Heroes' safe return from hell's mouth

BRAVE soldier Major Matt Moore clutches his five-year-old daughter Harriett for the first time in six months yesterday-as he returned with hundreds of our troops from gruelling tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Among the hero men and women flown back to Britain were survivors from C Company-who defended a tiny base in notorious Helmand provence.

The Taliban killed five Paras at Forward Operating Base Gibraltar and seriously injured 14 others in two years of terrifying fighting. But Our Boys fought to victory in SIXTY-FIVE pitched battles in intense heat.

Cpl Matthew Desmond, 31, told how the small force of just 160 men fought with such ferocity that their base was dubbed "the mouth of hell" by the Taliban. The dad-of-three, from Colchester, Essex, said: "They hated the fact we loved being in the cornfields playing them at their own game, scooting along drainage ditches to outflank them and take them down.

"We heard their radio chatter, warning each other we were 'warriors' and to be careful. They were also astonished by the amount of kit we carried and called us donkeys. They found out though that some donkeys can give you a nasty kick!"

In an ambush in July, the Company's L Cpl James Bateman, 29, and Pte Jeff Doherty, 20, were killed.

Cpl Desmond said: "We came across some children. They were laughing and kept pointing down towards the route we would shortly be moving down.

"We thought they were laughing at something else. But they were pointing at the place where we'd be attacked. We were crossing a river when we walked into the most impressive ambush I have ever witnessed in my 13 years in the Army.

"The Taliban had a heavy machine-gun group, a rocket-propelled group, a mortars section and an AK 47 group-all opened up on us at once." Our Boys retaliated by firing 9,000 rounds into their positions.

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