow team leaders suddenly asked me while we were busy talking about the Afghan national election, which would take place the next day. I also heard that distant detonation. “Perhaps a fucken lorry backfired,” I answered, then another one, and at that time I saw the flash too. For fuck's sake, it’s not a bloody dump truck, it’s an RPG-7. Then the machine guns and a high-calibre Russian cannon start firing from various positions on the mountainside. Luckily I didn't have any clients today as I was leading the rowing patrol team. I jumped into my 4x4 and drove into the direction of gunfire, which was approximately a kilometer or two away from my current position. We left the vehicle behind the last safe cover; then I ran to the first defense post in front of that mountain where the Taliban shot at us, on top of the hill. I left my guys at the bottom of the hill where they covered me from the back. I reached the post, a ditch with sandbags where four local guards were in the bottom, struggling with the machine gun as it has a stoppage. I jumped into the foxhole, grabbed the weapon from them and fixed it. Then I crawled out covered by some bush, carefully observed an enemy post and shot a few short bursts into the direction. The enemy gunfight wasn’t very intense at that stage because our heavy machine gunners also started to engage the enemy from higher ground. The Afghan National Army started to throw mortars from their position some 4 Km away as we directed them with radio. I went back into the hole and handed the weapon back to those guys. On the bottom of hill I met another team leader who had a minibus so I jumped in and we drove further through the road into some enemy fire, where a client stayed with another team under safe cover behind a hill. I jumped out, asked the clients (formerly under my watch) if they were okay...minor injuries, as both of them had fallen on the rocky ground. The enemy was pretty accurate even though it was a relatively long distance. One of our machine’s wheels had been shot out but luckily we had no wounded. They still carried on firing at us with that high-calibre cannon as I watched them from the side of the hill. We decided to withdraw the clients from the danger zone. One by one, vehicles left the place covered by fire. We were the last. We moved back on the other side where there was an outpost of the Afghan army; they were also busy engaging the enemy. I climbed into the post and observed the enemy.
They started to pull out as the US army Apaches appeared. They started to fly above the mountains and finally they fired on the other side where no enemy was there at all...
We worked through the day but due to the high threat of suicide bombing and ambushes the management decided to give everybody a day off on the following election day.
