Green Beretss rode horseback alongside Northern Alliance warlords. Delta Force and Seal Team 6 conducted lightning raids on suspected terrorist hideouts. B-52 Strato fortresses circled at 40,000 ft, turning cave complexes into craters with 2,000 lb J dams. The full might of the United States military machine was unleashed.
Nothing would stop America’s vengeance. And yet, when British intelligence discovered a massive al-Qaeda fortress and opium processing facility in the southern Afghan desert, a compound defended by nearly 100 fanatical fighters stuffed with millions of dollars worth of drug money, potentially containing invaluable intelligence on terrorist networks, the Americans said, “No, too risky, low priority, not worth the manpower.
” The Pentagon’s solution, drop some bombs from 30,000 ft and move on to more important targets. But the British weren’t satisfied with that answer. They saw something the Americans missed. They saw opportunity. They saw intelligence documents, laptops, communications equipment. The kind of information you can’t extract from a smoking crater.
The kind of information that could unravel terrorist networks worldwide. So while America’s elite operators guarded their targets for their own units while Delta and the SEALs waited for the high-value missions, 120 men from the Special Air Service loaded into Land Rovers, drove across 50 km of open desert, and launched a daylight assault against a fortified position held by 100 fanatical al-Qaeda fighters who would rather die than surrender.
What happened next would become the largest SAS operation since World War II. The mission America refused would become the mission that proved once again why the SAS remains the most elite special forces unit on the planet. This is the story of Operation Trent. Chapter 2, Warriors Without a War. In the weeks following September 11th, A&G squadrons of 22 SAS deployed to Afghanistan under the code name Operation Determine.
These were the best of the best, the most elite special operations unit in the British military. Arguably the finest fighting force in the world. The selection process for the SAS is legendary. Candidates endure weeks of brutal physical and psychological testing in the Breen Beacons Mountains of Wales. They march for miles carrying crushing loads, navigate through hostile terrain in complete darkness, resist interrogation techniques that would break ordinary men. Only about 10% of candidates pass.
Those who make it through become part of a brotherhood forged in suffering and excellence. These men expected action in Afghanistan. They expected to hunt terrorists. They expected to do what they trained their entire careers to do close with and destroy the enemy through superior skill, aggression, and determination.
Instead, they got reconnaissance missions, bomb damage assessments, long range patrols through empty desert and abandoned villages, watching and waiting while American forces got all the action. The problem wasn’t capability. The SAS had more combat experience than most American units combined. They had fought in Malaya, Borneo, Oman, the Faullands, Northern Ireland, the Gulf War, Sierra Leone. They knew how to kill terrorists.
They knew how to win. The problem was politics. US Central Command controlled all operations in Afghanistan. Sentcom answered to Washington and Washington wanted American faces on the victory. This was America’s war, America’s vengeance for 911. The British were welcome to help, but they would help on American terms.
US Special Operations Command guarded their targets jealously. The high-v value missions, the compound raids, the cave clearances, the operations that would make headlines were reserved for Delta Force and Seal Team Six. The SAS could have the scraps. The operators of A and G squadrons grew restless.
These were men who had spent years preparing for exactly this moment, and they were being sidelined. After a fortnight of uneventful patrols with zero enemy contact, both squadrons were sent home to the UK. The most elite special forces unit in Britain had traveled halfway around the world to accomplish essentially nothing. Back at their barracks in Hera Ford, the spiritual home of the SAS, the men waited.
B and D squadrons were stuck on antiback. The mission America refused. Operation Trent, the largest SAS assault since World War II. Afghanistan. November 2001. Chapter 1. The refusal. 7 weeks after September 11th, 2001, the most powerful military force in human history had one mission. Find and destroy al-Qaeda. American special forces were hunting Osama bin Laden across the mountains of Afghanistan.
Green Berets rode horseback alongside northern alliance warlords. Delta Force and SEAL team 6 conducted lightning raids on suspected terrorist hideouts. B52 strat fortresses circled at 40,000 ft, turning cave complexes into craters with 2,000lb J dams. The full might of the United States military machine was unleashed, nothing would stop America’s vengeance.
And yet, when British intelligence discovered a massive al-Qaeda fortress and opium processing facility in the southern Afghan desert, a compound defended by nearly 100 fanatical fighters stuffed with millions of dollars worth of drug money potentially containing invaluable intelligence on terrorist networks. The Americans said, “No, too risky, low priority, not worth the manpower.
” The Pentagon solution? drop some bombs from 30,000 ft and move on to more important targets. But the British weren’t satisfied with that answer. They saw something the Americans missed. They saw opportunity. They saw intelligence documents, laptops, communications equipment. The kind of information you can’t extract from a smoking crater.
The kind of information that could unravel terrorist networks worldwide. So, while America’s elite operators guarded their targets for their own units, while Delta and the SEALs waited for the high-v value missions, 120 men from the Special Air Service loaded into Land Rovers, drove across 50 km of open desert, and launched a daylight assault against a fortified position held by 100 fanatical al-Qaeda fighters who would rather die than surrender.
What happened next would become the largest SAS operation since World War II. The mission America refused would become the mission that proved once again why the SAS remains the most elite special forces unit on the planet. This is the story of Operation Trent. Chapter 2, Warriors Without a War. In the weeks following September 11th, A&G squadrons of 22 SAS deployed to Afghanistan under the code name Operation Determine.
These were the best of the best, the most elite special operations unit in the British military. Arguably the finest fighting force in the world, the selection process for the SAS is legendary. Candidates endure weeks of brutal physical and psychological testing in the Breen Beacons Mountains of Wales. They march for miles carrying crushing loads, navigate through hostile terrain in complete darkness, resist interrogation techniques that would break ordinary men. Only about 10% of candidates pass.
Those who make it through become part of a brotherhood forged in suffering and excellence. These men expected action in Afghanistan. They expected to hunt terrorists. They expected to do what they’d trained their entire careers to do close with and destroy the enemy through superior skill, aggression, and determination.
Instead, they got reconnaissance missions, bomb damage assessments, long range patrols through empty desert and abandoned villages, watching and waiting while American forces got all the action. The problem wasn’t capability. The SAS had more combat experience than most American units combined. They had fought in Malaya, Borneo, Oman, the Faullands, Northern Ireland, the Gulf War, Sierra Leone. They knew how to kill terrorists.
They knew how to win. The problem was politics. US Central Command controlled all operations in Afghanistan. Sentcom answered to Washington, and Washington wanted American faces on the victory. This was America’s war, America’s vengeance for 9/11. The British were welcome to help, but they would help on American terms.
US Special Operations Command guarded their targets jealously. The high value missions, the compound raids, the cave clearances, the operations that would make headlines were reserved for Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. The SAS could have the scraps. The operators of A and G squadrons grew restless. These were men who had spent years preparing for exactly this moment, and they were being sidelined after a fortnight of uneventful patrols with zero enemy contact.
Both squadrons were sent home to the UK. The most elite special forces unit in Britain had [clears throat] traveled halfway around the world to accomplish essentially nothing. Back at their barracks in Heraford, the spiritual home of the SAS, the men waited. B&D squadrons were stuck on anti-terrorist standby duty in case of attacks on British soil.
Training continued, but it felt hollow. The biggest war in a generation was happening without them. Morale suffered. These weren’t men who joined the military to sit in garrison. They had volunteered for the hardest selection process in the world, specifically to see action. And now, when action was everywhere, they were stuck at home.
That’s when Prime Minister Tony Blair picked up the phone. Chapter 3. The fortress in the desert. British intelligence had identified something significant in the wastelands of southern Afghanistan. At the foot of the Koi Malik Mountain, 190 mi southwest of Kandahar and just 12 mi from the Pakistani border, set a sprawling al-Qaeda compound.
The location was strategic close enough to Pakistan for supplies and reinforcements to flow across the poorest border, remote enough to avoid detection by conventional forces. This wasn’t just another cave complex. This was infrastructure. The compound consisted of multiple buildings, houses, and natural caves carved into the mountainside.
The al-Qaeda fighters had transformed it into a proper defensive position. Trenches snaked around the perimeter, providing protected firing positions. Bunkers offered shelter from air attack. Supply depots held ammunition, food, and water for a prolonged siege. Intelligence estimated between 80 and 100 foreign fighters defended the position.
These weren’t ordinary Taliban conscripts, local farmers pressed into service through threats or payment. These were hardcore al-Qaeda, Arabs, Chetchins, Pakistanis, Usuzbck’s jihadists from across the Muslim world who had traveled to Afghanistan to join Bin Laden’s holy war. Many had trained at al-Qaeda’s top camps. They knew small unit tactics.
They knew how to use terrain. They knew how to fight. More importantly, they knew they were fighting a holy war. Surrender was not an option. Retreat was cowardice. Death in battle was martyrdom, a guaranteed ticket to paradise. These were the most dangerous kind of enemy, skilled, motivated, and completely willing to die.
But the fighters weren’t the real prize. What made this compound valuable was what they were protecting. The facility was an opium processing plant. Afghanistan had long been the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient for heroin. The Taliban had initially banned poppy cultivation, but after 9/11, with their regime collapsing and their treasury empty, they reversed course.
Drug money became essential to funding the resistance. Millions of dollars worth of processed opium were stored at this facility. The drugs would flow across the Pakistani border, eventually reaching streets in Europe and America, generating cash that would fund terrorist operations worldwide. More importantly, the compound served as a command post, a headquarters where al-Qaeda planned operations, coordinated logistics, and communicated with cells across the globe.
Planning documents would be there, communications equipment, lists of operatives and their assignments. bank account numbers for terrorist financing and laptops, computers containing emails, organizational charts, encryption keys, the digital fingerprints of a global terrorist network. The British saw an opportunity.
A ground assault could capture that intelligence intact. The information could unravel terrorist networks worldwide. It could prevent future attacks. It could save lives. The Americans saw a problem. Sentcom classified the target as low priority. No highv value al-Qaeda leadership was believed to be present. Bin Laden wasn’t there. Zawahiri wasn’t there.
The compound didn’t rate on America’s target list. The terrain was brutal. Open desert with no cover for approaching forces, then fortified mountain positions that favored the defenders. Air support was limited. Every aircraft in theater was already committed to higher priority missions. The risk-to-reward ratio didn’t compute.
Just bomb it was the American position. A few JD dams from a B-52 would destroy the opium stores and kill whoever was unlucky enough to be there. Clean, efficient, and risk-free for American personnel. But Tony Blair had made a promise to his SAS. Britain would have a role in this war.
British special forces would see action, and this target, this fortress in the desert, would be their proving ground. Chapter 4. The impossible plan. Lieutenant Colonel Ed Butler, commanding officer of 22 SAS, faced a challenge that would have made most commanders walk away. Butler was a soldier soldier. He had served in Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leon.
He had earned a mention in dispatches and two queens commendations for valuable service. He understood special operations warfare at a level few officers ever achieve. He also understood that the mission parameters Sentcom had approved were designed to fail. The constraints were staggering. Sentcom would only provide 1 hour of close air support and only during daylight.
FA18 Hornets and 14 Tomcats would be available from carrier battle groups in the Arabian Sea, but only between sunrise and early afternoon. After that, the aircraft had other commitments. This meant the assault would have to go in during the morning in broad daylight, completely eliminating the SAS’s greatest advantage, darkness.
The SAS had built their reputation on nighttime operations. Every operator was trained extensively in night fighting. Night vision technology gave them superhuman sight in darkness. Years of practice had honed their ability to move unseen, communicate silently, and strike without warning. All of this would be useless. They would be attacking a fortified position uphill against prepared defenses in broad daylight.
The enemy would see them coming from miles away. Worse still, the timeline was compressed. Standard special operations doctrine called for extensive pre-mission reconnaissance. Scout teams would spend days, sometimes weeks, observing a target. They would identify defensive positions, guard rotations, entry points, escape routes.
They would build a detailed picture of the enemy before any assault was launched. There would be no time for any of this. Sentcom wanted the target hit quickly. Political pressure from London demanded results. The SAS would be going in essentially blind. The maps were nearly useless. The best available scale was 1 to 1,500,000.
So imprecise that the proposed landing zone wasn’t even marked. Trying to plan an operation with these maps was like trying to navigate London using a map of England. The SAS would be crossing 50 km of featureless desert with equipment designed for completely different terrain.
Any other commander might have refused the mission. The conditions violated every principle of special operations warfare. A daylight assault without reconnaissance against a numerically superior fortified enemy and terrain that favored the defense. It was the kind of plan that got men killed. But Ed Butler wasn’t any other commander, and the SAS wasn’t any other unit. He accepted the mission.
The plan Butler devised was audacious, a throwback to the original SAS of World War II, when David Sterling’s Desert Raiders had struck Raml’s Africa Corpse with speed, firepower, and surprise. First, an eight-man Pathfinder team from G Squadron’s air troop would perform a high alitude, low opening parachute jump into the Registan Desert.
Their mission establish and mark a temporary landing zone for the main force. This would be the first wartime halo insertion in SAS history. Then six C130 Hercules aircraft would land on the improvised airrip, disgorgging the assault force. 120 SAS operators and 36 heavily armed Land Rovers, plus eight Kawasaki dirt bikes for reconnaissance and two Amat logistics trucks carrying ammunition and supplies.
The convoy would drive through the night to a forming up point near the target, covering 50 km of open desert in total darkness. At precisely, 1100 hours, G Squadron would establish a fire support base on high ground overlooking the compound. Vehicle-mounted heavy weapons would engage al-Qaeda positions from standoff range too far for the enemy’s AK-47s and RPGs to be effective, but well within range of SAS machine guns and sniper rifles.
Simultaneously, American aircraft would strike the opium storage facilities, destroying the drug stock piles and adding to the chaos. Undercover of this overwhelming firepower, a squadron would assault the compound directly. Classic infantry tactics, fire and movement, suppression and advance executed by the best trained soldiers in the world.
They would clear the buildings room by room, gather every scrap of intelligence, and withdraw before the enemy could organize a counterattack. It was a plan worthy of the original SAS, vehicles, firepower, speed, and audacity. If it worked, they would destroy an al-Qaeda stronghold and capture intelligence that could unravel terrorist networks worldwide.
If it failed, 120 of Britain’s finest soldiers would die in the Afghan desert. Who dares wins? Chapter 5. Falling through darkness. The night before the assault, a C130 Hercules climbed through the darkness above the Registan Desert. At 20,000 ft, the aircraft leveled off. Some sources placed the altitude even higher, 28,000 ft, at the very edge of survivable oxygen levels.
At that height, the air is so thin that unprotected humans lose consciousness within seconds. The temperature drops to 30 or 40° below zero. Inside the aircraft, eight men from G Squadron’s air troop made final equipment checks. They wore specialized high altitude gear, oxygen masks connected to portable bottles, thermal suits to ward off the killing cold, helmets with built-in altimeters, and GPS receivers.
Each man carried weapons, communications equipment, infrared markers, and enough supplies to survive for days if something went wrong. Their rucks sacks weighed over 100 lb. They would fall through nearly 4 miles of atmosphere before their parachutes opened. This would be the first wartime halo insertion in SAS history.
The technique had been practiced countless times in training over the Welsh mountains, the Scottish Highlands, the English countryside. But this was different. This was real. Mistakes wouldn’t result in a failed exercise. Mistakes would result in death. High altitude, low opening jumps are among the most dangerous operations in special forces warfare. The concept is simple.
Exit the aircraft at extreme altitude where radar can’t track you. Freefall for miles through the thin atmosphere, then open your parachute at the last possible moment to minimize time visible in the sky. The execution is anything but simple. At 20,000 ft, a jumper without supplemental oxygen loses consciousness in under a minute.
The cold can cause frostbite in seconds. Equipment malfunctions can be fatal. A tangled oxygen line, a cracked mask seal, a failed altimeter. Navigation errors in the darkness can put you miles from your intended landing zone, alone and potentially in enemy territory. And then there’s the landing itself, hitting the ground in total darkness, unable to see obstacles until the last moment, carrying over 100 pounds of equipment.
A broken ankle in the middle of the Afghan desert would be a death sentence. The eight operators stepped to the edge of the ramp. The loadmaster gave the signal. They stepped into the void. For nearly 4 minutes, they fell through absolute darkness. The wind tore at their bodies at 120 mph. The only sound was the rush of air and the rasp of their own breathing through oxygen masks.
Below them, nothing, just blackness stretching to every horizon. They fell in formation, using the dim glow of altimeters and the faint outlines of each other’s bodies to maintain spacing. Any collision at that speed would be catastrophic. At 4,000 ft, their parachutes deployed automatically. Backup systems existed in case the automatic openers failed.
But in the chaos of freef fall at night, a manual deployment could easily come too late. The sudden deceleration was violent harnesses biting into shoulders and thighs, the canopy snapping open overhead with a sound like a gunshot. Then silence, relative peace as they drifted the final minutes to Earth. They landed in the Registan, one of the most desolate places on Earth.
Nothing but sand and rock stretching to every horizon. No features, no landmarks, no sign of human presence. The stars overhead were brilliant in the unpolluted sky, but they provided no comfort. All eight men made it down safely. The pathfinders went to work immediately. Their first task was critical.
Test whether the desert surface could support the weight of fully loaded C130 transports. If the ground was too soft, the aircraft would sink on landing and the entire operation would fail before it began. The surface held firm hardpacked sand and rock, perfect for an improvised air strip. Working through the darkness, the team marked out a landing strip 900 ft long, 40 ft wide.
Infrared strobes and markers were positioned to guide the incoming aircraft invisible to the naked eye. Brilliant beacons through night vision goggles. Then they established a concealed observation post, camouflaged against the desert floor, and settled in to wait. If enemy patrols discovered them, they would have to fight or die alone.
17 hours later, the drone of aircraft engines broke the desert silence. Chapter 6. The armored fist. The 6C130 Hercules came in low and fast, flying out of Bram airfield to the north. The pathfinders guided them in with infrared torches waving patterns that the pilots could see clearly through their night vision, but that were invisible to anyone watching without similar technology.
One by one, the massive aircraft touched down on the improvised strip. The pilots barely slowed as they rolled across the hard-packed sand. Before the planes could even fully stop, their rear ramps dropped and SAS Land Rovers came roaring out into the darkness. This was the largest deployment of SAS firepower since the regimen’s founding in 1941.
120 operators from A&G squadrons in 36 vehicles supported by eight Kawasaki dirt bikes for reconnaissance and two Amat logistics trucks nicknamed mother ships carrying ammunition, water, fuel, and medical supplies. The vehicles themselves were purpose-built for exactly this kind of mission. SAS Land Rover 1 to 10 desert patrol vehicles known informally as pinkies from their original desert camouflage color had been stripped of everything unnecessary and reinforced with armor around critical components. Each vehicle
bristled with weaponry. Pintlemounted GPMG’s generalpurpose machine guns could engage targets to 1,800 m. Heavy machine guns in 050 caliber could penetrate light armor and destroy vehicles. MK19 automatic grenade launchers could walk explosions across enemy positions. Milan anti-tank missiles could crack bunkers.
L82 A1 Barrett sniper rifles. The legendary 050 caliber precision weapons could kill at over a mile. It was a rolling arsenal, a mechanized special operations force with more firepower than many conventional infantry battalions. Within minutes of landing, the convoy formed up in all round defensive positions.
The C130s were already lifting off, their engines screaming as they climbed into the night sky. One Land Rover suffered engine failure at the landing zone and had to be abandoned. The only equipment loss of the insertion. Lieutenant Colonel Butler gave the order to move out. The convoy drove through the night across the registan desert.
50 km of featureless terrain, navigating by GPS and dead reckoning. The vehicles traveled blacked out. No headlights, no brake lights, nothing that could be seen from a distance. Drivers used night vision goggles to pick their way across the rocky ground, straining to spot waddies and boulders that could disable a vehicle. The pace was grueling.
Every minute mattered. They needed to reach the forming up point before dawn to have any chance of achieving surprise. It was like something from another era. The original SAS had done exactly this in World War II, driving armed jeeps across the North African desert to strike Raml’s airfields. David Sterling’s raiders had destroyed more German aircraft on the ground than the entire Royal Air Force.
Now their successors were doing it again 60 years later against a different enemy in a different desert. By dawn, the convoy had reached its forming up point. The vehicles dispersed into a wide defensive formation. Engines off, crews using the last minutes of darkness to camouflage their positions. The men conducted final weapons checks.
They verified communications. They reviewed the assault plan one last time, each team leader, ensuring every man knew his role, his position, his targets. Ahead of them, the Koi Malik mountain rose from the desert floor. The early morning light revealed rocky slopes, sparse vegetation, and the distant outlines of structures, buildings, walls, the compound they had come to destroy.
Somewhere in those rocky slopes, 100 al-Qaeda fighters waited behind prepared defenses. The SAS were about to do something that violated every principle of special operations warfare. Attack a fortified position uphill in broad daylight with a numerically inferior force against an enemy who would fight to the death. Chapter 7.
Daylight assault. Just after 0700, a squadron observers spotted movement in the enemy trenches. Al-Qaeda fighters were stirring, preparing for another day at the remote outpost. Some emerged from bunkers, stretching in the morning sun. Others moved to defensive positions, performing the routine guard changes they had done every day for weeks.
They had no idea what was coming. At 1100 hours, the assault began. G Squadron moved into position and established their fire support base on a ridge overlooking the compound. The vehicles spread out in a firing line, presenting a wall of weaponry, 050 caliber heavy machine guns capable of penetrating walls and light vehicles.
GPMGs laying down sustained suppressive fire. MK19 automatic grenade launchers ready to walk explosions across the enemy trenches. Milan missile teams targeting bunkers and hardened positions. Barrett sniper rifles with scopes that could distinguish individual features at 1500 meters.
The first rounds slammed into al-Qaeda positions. The sound was apocalyptic. the deep thuting of heavy machine guns. The crack of sniper rifles, the distinctive thump thump thump of grenade launchers. Explosions walked across the enemy trenches. Dust and debris erupted into the air. Fighters who had been preparing for a quiet morning suddenly found themselves under withering fire from an enemy they hadn’t known existed.
Simultaneously, US Navy F A18 Hornets and 14 Tomcats screamed overhead at 500 mph. Maverick missiles streaked down into the opium storage facilities, detonating in massive fireballs that sent columns of smoke hundreds of feet into the air. The pilots made pass after pass, dropping bombs and conducting strafing runs until their ordinance was expended.
50 million pounds worth of processed opium, the equivalent of $85 million, went up in flames. Undercover of this overwhelming firepower, a squadron advanced. The assault teams moved in their Land Rovers at high speed, closing the distance to the compound as quickly as possible. The open ground offered no cover every second exposed was a second the enemy could find their range.
Enemy fire began to crack around them. AK-47 rounds snapped overhead. RPGs trailed smoke, detonating in clouds of dust and shrapnel. Machine gun bursts kicked up dirt in front of the advancing vehicles. The SAS didn’t slow down. They pressed the assault, returning fire from their vehicles even as they closed with the enemy.
At the base of the compound, the assault teams dismounted and went forward on foot. They used classic infantry fire and movement drills, the same basic tactics taught to every soldier, but executed with a precision that came from years of relentless training. Two-man teams pepper potted toward the objective. One man would advance while his partner provided covering fire, putting rounds on any enemy position that showed movement.
Then they would switch. The covering man advancing while his partner fired, leapfrogging across the open ground, never giving the enemy a static target. always maintaining pressure. What they encountered shocked even these hardened veterans. The al-Qaeda fighters didn’t retreat.
They didn’t take cover and try to survive the barrage. They counteratt attacked. Wave after wave of fighters came charging out of the trenches, firing wildly, screaming. They ran directly into the teeth of SAS firepower, seemingly oblivious to the bullets cutting down their comrades. One SAS operator later described the scene. These guys were lunatics.
Surrender was the last thing on their minds. They would run out of the front line firing. It was something out of the First World War. The intensity of the fighting exceeded anything the regiment had experienced in decades. Rounds snapped past heads close enough to feel the shock waves. RPGs whooshed overhead, their back blasts kicking up debris.
The air was thick with dust, smoke, and the constant crack of gunfire. One SAS officer was hit three times in rapid succession. Twice in his ceramic armor plates and once in the water bottle on his belt. Three rounds that should have killed him, stopped by equipment and luck. These were not people. Proper soldiers who could be treated with dignity. Another veteran recalled.
If they had a breath left in them, they would be trying to shoot you. So, we had no choice but to kill. At one point, the assault appeared to stall. The ferocity of al-Qaeda resistance was threatening to pin down a squadron in the open a death sentence if they couldn’t maintain momentum.
That’s when the RSM, the regimental sergeant major commanding the fire support base, made a decision that would earn him recognition in the medals that followed. Seeing the assault faltering, he gathered Lieutenant Colonel Butler’s headquarters team and personally led them forward to reinforce a squadron. It was a calculated risk, leaving the fire support base with reduced leadership.
But the RSM recognized that the assault needed mass at the critical moment. The additional firepower and leadership presence turned the tide. A squadron pushed through the final defenses and into the compound itself. Then came the near disaster. Chapter 8. Danger close. In the chaos of close combat, an American F18 pilot misidentified friendly positions from 15,000 ft through dust and smoke.
The distinction between friend and enemy became fatally unclear. The aircraft was lining up for a strafing run. Its 20 mm Vulcan cannon capable of firing 6,000 rounds per minute directly on SAS operators. Blue-onblue incidents friendly fire are the nightmare scenario in combined arms operations. American aircraft had killed British soldiers before.
The Gulf War had seen several tragic incidents. The danger was especially acute in Afghanistan, where coalition forces from multiple nations operated alongside local militias, all in similar terrain with imperfect communications. The Americans were running low on ordinance. They had made multiple passes, dropping bombs and firing missiles.
The situation on the ground was fluid troops in contact, moving through buildings, difficult to distinguish from the enemy they were killing. The forward air controller attached to a squadron caught the error. Screaming into his radio, he waved off the attack with seconds to spare. Abort. Abort. Friendlies on target. The F A18 pulled up and away.
Its cannon rounds that would have shredded the assault team remaining unfired. The pilot hadn’t seen the SAS positions clearly. A fraction more delay in the communication, a moment’s hesitation, and Operation Trent would have become a tragedy. It was the closest call of the entire operation, but the SAS had survived worse. They pressed on.
A squadron fought through the compound, building by building, room by room. The close quarters battle was brutal grenades through doorways, bursts of automatic fire into darkened corners. The point blank violence that special operators trained for obsessively. Enemy fighters appeared in doorways and died before they could raise their weapons.
Others hid in corners and aloves, springing out with knives or pistols, forcing hand-to-hand combat. Some played dead, waiting until SAS operators passed before trying to shoot them in the back. Nothing could be taken for granted. Every room had to be cleared, every body checked, every shadow examined.
In the headquarters building, they found what they’d come for. two laptops, stacks of documents, communications equipment, maps with annotations in Arabic, lists of names and numbers, the intelligence gold mine that justified the entire mission. The assault teams gathered everything they could carry and prepared to withdraw. Chapter 9.
Withdrawal under fire. Approximately 2 hours after the first shots were fired, the order came to pull back. A squadron began a fighting withdrawal under the protective fire of G Squadron’s support base. The classic leapfrog maneuver in reverse elements, breaking contact in sequence, always undercovering fire, never presenting a vulnerable target.
Behind them, the al-Qaeda compound was devastated. The opium stores were burning, sending a pillar of dark smoke, visible for miles. Bodies littered the trenches and buildings. The defensive positions that had seemed so formidable hours earlier were now smoking ruins. Surviving al-Qaeda fighters continued to engage from the flanks, trying to catch the withdrawing SAS in crossfire.
G Squadron’s heavy weapons kept them suppressed, laying down walls of fire that made any movement suicidal. G Squadron collapsed their fire support base in sequence, vehicles pulling back in bounds while maintaining suppressive fire on any remaining enemy positions. The discipline was textbook exactly how it’s taught at Heraford.
executed under combat conditions against an enemy that wanted nothing more than to die killing infidels. The convoy reformed and headed back toward the temporary landing zone where the three-man crew left to secure the position was waiting. They had spent the hours of the assault watching the horizon, listening to radio traffic, ready to fight if enemy forces discovered them.
American CH47 Chinook helicopters were already inbound to evacuate the wounded. Four SAS operators had been hit during the assault. One had taken rounds in his body armor. Others had wounds to arms and legs. All four injuries were non-life-threatening, painful, bloody, but not fatal. Considering the intensity of the firefight, a daylight assault against a fortified position held by fanatical fighters who charged into machine gun fire. The casualty count was remarkable.
Zero SAS killed in action. The enemy toll was catastrophic by comparison. Conservative estimates put al-Qaeda dead at 18. Other sources, including media reports in the months that followed, claimed the number was as high as 73 killed, with dozens more wounded and captured. No highlevel leadership was among the casualties the Americans had been right about that.
But the rank and file losses were devastating. An entire garrison of hardened fighters had been destroyed. The opium destroyed was valued at £50 million, approximately $85 million at the time. Drug money that would have funded terrorist operations across the globe had gone up in smoke, but the real prize was in the rucks sacks of a squadron. Chapter 10.
The intelligence gold. The two laptops and stack of documents recovered from the compound would prove invaluable in the months and years that followed. Intelligence analysts at GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, and their American counterparts at the NSA poured over the materials. The laptops contained emails, organizational documents, financial records.
The paper files held planning materials, personnel lists, communications protocols. The information drove future raids across Afghanistan. Names led to other names. Locations led to other locations. The capture of one compound’s records helped expose networks that stretched from Pakistan to Europe to America.
This was exactly what the British had argued for. This was why you send men instead of bombs. A B-52 strike would have destroyed the compound just as effectively. The opium would have burned. The fighters would have died. But the intelligence, the names, the plans, the connections wo