Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry
Shaun Garry Jardine, a native of Dumfries in south-west Scotland, joined the King’s Own Scottish Borderers at the age of 16 and was deployed to Iraq with the 1st Battalion on TELIC 2 after the initial invasion, in mid-June 2003 at the age of 21. The following extracts relating to Jardine’s service in Iraq, in particular the action for which he was awarded the C.G.C., are taken from an 8 page interview with Corporal Jardine which appears in the book In Foreign Fields by Dan Collins:
‘We arrived in Basra and then drove down to Kuwait to get acclimatised for a couple of weeks. Coming from Scotland, we definitely needed that. It was roasting hot, around 100 degrees in the shade, and a wee bit different to the weather back home...A week after we arrived the six Royal Military Policemen got murdered in Al Majar Al Kabir, so we were fast tracked to move up earlier than planned. There was a lot of activity to try and find the killers, and make sure everyone knew the British Army was in control, and so they needed plenty of boots on the ground.
We made our way up through Basra towards Camp Abu Naji. The way it worked was we rotated on a four week
basis...The fourth week was spent down at the Al Uzayr Security Force Base, an out station roughly 70 or 80 km south of Al Aamarah and the same distance north of Basra.
It was a very small camp, an old police station in the shape of a squared-off figure eight, with courtyards in the middle. Around the whole compound, five or ten metres from the building, there was a perimeter wall. If you looked over the wall you would see Al Uzayr itself. Its a pretty poor place sitting on the banks of the Tigris there in the middle of the marshland that runs down to the Iranian border which isn’t far away at all...
We would patrol the immediate area of the village and then strike out into the other villages and the marshland round about. We were just showing a presence, and obviously looking for weapons and insurgents. You have to remember, Saddam’s own police and Army had sort of vanished, so there wasn’t that much formal law and order apart from us.
Of course there were people who didn’t want us there. It had all kicked off two nights before. I had taken a six man patrol out around the village in a Land Rover, and we had been shot at from a number of rooftops. The rounds were close enough, probably AK, and we de-bussed from the vehicle and tried to locate the shooters. But we couldn’t so we went back and reported it. There were no casualties, but we were slightly shaken up...
The next night, another patrol was out and as they pulled out onto Route Six - the main road from Basra through to Al-Amarah - they got heavy incoming fire from the other side of the road, again from the village. They also de-bussed and started to return fire. Its always sketchy, particularly in the dark, but from the muzzle flashes and noise they thought there were between ten and twenty insurgents.
I deployed with six more guys towards the south, and we swept them out of the village, on to the other side of the road and over around 300 metres of flat, open ground to a farm complex. They were firing at us all the way. [An M.C. and an M.I.D. were were awarded to men of the regiment for this action.]
It was the next morning when the main thing happened. A team went out to clear the area and as they were returning, just as they got back to control base, there was a lot of gunfire to the north east of our position. It was a mixture of heavy machine gun and small arms. You can hear the difference. Heavy machine gun is an awful lot louder and when it is fired over your head you hear the thump of the weapon and then a much louder crack as the round passes over. I was on Quick Reaction Force, dressed and ready to go, so I grabbed my guys. The sentries on our roof shouted down and they’d spotted some enemy up to the north east of the camp, on the other side of the river.’
There was only one bridge across the river, and Corporal Jardine and his men had to cross it to get to the enemy. This was extremely hazardous; the bridge would channel them into a narrow killing ground in front of the enemy guns. Despite knowing this, Cpl. Jardine and his men did not hesitate.
‘I moved out with my team - there were five of us, including myself. As we were moving up the road, we received incoming fire from the opposite side of the river, which was about 100 metres from our position. We started fire-manoeuvring over some waste ground until we came to the river.
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