Extract from debriefing of Colour Sergeant Sean Murphy – formerly attached to British Army SAS Regiment – given to Canadian military post-war.
[Part 3]

I'd seen just what a shot from the L115 can do back in Afghanistan – especially at short ranges. Smith and Underwood didn't need me and Private Jones (the fourth member of my team) to call out targets for them because we were only four hundred yards from the hole in the fence in an elevated position.
Each Corporal fired single shots into those that got through the fence with stunning efficiency. Point Three Three Eight Calibre rounds thundered away at their targets and when the hollow-point bullets impacted, those hit were thrown backwards and put down.
More Zombies kept coming through the fence though.
I at once tried to get the TA guys on the radio, but they weren't answering my calls: they were too busy dealing with those outside the main gate. Wing Commander Curtis wouldn't answer the radio either! We had enough ammunition and the correct position to stop penetration of Fairford's defences, though I still wanted back-up just in case things went wrong. I remember the foreboding fear forming inside me that this wasn't going to work all afternoon. And I was soon proved correct too.
Smith's gun jammed. He didn't know why, nor did Jones or I. The rifle just suddenly wouldn't fire. The L115 isn't prone to jamming so we were all at a loss as to why that had happened. Underwood had many five-round magazines at-hand, but every time there was a delay in him reloading, more targets got through the hole in the fence and further inside Fairford. No longer was he engaging them at the fence, now he was picking them off far inside… while more came towards the hole.
I recall taking my eyes off the shooting. I looked down at the flight-line where the aircraft and helicopters were. There were civilians there – those VIP's who were ever-so eager to get the hell away – along with RAF personnel. The latter had their own weapons (pistols and a few SA80 assault rifles), but those few armed men didn't instil confidence in me. They weren't forming up a protective line or doing anything else useful. No, instead, they were all pushing the civilians out of the way as they tried to get aboard the parked aircraft and helicopters.
Underwood kept firing, dropping targets all over the place, but we were eventually going to run out of ammunition. There was more with our kit, which I could have sent Smith and Jones to get, but I didn't want to split us four up seeing the panic below.
I couldn't decide what to do. I messed up by doing nothing.

One of the helicopters – a RAF Puma transport model – was the first to lift off. I heard the roar of its engines and looked across at it. The Puma can usually take sixteen passengers with three crew, but there must have been thirty, maybe forty people aboard. They were hanging out the doors!
Gunfire then erupted around a parked Boeing as the Puma flew away north, but I took my eyes off the flight-line and back to the 'action'. Zombies were now less than two hundred yards away from us. Underwood had dropped so many of them, but more were coming. I assumed (correctly with hindsight) that the noise from the car's alarm, which had started going off after the crash, was attracting them. So many were coming through the fence and Underwood was struggling with so many targets.
Jones and Smith were now kneeing and firing with their M16's (the faulty L115 had been discarded) and so were helping Underwood, but the M16 wasn't nowhere near as good a sniper rifle. Bullets from those weapons wouldn't be as carefully aimed nor have the stopping power. Underwood was taking head shots, but my other two guys were aiming for the body mass of their targets.
One of the enemy got beyond all of us. I took a shot at her (she was a blood-drenched blonde teenage girl in a hoodie and trainers) with my own weapon just before she dropped out of sight, but missed too. She'd reached the dead-zone below us and went along the side of the building towards the flight-line. Smith got up and ran along the edge of the roof to fire directly down upon her and I started to call out to him as he did so. It had been raining the night before and the surface was wet where we were. I was going to tell him to be careful, but he slipped and went over the edge before I could get my words out.
It was a twenty foot drop and he didn't have his helmet on.
Jones went at once to look over the edge to see what had happened to his buddy (they were close), though I stayed with Underwood firing at more and more of the enemy coming towards us and the flight-line too. Fairford was being overrun, I knew that, but I wanted to keep firing at the enemy while my mind tried to work out what the hell we were going to do to rectify the situation.
Just as I had feared, everything had gone wrong.