.FRONTLINE SNIPER: BRITISH SHARPSHOOTER TELLS OF LIFE AND DEATH IN AFGHAN WAR ZONE
IT WAS like a bloodcurdling video game for sniper Steve Lewis as he saw a Taliban hand clutching an RPG appear over a wall 50 yards away.
The army's best shot watched in delight down the sights of his L96A1 rifle as the launcher bobbed along for 20 yards behind the wall... and paused.
The point of the rocket dipped and aimed towards him. The enemy's face bobbed up into the crosshair. And Steve squeezed the trigger.
He saw the face wobble with the impact. Half of it blew away. The grenade launcher fell back over the wall and disappeared... but only briefly.
Seconds later it was back up, bobbing along the wall. Steve watched it until it stopped, and fired again as a second Taliban face appeared. "Looked like someone bounced a football off his head, the way it snapped backwards," says the L Cpl. Throughout that day Steve shot dead another five insurgents from the snipers' nest he shared with fellow crackshot Frank "The Yank" Ward.
Steve, 29, says it's their "job to kill people and there's no other way of saying it".
And award-winning writer Sam Kiley, who followed their exploits, believes the pair epitomise the desire of the British Army to get the job done. "Afghanistan is in many ways a sniper's war," he says. "Most insurgent attacks are conducted by up to a dozen men who can tie up a whole company.
"If a sniper can kill or injure two or three, he drives down the ability of the Taliban to suck energy out of the British."
In their snipers' nest on the roof of forward operating base Gibraltar, Steve and Frank used a bizarre decoy to draw the Taliban from cover... a blow-sex doll in uniform.
It never failed to attract them. Steve's tally on his first tour was 13 unlucky Taliban fighters. His life now is a far cry from his old one. At 15 he spent time in jail for burglary and arson before getting a job.
Steve says: "It was good fun working on the bins. Kept me fit. But at 21 life was getting grim. I had to wait until I was 23 to join. Once I was in I never looked back. I love the army. I'm keen as f***." Now settled and married to a policewoman, he recalls an early kill - a Taliban sniper shooting at a British patrol.
His colleague Frank used a range finder to plot the insurgent's position on a roof 798 yards away. Steve homed in on him down the sight of his L96A1 - which can kill from 1,300 yards. Barely pausing, he shot him in the head. Steve says: "There was a bit of disbelief to start with. It was exhilarating.
"Does that mean I'm sick or what? They'd do a lot worse to us if they got hold of us - but it's not the sort of thing you want to boast about.
"We do it because it's the job and we take satisfaction from the fact that we're killing people who are trying to kill us.
Frank - who holds a British passport but grew up in America's Mid-West - adds: "Even so, if you talked about it much people would want to avoid you. They'd think you were weird."
Nursing a battle wound near his eye, Frank, 22, shares Steve's grim determination.
He wanted to be a sniper after getting a pellet gun at 12. "I always wanted to be the best, the pinnacle," he says. Frank dreams of being SAS one day. For now he's the 'number two' in the sniping pair, responsible for ranging the targets, working out wind speed, humidity, temperature - anything that can affect the trajectory of a bullet.
Together, their marksmanship was crucial in a ferocious 17-hour firefight with insurgents during Operation Oqab Talander, a mission last June launching attacks on Taliban positions near Sar Puzeh. Sadly there were two British casualties but enemy fatalities were estimated between 30 and 70.
Despite the daily dangers, writer Kiley says that, like Steve and Frank, almost every front-line soldier he met in Helmand was "loving the war". He says: "They were getting to play the most dangerous and exhilarating game man has ever invented. And their determination "has meant that they have managed to survive the poor political decisions that have taken them to Helmand under- equipped and under-manned.
"This has been their desperate glory."
News of the World
The army's best shot watched in delight down the sights of his L96A1 rifle as the launcher bobbed along for 20 yards behind the wall... and paused.
The point of the rocket dipped and aimed towards him. The enemy's face bobbed up into the crosshair. And Steve squeezed the trigger.
He saw the face wobble with the impact. Half of it blew away. The grenade launcher fell back over the wall and disappeared... but only briefly.
Seconds later it was back up, bobbing along the wall. Steve watched it until it stopped, and fired again as a second Taliban face appeared. "Looked like someone bounced a football off his head, the way it snapped backwards," says the L Cpl. Throughout that day Steve shot dead another five insurgents from the snipers' nest he shared with fellow crackshot Frank "The Yank" Ward.
Steve, 29, says it's their "job to kill people and there's no other way of saying it".
And award-winning writer Sam Kiley, who followed their exploits, believes the pair epitomise the desire of the British Army to get the job done. "Afghanistan is in many ways a sniper's war," he says. "Most insurgent attacks are conducted by up to a dozen men who can tie up a whole company.
"If a sniper can kill or injure two or three, he drives down the ability of the Taliban to suck energy out of the British."
In their snipers' nest on the roof of forward operating base Gibraltar, Steve and Frank used a bizarre decoy to draw the Taliban from cover... a blow-sex doll in uniform.
It never failed to attract them. Steve's tally on his first tour was 13 unlucky Taliban fighters. His life now is a far cry from his old one. At 15 he spent time in jail for burglary and arson before getting a job.
Steve says: "It was good fun working on the bins. Kept me fit. But at 21 life was getting grim. I had to wait until I was 23 to join. Once I was in I never looked back. I love the army. I'm keen as f***." Now settled and married to a policewoman, he recalls an early kill - a Taliban sniper shooting at a British patrol.
His colleague Frank used a range finder to plot the insurgent's position on a roof 798 yards away. Steve homed in on him down the sight of his L96A1 - which can kill from 1,300 yards. Barely pausing, he shot him in the head. Steve says: "There was a bit of disbelief to start with. It was exhilarating.
"Does that mean I'm sick or what? They'd do a lot worse to us if they got hold of us - but it's not the sort of thing you want to boast about.
"We do it because it's the job and we take satisfaction from the fact that we're killing people who are trying to kill us.
Frank - who holds a British passport but grew up in America's Mid-West - adds: "Even so, if you talked about it much people would want to avoid you. They'd think you were weird."
Nursing a battle wound near his eye, Frank, 22, shares Steve's grim determination.
He wanted to be a sniper after getting a pellet gun at 12. "I always wanted to be the best, the pinnacle," he says. Frank dreams of being SAS one day. For now he's the 'number two' in the sniping pair, responsible for ranging the targets, working out wind speed, humidity, temperature - anything that can affect the trajectory of a bullet.
Together, their marksmanship was crucial in a ferocious 17-hour firefight with insurgents during Operation Oqab Talander, a mission last June launching attacks on Taliban positions near Sar Puzeh. Sadly there were two British casualties but enemy fatalities were estimated between 30 and 70.
Despite the daily dangers, writer Kiley says that, like Steve and Frank, almost every front-line soldier he met in Helmand was "loving the war". He says: "They were getting to play the most dangerous and exhilarating game man has ever invented. And their determination "has meant that they have managed to survive the poor political decisions that have taken them to Helmand under- equipped and under-manned.
"This has been their desperate glory."
News of the World
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