Afghan hell was industrial-scale killing, says hero who saw 35 die as he urges Sun readers to back Poppy Appeal
EACH time war veteran James Heappey hears the Last Post on Remembrance Sunday he is transported to the hell of Helmand – and the bloodiest of tours in Afghanistan.
Back to the summer of 2009, Major Heappey’s regiment, the Rifles, sent 35 bodies home and had more than 200 of its men wounded.
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If you want to know just why this year’s Covid-threatened Poppy Appeal is more vital than ever, spend time like I did this week listening to Heappey — who since 2015 has been a Tory MP and is now Armed Forces minister.
His regiment saw so much action in Iraq in 2007 that The Sun dubbed them the Lions of Basra. But nothing prepared these warriors for their 2009 tour in the perilous desert country of the Upper Helmand valley around Sangin.
Tears welling in his eyes, Heappey says: “It was industrial-scale killing. Really sh*t. Guys would go out in the very early hours and normally by four or five in the morning you would hear the bang as one of them lost their legs or whatever.
“The Taliban were cunning, they deliberately laid IEDs a stretcher-width apart to blow up guys carrying our wounded to the helicopter.
“Each day, just before sunset, we would gather on the helicopter landing site in the forward operating bases around the Helmand valley.
“We had some powerful Fijian warriors in our battalion who would sing a hymn, which was phenomenally poignant and quite beautiful.
Guys would go out in the very early hours and normally by four or five in the morning you would hear the bang as one of them lost their legs or whatever.
James Heappey
“We would pray. We would read out the battle- group roll of honour, which was ever longer. By the end of the tour we had 35 dead.
“Then Bugle Major Ben Budd, an immaculate man with mutton-chop sideburns, would blow Last Post in the most perfect way and it felt like each note was bouncing off all the mountains.
“In the two minutes’ silence that followed it was as if the valley stood still, everything stopped. We would pause and reflect. Two minutes’ silence is very poignant, and the faces of your fallen comrades come to mind very quickly.
“But what happened next was amazing. Ben’s bugle became a weapon. There was a defiance in the way he blew the Reveille at the end of the two-minute silence. It sent a message to the Taliban: ‘You have got one of us and we are mourning them and it hurts but we will be back out tonight. See you later’.
“When I hear the act of Remembrance, even if played by a trumpeter from the local town band, the pictures are in my mind. The better the bugler, the more vivid those pictures.
“The silence is important. The Last Post is about respects. Reveille is about back at them.”
How to be a poppy star
THE pandemic may have stopped thousands of sellers from hitting the streets — but it doesn’t have to stop you from buying a poppy. MIKE RIDLEY looks at some of the ways you can do your bit for the appeal by going to:
- Fundraise for appeal: Move to Remember and the 11/11 Challenge are among the fundraising suggestions from the appeal itself. Free fundraising packs on the website will give the help and support you will need.
- Poppies in the post: Help make up for the reduced number of volunteer collectors by requesting 20 poppies free of charge from the RBL — and then giving them to friends and family yourself in return for a donation.
- My poppy run 2020: Run, walk or jog any distance, anywhere and at any time. Get family and friends involved to raise cash. And buy a T-shirt to run in and a medal to give to yourself afterwards!
- Visit the poppy shop: There is an extensive range of products from poppy pins and jewellery to clothing, stationery and homeware. All profits fund the Legion’s work in supporting the Armed Forces community.
- Make online donation: Alternatively, you could just visit the British Legion’s website and make a donation. You can choose a one-off payment or set up a regular amount — and no amount is too small.
…OR POP INTO YOUR LOCAL SAINSBURY’S, TESCO, ASDA, ALDI OR MORRISONS AND BUY A POPPY
Heappey will not be at the Cenotaph in London’s Whitehall to observe this year’s Remembrance Sunday, on November 8, because Covid means the event has been slimmed down — and for the first time in 75 years will see no veterans marching past.
But he is backing The Sun’s campaign to save the Poppy Appeal as Covid traps a third of collectors indoors. We are urging readers to bulk-buy poppies to sell to friends and neighbours, or just give via the Royal British Legion’s website.
Heappey will also lay a wreath on Remembrance Day as he joins his local legion in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, at the cenotaph outside the town’s War Memorial Hospital.
He will remember the men killed and wounded on that 2009 tour of Afghanistan — which at The Sun’s annual Military Awards, won the Rifles a Millie for Best Unit in the Armed Forces.
Heappey recalls: “At Wishtan, C Company was running casualty rates we hadn’t seen in the British Army since Korea. They were one in ten dead and one in three injured by the end of the tour.
“Other than the Nimrod crash in 2006 (in which 14 died) the biggest repatriation of the whole Iraq/Afghanistan campaign was mid-July 2009 when eight bodies came back from Afghanistan in one go.
“Six were from our battalion and five had died in one incident.”
Harry died two or three times on the helicopter back to Bastion — but he is still here and that is amazing.
James Heappey
One of James’s friends, platoon commander Lieutenant Alex Horsfall, lost a leg and most of one hand when the Taliban planted a daisy-chained IED in a wall.
Platoon sergeant Jaime Moncho won the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross that morning, July 10, when five men from 9 Platoon C Company 2 Rifles were killed.
Heappey remembers: “Surrounded by dead bodies under ponchos, he was having to make life-and-death decisions about who got to go on the first helicopter.
“Those with the best chance of surviving got to go on the first helicopter — and I don’t think Hors went on the first helicopter, yet he had lost a leg. Just unbelievable.
“Harry Parker, another good friend of mine, lost both of his legs in that same tour, with 4 Rifles.”
But he adds: “People were surviving things they had no right to survive because the world’s best trauma surgeons would arrive on a helicopter within 15 minutes and, 15 minutes after that, they would be in the world’s best trauma hospital, which is what the Camp Bastion hospital was by the end.
“Harry died two or three times on the helicopter back to Bastion — but he is still here and that is amazing.”
Heappey had the job of logging every casualty. He says: “We had information on everyone in the battle groups. When we knew something had happened to them, the Regimental Sergeant Major and I would sort of tag them up as dead or VSI — Very Seriously Injured.
“There is something macabre about all those lives — the names of children, wives, husbands, parents, where they are from, how long they have been in, and then, red tag, dead. Morning after morning.
“C Company, which had been running those Korean War levels of deaths and casualties, were hit hard by mental health challenges. Some-thing like 13 of them had lost limbs, or their sight or a lung.”
But, ahead of Remembrance Sunday, he says: “Now that I am a veteran, being in the legion means a lot more than it did when I was a serving soldier. Then I regarded the Royal British Legion as a thing for older people, veterans of the world wars, lots of National Service people and I wasn’t quite sure it was for me.
"Now, increasingly, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have joined and find it a great way of connecting with people with shared experience. There is no doubt you carry the baggage of what you saw.
“Most people go through life not having to tourniquet someone who has had their legs blown off or to see death on the scale we saw.
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“I have never thought of my own service as having caused me any immediate mental health stuff. There was a period after a suicide bombing in Kabul in 2005 when I couldn’t eat bacon because of the smell of burnt flesh but other than that I was fine.
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“But that doesn’t mean it is not helpful from time to time to get together with people that . . . you don’t have to talk about it . . . you just all know you've seen the same stuff and it was a bit sht.”
“That is what being part of the legion is — I know there will be people who just understand.”
Prince Ed bedded down in a shipping container
PRINCE Edward, the Honorary Colonel of 2 Rifles, visited Sangin, pictured, under a cloak of secrecy during their Afghan tour from hell.
James Heappey says: “Edward came off the helicopter at 2am or 3am, the sand gets whirred up and it is mayhem, soldiers embarking and disembarking.
“The helicopter doesn’t want to be on the ground for longer than it has to, so the Regimental Sergeant Major ran on to the back of the ramp, grabbed the Earl by his body armour, and his private secretary, and dragged them off.
“He told them: ‘Welcome to FOB Jackson. Programme starts at 8am, grab some sleep’. We had converted a shipping container into a bedroom for him, with a camp cot.
"The blokes found a framed picture of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and put it on a box. Of course, nobody thought to tell him how far away the enemy was. The RSM added, ‘If you hear a bang, lie on the floor, some-one will come and find you’.
“We went to Buckingham Palace to see the Earl when we got back from the tour and he was saying he just lay there all night terrified.
“But he came out the next day and was brilliant with the blokes. When we returned, he turned over his Bagshot Park home to the battalion, for our wounded and bereaved families to have a reception, which meant a lot.”
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