wasn’t known for being a glamour posting. The isolated location of the base and the harsh Welsh weather made it uninviting, but it proved a great posting for me. First, we only worked a four-day week, which enabled me to pursue one of favourite hobbies: hillwalking. With the Brecon Beacons less than an hour’s drive away, I spent most weekends there with a few mates, crisscrossing the peaks, and following it up with a few well-earned pints. I kept up boxing, and I was able to take an advanced course in jamming technology (used to disable enemy communications) so as to improve my chances of being deployed: jammers are often deployed in support of other units.
All in all, I wasn’t complaining about Brawdy, but by mid2000 I was getting a little bored with the predictable life of the base. I wanted some adventure. The opportunity came sooner than I’d expected.
4 SIERRA LEONE
While all the fighting was going on, back at our operations room we listened in to the very controlled and professional communications of the assault force, and what a contrast that was to what we heard from the rebel ranks. As they tried desperately to defend themselves and communicate what was going on across their network, our jammers did their thing and rendered the attempts at communication useless. This generated further panic and helped significantly in the success of the mission.
*
In May 2000, 226 Squadron’s Light Electronic Warfare Troop (LEWT) was readying for a deployment to Sierra Leone, which was in the grips of a vicious ten-year civil war. Despite having vast mineral wealth, the country remained one of the poorest on the planet thanks to decades of war and corruption. The Sierra Leone Army (SLA) and government was led by President Kabbah. The antigovernment rebels, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by ‘Brigadier’ Foday Sankoh, were marching on the capital, Freetown. Trying to keep the two sides apart was the UN peacekeeping force, UNAMSIL, but it was far too under-resourced to be able to hold back the rebels. Tony Blair decided to dispatch a rescue force to extract British and other foreign nationals to safety. The mission, codenamed Operation Palliser, involved 800 men from the Parachute Regiment, led by the force commander brigadier, David Richards, and was meant to last between seven and ten days. Fifteen years later, there are still British troops in Sierra Leone.
The LEWT was a small troop, composed of about a dozen men from my regiment, 14th Signals, and they were mainly deployed with British Special Forces to provide communications, direction-finding, interception and jamming capabilities. Everyone in the LEWT was airborne-trained, and on this mission they would be deploying with the Parachute Regiment. As the rest of our regiment watched in envy, the LEWT guys moved about Brawdy camp in their stripped-down Landrovers fitted with 50mm heavy machine guns (HMG) and 7.76mm GPMGs. Kitted out in tropical warfare uniforms and jungle boots, they looked the part, and we envied them.
LEWT lacked only one thing: a communications and electronic warfare technician. However, before I could even throw my hat in for selection to join the mission, my mate Susan was chosen to deploy with them. I was gutted, of course, but quickly put it to the back of my mind and got on with my normal duties.
A few weeks after LEWT’s initial deployment, our sergeant major appeared at the door of the tech workshop.
‘We’ve received a further warning order for Sierra Leone,’ he said, addressing Jock the tech sergeant. I was in like a shot, cocky as hell, immediately listing off the reasons why I should be part of the next deployment. He stood there, expressionless, until I finally stopped talking.
‘Save your breath Paddy,’ he said, ‘you’ve already been picked. Get your ass down to the medical centre and sort out your jabs.’ A warning order didn’t necessarily mean that I would be going anywhere, just that we had to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. No one knew for sure where the mission was headed at that point, and I knew it could well be over before I got a chance to deploy. Selfishly, I was probably one of the few people hoping that the British army presence in Sierra Leone would continue.
Over the next few weeks I watched anxiously and enthusiastically as Brigadier Richards stretched his initial rules of engagement (ROE) to push the RUF back into the jungle. On 26 May, 600 men from 42nd Commando took over from the Parachute Regiment, and on 15 June Operation Palliser officially came to an end, succeeded by Operation Basilica which aimed to train and support the SLA in defeating the rebel forces. I was overjoyed at the news as it would mean a long-term commitment to Sierra Leone. I was now certain of being deployed.
Within a few days I had begun training for my first overseas deployment to a combat zone as a British soldier. This involved everything from advanced weapon training and mine clearance to jungle warfare. We were given the general background to the conflict in Sierra Leone: how Sankoh’s war effort was funded by the smuggling of unregulated diamonds, known as blood diamonds, across the border to neighbouring Liberia. Liberia was under the control of President Charles Taylor, who took the diamonds in exchange for drugs and weapons, which in turn fuelled the war.
There would be six of us from the regiment deploying as part of Operation Basilica, replacing the troops that went out initially. The day before we departed, we got our final briefing from one of the LEWT staff sergeants who had just returned from Sierra Leone. He didn’t have anything good to say:
‘First off, Sierra Leone is a shithole and I mean that in the worst possible way. There is no infrastructure to speak of. Mains electricity, clean water and sewerage systems are almost non-existent. However, on a good day you can, oddly enough, get great mobile phone coverage! Like in many parts of Africa, child soldiers are part of the conflict. Be under no illusions: a round fired by a child will kill you just the same as a round fired by an adult. Don’t hesitate, because they won’t. Drink and drugs make the rebels utterly unpredictable, so never let your guard down … One final thing: Freetown’s largest-growing industries since the arrival of the UN forces are drugs and prostitution. They are known locally as ‘night-fighters’. HIV, AIDS and every other STI you can think of are at epidemic levels in Sierra Leone, so don’t even think about it.’
The following day we would collect our personal weapons from the armoury and board the flight for Lungi Airfield, Sierra Leone.
Due to the threat of ground fire as we approached Lungi, the pilot of RAF Galaxymade a very rapid descent and hit the pothole-marked runway with an awful thud. There was no doubt about it, we were now in a combat zone – fortified British army positions, checkpoints, and British and UN helicopters dotted all over the airfield. Nonetheless, the main thing I noticed as we alighted from the aircraft was the humidity. My light jungle warfare uniform was wet through within minutes.
We travelled the thirty miles to Freetown in a convoy protected by six weapons-mounted Landrovers manned by members of the Royal Irish Regiment. Sad-looking villages and an unending number of dilapidated roadside shacks lined the route, but it was the sight of the impoverished children chasing the convoy, hoping that food would be thrown by the soldiers, that hit me hardest. Reading about poverty and seeing it are two very different experiences.
As we approached the ferry point at Tagrin, I looked in horror at what we were about to board. The lopsided rust bucket sitting with its ramp lowered on the quayside looked barely able to float itself never mind carry a full load of military vehicles and personnel across the mouth of the Sierre Leone River. After a tense and agonisingly slow voyage, we rolled off the ferry in the Kissy district of Freetown.
I was about to take a deep breath of relief when I got the stench from the open sewers and untreated sewage flowing freely in the streets. This was a city in free fall. Already bursting at the seams before the war, it was now entirely overrun with a population desperate for any sort of refuge from the rebel forces. They lived in makeshift houses, made of everything from plastic, timber and – for the lucky ones – corrugated steel. The buildings that had once been properly constructed from concrete were now scarred with shell and bullet marks and in otherwise terrible condition.
As our convoy arrived at the HQ of the SLA, where the British army Joint Task Force Headquarters (JTF-HQ) was also based, our vehicle peeled away and continued along another road until we arrived at the gates of Spur Lodge. This had once been a luxurious villa owned by some wealthy Freetown family. In more recent times it had been the