Former SAS soldier Andy White recounts Taliban ambush that killed Jason Brown

I hit the deck, dropping flat onto my back. As I did, I saw dirt kicking up around Browny. The weight of the burst that hit him spun him around so he was facing the way we’d come — and looking directly at me. In the same motion, his legs buckled and he went down. The sudden shattering noise and overwhelming violence of the ambush was all-consuming. My heart throbbed in my throat.

Everything external slowed down. At the same time, it felt as if my senses had been kicked into overdrive: my situational awareness and vision were crystal clear. Strangely, my first feeling wasn’t fear but shock. How the f... am I still alive?

With Browny down, I became their next target, and they were making a concerted effort to kill me. Caught in the open, completely exposed with no cover, I was smack-bang in their killing area. The elongated bursts from the machine gun, concealed by foliage just off to my left, were so close that there was no distinct crack of the rounds, just a deafening rattle of automatic gunfire that completely enveloped me.

Amid the cacophony emanating from the machine gun, I could sense hot lead death zipping past me. I knew it was perilously close because I could feel the air displacement on my face as I was pelted with dirt and dust from the small berm that the Afghan farmers had built to keep water inside their pomegranate orchard. The berm was all that stood between me and certain death, and it was beginning to disintegrate under the relentless onslaught of automatic machine-gun fire. When it was inevitably chewed away, I would be dead.

Still on my back, I placed the muzzle of my rifle above the berm and, without aiming, returned fire towards the machine gun. But I needed to move — it was only a matter of time before one of their rounds found its target and I had a hole for a face.

I was unable to raise my body to turn over and crawl out of the killing area, as doing so would expose my torso above the small mound. So, with zero cover, I crab-shuffled backwards — upside down, undignified but somehow still alive — out from under the machine gun’s fire and towards Adam, who was flat on his belt buckle behind a small dirt mound. Unaware of the insurgents’ exact position, he was shooting over my head into likely enemy positions in the green.

I reached him and our new best friend, a pathetic little pile of dirt that barely offered enough cover for him, let alone the both of us. Then, as loud as I could, I shouted a target indication to the patrol — something like, “Contact left, machine gun!” — while firing in the direction of the enemy. Adam matched my aim; together, we fired rapid single shots just to the left of Browny’s motionless body, attempting to match the massive weight of fire from the machine gun with our 7.62mm M14 Enhanced Battle Rifles (EBR). Having fired after the initial contact, mine ran empty first.

Kneeling behind the mound as I changed mags, I looked over and screamed at Browny to crawl to me, but I didn’t get a response. With Adam laying down suppressive fire, I positioned myself at the edge of the dirt mound, mentally bracing myself to crawl out and drag Browny back to us during the next lull in the fire. He was so fucking close!

When the enemy fire stopped, I showed my face. But as soon as I did, a burst of fire disintegrated the ground in front of me, blinding me with clumps of dirt and dust. The bastards had me pinned, so I rejoined Adam in engaging the enemy position with rifle fire.

“Frag out!” Adam threw a US fragmentation grenade, followed quickly by a white phosphorus grenade (a “Willie Pete”), to our left flank. We were now fixed in this location and vulnerable to a Taliban flanking action. We had no idea how many enemy fighters might be hidden behind that green wall only metres away.

Phosphorus self-ignites on exposure to oxygen, and the Willie Pete ignited with a whump and a cloud of white smoke billowed from our flank, providing an excellent visual reference of the ambush location for any of our guys who were coming to assist. Additionally, the highly reactive burning smoke cloud stuck to and burned anything it touched, including Taliban flesh. It effectively guarded our flank, denying the insurgents access for the few minutes it burned.

Our Rules of Engagement, written from the safety of Canberra offices, did not authorise the use of the Willie Pete as a weapon. But the relentless fire from the insurgent PKM machine gunner was tearing through the low-hanging foliage, giving him better visibility. There were rounds impacting closer still, centimetres from our faces, rapidly collapsing the small mound of dirt we were sheltering behind. With all that, I had no time to pause and contemplate Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, or to weigh up whether Adam’s intended use of the Willie Pete was to conceal our position or attack the enemy. I was simply grateful for the protection it afforded us amid the chaos.

Everything was happening very fast. I shouted again: “Crawl to me, mate!” But I got nothing. Then, while changing magazines again, through the earpiece attached to my radio I heard someone in the troop asking for information.

Anyone within several kilometres would’ve heard the gunfire, but could not know who it was directed at or exactly where it was coming from. I knew everyone in our small team of five was fighting their own battle at this stage and may not have heard the request for information, but it was vital for the other teams in the troop — who had also been moving to their own extraction points and who I could now envisage were in all-round defence, waiting for this information in order to reorientate and assist us. So I jumped on the radio and read off the six-figure grid reference from my wrist-mounted GPS. Then I continued to pour fire into the pomegranate orchard.

My aims at this point were to return fire, to get Browny out of the killing area and to try not to get ventilated in the process. I wasn’t sure where Dave and Rich were, but I could hear them firing so knew they weren’t down.

In an ambush drill you have several options: fire and manoeuvre forward, fighting through the ambush; move backwards, away from it; or peel left or right and out of the killing area. The patrol commander would normally make this call, or the ‘Johnny on the spot’ who had the tactical awareness of the situation, but with our mate down, we weren’t entertaining any thoughts other than getting him out of there.

Once again, I turned towards Browny, now on the edge of the dirt mound, covered by Adam’s fire. I pleaded with him, praying for a response: “Mate, f...ing crawl to me, move, mate . . . F...ing crawl to me, mate . . .”

He was just metres away, and the cruelty of the insurgents was starting to piss me off. They continued to try to draw us out into the killing area, knowing we desperately wanted to retrieve our mate.

Tactical combat casualty care principles teach that the best medicine for injured soldiers in situations like this is suppressive fire. Still, I was increasingly desperate to reach Browny and start much-needed first aid. It had been minutes since we’d been hit — time I knew Browny did not have.

I turned to him once more, intending to reach him, but another burst of machine-gun fire drove me back behind the mound. On elbows and knees, firing rapid single shots towards the unseen enemy machine gun, Adam and I shouted in sheer anger and frustration at Browny to hold on. It was obvious that the enemy had us dead to rights and that another body would be added to the equation if either Adam or I moved into the open. We had to kill the bastards at the other end of the machine gun, and do it quickly.

In my peripheral vision I caught sight of movement in the open area to the right of Browny. I raised my EBR towards it, thinking it was a threat — but then saw it was Dave running towards Browny, straight down the barrel of the PKM machine gun and into the ambush killing area. I swivelled my weapon and fired to cover him as Adam called out to Dave, telling him to get in cover. If Dave heard him, he didn’t acknowledge or change course.

On reaching Browny, Dave bent down to grab him and drag him out of the ambush site. As he did, a burst of machine-gun fire peppered the ground around his feet. He dropped to the ground behind Browny as the next burst of fire came in, shredding the back of his body armour and kicking up a cloud of dust from his back.

I could see Dave had been hit multiple times, and I watched as his body sagged into the dirt. I turned to Adam and said, “F..., Dave’s dead.”

This is an edited extract from Outside The Wire by Andy White (Allen & Unwin), available from Tuesday 21st July.