The Battle For Echo 7-7 (Part Two)

Near death is such a cliché.

I don't know if what I experienced was my subconscious putting into action what it thought I was meant to go through, or if that's what really happens.

Either way, it could have been more interesting.

So.
There I was on the roof of compound number Echo 7-7.
There was a lull in the battle of around half an hour or so after the last contact.
This is where I continue to make the decisions that would lead to my being shot. Decisions that continue to baffle me to this day.

I became bored. I understand how that make sound strange, given it was on a battlefield, arrogant even.
I turned to Dave The Medic and asked if he wanted a turn on my Light Machine Gun. Apart from being a superb combat medic, he relished being attached to an Infantry unit and was eager to learn what ever he could about our trade.
I gave him a quick lesson on the gun, and dropped down into the roof trough beside Murph to rest.

In the coming minutes, these two men would save my life.

After a period of sitting there in cover I turned to Murph and asked if anything needed doing.
Why I did this I will never know. Anyone in the forces will know, you should never as an NCO if any work needs doing. He suggested I fill some sandbags, as we would need to shore up the compounds defences in the days to come. Again, why I was happy to do so is a mystery: 2 Platoon had filled over 2,000 building Patrol Base Blenheim.

I went in search of someone to give me a hand. I got up out of cover, and moved along the roof.
Half of it had protection up to around shoulder height and the other half less so. That's how I remember it, but as with all of this, people who were there may do so differently.

As I moved across the roof I came across a small area that the IED clearance teams had deemed to be unclear. It was a small area cordoned off with three Cyalume light sticks, arranged in a triangle. The likelihood that it was an IED was very low, but better to be safe than sorry.
I stepped over it and and continued across the roof until I reached Rifleman Carlo Apolis in cover.

I asked him if he would give me a hand. He agreed. Of course he would.

Rfn Carlo Apolis

Carlo was the most genuine and good hearted man in the Platoon.
A 28 year old South African, he joined the Army to save up and continue his education to one day open his own hotel. He was a dreamer, a budding entrepreneur.
We called him "The Silver Fox" due to the streak of grey in his closely cropped hair.

I will never be able to do the man justice.

The medium does not exist to do so.

He had some sand bags, but no entrenching tool. He suggested I look for one, yet for some reason I thought I had one packed into my almost overflowing daysack. My kit was back with my weapon, on the other side of the roof.

I began to make my way back to my daysack. I got about three quarters of the way across, over the cyalumes and into cover, before realising I didn't have one of the small, folding shovels with me after all.
I turned and began my third trip across the roof.

It was a journey I would not finish.

As I stepped over the cyalume triangle, time slowed to a glacial pace.
People always ask me what its like to get shot, but I never felt the bullet enter or exit me.
The only way I can describe what I felt is akin to what it feels like when you bang your funny bone.
That's what it's like, on a much bigger scale, to have a bullet shatter 2 vertebrae in your spine.

The bullet had entered me on the right hand side, just below my ribs and the exit wound was on the lower left side of my back.
Still in slow motion, I felt like I was being pushed up and forwards rather than to the side as you might think. This, coupled with the fact I had just stepped over a suspected IED, led me to think I had been blown up.

The time it took to hit the ground felt like an age. It was also a time of immense clarity.
I realised I would not finish the tour, would need to go to Selly Oak Hospital and to Headley Court.
It was like a fast forward preview of what was to come.

When I hit the ground, almost on top of The Boss, things returned to normal and I became aware of the growing battle for Echo 7-7.

I screamed. I'm not ashamed to say it.

It was more out of shock and surprise than any real pain.
The Boss dragged me into cover to where Dave The Medic and Murph were waiting.
I asked The Boss, that classic question every man injured on tour asks:

"Are my balls still there?!"

I remember him saying, in his poshest Sandhurst voice:

"I'm not checking your balls, Rifleman Owens." To be fair, he did have a battle to win.

I was lying on my back as they prepared to treat me. As my left leg was now paralysed due to the damage to my spine, my leg below the knee was limp. It looked to me, only being able to see my knee, that I had a stump.

I asked where my leg was and Dave told me it was still there, and that I had been shot.
Weeks later, fresh out of a coma, I would be convinced I had lost it. I blame the drugs.

They began to treat me. I was turned over and Dave began to pack the grapefruit sized exit wound in my back. It was at this point I began to hyperventilate as the bullet had ripped through my diaphragm.

The battle was raging by now.
The multiple was defending hard from the roof, pouring fire onto the enemy positions.
Murph, with his helmet cam recording everything was kneeling above me, talking and keeping me lucid. I could hardly breath. I told him this, to which he replied "You're talking now, aren't you?".

I told him, in between my rapid breaths: "Murph...don't...let...me...die".

Shortly afterwards, the first grenade came over the compound walls.
The warning cry went up and both Dave and Murph threw their bodies on top of me, shielding me from the blast. Luckily no one was hurt.

At this point, Dave had administered an "Easy IO" to the bone in my upper chest. It is a large, thick needle that when inserted into bone, allows fluids to quickly enter the body.

He would insert two, but i would hardly flinch, even as i heard and felt the needle "crack" into the bone.
This isn't me showing off, you understand. Just another example of the pain killing effects of adrenaline.

A U.S soldier with an SPG9.

The compound was now being hit with 73mm SPG9 anti tank rounds.
This was a "prestige" weapon. By deploying it, The Taliban were throwing everything they had at us.

Another grenade landed on the roof and once again, I was heroically shielded.

Now I was stabilised, they needed to get me off the roof.

The two attempts to pick me up and get me out of the roof trough were unsuccessful and met with the crack of incoming fire above us. It was at this point that Murph, in true Army style, "motivated" me to get over the roof hump myself. I began to leopard crawl, dragging my useless leg behind me with Dave and Murph helping me over.
Months later he would agonise that he might have done more damage to my spine than was necessary.

I don't believe that's the case.
Besides, without his efforts I probably wouldn't have made it off that roof alive.

There was a doorway leading downstairs, and I was passed through it.
Although there was a flight of rickety stairs, I was passed down "crowd surfing" style by the massed members of the Engineer and IED search team.

I was set down next to Carlo.

He had been shot, they told me, moments after myself.
Laying there next to him, with Dave fighting to save his life, was the first I knew of it.

We laid there, side by side but facing away from each other. Every time I turned my head to look at him, the Engineers looking after me gently turned my head away.

This is not the place to describe his injuries or the final moments of his life in vivid detail.
So I will not.

But he was dying. Dave's tan coloured Oakley gloves were stained red with Carlo's and my blood.
When he came over to work on me, I took my own off and threw them at him.
"You're going to need these more than me, now." I said.

I was so tired.
I just wanted to sleep, to close my eyes for a few minutes.
Dave was colourful in his choice of words when I did so.

It took around 45 minutes for us to be evacuated. The British Medical Emergency Response Team  (MERT) mounted in a Chinook, was already in the air to collect another casualty. It was told we were of a higher priority.
We waited. But after an unsuccessful attempt to land in to compound opposite us, they reluctantly admitted they could not land safely in the built up area we were in. The Chinook was just too big.

As Dave continued to work on Carlo, we heard the sound of approaching rotors again. We were told an American "PEDRO" team was on route.

The PEDRO is made up of medics mounted in two UH60 Blackhawks. Heavily armed and armoured, the are smaller than the Chinooks and therefore could go places the MERT could not.

Soon one of the two Blackhawks tried to land inside the compound. Even the PEDRO were too big for that. All it did was create a massive "Brown Out".

Carlos and I were placed on to makeshift stretchers and carried to the compound doors.
There was another lull in the battle at this point, no doubt due in part to the mini guns carried by the Blackhawks.
The gunners even threw grenades out of the open doors of the helicopters.

The men from A Company that cleared
and held Echo 7-7.
Murph and Dave are 2nd and 3rd men in
rear rank, respectively. The Boss is the furthest right.

The first one landed outside 7-7 and I saw Carlo be carried through the compound doors.

That was the last time I saw him.

It would be weeks before I discovered his fate.

He would die later that day.

Soon it was my turn and I was carried out and set down in that long green grass.

We were moving again, before the 'heli even landed and I felt the hot down force as we passed underneath the rotors.
I was slid on and immediately injected with Ketamine by the medic. Trust me kids, don't ever try it.

I passed in and out of conciseness on the way back to Camp Bastion, but I remember seeing the Afghan countryside flash past below us.
I even managed to realise I was riding in a helicopter that I had dreamt of, ever since seeing the film  "Black Hawk Down"

Getting shot wasn't quite worth it.

I remember arriving at Bastion. I was put into an ambulance and taken to the operating theatre.
It was inside that I began to loose consciousness for the last time.

My vision began to cloud, starting at the edges and working towards a singular point. Not unlike a head rush.

There was no with a shining light at the end and no life flashing before my eyes.
But there was another moment of extreme clarity.

And acceptance.

"So, this is dying?" I thought.

"Huh".

I woke up 12 days later.

Carlo's grave two years on.
R.I.P