Live ChatSSAFA’s Richard French served as a sniper in Iraq, fighting the Mahdi Army as they targeted British troops with increasingly sophisticated weapons.
He was inside a Warrior armoured vehicle attacked by a petrol bomb-throwing mob in a riot that made global news.
Richard shares his personal experiences and recounts day-to-day life as an infantry soldier in post-Saddam Basra.
“I was brought up around the Army,” says Richard ‘Frenchy’ French. “It's all I ever wanted to do.”
Richard had a 17-year Army career, spanning Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan, before being medically discharged six years ago.
“I'm blind in my right eye from a grenade in Afghanistan,” he says. “I managed to bounce back from that, then a military parachute jump ended my career. I got injured when my arm got caught up in the line coming out the plane. It was a bit unlucky, but there you go.
“I was born in Germany; both my mum and dad were in the Army and then we moved to Belize. I didn't move to England until I was about ten. My mum was an Army nurse, my dad was a medic, my brother's a medic but I wasn't interested in that side of it, I wanted to be just a bog-standard soldier and infantryman.
“My dad's brothers were all in the military family. They were brought up in a boys' home and all joined the Army because there were not a lot of choices. My dad was the only one who stuck it and he made a hell of a career out of it. He went through the ranks from private and retired as a full Colonel, as a commanding officer of a field hospital.
“When I was a child, we settled in rural Devon. I spent a lot of my childhood with rifles, lying still, shooting the rats that would try to get into the chicken coop. I think that led me down that path to being a sniper.
“I was 17 when I joined up. I joined the Coldstream Guards, and the Guards have a platoon in 3 PARA. I was not just attached, you're a platoon within their rifle companies wearing the parachute regiment cap-badge and all the insignia, after doing P Company."
I was very happy to go to Iraq.
"I was very happy to go to Iraq,” says Richard, now 41 and based in West Sussex. At the time, I thought, 'Great, I get to go to a new country.'
“I went in 2005, 18 months after the war started and I was in a place called the Old State Building, which was a company base in the centre of Basra. A lot of my friends went to Al Amarah. We went to Basra, and we expected it to be the worst place of the tour. So, we were giving them a hard time about having an easy tour, but it was worse in Al Amarah than it was for us, in the end. Sadly, we all lost people, but they had a lot more going on than we did daily. That just shows you just don't know what a tour is going to hold.
“The Mahdi Army [a Shiite militia considered one of the most dangerous in Iraq] were coming into their own and they were using IEDs, including quite sophisticated ones with shaped charges, made from plastic explosives. They could blow through armour and there were stories of them going through Abrams tanks. So, if it can go through a main battle tank, then it can through anything.
“The Mahdi Army were learning this technology as we were switching to more armoured vehicles. But they weren't necessarily all home-made. There were other countries unofficially involved in the war. It wasn't just people making it in their bathrooms anymore."
A couple of SAS guys were kidnapped by Iraqi police.
In September 2005, Richard was involved in an incident that made headlines around the world.
“A couple of SAS guys were kidnapped by Iraqi police and taken to al-Jamiat police station in Basra. The police were trying to smuggle them off to the Mahdi Army but didn't know they had a tracker.
“One of our companies went around to the police station and said, 'You've got a couple of our guys in there.' The police were like, 'No, we haven't.' They were like, 'Yes, you have. We've got it on a tracker.' The police pointed weapons at them and told them to leave, so then they came back in force.”
Soldiers with riot shields surrounded the police station in a cordon protected by Warriors, the British Army’s armoured infantry fighting vehicles.
“The locals were getting very upset. On other operational tours I’ve been on, when you have a riot, it builds up slowly. In Iraq, it seemed to happen in two minutes."
It went crazy in no time at all!
“It went crazy in no time at all,” Richard recalls. “Small arms were being fired and rioters threw petrol bombs on top of the Warriors."
“We were in the back of the Warriors while this was going on,” Richard recalls, “It's a big metal vehicle with a huge diesel engine, so there's always noise and smell. But then with bricks hitting it, a full-on riot, it's very noisy. It was very confusing for us as young soldiers.
“The scariest thing about it was not knowing what is happening outside. And then when the petrol bombs hit the drivers and a lot of smoke coming in, there was even more confusion, because they're the main commanders."
People tried to attack them while they were on fire.
“Because it escalated so quickly, the drivers and commanders still had their hatches open, and they got badly injured. They were all severely burnt. People tried to attack them while they were on fire, so shots were fired.
“At that stage the soldiers had to move forward and engage some of the crowd to protect the vehicles because we were about to get swarmed.
“The rioters were pushed back, the Warriors were secured, and we got out of them. In a way it was like coming out of the frying pan and into a fire. But once out in the daylight, you could see what was going on and there was a commander controlling the situation, so it felt more normal.
“One of the lasting media images of the British involvement in Iraq is those soldiers jumping out of the Warriors on fire. The country saw a very negative side to what was happening in Iraq. It was spun as a defeat because our tanks were on fire and soldiers were on fire. But they weren't tanks, and they weren't captured. They weren't surrounded and defeated by the enemy. They were there to protect the other soldiers,” says Richard.
We were there to keep the peace, not kill civilians.
“It looked like the Warriors were getting overrun, but they could have just driven over the crowd or fired their 30mm cannon into them. But that's not what we're there to do. We were there to keep the peace, not kill civilians.
“Our company was lining up to go into the police station then, the SAS turned up and said: 'We'll do this. This is our job.' One of our Warriors drove over police cars and through a wall so the SAS could charge in.”
Beaten but still alive, the two SAS troopers were rescued.
“There were no British deaths during the riot, but quite a few were injured. The driver of one of the Warriors was the worst injured out of everyone. He was very badly burnt, all his face, his arms, his hands, everything,” says Richard.
“I didn't know him that well when it happened, because I'd only been attached to them for a few days, and I didn't see him afterwards because it was a different regiment.
“But in 2019, I was running an ultramarathon in Kenya, and I bumped into him at a coffee shop, and he was on the same ultramarathon!"
We're in touch all the time now.
“We were feet apart during the worst incident of his life, but we never knew each other. Then we met each other on a run in the Kenyan bush. It's such a strange series of things to happen, but he's a really nice guy. We're in touch with each other all the time now.
“In Iraq I worked in a ‘multiple’: half a platoon made up of the snipers, the Javelin anti-tank guys and the machine guns. I was a sniper. That was my role. It was quite a bad deal for us because we'd go out on patrol with them all day. And then we'd be in sniper over-watch all night while they'd get their head down because they weren't needed. And then, the next day, they were nice and fresh and then we'd be back out again. So, workload-wise, it was the toughest tour I ever did, just for not getting much sleep and time off.
“We were on foot or in the Snatch Land Rovers mainly. They were armoured, but very easy to blow up. But that's when we started seeing big investments being put into equipment and the company that made the Snatches started making the Mastiffs. If you put them next to each other, it's like a cross-country runner next to The Mountain from Game of Thrones. It's just unrelatable, the size of them!
“We'd go out and do sniper-specific ops to confuse the enemy. Sometimes we would get dropped off out of the back of a vehicle at a checkpoint and we'd dive behind some bins and hide there."
It put the fear into them.
“Then about three hours later, we'd emerge and patrol back through Basra, just three snipers in full ghillie suits with sniper rifles. Everyone sees us and wonders what we've been doing. They think we're always out there, but it was just to put the fear into them. So, when they're setting up IEDs, they don't know if they're being watched. We weren't, we were just hiding behind a bin for a couple of hours then walking back in!
“But these sorts of things can work really well. Quite an easy task that could really put the fear into people and stop them or affect the recruiting of the Mahdi Army because no one wants to join a losing side, everyone wants to join a winning side.
“Iraq was, in sniping terms, more in fixed positions. So, you weren't really much use when you were moving around. But you could hide in the sangers (fortified observation posts), and they wouldn’t know who is in it, or if anyone's in it, because of the camo nets.
“There'd be times where we'd take shots, and it would stop bigger things happening. So, laying an IED is an easy one, but they'd quite often be laying an ambush in place. Although the Mahdi Army were very brave people, everyone in history has always been scared of sniping because it's not knowing who they're looking at, where they are. I think it's the fact it's not indiscriminate like artillery or machine gun fire, they're picking who to shoot, which can put extra fear into people."
A very powerful weapon, psychologically.
“It can be a very powerful weapon psychologically and it's cost effective as well. A bullet costs £1.27. A Javelin missile which could be used to do the same job is £75,000. If I shoot someone, it's extremely unlikely there's going to be collateral damage, because you're going to see where the bullet is going before and after the target and what will stop it, like a wall. Whereas a Predator drone or a Javelin missile can hit a legitimate target and unbeknownst to you on the other side is a family having dinner.
“In movies, snipers always take out generals, or Hitler. But the first target you always have is other snipers because they're the biggest threat to you. Take out that threat and you've got freedom of movement to move onto other targets.
“We'd spend a lot of time protecting our camps. So, we'd be in either sangers or on rooftops over-watching when there were bigger threat levels or attacks imminent."
I sat staring into Basra.
“For long periods of time, I sat staring into Basra. The Old State Building was right next to a slaughterhouse and the canal was right in front of us. Every day, all of the lorries that went to our camps emptied the Portaloos full of human waste into the canal, which didn't have much water in it in the summer.
“Then, once a week, the slaughterhouse would empty all of the blood in there. One of my lasting memories of Basra is the smell, just all day, every day. You think you get used to a smell, it was just so bad, we never did.
“There was rubbish everywhere because the infrastructure had been destroyed during the war and never replaced. Basra is a huge city, and it had no running water, very little electricity, no sewer system, all just absolutely standard things.
“It was adapting by the time we were there because it had been a year and a half since the war had officially ended but it wasn't functioning as a proper city, the city they were used to. A lot of Westerners probably think that was what it was always like, because the only time they ever saw it was after the war, in the papers and the news."
The smell, the litter and the children.
“A lot of my memories are of the smell, the litter and the children playing in it,” says Richard.
“When I was in Northern Ireland, we were told things that generations before us had done, like carry sweets because then children would come to you and the IRA will never shoot at you when you've got children near you. Whether they're Catholic or Protestant, no-one wants to kill children.
“Iraq was the opposite. If the children are talking to you, that's their fault, they shouldn't be talking to the infidel. So, you tried to keep them away from you, because you're just making yourself a bigger target and making them a target too.
“Kids would throw stones at us when we were on vehicle patrols, but I don't think they were anti-us. I just think if kids in London could throw stones at the police without repercussions, they would do. It's just kids being kids. They don't because they get arrested whereas in Basra, we couldn't arrest them, so they'd throw stones. It's fun.
“It was my first time in the Middle East in a Muslim country. It was very alien. The camel spiders, the vicious wild dogs everywhere.
A dog called Steve.
“I was one of the first waves of soldiers from our unit there to take over the Old State Buildings.
“When we arrived, there was a puppy that had been rescued by British solders after some locals had thrown it into the razor wire. As everyone arrived, they asked what his name was, I said, ‘Steve.’
“He became our camp’s unofficial pet dog, a little bit of morale, and he would follow us around and sleep in the sangers with us. He wouldn't go out on patrol because the street dogs out there were like Resident Evil dogs.
“The adjutant accidentally ran Steve over in a Land Rover once. We managed to nurse him back to health, even getting the vet from a bigger camp to give him his jabs and we were getting photos of female dogs sent from England and put on the wall next to him. No-one spoke to the adjutant for a month until we knew Steve was going to be alright.
“When we closed the camp down, we had an operation to smuggle him out, but we got caught. Someone obviously grassed us up! We were stopped at the gate and the dog was removed. We had to leave him behind. And I never knew what happened to Steve. He certainly wouldn't have survived in the wild of Basra; he was too used to being pampered by British dog-lovers.
“Old State Buildings was retaken on the next tour and used as a camp again. A year later I was on a course, and I met a guy from The Rifles who was based there. The first thing I asked him was if they had a dog, and straight away he said, ‘Oh, you mean Steve the dog! So, Steve was obviously still going strong years after I'd left Iraq!’
“I've always liked animals. They're the real innocents in everything, aren't they? They don't understand what's going on. When I was young, I wanted to be a vet, as in an animal doctor, but when I was at boarding school my headmaster said, 'You've got more chance of being an astronaut!' So that was the end of that. There wasn't much boosting up children in those days, I'm guessing!”
I'd love to go back to Basra.
Richard hopes to see Iraq again one day, in better circumstances.
“I now go back to that region a lot in my time off. I can see Iraq being somewhere to visit in the future, unlike other places I've been to. It's got hot weather and the waterfront and once the country can recover from the last 20 years and the whole Saddam regime for years before that, it has a potential to be a new Turkey. And when that happens, I'd certainly love to go back to Basra and see how it has recovered.”
After leaving Iraq, Richard was promoted to Lance Corporal, returned to 3 PARA and was deployed to Afghanistan as one of the first soldiers into Helmand Province in 2006.
“Then Afghanistan really took over the next decade of my life,” he recalls. “I was deployed again in 2008, with 3 PARA, and then in 2011, back with the Coldstream Guards as a sniper again.
“Towards the end of that deployment, a grenade was thrown at me over a wall and detonated about a metre in front of my face. I dived on the ground and the mud and my helmet absorbed most of the frag.
“I got a little bit in my face, and I lost most of the sight in my right eye. But other than that, I was okay. It could have been a very different story. And I managed to bounce back from that injury eventually and kept my career.
“Unfortunately, while back in 3 Para, I had a parachute accident while deployed with the 82nd airborne in America. That ended my career. Being medically discharged as a career soldier brings its own problems. I never saw myself leaving. An infanteer, a sniper: They’re not the most useful skills to go out into the world with.
“Some people have the injuries or the psychological stuff to deal with. But everyone has the question, ‘What do I do next?’
“I was always so proud of what I did in the army and losing that affected me. That's why I decided I wanted a job that could give back. I was a caseworker with a homeless charity for 18 months, and then a job became available at SSAFA."
SSAFA has done so much for my friends.
“Before starting at SSAFA, I couldn't have told you anyone I knew had been helped by them. Now I've got the job, so many friends and previous colleagues say: ‘Oh, they really helped me, when I had this accident; they really helped me when I was injured; they really helped my brother, my friends.’
“SSAFA has done so much for my friends, which I wasn't aware of, because it's not something everyone wants to talk about when they've had to rely on a charity to help them. But they always knew they were there. And they were always willing to help.
“So, I've now got that pride back in in my work and I'm very, very happy to tell all my friends what I do.”