a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6689752.ece"Sunday Times:/abr /br /blockquotep An army sergeant freewheeled his Land Rover down a hill into a Taliban firefight in order to protect an ambushed supply convoy after his vehicle broke down. /p p Sergeant Andrew “Mac” McNulty was towed to the top of the ridge in Helmand, southern Afghanistan, and rolled down the other side to take on the enemy. /p p However, when the heavily armed Land Rover came to rest it was facing the wrong way to fire its machinegun, forcing McNulty and two of his colleagues to get out and shove the vehicle into position with their bare hands while coming under fire. /p p The soldiers were guarding a 100-vehicle supply column on its way from Sangin to Camp Bastion, the British Army base, when the ambush took place.br //pp Their Land Rover, fitted with a mounted machinegun and an automatic grenade-firing weapon, was struggling up a sandy desert slope when it broke down. /p p “The gearbox actually conked out on us so we had no way of getting the vehicle into gear,” said McNulty. “It was pretty knackered.”br //pp.../pp With the supply vehicles relying on McNulty’s firepower for protection, he knew he had to act fast. /p p “Luckily, at that time the platoon commander was coming up the hill so I shouted across to him and he pulled me up to the top,” said the sergeant. “I thought I’d be able to see the enemy from there.” /p p McNulty, however, was to discover that his view of the battlefield was blocked by a ridge line, preventing him from engaging the Taliban. /p p “I spoke to the other lads in the wagon and I just said, ‘Right, just push it down the hill with the handbrake off. Using momentum, we should be able to get down there’.”br //pp As the Land Rover plunged half a mile down the hillside, gathering speed, McNulty could see the enemy off to the right, attacking the convoy. /p p Yet when the vehicle finally came to a halt, McNulty realised he was badly positioned to fight back. /p p “You can’t fire the machinegun across the right-hand side because there’s a rollbar in the way,” he said. “We’d actually come into the contact the wrong way round.” /p p All three men had to jump out of the Land Rover and turn it around under sustained Taliban fire.br //pp They managed to provide enough cover to allow the entire two-mile supply column through the ambush, but then had no way of getting themselves out of the line of fire. /p p “I had not really concerned myself with how we would get the vehicle out of the contact area,” said McNulty. “My colleagues were already there and we needed to support them. /p p “Once we managed to get the whole convoy through I had to get the platoon commander to come back and drag my wagon out.”br //pp...br //p/blockquoteThe story speaks better for the troops then the equipment they have been provided. That is becoming a political issue in the UK with the recent surge in deaths of their troops. There is more about the heroics of Sgt. McNulty who saved the lives of three troops whose vehicle was underwater.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5051247-1881312548994790296?l=prairiepundit.blogspot.com'//div
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