Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.
[Part 1]
There were over eighty of us that came back to the UK on the flight from Afghanistan. It was four days after the outbreak and we didn't know much about what was going on. There were squaddies attached to line regiments on the flight, Royal Marines, and members of small special forces teams like me aboard.
We landed at RAF Fairford, which was near Gloucester, and our transport aircraft soon left (this was before the enforced NATO transport quarantine). The squaddies and the Royal Marines went off – to blocking positions along the M4 motorway, so I heard – but we were to stay behind.
There were four of us in my patrol team: three other commandoes and I. Our mission was to aid in the defence of the huge airbase in the Gloucestershire countryside so that it would be used as a transport base for military operations in western England. Jets were still flying from Fairford then, as well as many helicopters. The airbase was a communications point for shuttling troops towards the so-called 'front-lines' as well as evacuating non-combatants out to Wales or up north.
Fairford was an American base in the UK. During the Cold War, it had been a staging post for B-52 bombers should conflict break out. It was used for the same purposes – American bombers flying over Europe during the post Cold War period – and was a large facility. Air-shows were held there too. Because of the latter, there was plenty of civilian transportation links to Fairford. It may have been out in the middle of the countryside, but it was close to the road network. In addition, civilians knew of it any many tried to head towards this 'safe' location when the panic hit.
Evacuating ordinary civilians wasn't what the military had in mind for Fairford at that point though.
The non-combatants who were being evacuated from Fairford were VIP's. These weren't people whose faces or names I would recognise, but they were apparently important. These VIP's had family too, as well as personal possessions. I'm talking about civil servants, politicians, scientists, as well as many rich people with connections to the great and good. They were all being shuttled through Fairford in the hundreds and sent out of harm's way. Don't get me wrong, these were people who couldn't fight, but it grinded me that these type of people were getting priority over everyone else. Ordinary civilians were getting turned away at the gates to Fairford so that these VIP's and their families could be saved from the apparent flesh-eating zombies that I had yet to see with my own eyes.
We had orders to ignore all of this. It wasn't our business. The base needed defending and matters such as that, I was told, weren't for me to dwell on.
As I said, Fairford was huge. With that long main runaway, all those taxiways, dispersal areas, the terminals, the maintenance buildings, the hangars… it was just huge. Fences topped with barbed- wire, and an anti-vehicle ditch, surrounded it almost all of the way around its perimeter apart from the main gate and two second entrances/exits. In an 'ordinary' situation, a small mobile force of armed men could defend this location against intruders and saboteurs. Anyone trying to sneak in would have to cross the razor wire fence and then avoid getting illuminated by spotlights before the armed guards reacted.
Two understrength companies of TA reservists were the guards at Fairford when we arrived, and they constituted a strong enough force to defeat a conventional threat to the airbase. My team – the four of us commandoes – were meant to back them up. Faced with sneaky saboteurs trying to blow up parked aircraft was what we could easily defeat, but that wasn't the threat.
Many people couldn't understand this. Maybe… I'll admit this… I didn't too. I was a highly-trained soldier, but a soldier nonetheless. Just like everyone else in Britain who wore their country's uniform, we trained for combat in the 'normal' way. The enemy was to be engaged before it reached us with air and artillery support to strike at its communications and logistics points. They would be hit by long-range attack to slow them down and above all demoralise them. Then, we would engage them for a covered position to hit their leaders. Only when they came close, would the enemy be engaged with shots to wound and against their body mass: the torso. That's how you fight.
But none of this works with a zombie. He has no communications or logistics. He has no morale or a leader. Shooting the guy next to him in the leg or the abdomen wouldn't stop him because that isn't his comrade that he'll stop to help.
We didn't know how to fight zombies.
They weren't following leaders, they had no weaknesses to be exploited in their rear and they just wouldn't stop when one of their number went down. Soldiers like us had never gone up against a horde of fearless attackers before and we just weren't really – mentally or equipment-wise – for when they struck.
It was my second day at back in England, the sixth day since it all started when the Battle of Fairford begun.