Point man in Afghanistan: a soldier's view

Kenny Meighan served in Helmand, guiding his patrol through mines and ambushes. He survived, but would he, like his soldier father before him, struggle to find peace back home?
Soldier in Afghanistan
Into the lions’ den: a British 'point man' guides his patrol through enemy lines in Afghanistan. Photograph: Camera Press

It was dusk and shadows were spilling across the courtyard of the British forward operating base in Sangin when I first met Kenny Meighan. He shuffled over meekly, olive eyes blinking in the fading light. He looked like a child soldier, yet his stories were those of an old warhorse. At first Kenny was reticent but gradually he warmed up, speaking matter-of-factly about the time he should have been a goner.

"I was pinned down on the domed roof of a compound getting smashed by the enemy. They had a bead on us. I couldn't move a muscle. I was trapped there for ages just waiting to be hit, RPGs, small-arms fire coming right up at me." He made an exploding noise with the back of his throat and gestured with his hands to replicate rubble tumbling upon his body.

Even among the young soldiers, there was something particularly boyish about Kenny. Open-faced and glossy-eyed with a button nose, at times he had the look of a choirboy. Other things set him apart. He had the widest smile of all the troops. And he talked the quickest. Conversations would start and pick up in excitement until thoughts toppled out while his tongue tried to keep up.

He was a small, almost fragile figure compared to some of the other soldiers. It was hard to believe the weight he could carry unless you saw it for yourself.

After a supper of boil-in-the-bag beans I had wandered around the base asking guys who they thought had a few stories to tell. A few names were touted, but one in particular kept cropping up. "Kenny," they said. "Talk to young Kenny." Kenny was point man, they said.

Point man
Kenny on tour in Afghanistan.

Taking point means you are the lead soldier of a patrol, the figure who guides the unit through enemy terrain. The point man walks ahead, scanning for danger. It is the most exposed position in a warzone. Taking point guarantees you will be first to wander into an ambush, first to tread upon a hidden bomb, first to be framed in the sights of an opposing sniper. Those who take point accept a vastly reduced chance of surviving. Men can "take point", "walk point", "do point", "be point", but it all amounts to the same thing: high risk.

Out here, Kenny had felt his senses sharpen until his instincts were tripwire taut, honed to notice the tiniest inconsistency. He could hear the crunch of loose rock across the valley, decipher scratches in tree bark and determine the anxiety of a stranger from the depth of their footprint. Kenny compared himself to a great white shark, a creature capable of sniffing blood in water up to 5km away. Sometimes, Kenny said, it was as if the land talked to him. "It's weird. Your senses become so highly tuned that you get all these subconscious instincts that start to read what's going on around you."

Kenny had convinced himself he had secured the most coveted position on the team. Before leaving, he had promised his father he would be the best infantryman he could possibly be, a man future Meighans would be proud to call their own.

Kenny's father couldn't have been prouder of his son, but inwardly John Meighan was deeply anxious. He had begged his son not to join the army. The price was too high.

"You'll see things you wished you never saw. Carry them around too long and you'll end up praying for a lobotomy," the 43-year-old told his son in his dense Glaswegian brogue. John had seen the world, known bravery and sacrifice, inspired unflinching loyalty among men. But he could not escape the drumbeat of his past. The things he had seen were destroying him.

Point man
John with Kenny on his knee.

For the past 12 years, Kenny's father would lie in bed and wait for the memories – the torso of his friend Big Jim Houston twitching on a South Armagh road after being gunned down by the Provisional IRA. Houston had a chin like Bruce Forsyth and hours before his death John had stroked it teasingly, just like he always did. Now in the night, Big Jim's long face lay staring back, pale and wide-eyed on the Irish tarmac.

For 14 years and 47 days, Corporal John Meighan served his country with distinction. But he had seen what most could never imagine. He left the military because he couldn't risk seeing another corpse. The images of big-chinned Jim and mutilated Iraqis grew more real over time; they began visiting him in the morning, when he woke, in the afternoon and on the way to bed, gradually eclipsing everyday reality. John tried to obtain psychiatric help – counselling, medication, anything – to shoo away the dead, but no one wanted to know.

In broad daylight, out shopping, he became lost in his visions. The waft of drains transported him outside a sewage works in the pissing rain. The smell of meat from a butcher's would make him freeze, incapacitated by the stench of death. During this period he stopped eating bacon because it smelt like burning flesh. The simplest things felt beyond him. His taut nerves failed him during the most mundane tasks. John overcompensated, planning trips to collect the morning milk with military precision.

Even then mysterious figures would appear from behind, forcing him to cross the road until the mother and child or the dog walker passed. Navigating the city grew increasingly terrifying.

On 21 August 1996 he reached breaking point. That night was worse than any other. Big Jim, his brain like a grey cauliflower hanging from the side of his head, asked why? Why did you send me to the checkpoint that day?

He went downstairs and hit the vodka. He apologised to Jim, to his sons, to his wife. Beside the bathroom cabinet he calculated how many paracetamol tablets he might need. Thirty was medically sufficient to kill. He took 60. His wife Beverley found him two hours later, weeping in a foetal position on the lounge floor. She drove him to Glasgow Royal Infirmary. The following day John was referred to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with extreme post-traumatic stress disorder. John suspected he was the first British soldier to have caught such a thing. He'd never heard of it.

Point man
John wearing the traditional Glengarry cap in front of Edinburgh Castle in 1990.

Something big was brewing. In the hinterland north of Sangin, huge numbers of Taliban forces were said to be massing. Intelligence had intercepted talk of the enemy moving south in an offensive to drive the invaders out. The British senior command were planning a decisive counterattack, an event they hoped would define the conflict. High on ambition, it was fraught with risk. By night, a unit of infantry supported by Afghan troops would march 11km into the enemy's heartland. Caught off guard, the Taliban would be routed in their own backyard.

On 29 May 2007 the order came to go. Operation Ghartse Gar would take Kenny and his platoon deeper and further into Afghanistan on foot than any British unit had gone for more than a century.

They carried everything they would need. Five litres of water, 48-hour ration packs and a spare pair of socks. Kenny's small frame, bent almost double, carried a 100-round link of 7.62mm machine-gun ammo slung over his shoulders. Several bandoliers were wrapped around his chest and another 100 link in his Bergen day sack for the GPMG – general- purpose machine gun. In his Bergen he also made room for a spare radio battery, to stay in touch where they were headed. But what they would find when they got there, no one really knew. The intelligence, as always, was vague. A battalion of trained Pakistani fighters or some "hocus-pocus" potshooters – anything was possible.

Orders travelled down the line of British soldiers: the enemy were ahead. Kenny was told to keep moving. Cautiously, he guided them towards the inevitable ambush. Their bodies stiffened, minds psyched for the impending mayhem. A cluster of mudbaked compounds appeared above a dip in the trail. Kenny remembers feeling the place had a bad vibe. Real bad. He raised his hand. The column slowed.

He was still scrutinising a possible passing point when the enemy began firing. Bullets ricocheted off the rocks. Rockets poured down from medieval slits in the buildings.

The fighting lasted all day. By late afternoon, the Taliban began retreating rapidly towards their flimsy boats to navigate the channels of the river, 200m wide, back to their hilltop hideout. The British gave chase, lungs bursting, wide-eyed. They had already decided on a harbour area, a safe haven, by the river where they would regroup, but in the enemy's heartland nowhere was secure. As they sprinted down into the designated safe zone, Kenny heard Badger right behind. There was a sudden terrible popping noise and the surrounding air began snapping. Kenny could feel the bullets, the air warping and sucking as the projectiles flew by.

They had been outmanoeuvred. A line of fighters were waiting for them in dense foliage just 50m away. Several steps ahead, to Kenny's left, a group of Afghan army soldiers attempted to storm the enemy position. One by one they fell. They simply fell. One, two, three men down. Gone. It was a kind of no-nonsense killing that Kenny later said reminded him of the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, when US marines are mown down on Omaha Beach in the Second World War.

There was a grunt behind him. Badger collapsed. He was holding his chest. "Man down!" screamed Kenny. The enemy's firing intensified. The British soldiers were being targeted in their chosen safe zone. Kenny knelt beside Badger. A 7.62mm bullet had been directed at his heart, but Kenny knew his friend was going to survive. The Kevlar slab of his Osprey body armour had hollowed at the point of impact as if a scoop had been taken from a tub of ice cream. The bullet had deflected from Badger's chest, pinging into his wrist which now dangled limply.

Badger seemed delighted with the development. He was going home. He might even get laid. "Yes! A war wound. I'll get some ladies with this," he shouted, holding up his crooked limb.

The fight carried on into evening until the bent bodies of the enemy lay still in the treeline.

Badger had been taken by Afghan troops back to Sangin for treatment. Kenny wondered how he was getting on, and why his friend and not he had been shot. Badger was right behind at the time, right up his arse. The bullet must have passed straight through him. The margins of war; sometimes they worked for you.

Point man
Soldiering on: John and Kenny Meighan, father and son, showing their medals in Kenny’s house. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the Observer

In the morning the river looked solid. The men were still cutting deals over whose turn it was to make the brew when a dull boom ruptured the dawn air. A moment later the river erupted and a fountain of water reared up. A sequence of overlapping thuds rang across the banks. The water churned as the enemy mortars flopped short of their targets. Another series of bangs. The white water towers crept closer. Spray hit the men crouched on the far bank.

The enemy were finding their range. Machine-gun fire stitched across the river surface like skimming stones. Puffs of dirt appeared as bullets slammed into the bank behind where Kenny lay. He peered at the wall of greenery across the water. Figures winked and waned in the foliage. The salvo looped short, sploshing sadly into the water. The British began firing back, shooting steadily across the river as the mortars found their range. The Taliban melted away. There would be other fights.

They started calling themselves "Bait Platoon". They were sent out to lure the enemy into the open, where they would try and kill as many as possible. But the Taliban weren't biting. The only movement was the mechanical plodding of the platoon.

Yet even then, before any of Bait Platoon had died, Kenny remembers feeling that the war was starting to touch him in a way that might be irreversible. He knew that he had gone through nothing compared to the horrors his dad had seen, but he also knew that was likely to change.

This is an edited extract from Point Man by Mark Townsend, published by Faber & Faber, at £16.99.