one if they have to. But if you've got down to that you're in pretty dire straits. You have to get extremely close to someone to stab them, and it's almost impossible to cut someone's throat without them knowing – unless they're fast asleep. If you really can't shoot them, batter them with your rifle butt instead.
The two weapons we carried out on patrol were the SA80 assault rifle and Minimi machine gun. Our longs would stay back at base, unless we were going on a specific snipers' task.
Forget what you've heard, the SA80 A2 variant was a perfectly reliable and good weapon. Its predecessor, the A1, got all the bad headlines and was a bit suspect. But its German manufacturers Heckler and Koch had done a lot of work to iron out the faults. The A2 had a sturdier cocking handle and a decent ejection mechanism that no longer threw the old shells back inside the rifle to cause stoppages.
The SA80 takes a 5.56mm round and weighs about five kilograms. It has two modes of fire, single shot and fully automatic. The latter would be used only very rarely, for in-your-face tasks like trench clearing. It's very hard to aim on fully automatic because of the recoil. On single shot, a soldier is expected to hit a target at 300 metres. But you're a pretty good shot if you can hit something more than 600 metres away.
The rifle's SUSAT telescopic sight was another new addition to it, and it was also pretty handy. It had a simple needle with a sharp point at its tip to signify the point of aim. Some of the boys had added laser aimers that clip on to the barrel and throw a red dot onto the point of aim. Itwas also standard issue kit for Iraq. It's handy if you're in a rush, because you can just point and squirt. In darkness, we swapped the SUSAT for a CWS night sight, which works by light gathering.
One bloke in every four on a patrol would carry an Underslung Grenade Launcher (UGL), mounted under the barrel of his SA80. It was yet another piece of kit that we hadn't seen before, though widely used by the US Army for years. And we thought it was gleaming.
The UGL was fired with its own trigger, and aimed by a flick-up sight. It shoots out a 40mm fragmentation grenade to a range of up to 350 metres, which explodes after a few seconds once its fuse has burnt out, killing anything in a five-metre radius. It was a very good weapon, and easy to be accurate with.
There would also be one Minimi in every four-man fire team. The Belgian-made Minimi is an area weapon with a far heavier weight of fire than the SA80. It's designed primarily to suppress rather than for accurate target shooting, and chucks out up to 1,000 rounds per minute. Basically, the enemy is going to keep their heads down for a bit if there is a continual wall of lead coming over them. That gives you and your men time and space to manoeuvre.
The weapon also took a 5.56mm calibre round in magazines of 250, which came in either a bag or a hard box. Minimi men would also carry one or two spare 200-round magazines on them. A bipod was attached to the barrel that could be folded out to support the weapon while being fired. It has an effective range of 800 metres, but it's hard to hit anything accurately beyond 300 with automatic bursts.
It was the first time we'd been given Minimis too. They look pretty sexy, so the younger blokes in the platoon loved prancing around town with them feeling hard.
No matter what you had, in a place as dirty and dusty as Iraq you would clean your weapon every single day. That means stripping it down, wiping every surface with a cloth, cleaning out any dirt, carbon or gunpowder residue, oiling the moving parts, wiping it down again, reassembling it, and finally performing a function check by cocking it and pulling the trigger. It takes between fifteen and twenty minutes. You do it so often that the whole process doesn't require any thought at all. It becomes a ritual. And you're happy to do it, because you know that lump of steel can save your
The two weapons we carried out on patrol were the SA80 assault rifle and Minimi machine gun. Our longs would stay back at base, unless we were going on a specific snipers' task.
Forget what you've heard, the SA80 A2 variant was a perfectly reliable and good weapon. Its predecessor, the A1, got all the bad headlines and was a bit suspect. But its German manufacturers Heckler and Koch had done a lot of work to iron out the faults. The A2 had a sturdier cocking handle and a decent ejection mechanism that no longer threw the old shells back inside the rifle to cause stoppages.
The SA80 takes a 5.56mm round and weighs about five kilograms. It has two modes of fire, single shot and fully automatic. The latter would be used only very rarely, for in-your-face tasks like trench clearing. It's very hard to aim on fully automatic because of the recoil. On single shot, a soldier is expected to hit a target at 300 metres. But you're a pretty good shot if you can hit something more than 600 metres away.
The rifle's SUSAT telescopic sight was another new addition to it, and it was also pretty handy. It had a simple needle with a sharp point at its tip to signify the point of aim. Some of the boys had added laser aimers that clip on to the barrel and throw a red dot onto the point of aim. Itwas also standard issue kit for Iraq. It's handy if you're in a rush, because you can just point and squirt. In darkness, we swapped the SUSAT for a CWS night sight, which works by light gathering.
One bloke in every four on a patrol would carry an Underslung Grenade Launcher (UGL), mounted under the barrel of his SA80. It was yet another piece of kit that we hadn't seen before, though widely used by the US Army for years. And we thought it was gleaming.
The UGL was fired with its own trigger, and aimed by a flick-up sight. It shoots out a 40mm fragmentation grenade to a range of up to 350 metres, which explodes after a few seconds once its fuse has burnt out, killing anything in a five-metre radius. It was a very good weapon, and easy to be accurate with.
There would also be one Minimi in every four-man fire team. The Belgian-made Minimi is an area weapon with a far heavier weight of fire than the SA80. It's designed primarily to suppress rather than for accurate target shooting, and chucks out up to 1,000 rounds per minute. Basically, the enemy is going to keep their heads down for a bit if there is a continual wall of lead coming over them. That gives you and your men time and space to manoeuvre.
The weapon also took a 5.56mm calibre round in magazines of 250, which came in either a bag or a hard box. Minimi men would also carry one or two spare 200-round magazines on them. A bipod was attached to the barrel that could be folded out to support the weapon while being fired. It has an effective range of 800 metres, but it's hard to hit anything accurately beyond 300 with automatic bursts.
It was the first time we'd been given Minimis too. They look pretty sexy, so the younger blokes in the platoon loved prancing around town with them feeling hard.
No matter what you had, in a place as dirty and dusty as Iraq you would clean your weapon every single day. That means stripping it down, wiping every surface with a cloth, cleaning out any dirt, carbon or gunpowder residue, oiling the moving parts, wiping it down again, reassembling it, and finally performing a function check by cocking it and pulling the trigger. It takes between fifteen and twenty minutes. You do it so often that the whole process doesn't require any thought at all. It becomes a ritual. And you're happy to do it, because you know that lump of steel can save your
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