THE bullwhip crack of a single round zipped over the heads of the soldiers as they prepared to move out of a ditch. Led by Captain Robin Bourne-Taylor, the Olympic oarsman and three-time winner of the varsity boat race, 2 Platoon sprinted down a wide dirt track to cut off the insurgents’ escape route.
As the rest of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force headed towards the firing position, Bourne-Taylor, 28, told his men to pause while he poked his head round the corner of a compound wall to assess which route to take. He spotted four men drinking tea, who, seeing a British soldier, stood up and dashed down an alley.
Bourne-Taylor, who won a bronze medal in the world rowing championships in 2007, gave chase and caught two as they tried to melt into a group of locals. He sprinted after the other two insurgents, but after 300 yards they vanished into a maze of alleyways.
As 2 Platoon retraced the insurgents’ tracks, they found a Kalashnikov assault rifle where one of the men had dropped it. In the compounds they discovered a bundle of grenades, bullets and another AK-47 in a tyre’s inner tube.
“Household weapons tend to be shotguns. The presence of grenades suggests the men were insurgents,” said Bourne-Taylor.
“The insurgents realise that we’re not prepared to take the risk of firing at the wrong person.”