I deployed with Combat Team – Charlie to Afghanistan in November 2010. My call sign was assigned as the Company Quick Reaction Force and worked out of Forward Operation HADRIAN. One reaction task happened when we were called out to assist an Australian Bushmaster vehicle that found itself in a spot of bother and rolled off a road. Thankfully there were no serious injuries. None the less my section geared up in our Bushmaster with the support of two ASLAVS and made our way to the site. While in transit we were given our orders to establish a Vehicle Check Point (VCP) to allow no other vehicle access near the site to prevent clutter so the American recovery team could do their job unhindered.

Once we arrived at our VCP location, my section split into two parts which are called ‘bricks’. One was to stay with the Bushmaster and two ASLAVS in rear security while the other four of us made our way to the VCP location on foot 500m away. The site of the VCP was smack bang in a bottleneck. It was a Narrow road about 5 metres across with a steep cliff on one side and Afghan compounds, called qualas, on the other. One of the qualas had an Afghan National Police checkpoint on it’s roof with sandbags which was manned by a teenager with an AK-47.

Our orders were clear and simple, no vehicles including Australian, American and Afghani were allowed past the checkpoint until the Bushmaster was recovered. When we arrived I positioned myself in the middle of the road while my team mates took up security positions around me. After about 15 minutes a platoon of mounted Afghan National Army with heavy weapons came flying into the VCP wanting to gain access to the crash site. Me, with my rifle slung across my front in a non hostile manner, used hand signals to get them to stop.

Since we had no interpreter with us at the time, there was a breakdown in communication through language barriers and I soon found the barrel of an M-60 Machine Gun with a balaclava wearing ANA soldier on the other end of it jabbing me in the stomach below my front Kevlar plate simply because I wouldn’t let them pass.

Straight away one of my teammates, Private H, jammed the muzzle of his rifle into the back of the Afghani soldiers head, only for that to piss the entire platoon off. Within a matter of seconds, myself and Private H were completely surrounded by ANA soldiers, under the influence of substances pointing everything from M16s, Ak-47s, PKMs and RPGs trained on us from multiple angles at close range. It was like a Mexican drug deal gone bad.

The other two members of the brick were desperately trying to raise communication with the vehicles we arrived in so they could help defuse the situation. By this stage several minutes had passed and the situation was deteriorating quickly..

It was then I turned to Private H and said… “You shoot the cunt with the RPG and I’ll shoot the cunt with the mounted PKM” Not that made any difference as we still had 30+ weapons pointed at us.

The next words from Private H I’ll never forget – “You Ready?”

This was our cue. We weren’t going to let them get the first shots off so we flicked our weapons from action to instant, took aim at our already agreed targets and took up the first trigger pressure. We had both resigned to the fact that we were both about to be killed in a hail of bullets. Finally one of our other team members did manage to get a hold of our rear security and the sounds of ASLAVS roaring around the corner forced the ANA to lower their weapons. Even they didn’t want to take on 25mm cannons from point blank range.

Right at the moment, myself and Private H kept our weapons up, the slightest squeeze of one of our triggers would have changed the relationships between Australian and Afghani troops forever. But thanks to good training and discipline, some timely reinforcements and to be honest, not wanting to get filled with holes, a disaster was averted.

This was the type of thing that I find hard to explain to people. Myself and Private H have had many conversations about that day. We accepted the fact that we were about to die but through sheer luck, we didn’t….. But we were ready.