THE bullwhip crack of a single round zipped over the heads of the soldiers as they prepared to move out of a ditch. Led by Captain Robin Bourne-Taylor, the Olympic oarsman and three-time winner of the varsity boat race, 2 Platoon sprinted down a wide dirt track to cut off the insurgents’ escape route.
As the rest of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force headed towards the firing position, Bourne-Taylor, 28, told his men to pause while he poked his head round the corner of a compound wall to assess which route to take. He spotted four men drinking tea, who, seeing a British soldier, stood up and dashed down an alley.
Bourne-Taylor, who won a bronze medal in the world rowing championships in 2007, gave chase and caught two as they tried to melt into a group of locals. He sprinted after the other two insurgents, but after 300 yards they vanished into a maze of alleyways.
As 2 Platoon retraced the insurgents’ tracks, they found a Kalashnikov assault rifle where one of the men had dropped it. In the compounds they discovered a bundle of grenades, bullets and another AK-47 in a tyre’s inner tube.
“Household weapons tend to be shotguns. The presence of grenades suggests the men were insurgents,” said Bourne-Taylor.
“The insurgents realise that we’re not prepared to take the risk of firing at the wrong person.”
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“The insurgents realise that we’re not prepared to take the risk of firing at the wrong person.”
ReplyDeleteSo they fire at British troops then sit down and drink tea ?
And by not killing them we achieve what ?
Don't we simply give them the chance to do the same the next day and the next until they kill one of our soldiers.
This is simply ridiculous.
Either fight the war or get out.
Preferably the latter.