Chris Witts (3:41)

Chris Witts, I was a captain in the Royal Marines in 2007, in command of the Viking vehicles at Jugurum Fort. All missions start with what's called a H hour. So this is the, you know, the zero time where everyone's got to be in position. And our initiating activity was a simultaneous drop of £51,000 of bombs onto Drugram Fort. Quite honestly, the largest explosion I think I've ever heard from 8km away. It felt like the, the world was, was on fire. It was, it was enormous. You, you start to think, no one can survive this. That was just an incredible amount of ordnance.

Glyn Sadler (4:25)

I'm Glyn Sadler. I don't know whether it's. It's worth it, but I do actually have the set of orders that we were issued. The mission was to disrupt the enemy in the area of Drukrun Fort in order to disrupt enemy freedom of manoeuvre. In a nutshell, we were to set up a gun line and a javelin ambush approximately 1.3 kilometers away from the fort.

Chris Witts (4:47)

The original plan was overwhelming aviation firepower as well as direct fire support from light dragoons, light armoured vehicles with a be prepared to task, to cross the river and prosecute the mission with dismounted troops. Almost every mission has be prepared two tasks and the reason for that is because you don't know quite how it's going to shake out. And so the commanders want you to be prepared to think about other actions that could be carried out so that you can change the plan very quickly, but you've had some thinking time about it ahead.

Alex von Tunzelman (5:25)

So.

Chris Witts (5:25)

So be prepared. Two tasks are very, very common.

Glyn Sadler (5:28)

Nowhere in those orders were we expecting to attack before. It was sort of intimated that it was a possibility, but it was brushed over as that. 0500. That's when things changed.

Chris Witts (5:42)

We got the order that the be prepared to task to cross the river was going to get initiated.

Glyn Sadler (5:49)

At the end of the day, we were Zulu companies, a fighting unit in the Royal Marines. A company level attack is. That's what we do. That's our bread and butter. But the only problem when it comes to a fort is that, you know, it's a bit different than being opened up on in open ground or from a small compound or stuff like that. This is a huge deal, you know, so you'd really ideally want time to plan and prepare. The river crossing wasn't ideal.

Shep Shepherd (6:17)

Once it's given to you as a prepared two task. We knew that it was a possibility. However, I had been told it was probably unlikely actually having to conduct a river crossing. It's like the River Thames in London. You know, to put it into perspective, it's a big river before you even, you know, get onto the enemy's bank and start the fight.

Chris Witts (6:40)

The beauty of the Viking is that it doesn't need to go on roads. I mean, we can drive up glaciers. I mean, absolutely, the vehicle is unbelievably mobile, so they are amphibious. I would say loosely amphibious, but absolutely they swim. It's an incredibly versatile vehicle. So the challenge with the river crossing is that if the vehicle did transition to buoyancy and the river wasn't deep enough to get it to full buoyancy, that is, you were just clearing the bottom of the river by, you know, an inch or two. Then as the river pushes the Viking downstream, if there's an unseen protrusion in the bottom of the river, it can cause the vehicle to catch a track and effectively roll. You know, in that situation, you've got a steel box filling with water and a dozen marines in it.

Shep Shepherd (7:28)

When we were told we were going over, we got given a quick set of QBOs, quick battle orders. Now the Vikings are all lined up, ready to go. Troop commanders are pulled in with the troop sergeants. They're given a quick brief of the scheme, manoeuvre, what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And then everyone went back to their vehicles.

Chris Witts (7:46)

I already had the order that the Vikings are going to cross that river and effectively dismount their troops, ready for what would be, we thought, a pretty easy clearance operation of a pretty ruined fort.

Glyn Sadler (8:05)

With a bizarre twist of fate, I actually bumped into Fordy at the back of the Viking and I could tell that obviously he wasn't particularly happy about the situation. At the end of the day, we're professionals and we want to do the best job that we can. And in order to do that, we deserve the best information that we can get without knowing what the guys in the HQ can see in terms of maybe we won't get this chance again or whatever. So I appreciate that. I can only give my opinion from what I was feeling on the ground with very little information. Everybody got back in the Vikings. That's it. We start rolling towards a fort.

Shep Shepherd (8:44)

So you start moving, you can't hear anything inside the vehicles. You know, headsets only for speaking. The noise of the vehicle's loud. Your vision is minimal because they're very small windows. The gunner is out the top so he can actually see. So at one stage, the vehicle, our vehicle went over a boulder and I spoke to other people and there's no way you're getting out in your fighting gear. You weighing a lot anyway. You know, it's a ridiculous amount of ammunition and grenades that you carry, but you're not even gonna get out. You wouldn't get the doors open. You wouldn't get out of the doors. You know, as we start hitting boulders and then going up and we're at like 45 degrees, and I'm thinking any minute now, this going to flip.

Glyn Sadler (9:28)

Just as we start to get towards the fort, I think we're sort of maybe three or four Vikings back from. From the front. I just see the. The water filling up at the window at the back of the Viking. So I know that it's super deep.

Shep Shepherd (9:42)

And then obviously, you know, when you get to the other side, you know, it's going to be out of the vehicles and straight into the task.

Chris Witts (9:50)

You know, this is what you train for. There is just a very quiet focus. The radio chatter was absolutely minimal. Every Marine has a kind of inward focus of, this is the job now. We've got to get ready.

Shep Shepherd (10:05)

Final checks, final confirmation. And then everyone just sat there knowing what they needed to do. You're getting your thoughts right in your head. You're getting your nerves steeled and you're getting ready for it.

Chris Witts (10:18)

All of that work, all of that preparation, all of that mental preparedness is now coming to a conclusion. And it's going to come to a conclusion in about eight minutes. Okay, we're ready. We're a team. We're going to go do this.

Shep Shepherd (10:34)

When you attack a compound or a building or a village, so you've got to break in. So when. I mean break in, I mean You've got to get into there through their defences. So I remember getting out of my vehicle and it was very grey, almost like civil twilight. It wasn't. The sun hadn't quite come up. They put a ,ousand pounder or five hundred pounder into the side of the fort and I can remember seeing the wall and seeing the big V shape smashed out of it that we were going to use as our breaching point. As we got out of the vehicle, 5 troop, they had to move quickly. You know, their task was to get straight to the wall to start the braking. It's man power intensive. You need people to be able to keep on pushing through each other. You may attack one room and you've got to hold that room and people will come through you. You don't all move at once. They, you know, moved in groups. So one lot covering, one lot moving. And it was probably once all the 5 troop was there, it just, just changed. The noise and the intensity of the fire concentrated into such a small area was unbelievable.

Chris Witts (11:44)

The confusion of battle comes upon you very quickly. You know, the firefight was.

Glyn Sadler (11:49)

Was happening and I don't know whether it was the FST officer said, we're just getting out and we're just going to fight. That's all we can do.

Shep Shepherd (12:00)

Obviously, I can see 100% from the enemy's perspective, because it's exactly what we would do. The last thing that they want us to do is to actually gain a foothold inside the force. It was immense. The amount of green and red tracer that was in the air.

Glyn Sadler (12:15)

We were getting shot up, not from 360 because we had the river to our back, but every other direction we could receive fire from, we were receiving fire from.

Shep Shepherd (12:27)

Fear's healthy. Fear can also grip people. You don't want people who are not scared. You know, people who aren't scared, they're obviously not all there, you know, you want people who are completely aware of their senses.

Glyn Sadler (12:43)

If you can't physically see the enemy, you can hear the rounds coming in and they're close because you can hear that snap that's going over your head.

Chris Witts (12:51)

Chris Witts My recollection is talking down a radio, marshaling my sections. I knew that machine guns were being fired. I knew heavy machine guns were being fired. You can still hear the kind of crumping of that weapon firing.

Shep Shepherd (13:06)

I'm not bothered who you are. You feel fear. You're functioning completely sound. And then you get like this feeling coming up through your face and you feel it coming into your knees and you feel it coming up your body into your stomach, right into your chest. And then you have to, you know, take a couple of good, hard, deep breaths, force it down. But it's a conscious effort to force it down.

Glyn Sadler (13:36)

There's no room. There's no space around the Vikings. Like I said, it was just lads squashed in between trying to find a fire position, trying to get behind some.

Shep Shepherd (13:44)

Sort of COVID We were all in a very small, tight area. The attack was stalling, so we'd lost momentum. And you need that momentum to be able to keep. Keep on going and keep on pushing still under that, you know, incredibly intense fire. It was a killing ground designed, you know, hundreds of years ago. The fort was produced by Kev Kaur.

Kavita Puri (14:23)

Look, we found this. Nicky's never seen this before. Oh, wow. It was just him. In homes across Britain, children and grandchildren are discovering stories about their families in the Second World War. I've never noticed it before. It's a battered old suitcase. Do you want to open it? I'd love to open it. Not the war you're thinking of the fight against the Nazis. The other story of World War II, the one on the Asian front against Japan.

Shep Shepherd (14:53)

The battle was. Gun battle, really. And kept on pounding them, pounding them, pounding them.

Kavita Puri (15:00)

I'm Kavita Puri from BBC Radio 4, the World Service, and the history podcast. This is the second map. 80 years after the end of that war, why don't we remember it as well as we should? Listen to the second map first on BBC Sounds.

Alex von Tunzelman (15:20)

This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

Narrator (15:33)

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when. When I'm done with you.

Alex von Tunzelman (15:40)

Join me, Alex Von Tanzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.