Andy McNab
Bravo two-zero [030-066-4.9]
Category: Fiction Military
Synopsis:
They were British Special Forces, trained to be the best. In January
1991 a squad of eight men went behind the Iraqi lines on a top secret
mission. It was called Bravo Two Zero. In command was Sergeant Andy McNab.
Dropped into "scud alley" carrying 210-pound packs, McNab and his men
found themselves surrounded by Saddam's army. Their radios didn't work. The
weather turned cold enough to freeze diesel fuel. And they had been spotted.
Their only chance at survival was to fight their way to the Syrian border
seventy-five miles to the northwest and swim the Euphrates River to freedom.
Eight set out. Five came back.
This is their story. Filled with no-holds-barred detail about McNab's
capture and excruciating torture, it tells of men tested beyond the limits
of human endurance ... and of the war you didn't see on CNN. Dirty, deadly,
and fought outside the rules.
Also by Andy McNab
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BRAVO TWO
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Copyright 1993 by Andy McNab
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ISBN: 0-440-21880-2
Reprinted by arrangement with Bantam Press
Printed in the United States of America
September 1994
10 9 8
OPM
To the three who didn't come back
Prison
BRAVO TWO ZERO
1
Within hours of Iraqi troops and armor rolling across the border with
Kuwait at 0200 local time on August 2, 1990, the Regiment was preparing
itself for desert operations.
As members of the Counter Terrorist team based in Hereford, my gang and
I unfortunately were not involved. We watched jealously as the first batch
of blokes drew their desert kit and departed. Our nine month tour of duty
was coming to an end and we were looking forward to a handover but as the
weeks went by rumors began to circulate of either a postponement or
cancellation altogether. I ate my Christmas turkey in a dark mood. I didn't
want to miss out. Then, on January 10, 1991, half of the squadron was given
three days' notice of movement to Saudi. To huge sighs of relief, my lot
were included. We ran around organizing kit, test firing weapons, and
screaming into town to buy ourselves new pairs of desert wellies and plenty
of Factor 20 for the nose.
We were leaving in the early hours of Sunday morning. I had a night on
the town with my girlfriend Jilly, but she was too upset to enjoy herself.
It was an evening of false niceness, both of us on edge.
"Shall we go for a walk?" I suggested when we got home, hoping to raise
the tone.
We did a few laps of the block and when we got back I turned on the
telly. It was Apocalypse Now. We weren't in the mood for talking so we just
sat there and watched. Two hours of carnage and maiming wasn't the cleverest
thing for me to have let Jilly look at. She burst into tears. She was always
all right if she wasn't aware of the dramas. She knew very little of what I
did, and had never asked questions--because, she told me, she didn't want
the answers.
"Oh, you're off. When are you coming back?" was the most she would ever
ask. But this time it was different. For once, she knew where I was going.
As she drove me through the darkness towards camp, I said, "Why don't
you get yourself that dog you were on about? It would be company for you."
I'd meant well, but it set off the tears again. I got her to drop me
off a little way from the main gates.
"I'll walk from here, mate," I said with a strained smile. "I need the
exercise."
"See you when I see you," she said as she pecked me on the cheek.
Neither of us went a bundle on long goodbyes.
The first thing that hits you when you enter squadron lines (the camp
accommodation area) is the noise: vehicles revving, men hollering for the
return of bits of kit, and from every bedroom in the unmarried quarters a
different kind of music--on maximum watts. This time it was all so much
louder because so many of us were being sent out together.
I met up with Dinger, Mark the Kiwi, and Stan, the other three members
of my gang. A few of the unfortunates who weren't going to the Gulf still
came in anyway and joined in the slagging and blaggarding.
We loaded our kit into cars and drove up to the top end of the camp
where transports were waiting to take us to Brize Norton. As usual, I took
my sleeping bag onto the aircraft with me, together with my Walkman, washing
and shaving kit, and brew kit. Dinger took 200 Benson & Hedges. If we found
ourselves dumped in the middle of nowhere or hanging around a deserted
airfield for days on end, it wouldn't be the first time.
We flew out by R.A.F VC10. I passively smoked the twenty or so
cigarettes that Dinger got through in the course of the seven-hour flight,
honking at him all the while. As usual my complaints had no effect
whatsoever. He was excellent company, however, despite his filthy habit.
Originally with Para Reg, Dinger was a veteran of the Falklands. He looked
the part as well-rough and tough, with a voice that was scary and eyes that
were scarier still. But behind the football hooligan face lay a sharp,
analytical brain. Dinger could polish off the Daily Telegraph crossword in
no time, much to my annoyance. Out of uniform, he was also an excellent
cricket and rugby player, and an absolutely lousy dancer. Dinger danced the
way Virgil Tracy walked. When it came to the crunch, though, he was solid
and unflappable.
We landed at Riyadh to find the weather typically pleasant for the time
of year in the Middle East, but there was no time to soak up the rays.
Covered transports were waiting on the tarmac, and we were whisked away to a
camp in isolation from other Coalition troops.
The advance party had got things squared away sufficiently to answer
the first three questions you always ask when you arrive at a new location:
Where do I sleep, where do I eat, and where's the bog?
Home for our half squadron, we discovered, was a hangar about 300 feet
long and 150 feet wide. Into it were crammed forty blokes and all manner of
stores and equipment, including vehicles, weapons, and am munition. There
were piles of gear everywhere--everything from insect repellent and rations
to laser target markers and boxes of high explosive. It was a matter of just
getting in amongst it and trying to make your own little world as best you
could. Mine was made out of several large crates containing outboard
engines, arranged to give me a sectioned-off space that I covered with a
tarpaulin to shelter me from the powerful arc lights overhead.
There were many separate hives of activity, each with its own
noise--radios tuned in to the BBC World Service, Walkmans with plug-in
speakers that thundered out folk, rap, and heavy metal. There was a strong
smell of diesel, petrol, and exhaust fumes. Vehicles were driving in and out
all the time as blokes went off to explore other parts of the camp and see
what they could pinch. And of course while they were away, their kit in turn
was being explored by other blokes. "You snooze, you lose," is the way it
goes. Possession is ten tenths of the law. Leave your space unguarded for
too long and you'd come back to find a chair missing--and sometimes even
your bed.
Brews were on the go all over the hangar. Stan had brought a packet of
orange tea with him, and Dinger and I wandered over and sat on his bed with
empty mugs.
"Tea, boy," Dinger demanded, holding his out.
"Yes, bwana," Stan replied.
Born in South Africa to a Swedish mother and Scottish father, Stan had
moved to Rhodesia shortly before the UDI (Unilateral Declaration of
Independence). He was involved at first hand in the terrorist war that
followed, and when his family subsequently moved to Australia he joined the
TA (Territorial Army). He passed his medical exams but hankered too much for
the active, outdoor life and quit in his first year as a junior doctor. He
wanted to come to the UK and join the Regiment, and spent a year in Wales
training hard for Selection. By all accounts he cruised it.
Anything physical was a breeze for Stan, including pulling women. Six
foot three, big-framed and good looking, he got them all sweating. Jilly
told me that his nickname around Hereford was Doctor Sex, and the name
cropped up quite frequently on the walls of local ladies' toilets. On his
own admission, Stan's ideal woman was somebody who didn't eat much and was
therefore cheap to entertain, and who had her own car and house and was
therefore independent and unlikely to cling. No matter where he was in the
world women looked at Stan and drooled. In female company he was as charming
and suave as Roger Moore playing James Bond.
Apart from his success with women, the most noticeable and surprising
thing about Stan was his dress sense: he didn't have any. Until the squadron
got hold of him, he used to go everywhere in Crimplene safari jackets and
trousers that stopped just short of his ankles. He once turned up to a smart
party in a badly fitting check suit with drainpipe trousers. He had traveled
a lot and had obviously made a lot of female friends. They wrote marriage
proposals to him from all over the world, but the letters went unanswered.
Stan never emptied his mailbox. All in all a very approachable, friendly
character in his thirties, there was nothing that Stan couldn't take
smoothly in his stride. If he hadn't been in the Regiment, he would have
been a yuppie or a spy--albeit in a Crimplene suit.
Most people take tubes of mustard or curry paste with them to jazz up
the rations, and spicy smells emanated from areas where people were doing
supplementary fry-ups. I wandered around and sampled a few. Everybody
carries a "racing spoon" about their person at all times. The unwritten rule
is that whoever has the can or is cooking up has first go, and the rest has
to be shared. You dip your racing spoon in so that it's vertical, then take
a scoop. If it's a big spoon you'll get more out of a mess tin, but if it's
too big--say, a wooden spoon with the handle broken off--it won't go into a
can at all. The search for the perfect-sized racing spoon goes on.
There was a lot of blaggarding going on. If you didn't like the music
somebody was playing, you'd slip in when they weren't there and replace
their batteries with duds. Mark opened his bergen to find that he'd lugged a
twenty-pound rock with him all the way from Hereford. Wrongly suspecting me
of putting it there, he replaced my toothpaste with Uvistat sunblock. When I
went to use it I bulked up.
I'd first met Mark in Brisbane in 1989 when some of us were being
hosted by the Australian SAS (Special Air Service). He played against us in
a rugby match and was very much the man of the moment, his tree trunk legs
powering him to score all his side's tries. It was the first time our
squadron team had been beaten, and I hated him--all 5'6" of the bastard. We
met again the following year. He was doing Selection, and the day I saw him
he had just returned to camp after an eight-mile battle run with full kit.
"Put in a good word for us," he grinned when he recognized me. "You lot
could do with a fucking decent sc rum-half."
Mark passed Selection and joined the squadron just before we left for
the Gulf.
"Fucking good to be here, mate," he said as he came into my room and
shook my hand.
I'd forgotten that there was only one adjective in the Kiwi's
vocabulary and that it began with the letter f.
The atmosphere in our hangar was jovial and lively. The Regiment hadn't
been massed like this since the Second World War. It was wonderful that so
many of us were there together. So often we work in small groups of a covert
nature, but here was the chance to be out in the open in large numbers. We
hadn't been briefed yet, but we knew in our bones that the war was going to
provide an excellent chance for everybody to get down to some "green
work"--classic, behind-the-lines SAS soldiering. It was what David Stirling
had set the Regiment up for in the first place, and now, nearly fifty years
later, here we were back where we'd started. As far as I could see, the
biggest restrictions in Iraq were likely to be the enemy and the logistics:
running out of bullets or water. I felt like a bricklayer who had spent my
entire life knocking up bungalows and now somebody had given me the chance
to build a skyscraper. I just hoped that the war didn't finish before I had
a chance to lay the first brick.
We didn't have a clue yet what we'd have to do, so we spent the next
few days preparing for anything and everything, from target attacks to
setting up observation posts. It's all very well doing all the exciting
things--abseiling, fast roping, jumping through buildings-but what being
Special Forces is mostly about is thoroughness and precision. The real motto
of the SAS is not "Who Dares Wins" but "Check and Test, Check and Test."
Some of us needed to refresh our skills a bit swiftly with explosives,
movement with vehicles, and map reading in desert conditions. We also
dragged out the heavy weapons. Some, like the 50mm heavy machine gun, I
hadn't fired for two years. We had revision periods with whoever knew best
about a particular subject --it could be the sergeant major or the newest
member of the squadron. There were Scud alerts, so everybody was rather keen
to relearn the NEC (nuclear, biological, chemical) drills they had not
practiced since being in their old units. The only trouble was that Pete,
the instructor from our Mountain Troop, had a Geordie accent as thick as
Tyne fog and he spoke with his verbal safety catch on full automatic. He
sounded like Gazza on speed.
We tried hard to understand what he was on about but after a quarter of
an hour the strain was too much for us. Somebody asked him an utterly bone
question, and he got so wound up that he started speaking even faster. More
questions were asked, and a vicious circle was set in motion. In the end we
decided among ourselves that if the kit had to go on, it would stay on. We
wouldn't bother carrying out the eating and drinking drills Pete was
demonstrating, because then we wouldn't have to carry out the shitting and
pissing drills--and they were far too complicated for the likes of us. All
in all, Pete said, as the session disintegrated into chaos, it was not his
most constructive day--or words to that effect.
We were equipped with aviator sunglasses, and we enjoyed a few Foster
Grant moments, waiting outside the hangar for anybody to pass, then slipping
on the glasses as in the TV commercial.
We had to take pills as protection against nerve agents, but that soon
stopped when the rumor went around that they made you impotent.
"It's not true," the sergeant major reassured us a couple of days
later. "I've just had a wank."
We watched CNN news and talked about different scenarios.
We guessed the parameters of our operations would be loose, but that
wouldn't mean we could just go around blowing up power lines or whatever
else we saw. We're strategic troops, so what we do behind enemy lines can
have serious implications. If we saw a petroleum line, for example, and blew
it up just for the fucking badness of it, we might be bringing Jordan into
the war: it could be a pipeline from Baghdad to Jordan which the Allies had
agreed not to destroy so that Jordan still got its oil. So if we saw an
opportunity target like that, we'd have to get permission to deal with it.
That way we could cause the maximum amount of damage to the Iraqi war
machine, but not damage any political or strategic considerations.
If we were caught, we wondered, would the Iraqis kill us? Too bad if
they did. As long as they did it swiftly--if not, we'd just have to try and
speed things up.
Would they fuck us? Arab men are very affectionate with each other,
holding hands and so on. It's just their culture, of course; it doesn't
necessarily mean they're shit stabbers, but the question had to be asked. I
wasn't that worried about the prospect, because if it happened to me I
wouldn't tell. The only scenario that did bring me out in a sweat was the
possibility of having my bollocks cut off. That would not be a good day out.
If the rag heads had me tied down naked and were sharpening their knives,
I'd do whatever I could to provoke them into slotting me.
I'd never worried about dying. My attitude to the work I am expected to
do in the Regiment has always been that you take the money off them every
month and so you're a tool to be used--and you are. The Regiment does lose
people, so you cater for that eventuality. You fill in your insurance
policies, although at the time only Equity & Law had the bottle to insure
the SAS without loading the premium. You write your letters to be handed to
next of kin if you get slotted. I wrote four and entrusted them to a mate
called Eno. There was one for my parents that said: "Thanks for looking
after me; it can't have been easy for you, but I had a rather nice
childhood. Don't worry about me being dead, it's one of those things." One
was for Jilly, saying: "Don't mope around--get the money and have a good
time. PS 500 pounds is to go behind the bar at the next squadron piss-up.
PPSI love you." And there was one for little Kate, to be given to her by Eno
when she was older, and it said: "I always loved you, and always will love
you." The letter to Eno himself, who was to be the executor of my will,
said: "Fuck this one up, wanker, and I'll come back and haunt you."
At about 1900 one evening, I and another team commander, Vince, were
called over to the squadron OC's table. He was having a brew with the
squadron sergeant major.
"We've got a task for you," he said, handing us a mug each of tea.
"You'll be working together. Andy will command. Vince will be 2 i/c. The
briefing will be tomorrow morning at 0800--meet me here. Make sure your
people are informed. There will be no move before two days."
My lot were rather pleased at the news. Quite, apart from anything
else, it meant an end to the hassle of having to queue for the only two
available sinks and bogs. In the field, the smell of clean clothes or bodies
can disturb the wildlife and in turn compromise your position, so for the
last few days before you go you stop washing and make sure all your clothing
is used.
The blokes dispersed, and I went to watch the latest news on CNN. Scud
missiles had fallen on Tel Aviv, injuring at least twenty-four civilians.
Residential areas had taken direct hits, and as I looked at the footage of
tower blocks and children in their pajamas, I was suddenly reminded of
Peckham and my own childhood. That night, as I tried to get my head down, I
found myself remembering all my old haunts and thinking about my parents and
a whole lot of other things that I hadn't thought about in a long while.
2
I had never known my real mother, though I always imagined that whoever
she was she must have wanted the best for me: the carrier bag I was found in
when she left me on the steps of Guy's Hospital came from Harrods.
I was fostered until I was 2 by a South London couple who in time
applied to become my adoptive parents. As they watched me grow up, they
probably wished they hadn't bothered. I binned school when I was
15-and-a-half to go and work for a haulage company in Brixton. I'd already
been bunking off two or three days a week for the last year or so. Instead
of studying for CSEs (Certificate of Secondary Education) I delivered coal
in the winter and drink mixes to off-licenses in the summer. By going
full-time I pulled in 8 a day, which in 1975 was serious money. With forty
quid on the hip of a Friday night you were one of the lads.
My father had done his National Service in the Catering Corps and was
now a minicab driver. My older brother had joined the Royal Fusiliers when I
was a toddler and had served for about five years until he got married. I
had exciting memories of him coming home from faraway places with his
holdall full of presents. My own early life, however, was nothing
remarkable. There wasn't anything I was particularly good at, and I
certainly wasn't interested in a career in the army. My biggest ambition was
to get a flat with my mates and be able to do whatever I wanted.
I spent my early teens running away from home. Sometimes I'd go with a
friend to France for the weekend, expeditions that were financed by him
doing over his aunty's gas meter. I was soon getting into trouble with the
police myself, mainly for vandalism to trains and vending machines. There
were juvenile court cases and fines that caused my poor parents a lot of
grief.
I changed jobs when I was 16, going behind the counter at McDonald's in
Catford. Everything went well until round about Christmas time, when I was
arrested with two other blokes coming out of a flat that didn't belong to us
in Dulwich village. I got put into a remand hostel for three days while I
waited to go in front of the magistrates. I hated being locked up and swore
that if I got away with it I'd never let it happen again. I knew deep down
that I'd have to do something pretty decisive or I'd end up spending my
entire life in Peckham, fucking about and getting fucked up. The army seemed
a good way out. My brother had enjoyed it, so why not me?
When the case came up the other two got sent to Borstal. I was let off
with a caution, and the following day I took myself down to the army
recruiting office. They gave me a simple academic test, which I failed. They
told me to come back a calendar month later, and this time, because it was
exactly the same test, I managed to scrape through by two points.
I said I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, as you do when you have no
qualifications and not a clue what being one involves.
"There's no way you are going to become a helicopter pilot," the
recruiting sergeant told me. "However, you can join the Army Air Corps if
you want. They might teach you to be a helicopter refueler."
"Great," I said, "that's me."
You are sent away for three days to a selection center where you take
more tests, do a bit of running, and go through medicals. If you pass, and
they've got a vacancy, they'll let you join the regiment or trade of your
choice.
I went for my final interview, and the officer said, "McNab, you stand
more chance of being struck by lightning than you do of becoming a junior
leader in the Army Air Corps. I think you'd be best suited to the infantry.
I'll put you down for the Royal Green Jackets. That's my regiment."
I didn't have a clue about who or what the Royal Green Jackets were or
did. They could have been an American football team for all I knew.
If I'd waited three months until I was 17, I could have joined the
Green Jackets as an adult recruit, but like an idiot I wanted to get stuck
straight in. I arrived at the Infantry Junior Leaders battalion in
Shorncliffe, Kent, in September 1976 and hated it. The place was run by
Guardsmen, and the course was nothing but bullshit and regimentation. You
couldn't wear jeans, and had to go around with a bonehead haircut. You
weren't even allowed the whole weekend off, which made visiting my old
Peckham haunts a real pain in the arse. I landed in trouble once just for
missing the bus in Folkestone and being ten minutes late reporting back.
Shorncliffe was a nightmare, but I learned to play the game. I had to--there
was nothing else for me. The passing-out parade was in May. I had detested
every single minute of my time there but had learned to use the system and
for some reason had been promoted to junior sergeant and won the Light
Division sword for most promising soldier.
I now had a period at the Rifle Depot in Winchester, where us junior
soldiers joined the last six weeks of a training platoon, learning Light
Division drill. This was much more grown-up and relaxed, compared with
Shorncliffe.
In July 1977 I was posted to 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets, based
for the time being in Gibraltar. To me, this was what the army was all
about--warm climates, good mates, exotic women, and even more exotic VD.
Sadly, the battalion returned to the UK just four months later.
In December 1977 I did my first tour in Northern Ireland. So many young
soldiers had been killed in the early years of the Ulster emergency that you
had to be 18 before you could serve there. So although the battalion left on
December 6, I couldn't join them until my birthday at the end of the month.
There must have been something about the IRA and young squad dies
because I was soon in my first contact. A Saracen armored car had got bogged
down in the curls (countryside) near Crossmaglen, and my mate and I were put
on stag (sentry duty) to guard it. In the early hours of the morning, as I
scanned the countryside through the night sight on my rifle, I saw two
characters coming towards us, hugging the hedgerow. They got closer and I
could clearly see that one of them was carrying a rifle. We didn't have a
radio so I couldn't call for assistance. There wasn't much I could do except
issue a challenge. The characters ran for it, and we fired off half a dozen
rounds. Unfortunately, there was a shortage of night sights at the time so
the same weapon used to get handed on at the end of each stag. The night
sight on the rifle I was using was zeroed in for somebody else's eye, and
only one of my rounds found its target. There was a follow-up with dogs, but
nothing was found. Two days later, however, a well-known player (member of
the Provisional IRA) turned up at a hospital just over the border with a
7.62 round in his leg. It had been the first contact for our company, and
everybody was sparked up. My mate and I felt right little heroes, and both
of us claimed the hit.
The rest of our time in Ireland was less busy but more sad. The
battalion took some injuries during a mortar attack on a position at
Forkhill, and one of the members of my platoon was killed by a booby trap
bomb in Crossmaglen. Later, our colonel was killed when the Gazelle
helicopter he was traveling in was shot down. Then it was back to normal
battalion shit at Tidworth, and the only event worth mentioning during the
next year was that, aged all of 18, I got married.
The following year we were back in South Armagh. I was now a lance
corporal and in charge of a brick (four-man patrol). One Saturday night in
July our company was patrolling in the border town of Keady. As usual for a
Saturday night the streets were packed with locals. They used to bus it to
Castleblaney over the border for cabaret and bingo, then come back and boogy
the night away. My brick was operating at the southern edge of the town near
a housing estate. We had been moving over some wasteland and came into a
patch of dead ground that hid us from view. As we reappeared over the brow,
we saw twenty or so people milling around a cattle truck that was parked in
the middle of the road. They didn't see us until we were almost on top of
them.
The crowd went ape shit shouting and running in all directions, pulling
their kids out of the way. Six lads with Armalites had been about to climb
onto the truck. We caught them posing in front of the crowd, masked up and
ready to go, their rifles and gloved fists in the air. We later discovered
they had driven up from the south; their plan was to drive past the patrol
and give us a quick burst.
Two were climbing over the tailgate as I issued my warning. Four were
still in the road. A lad in the back of the truck brought his rifle up to
the aim, and I
dropped him with my first shot. The others returned our fire, and there
was a severe contact. One of them took seven shots in his body and ended up
in a wheelchair. One player who was wounded was in the early stages of an
infamous career. His name was Dessie O'Hare.
I was flavor of the month again, and not just with the British army.
One of the shop owners had taken a couple of shots through his window during
the firefight, and the windscreen of his car had been shattered. About a
month later I went past on patrol and there he was, standing behind his new
cash register in his refurbished shop, with a shiny new motor parked
outside. He was beaming from ear to ear.
By the time we returned to Tidworth in the summer of 1979 I was
completely army barmy. It would have taken a pick and shovel to get me out.
In September I was placed on an internal NCOs' cadre. I passed with an A
grade and was promoted to corporal the same night. That made me the youngest
infantry corporal in the army at the time, aged just 19. A section
commanders' battle course followed in 1980. I passed that with a
distinction, and my prize was a one-way ticket back to Tidworth.
The Wiltshire garrison town was, and still is, a depressing place to
live. It had eight infantry battalions, an armored regiment, a recce
regiment, three pubs, a chip shop, and a launderette. No wonder it got on my
young wife's nerves. It was a pain in the arse for the soldiers too. We were
nothing more than glorified barrier technicians. I even got called in one
Sunday to be in charge of the grouse beaters, who were also squad dies for a
brigadier's shoot. The incentive was two cans of beer--and they wondered why
there was such a turnover of young squad dies By September my wife had had
enough. She issued me with an ultimatum: take her back to London or give her
a divorce. I stayed, she went.
In late 1980 I got posted back to the Rifle Depot for two years as a
training corporal. It was a truly excellent time. I enjoyed teaching raw
recruits, even though with many of them it meant going right back to basics,
starting with elementary hygiene and the use of a toothbrush. It was also
round about this time that I started to hear stories about the SAS.
I met Debby, a former R.A.F. girl, and we got married in August 1982. I
married her because we were getting posted back to the battalion, which was
now based at Paderborn in Germany, and we didn't want to be parted. All my
worst fears about life in Germany were confirmed. It was Tdworth without the
chip shop. We spent more time looking after vehicles than using them, with
men working their fingers to the bone for nothing. We took part in large
exercises where no one really knew what was going on, and after a while no
one even cared.
I felt deprived that the Green Jackets had not been sent to the
Falklands. Every time there was some action, it seemed to me, the SAS were
involved. I wanted some of that--what was the point of being in the infantry
if I didn't? Hereford sounded such a nice place to live as well, not being a
garrison town. At that time, you were made to feel a second-class citizen if
you lived in a place like Aldershot or Catterick; as an ordinary soldier you
couldn't even buy a TV set on hire purchase unless an officer had signed the
application form for you.
Four of us from the Green Jackets put our names down for Selection in
the summer of 1983, and all for the same reason--to get out of the
battalion. A couple of our people had passed Selection in the previous
couple of years. One of them was a captain, who wangled us onto a lot of
exercises in Wales so we could travel back to the UK and train. He
personally took us up to the Brecon Beacons and put us through a lot of hill
work. More than that, he gave us advice and encouragement. I owe a lot to
that man. We were lucky to know him: some regiments, especially the corps,
aren't keen for their men to go because they have skills that are hard to
replace. They won't give them time off, or they'll put the application in
"File 13"--the wastepaper basket. Or they'll allow the man to go but make
him work right up till the Friday before he goes.
None of us passed. Just before the endurance phase, I failed the
sketch-map march of 18 miles. I was pissed off with myself, but at least it
was suggested to me that I try again.
I went back to Germany and suffered all the slaggings about failing.
These are normally dished out by the knobbers who wouldn't dare attempt it
themselves. I didn't care. I was a young thruster, and the easy option would
have been to stay in the battalion system and be the big fish in a small
pond, but I'd lost all enthusiasm for it. I applied for the Winter 1984
Selection and trained in Wales all through Christmas. Debby didn't care too
much for that.
Winter Selection is fearsome. The majority of people drop out within
the first week of the four-week endurance phase. These are the Walter Mitty
types, or those who haven't trained enough or have picked up an injury. Some
of the people who turn up are complete nuggets. They think that the SAS is
all James Bond and storming embassies. They don't understand that you are
still a soldier, and it comes as quite a shock to them to find out what
Selection is all about.
The one good thing about Winter Selection is the weather. The racing
snakes who can move like men possessed across country in the summer are
slowed by the snow and mist. It's a great leveler for every man to be up to
his waist in snow.
I passed.
After this first phase you are put through a four month period of
training which includes an arduous spell in the jungle in Asia. The last
main test is the Combat Survival course. You are taught survival skills for
two weeks, and then sent in to see the doctor. He puts a finger up your arse
to check for Mars bars, and you're turned loose on the Black Mountains
dressed in Second World War battle dress trousers and shirt, a greatcoat
with no buttons, and boots with no laces. The hunter force was a company of
Guardsmen in helicopters. Each man was given the incentive of two weeks'
leave if he made a capture.
I had been on the run for two days accompanied by three old
grannies--two Navy pilots and an R.A.F, load master You had to stay together
as a group, and I couldn't have been cursed with a worse trio of millstones.
It didn't matter for them: the course was just a three-week embuggerance,
and then they'd go home for tea and medals. But if SAS candidates didn't
pass Combat Survival, they didn't get badged.
We were waiting for one particular RV (rendezvous) when the two on stag
fell asleep. In swooped a helicopter full of Guardsmen, and we were bumped.
After a brief chase we were captured and taken to a holding area.
Some hours later, as I was down on my knees, my blindfold was removed
and I found myself looking up at the training sergeant major.
"Am I binned?" I said pitifully.
"No, you nugget. Get back on the helicopter and don't fuck up."
I'd caught him in a good mood. An ex-Household Division man himself, he
was delighted to see his old lot doing so well.
For the next phase I was on my own, which suited me fine. Our movement
between RVs was arranged in such a way that everybody was captured at the
end of the E&E (escape and evasion) phase and subjected to tactical
questioning. You are taught to be--and you always try to be--the gray man.
The last thing you want is to be singled out as worthy of further
questioning. I didn't find this stage particularly hard because despite the
verbal threats nobody was actually filling you in, and you knew that nobody
was going to. You're cold and wet and hungry, uncomfortable as hell, but
it's just a matter of holding on, physically rather than mentally. I
couldn't believe that some people threw in their hand during these last few
hours.
In the end a bloke came in during one of the interrogations, gave me a
cup of soup, and announced that it was over. There was a1 thorough
debriefing, because the interrogators can learn from you as well as you from
them. The mind does get affected; I was surprised to find that I was six
hours out in my estimation of the time.
Next came two weeks of weapon training at Hereford. The instructors
looked at who you were, and they expected from you accordingly. If you were
fresh from the Catering Corps they'd patiently start from scratch; if you
were an infantry sergeant they'd demand excellence. Parachute training at
Brize Norton was next, and after the rigors of Selection it was more like a
month at Butlins.
Back at Hereford after six long, grueling months, we were taken into
the CO's office one by one. As I was handed the famous sand-colored beret
with its winged dagger, he said: "Just remember: it's harder to keep than to
get."
I didn't really take it in. I was too busy trying not to dance a jig.
The main bulk of the new intake, as usual, was made up of people from
the infantry, plus a couple of engineers and signalers. Out of 160
candidates who had started, only eight passed--one officer and seven men.
Officers only serve for a three-year term in the SAS, though they may come
back for a second tour. As an other rank, I had the full duration of my
22-year army contract to run--in theory, another fifteen years.
We went to join our squadrons. You can say whether you'd like to be in
Mountain, Mobility, Boat, or Air Troop, and they'll accommodate you if they
can. Otherwise it all depends on manpower shortages and your existing
skills. I went to Air.
The four squadrons have very different characters. It was once said
that if you went to a nightclub, A Squadron would be the ones along the wall
at the back, not saying a word, even to each other, just giving everybody
the evil eye. G Squadron would be talking, but only to each other. D
Squadron would be on the edge of the dance floor, looking at the women. And
B Squadron--my squadron--would be the ones out there on the floor, giving it
their all--and making total dickheads of themselves.
Debby came back from Germany to join me in Hereford. She had not seen
much of me since I started Selection way back in January, and she wasn't too
impressed that the day after she arrived I was sent back to the jungle for
two months of follow-up training. When I returned it was to an empty house.
She had packed her bags and gone home to Liverpool.
In December the following year I started going out with Fiona, my
next-door neighbor. Our daughter Kate was born in 1987, and in October that
year we got married. My wedding present from the Regiment was a two-year job
overseas. I came back from that trip in 1990, but in August, just a couple
of months after my return, the marriage was dissolved. In October 1990 I met
Jilly. It was love at first sight-or so she told me.
3
We assembled at 0750 at the OC's table and headed off together for the
briefing area. Everybody was in a jovial mood. We had a stainless steel
flask each and the world's supply of chocolate. It was going to be a long
day, and saving time on refreshment breaks would allow us to get on with
more important matters.
I was still feeling chuffed to have been made patrol commander and to
be working with Vince. Approaching his last two years of service with the
Regiment, Vince was 37 and a big old boy, immensely strong. He was an expert
mountaineer, diver, and skier, and he walked everywhere--even up hills--as
if he had a barrel of beer under each arm. To Vince, everything was "fucking
shit," and he'd say it in the strongest of Swindon accents, but he loved the
Regiment and would defend it even when another squadron member was having a
gripe. The only complaint in his life was that he was approaching the end of
his 22 years' engagement. He had come from the Ordnance Corps and looked
rough in a way that most army people would expect a member of the Regiment
to look rough, with coarse, curly hair and sideboards and a big mustache.
Because he'd been in the Regiment a bit longer than I had, he was going to
be a very useful man to have around when it came to planning.
The briefing area, we discovered, was in another hangar. We were
escorted through a door marked NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. As a regiment we
were in isolation, but the briefing area was isolation within isolation. OP
SEC (operational security) is crucial. Nobody in the Regiment would ever ask
anybody else what he was doing. As unwritten rules go, that one is in red
ink, capital letters, and underlined. Doors either side of us were labeled
AIR PLANNING, D SQUADRON, INT CORPS, MAP STORE. There was nothing fancy
about the signs; they were A4 sheets of paper pinned to the door.
The atmosphere in this building was markedly different. It was clinical
and efficient, with the ambient hiss and mush of radio transmissions in the
background. Intelligence Corps personnel, known to us as "spooks" or "green
slime," moved from room to room with bundles of maps in their arms, being
meticulous about closing doors behind them. Everybody spoke in low voices.
It was an impressive hive of professional activity.
We knew many of the spooks by name, having worked with them in the UK.
"Morning, slime," I called out to a familiar face. "How's it going?"
I got a mouthed word and a jerk of the wrist in return.
The place had no windows and felt as though it had been derelict for a
long time. There was an underlying smell of mustiness and decay. On top of
that were the sort of ordinary office smells you'd get anywhere-paper,
coffee, cigarettes. But this being what we called a remf (rear echelon
motherfucker) establishment and early in the morning, there was also a
strong smell of soap, shaving foam, toothpaste, and aftershave.
"Morning, remfs!" Vince greeted them with his Swindon accent and a
broad grin. "You're fucking shit, you are."
"Fucking shit yourself," a spook replied. "Could you do our job?"
"Not really," Vince said. "But you're still a remf."
The B Squadron room was about 15 feet square. The ceiling was very
high, with a slit device at the top that gave the only ventilation. Four
tables had been put together in the center. Silk escape maps and compasses
were laid out on top.
"Freebies, let's have them," Dinger said.
"Never mind the quality, feel the width," said Bob, one of Vince's
gang.
Bob, all 5'2" of him, was of Swiss-Italian extraction and known as the
Mumbling Midget. He'd been in the Royal Marines but wanted to better
himself, and had quit and taken a gamble on passing Selection. Despite his
size he was immensely strong, both physically and in character. He always
insisted on carrying the same load as everybody else, which at times could
be very funny--all you could see was a big bergen (backpack) and two little
legs going at it like pistons underneath. At home, he was a big fan of old
black-and-white comedies, of which he owned a vast collection. When he was
out on the town, his great hobbies were dancing and chatting up women a foot
taller than himself. On the day we left for the Gulf, he'd had to be rounded
up from the camp club in the early hours of the morning.
We looked at the maps, which dated back to the -1950s. On one side was
Baghdad and surroundings, on the other Basra.
"What do you reckon, boys?" said Chris, another from Vince's team, in
his broad Geordie accent. "Baghdad or Basra?"
A spook came in. I knew Bert as part of our own intelligence
organization in Hereford.
"Got any more of these?" Mark asked. "They're fucking nice."
Typical Regiment mentality: if it's shiny, I want it. You don't even
know what a piece of equipment does sometimes, but if it looks good you take
it. You never know when you might need it.
There were no chairs in the room, so we just sat with our backs against
the wall. Chris produced his flask and offered it around. Good-looking and
soft spoken Chris had been involved with the Territorial SAS as a civilian
when he decided he wanted to join the Regiment proper. For Chris, if a job
was worth doing it was worth doing excellently, so in typical fashion he
signed up first with the Paras because he wanted a solid infantry
background. He moved to Hereford from Aldershot as soon as he'd reached his
intended rank of lance corporal and had passed Selection.
If Chris had a plan, he'd see it through. He was one of the most
determined, purposeful men I'd ever met. As strong physically as he was
mentally, he was a fanatical bodybuilder, cyclist, and skier. In the field
he liked to wear an old Afrika Korps peaked cap. Off duty he was a real
victim for the latest bit of biking or skiing technology, and wore all the
Gucci kit. He was very quiet when he joined the Regiment, but after about
three months his strength of character started to emerge. Chris was the man
with the voice of reason. He'd always be the one to intervene and sort out a
fight, and what he said always sounded good even when he was bullshitting.
"Let's get down to business," the OC said. "Bert's going to tell you
the situation."
Bert perched on the edge of a table. He was a good spook because he was
brief, and the briefer they are the easier it is to understand and remember
what they're telling you.
"As you know, Saddam Hussein has finally carried out an attack on
Israel by firing modified Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa. The actual
damage done is very small, but thousands of residents are fleeing the cities
for safer parts of the country. The country has come to a standstill. Their
prime minister is not impressed.
"The rag heads, however, are well pleased. As far as they're concerned,
Saddam has hit Tel Aviv, the recognized capital of Israel, and shown that
the heart of the Jewish state is no longer impregnable.
"Saddam obviously wants Israel to retaliate, at whatever cost, because
that will almost certainly cause a split in the anti-Iraqi Coalition, and
probably even draw Iran into the war on the Iraqi side to join the fight
against Israel.
"We knew this was a danger, and have been trying from day one to locate
and destroy the Scud launchers. Stealth bombers have attacked the six
bridges in central Baghdad that cross the river Tigris. These bridges
connect the two halves of the city, and they also carry the landlines along
which Baghdad is communicating with the rest of the country and its army in
Kuwait-and with the Scud units operating against Israel. Since Iraq's
microwave transmitters are already bombed to buggery and its radio signals
are being intercepted by Allied intelligence, the landlines are Saddam's
last link. For the air planners, they have become a priority target.
"Unfortunately, London and Washington want the attacks to stop. They
think the news footage of kids playing next to bombed-out bridges is bad PR.
But gents, Saddam has got to be denied access to those cables. And if Israel
and Iran are to be kept out of the war, the Scuds have to be immobilized,"
Bert got up from the table and went over to a large scale map of Iraq, Iran,
Saudi, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Kuwait that was tacked to the wall. He
jabbed his finger at northwest Iraq.
"Here," he said, "be Scuds."
We all knew what was coming next.
"From Baghdad there are three MSRs (main supply routes) running east to
west," he went on, "mostly into Jordan. These MSRs are used for the
transportation of fuel or whatever--and for moving Scuds. Now, it appears
the Iraqis are firing the Scuds in two ways. From fixed-launcher sites,
which are pre surveyed and from unfixed sites where they have to stop and
survey before they fire. These are more tactical. We have hosed down most of
the pre surveyed sites. But the mobiles ."
We had even more of an idea now.
"Landlines are giving information to these mobile launchers, because
all other com ms are down. And I doubt there are that many people left in
the country who can repair these things. And that, basically, is the
situation."
"Your task is in two parts," said the boss. "One, to locate and destroy
the landlines in the area of the northern MSR. Two, to find and destroy
Scud."
He repeated the tasking statement, as is standard tasking procedure.
His task now became our mission.
"We're not really bothered how you do it, as long as it gets done," he
went on. "Your area of operation is along about 150 miles of this MSR. The
duration of task will be fourteen days before resupply. Has anybody got any
questions?"
We didn't at this stage.
"Right, Bert here will get you everything you want. I'll be coming back
during the daytime anyway, but any problems, just come and get us. Andy,
once you've got a plan sorted out, give me a shout and I'll have a look at
it."
Rather than dive straight in, we took time out to have a breather and a
brew. If you fancy a drink, you take one from the nearest available source.
We emptied Mark's flask, then looked at the map.
"We'll need as much mapping as you've got," I said to Bert. "All the
topographical information. And any photography, including satellite
pictures."
"All I've got for you is one-in-a-half-million air navigation charts.
Otherwise, there's jack shit."
"What can you tell us about weather conditions and the going?" Chris
said.
"I'm getting that squared away. I'll go and see if it's ready."
"We also need to know a lot more about the fiber optics, how they
actually operate," said Legs. "And Scuds."
I liked Legs. He was still establishing himself in the Regiment, having
come from Para Reg just six months before. Like all newcomers he was still a
bit on the quiet side, but had become firm friends with Dinger. He was very
confident in himself and his ability as patrol signaler, and having started
his army life in the engineers, he was also an excellent motor mechanic. He
got his name from being a real racing snake over the ground.
Bert left the room, and discussions started up amongst the blokes. We
were feeling relaxed. We appeared to have plenty of time, which is rare for
the Regiment's operations, and we were in a nice, sterile environment; we
weren't having to do our planning tactically, in the pouring rain in the
back of beyond. There is a principle in the infantry that's referred to as
"The Seven Ps": Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor
Performance. We had perfect planning conditions. We'd have no excuses for
Piss Poor Performance.
While we waited for Bert to come back, blokes wandered off to fill
their flasks or make use of the remfs' plumbing facilities.
"I've got the mapping for you," Bert said as he came through the door a
quarter of an hour later. "And I've got the information on the ground--but
not a lot of it. I'll try to get more. There are some better escape maps
coming through. I'll get you those before you leave."
We had already pocketed the others as souvenirs in any event.
We'd now had time to think things through a bit more, and Bert was
bombarded with requests for information on enemy positions; areas of local
population; the nature of the border with Syria because we were immediately
thinking of an E&E plan and that frontier was the closest; what type of
troops were near our area and in what concentrations, because if there were
massive concentrations of troops, there was going to be a lot of movement up
and down the MSR, which would make the task harder; what type of traffic
moved up and down the MSR and in what volume; plus everything he could find
out about how landlines worked, what they looked like, how easy they were to
detect, and whether, having been found, they could be destroyed with ten
pounds of plastic explosive or just a bang with a hammer.
Bert left with our new shopping list.
Looking at the map on the wall, I saw an underground oil pipe that had
been abandoned. "I wonder if it's laid parallel to the MSR," I said, "and if
the cable runs through it?"
"There's a boy in the squadron who used to lay landlines for Mercury,"
Stan said. "I'll see if he knows the score."
Bert came back with piles of maps. While some of us taped the separate
sheets together to make one big section, two lads went out and nicked
chairs.
The atmosphere was rather more serious now. We mulled things over in
general for another half an hour before we launched into planning proper.
Chris studied the maps and made pertinent comments. Legs scribbled memos to
himself about radio equipment. Dinger opened another packet of Benson &
Hedges.
The first point we had to consider was the location we were going to.
We needed to know about the ground, and areas of civilian and military
population. The information available was very sketchy.
"The actual MSR isn't a meta led road but a system of tracks
amalgamated together," Bert said. "At its widest point it's about one and a
half miles across, at its narrowest about two thousand feet. Over 10 miles
either side of the MSR there's only a 150 foot drop in the ground. It's very
flat and undulating, rocky, no sand. As you start moving north towards the
Euphrates, the ground obviously starts to get lower. Going south, it's flat
area most of the way down to Saudi, but then you start coming into major
wadi-type features, which are good for navigation and good for cover, and
then it flattens out again."
The tactical air maps didn't have contours but elevation tints, rather
like a school atlas. Ominously, the whole area of the MSR was one color.
"This country's fucking shit," Vince said.
We laughed, but a bit uneasily. We could see it was not going to be
easy terrain to hide in.
In remote regions, everything tends to be near a road or a river. The
MSR went through built-up areas of population, three or four airfields, and
several pumping stations for water, which we could take for granted would be
defended by troops. It was also a fair assumption that there would be
pockets of local population all along the MSR, either in fixed abodes or as
bedu on the move, and plantations scattered all along the area to take
advantage of the availability of transportation and water.
The MSR hit the Euphrates in the northwest at the major town of
Banidahir; then it ran southwest all the i way to Jordan. Traffic would be
in the form of transports to and from Jordan, military transport going to
airfields, and local militia in the built-up areas. They weren't likely to
be on the alert, because they would not be expecting Allied troops in such a
remote spot.
As far as they would be concerned, there was nothing of great strategic
importance up there.
So, where along the MSR should we operate? Not at its widest point,
that was for sure, because if we had to call up an air strike we wanted to
keep the potential target area tight. What we really needed was a point
where the MSR was at its narrowest, and common sense dictated that this
would be at a sharp bend: no matter where you are in the world, drivers
always try to cut a corner. We looked for a choke point that was as far away
from habitation and military installations as possible. This was hard to do
because an air chart only shows towns and major features. However, Legs
pinpointed a suitable bend at a position midway between an airfield and the
town of Banidahir, and about 18 miles from both. As a bonus, the underground
pipeline crossed at the same point, which might provide a useful navigation
marker.
The weather, Bert informed us, would be a bit nippy but not
uncomfortably cold. Like a spring day in the UK, we could expect it to be
chilly at night and early morning, warming up in the afternoons. Rainfall
was very rare. This was good news, because there's nothing worse than being
wet and cold, particularly if you are hungry as well. Keep those three
things under control and life becomes very easy indeed.
We knew where we were going to go. Next, we had to decide how we were
going to get there.
"The options are to patrol in on foot, take vehicles, or have a heli
drop-off," Vince said.
"Tabbing in is a nonstarter," Chris said. "We wouldn't be able to carry
sufficient kit such a distance --and we'd have to be resupplied after a
while by a heli that might just as well have dropped us off there in the
first place."
We agreed that vehicles could get us away from trouble quickly and let
us relocate on the MSR or get to another area altogether for re tasking
Pinkies or one-tens (long-wheelbase Land-Rovers) would also give us the
increased firepower of vehicle-mounted GPMGs (general purpose machine guns)
and M19 40mm grenade launchers, or anything else we wanted. We could take
more ammunition and explosives and equipment as well, and generally make
ourselves more self-sufficient for a longer period. But vehicles had two
major disadvantages.
"We would be limited as to the amount of fuel we could take with us,"
Dinger said, puffing on his cigarette, "and besides, the possibilities for
concealment in the area around the MSR look bugger all."
Since our mission required us to stay in the same area for a long time,
our best form of defense was going to be concealment, and vehicles wouldn't
help us with that at all. In this territory they'd stick out like a dog's
bollocks. Every time we went on patrol we'd have to leave people with the
wagons to keep them secure. Otherwise we wouldn't know if they'd been
booby-trapped or we were walking into an ambush, or if they had been
discovered by the local population and knowledge of their existence passed
on. What was more, for eight men we would need two vehicles, and two
vehicles equaled two chances of compromise. With one patrol on foot, there
was only one chance of getting discovered. On the other hand, it might just
be that two weeks' supply of ordnance and other equipment would be too much
for us to carry, and despite their shortcomings we would have to go in
vehicles -after all. We'd have to work out the equipment requirements first
and take it from there.
We worked out that we would need explosives and" ammunition, two weeks'
worth of food and water per man, NBC clothing, and, only if there was room,
personal kit. Vince did the calculations and reckoned that we could just
about lug the lot ourselves.
"So we're going to patrol on foot," he said. "But do we get people to
take us in vehicles, or are we going to get a heli and patrol in?"
"More chance of compromise in vehicles," Mark said. "We might not even
get there without a resupply of fuel."
"If we need a resupply by heli, why not just fly in anyway?" Legs said.
In the end the team consensus was for a heli drop off.
"Can we get an aircraft?" I asked Bert.
He went to the operations room to check it out.
I looked at the map. It must have been going through all of our minds
how isolated we'd be. If we got into trouble, there'd be nobody up there to
bail us out.
Bob said, "At least if we're in the shit we don't have too many hills
to hump over to get away."
"Mmm, good one," Dinger grunted.
Bert reappeared. "We can get you an aircraft, no problems."
I opened the next debate. "Where should they drop us off then?"
The good news about helicopters is that they get you there quickly. The
bad news is that they do it noisily and can draw antiaircraft fire. The
landing, too, is quite compromising. We didn't want it to be associated with
the task, so we would want to choose a site that was at least 12 miles from
the MSR itself. We wouldn't want to be landed east or west of the bend in
the MSR because it would be harder to navigate to. Navigation is not a
science but a skill. Why make the skill harder by putting in problems? The
object was to reach the LUP (lying-up point) as quickly as we could.
"Should we fly north over the MSR and then tab back south, or should we
approach it from the south?" I said.
Nobody saw any advantage in crossing the MSR with the aircraft, so we
chose to be dropped due south of our chosen point. Then all we had to do was
navigate due north and we'd hit the MSR.
We would march on a bearing and measure distance by dead reckoning.
Everybody knows his own pacing, and it's common practice to keep tally with
a knotted length of para cord in your pocket. I knew, for example, that 112
of my paces on even ground equaled 325 feet. I would put ten knots in a
length of para cord and feed it through a hole in my pocket. For every 112
paces I marched, I would pull one knot through. When I'd pulled ten knots
through, I would know that I'd covered six-tenths of a mile, at which point
I would check with the "check pacer." If his distance was different from
mine, we'd take the average. This would be done in conjunction with
Magellan, a handheld satellite navigation system. Sat Nav is an aid but it
cannot be relied upon. It can go wrong and batteries can run out.
We couldn't yet work out when we would want to be dropped off; we would
do the time and distance evaluation later, depending on what the pilots
said. It was up to them to gauge the problem of antiaircraft emplacements
and troop concentrations, together with the problem of fitting us into a
slot that didn't conflict with the hundreds of other sorties being flown
every day--a factor known as deconfliction.
By this stage of the planning we knew where we were going, how we were
getting there, and more or less where we would like to get dropped off.
There was a knock at the door.
"We've got the pilot here if you want to talk with him," said a spook.
The squadron leader was shorter than Mike, with ginger hair and
freckles.
"Could you get us to this point?" I asked, showing him the map.
"When?" he asked in a flat Midlands monotone.
"I don't know yet. Some time after two days."
"At the moment, yes. However, I'd have to do my planning on
deconfliction, etcetera. How many of you?"
"Eight."
"Vehicles?"
"Just equipment."
"No problem."
I sensed that in his mind he was already calculating fuel loads,
visualizing ground contours, thinking about antiaircraft capabilities.
"Have you got any other information--as in maps?"
"I was going to ask you the same question," I said.
"No, we've got jack shit. If we can't get you there, where else do you
want to go?"
"All depends where you can get us to."
The pilot would run the whole show from pickup to drop-off, even though
he'd have no idea what the task was. We would trust his judgment totally; we
would just be passengers.
He left and we organized another brew before we tackled the tricky bit:
how to attack the landlines and Scud.
We wanted to work out how to inflict the maximum amount of damage with
the minimum of effort. With luck, the cables would run alongside the MSR,
and every 5 miles or so there would be inspection manholes. We didn't know
if we would find a signal booster system inside the manholes, or what. But
Stan suggested that because of the economics of laying lines, there might
even be a land communication line inside as a bonus.
More questions for Bert. Would the manhole covers be padlocked? Would
they have intruder devices, and if so would we be able to defeat them? If
not, would we have to start digging for the landline itself? Might they be
encased in concrete or steel or other protective devices? If so, we might
have to make a shaped charge to pierce the steel. Would the manholes be
flooded to prevent attack? Strangely enough, this would actually be an
advantage, because water acts as a tamping for explosives and would
therefore increase the force of the explosion.
We worked out that, depending on the ground, we'd do an array of four,
five, or six cuts along the cable, and each one of them would be timed to
detonate at different times over a period of days. We'd lay all the charges
in one night, and have one going off, say, in the early evening next day.
That would give one whole night when, at best, it was incapable of being
repaired, or at least they would be slowed down, and they'd come probably at
first light to fix it. They'd eventually find out where the cuts had been
made and send a team down to repair them. It made sense for us to try and
include these people in the damage if we could, thereby reducing the Iraqis'
capability to carry out other repairs. Mark came up with the idea of putting
down Elsie mines, which are small antipersonnel mines that work on pressure.
When you step on them, they explode.
If everything went to plan, the first charge would make the cut and
when they came down, possibly at first light, to repair it, the technician
or a guard would lose his foot to an Elsie mine. The next evening, number
two would go off, but we'd have laid the charge without Elsie mines.
However, the boys that came down would be very wary, take their time, or
maybe even refuse to do the job. The following day, another would go off,
and this time we would have laid Elsie mines. Maybe they'd be more
confident, and they'd get hit again. The only problem would be that we
couldn't place the Elsie mines too near the site we were blowing, or the
explosion might dislodge or expose them.
In the worst scenario, we'd have rendered the cable inoperable over six
days. At best, we might have wrecked it for ever after the first day. It was
a brilliant thought of Mark's, and we added two boxes of Elsies
--twenty-four in all--to the equipment list.
In essence, we would do as many cuts as we could with the ordnance and
time available. It might be that we'd have to do cuts that were 12 miles
apart, and take two nights doing it. I hoped we wouldn't have to blow the
manholes to get at the cables, because if they checked other covers they'd
be sure to find the other devices. To cater for that, we would put an anti
handling device on all the timers. It would either be a pull switch or a
pressure release, which would detonate the charge if they lifted it.
I was starting to feel tired. It was time for a break, or we'd begin to
make mistakes. You only rush your planning if you have to.
We had a brew and stretched our legs before getting down to the
business of how to destroy Scud.
Thirty-seven feet long and about 3 feet wide, the Russian-built SS-1C
Scud-B had a range of 100-175 miles. It was transported on, and fired from,
an eight wheeled TEL (transporter erector launcher). Crews were trained to
operate from points of maximum concealment. Not very accurate, Scud was
designed to strike at major storage sites, marshaling areas, and airfields,
and was almost more of a propaganda weapon. As well as conventional high
explosive, it could carry chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads.
When our armored divisions were sent to Saudi, a rumor had circulated
that if Saddam Hussein used chemicals against British forces, Mrs. Thatcher
had instructed the generals to go tactical nuclear. I never thought that in
my lifetime I'd find myself up against chemical agents. No one in their
right mind would use them, but here was a man who had done so against Iran
and his own people and would no doubt do so again in this war if the need
arose.
"There are maybe fifteen to twenty TELs but many more missiles," Bert
said. "You can expect the TEL to be accompanied by a command vehicle, like a
Land Cruiser, with the commander and/or the surveyor aboard. In the TEL
itself will be the crew, two in the front, and other operators in the back.
The command post within the TEL itself is in the center of the vehicle,
entry being via a door on the left-hand side. There might be infantry in
support, but we don't know how many--nor whether there might be several TELs
together in convoy, or operating individually."
It became clear that the surveyor was the main personality at a Scud
launch. After the transporter rumbled up to an unprepared site, there was a
wait of about an hour before the Scud could be launched. The time was spent
in accurate site surveying, radar tracking of upper atmosphere balloons,
calculating such factors as angle of deflection, and pumping in of
propellants. There were a couple of lesser players, too--the commander, and
the operators in the control center who tapped in the coordinates. That made
a minimum of three people to be killed in order to render the launcher
totally inoperable. However, they could be replaced. We'd still have to deal
with the Scud.
How would we destroy it? Air strikes are all very well, but we knew
that the Iraqis had excellent DF (direction finding) capability, and we had
to assume the worst scenario--that their DF equipment was intact and
operational. It worked via a series of listening posts dotted around the
country that shot a bearing out to the source of a radio signal. It only
took two such bearings to pinpoint a position; it would then be very easy
for them to get hold of us, especially if we were on foot. Calling in an air
strike would effectively mean that we had gone overt.
We'd only use air strikes if the Iraqis made us an offer we couldn't
refuse--say, the world's supply of Scuds in convoy. Then we'd just have to
get on the net
(radio network) and take a chance of getting DF'd. We had to assume
that they'd know we were there anyway just because the strike had been
directed in.
If we were going to attack the missile itself, there were dangers with
the warhead. We wouldn't know if it was chemical, biological, nuclear, or
conventional, and we didn't want to have to take the precaution of attacking
with NEC protective clothing on because it takes time to put on and slows
you down badly. The fuel was also a problem, being highly noxious.
The TEL itself would be a better target, because without it the rockets
couldn't be launched.
"Can we destroy it?" Bob said.
"Probably, but we don't know how easy it would be to repair," Dinger
said. "And anyway, it's too near the missile."
"What about the flight information that has to be installed into the
rockets?" Chris said.
The more we thought about it, the more sense it made to do a hands-on
attack to destroy the control center in the middle of the vehicle.
"We could just put a charge in there which would fuck things up nice
without any problems to us," Vince suggested. "The TEL must be protected
against the rocket blast--enough to stop our charge affecting the missile."
We knew what to attack, but how would we do it? We finally decided that
when we saw a Scud being launched, which shouldn't be too difficult given
the billiard-table terrain, we would take a bearing and find it. Hopefully
if the landlines were destroyed there would not be any launches anyway.
We knew the vulnerable points. We knew there would be no problems,
finding the Scuds. We would go to the area, pinpoint the launch site, and
put in a CTR (close target recce) to find out how many troops there were,
how many launchers were left, and where the stags were. In a typical CTR,
we'd probably find the Scud, then move back and stop at an FRY (final RV)
about a mile away, depending on the ground. From there, four blokes would go
and carry out a 360degree recce of the position itself, looking for
vulnerable points. Two of us would then go in as far as we had to in order
to complete the information. Then we'd withdraw to the FRY. I'd have to give
a quick brief for that CTR--how we were going to do it, how we were going to
get there, what direction we were going to come back in, what the
recognition signal was as we came back into the FRY. You always come back in
exactly the same direction you left from, to cut down confusion. My normal
recognition signal was to walk in with both arms outstretched in a crucifix
position, my weapon in my right hand. Different patrols use different signs.
The aim is to cut out the noise of a challenge and be easily ID'd. FRVs have
to be somewhere easily identifiable and defendable, because navigating back
to them in pitch darkness is not as easy as it sounds. Back at the FRY, I'd
mentally prepare a quick set of orders for the attack and then tell
everybody what was "on target."
Until we actually got on the ground, we would work on the assumption
that we'd have at least three "points of contact": i.e." we'd kill the
surveyor, control-center commander, and operators. This would normally be
done with silenced weapons. A man will always drop if you put a round into
his body T--the imaginary line from one temple running across the eyebrows
to the other temple and from that line down the center of the face from the
bridge of the nose to the base of the sternum. Pop in a round anywhere along
the T, and your man will always go down. It must be done from close up,
almost right on top of him. You go from a "rolling start line" and just keep
going until he turns round; then you must be quick. You cannot hesitate.
It's all down to pure speed, aggression, and surprise.
So much for the theory. Vince had brought a silenced weapon with him
from the UK, but another squadron had come and begged it off him for a
specific task and there were none left. D Squadron had got to Saudi before
us, and down at the stores there had been a nasty outbreak of Shiny Kit
Syndrome. They had snaffled everything in sight, and there was no point in
us going and asking them nicely if we could please have our ball back.
They'd only say they needed it-and probably they did. In the absence of
silenced weapons we'd probably have to use our fighting knives--weapons
resembling the famous Second World War commando dagger--if we wanted the
attack to remain covert for as long as possible.
A fire-support base consisting of four men would be positioned, and
then the other four would move out and infiltrate the Scud area. We'd take
out the surveyor, then the characters sleeping or sitting in the TEL. Then
we'd lay a charge made from PE4 plastic explosive. My guess was that about 2
pounds of explosive on a 2-hour timer inside the TEL would do the trick.
We'd close the door and up it would go, well after we'd ex filtrated We'd
put an anti handling device on the PEas well, so that even if they found it
and went to lift it, it would detonate.
Also on the charge we would have a compromise device. This would be a
grip switch that would initiate a length of safety fuse, which in turn would
initiate the detonator after about 60 seconds. So if the shit hit the fan,
we could just place the charge and run. There would be three different
initiations on the charges, hopefully covering any eventuality: the timing
device, an anti handling device--pull, pressure, or pressure release,
whichever was appropriate--and a compromise device.
It was 1600. One or two of the faces around me were beginning to look
tired, and I guessed that I looked the same. We'd really motored. We knew
how we were going to do the task, even down to such detail as "actions on."
Actions on contact for the 4-man fire-support group were to give covering
fire to allow the attack group, if possible, to complete their task and
extract themselves. Actions on for the 4-man attack group were to give
support to each other and attempt to complete the target attack using the
compromise device. One way or another, they should extract to the ERV
(emergency RV) and quickly regroup. They should then move to the patrol RV
and regroup with the fire support team.
We wouldn't know, of course, if any of this was feasible until we saw
the disposition on the ground. There might be four TELs together, which
would pose problems of compromise as there would be many more targets. Or
maybe there'd be just one TEL which we couldn't get in to attack, in which
case we'd do a stand-off attack with lots of firepower--but not at the
expense of the patrol to take out only one objective. In a stand-off attack
we wouldn't get "hands on" but would use 66s to try and destroy the target.
Such an attack must be short and sharp, but whether or not to carry one out
would be a decision that could only be made on the ground. It's only when
you have seen the problem that you can make your appreciations and work out
what you will do. We would always try a covert target attack if at all
possible.
The third option would be an air strike. Deciding between a stand-off
attack and an air strike would be a fine balance, probably swayed by the
numbers involved. Both, however, would advertise the fact that we were close
by in the area. The compromise would be bearable if the numbers were high
enough to warrant it, but if we were successful in cutting the cable, there
would be no need for this at all.
By now the place was stinking of sweat, farts, and cigarettes. There
were bits of paper everywhere with pictures of Scuds and matchstick men and
fire-support group movement diagrams. Planning is always exhaustive, but
only because we want to work everything out to the finest detail. When we
got to the TEL and the door was closed, where was the handle? How did you
operate it? Which way did the door go, out or in? Was it a concertina door?
Did the door hinge from the top? Would the door be padlocked as it is on
many armored vehicles? What would we do then? People didn't know, so we
studied pictures and tried to work it out. Detail, detail, detail. It's so
important. You might be pushing a door when you should be pulling. Minor
detail missed equals fuckup guaranteed.
We moved on to thinking about the equipment required to execute our
plans.
You can destroy a power station with a shaped charge of 2 pounds of
explosive in just the right place; you don't have to blow the whole
installation into the sky. It can be done by a small specific-to-task
charge, because you know the vulnerable point you're going for. With Scud we
knew the vulnerable points, but not for sure how we were going to get at
them. I was keen to take just charges of PE, each weighing about 2 pounds,
rather than specific-to-task explosives, because we might not be able to use
specifics any other way. Again, we wouldn't have the information until we
got there on the ground.
We'd need PE4 explosive, safety fuse, grip switches, nonelectric and
electric dets, timers, and det cord. You don't put detonators straight into
plastic explosive, which is how it's portrayed in films. You put det cord
between the detonator and the explosives. We'd make up these charges in
advance, and just before the attack place the dets and timers on to them.
Vince and Bob disappeared to go and organize these items, and came back
a quarter of an hour later.
"That's all squared away," said Vince. "It's all under your bed."
All the main points had now been covered.
We would be on foot, carrying everything in, so we'd need a cache area,
which would be our LUP (lying-up point). Ideally, the LUP would provide
cover from fire and cover from view, because we'd be manning it all the
time. It's very dangerous to leave equipment and go back to it--even though
this sometimes has to be done--because it might be ambushed or booby-trapped
if discovered. We'd work from a patrol base and move out from there to carry
out our tasks. It might happen that we'd find a better site for our LUP
during a patrol, in which case we'd move all the kit again under cover of
darkness.
We now worked out the E&E plan. We would be 185 miles from Saudi, but
only 75 from neighboring countries. Some were part of the Coalition, so in
theory would be perfect places to head for.
"What are the borders like?" Vince asked Bert.
"I'm not entirely sure. Might be like the border with Saudi, a tank
berm and that's all. But they could be heavily defended. Whatever, if you
cross a border, for heaven's sake make sure they don't think you're Israeli
--it's not that far away."
"Fair one, Bert," said Stan, nodding his head in Bob's direction and
grinning. "But I'm not going across any border with that spick."
Bob certainly looked the part, with tight black curly hair and a large
nose.
"Yeah, well, who'd want to go with Zorro there?" Bob pointed at Mark's
big nose.
Everything was going well. It's when people stop the slagging and start
being nice to each other that you have to worry.
"What's the ground like going up there?" Mark asked.
"Much the same. Basically flat, but when you get up to the areas of
Krabilah and the border there is some high ground. The further west, the
higher the ground."
"What's the score on the Euphrates?" Dinger said. "Is it swimmable?"
"It's almost a half mile wide in places, with small islands. It'll be
in fierce flood this time of the year. All around there is vegetation, and
where there's vegetation, there's water, and where there's water there's
people. So there'll always be people around the river. It's rather green and
lush--Adam and Eve country, actually, if you remember your Bible."
We looked at the options. If we were compromised, did we tab it all the
way south or did we move northwest? We'd probably have a lot of drama
getting across any border, but we'd have that going south as well. They'd
guess we were going south anyway, and it was a hell of a long distance to
run.
Dinger piped up in his best W. C. Fields voice, "Go west, young man, go
west."
"Nah, fuck that," Chris said, "it's full of rag heads. If we're on the
run, let's go somewhere nice. Let's go to Turkey. I went there for my
holidays once. It was rather nice. If we get to Istanbul, there's a place
called the Pudding Club, where all the international travelers meet and
leave messages. We could leave a message for the search and rescue team and
then just go on the piss while we wait for them to pick us up. Sounds good
to me."
"Bert, what sort of reception committee would we get elsewhere?" Legs
asked. "Any info from downed pilots yet?"
"I'll find out."
"Unless we're told otherwise, Bert," I said, "we're not going south."
You always keep together as a team for as long as you can, because it's
better for morale and firepower, and your chances of escape are higher than
as individuals. But if the patrol were split, the beauty of choosing north
was that you could be the world's worst navigator and still find your way
there. Due north and hit the river, hang a left, heading west. But even if
we managed to cross the border we couldn't count ourselves as being on safe
ground. There was no information to suggest otherwise.
The one fixing we dreaded was getting captured. As far as I knew, the
Iraqis were not signatories to either the Geneva or Hague Conventions.
During the Iran/ Iraq War we'd all seen reports of atrocities they'd
committed while carrying out interrogations. Their prisoners had been
flogged, electrocuted, and partially dismembered. I was very concerned that
if we were captured and just went into the "Big Four"--number, rank, name,
date of birth--these people wouldn't be satisfied and would require more
from us, as their gruesome track record had shown. I therefore decided that,
contrary to military conventions and without telling my superiors, the
patrol should prepare itself with a cover story. But what should it be?
We were clearly an attacking force. We would be stuck up in northwest
Iraq, carrying the world's supply of ammunition, explosive ordnance, food,
and water. You wouldn't need the brains of an archbishop to realize that we
weren't there as members of the Red Cross.
The only thing we could think of was that we were a search and rescue
team. These teams came as quite a big package, especially when the Americans
were out to rescue one of their downed pilots. The pilots had a TACBE
(tactical beacon) which transmitted on the international distress frequency,
which AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) continuously listened to
and got a fix on. Of course, everybody else was listening in as well,
including the Iraqis. AWACS would locate the pilot from his beacon and relay
the message. A search and rescue mission would then be stood to
(made ready). The package would be a heli with an extraction party of
eight to ten men ready to give covering fire from the air, with machine guns
mounted on the helicopter. The party might even be joined by a couple of
Apache attack helicopters giving cover so that the bigger helicopter could
come down and do the snatch. There would probably be top cover as well, a
couple of jets like A10s to add to the hosing down if needed. There was a
big emphasis on getting people back, and so there should be. Then you know
that if you get in the shit, there'll be every effort made to come and save
you, especially if you're a pilot. It's good for morale and flying
efficiency, and quite apart from anything else there's the purely financial
angle-millions of pounds' worth of training have gone into every single
pilot.
The Iraqis would be aware of these big rescue packages, and of the fact
that inside the pickup helicopter there would be a medical team, mainly for
trauma management. We were about the right numbers, and we would be dressing
more or less uniformly. Contrary to common belief, we don't all walk around
in what we like. You need a form of recognition so your own troops can
identify you. You don't want to be shot by your own side: that's rather
unprofessional. So for this sort of op you resemble some form of soldier.
Because it was just normal PE4 that we would be carrying, we could say
it was for our own protection-that sometimes we had to man an RV point while
AWACS talked the downed pilot on to us. In such a case we'd put local
protection out. "They've given us all this stuff," we would say, "but we
don't really have a clue how to use it."
Everybody had medical experience. The whole Regiment is trained to a
high standard. Chris, being a patrol medic, was partly NHS (National Health
Service) trained. Stan, of course, had a medical degree and a year of
clinical experience. Search and Rescue is concerned mainly with trauma
management, so people of our standard would be involved.
The TACBEs would blend in with our story, but in my heart of hearts I
knew it wouldn't hold up for long, especially if we were caught with the
cache equipment. We knew we wouldn't get more than two or three days out of
the story, but that would be long enough for the Head Shed to do their
assessment of the damage we could do to OP SEC What do they know? our Head
Shed would ask--and how can it affect our future operations? They would have
to assume that everything we knew, we would have told. That's why we are
only told what we need to know-for our own good as well as everybody else's.
At best, we'd just be giving them time.
It was about six o'clock in the evening now and time for another break.
The room really stank, and you could see the signs of strain on people's
faces. We went and had a scoff, and for a change we all sat together.
Normally you'd be off with your own mates and doing your own thing.
"I was in the doghouse for watching Apocalypse Now on the box the night
before we left," Vince said as he stirred his coffee.
"Me too," Mark said. "But there was nothing else to do: the pubs were
shut."
Most people had experienced that same horrible lull when it was the
early hours of the morning and they were just sitting there and waiting.
Jilly and I had spent the day and night in strained silence. Only Bob had
had a different time of it, boogying the night away at the club, rather
badly as usual, apparently.
We talked about how good the task was and how much we were looking
forward to getting on the ground, but the excitement was tempered a bit by
the thought of how isolated we would be. We knew it was risky, but it wasn't
the first time and it wouldn't be the last--after all, this was what we were
paid for. We filled our flasks ready for the next session.
The mood was more lighthearted now as I summarized twelve hours of
planning.
"Right. We fly in by Chinook to a OOP (drop off point) twenty
kilometers south of the MSR, then tab one night, maybe two, depending on the
terrain and population, to the LUP-cum-cache. From there we'll carry out
recce patrols to locate the landline. This hunt might take two or three
nights: we just don't know until we get on the ground. Initially we will be
preoccupied with finding the landline, but at the same time we'll OP (put an
observation post on) the MSR, watching for Scud movement. If we see the
world's supply of Scud moving along the MSR, we will assess and call in an
air strike. If we see a Scud launch, we'll take a bearing, locate it, recce,
then carry out a target attack. We'll then move back to the LUP and carry on
with our tasking. All of this is very flexible until we get on the ground.
We might get a Scud launch on our very first night. But we'll do nothing
about it until we are firmly in an LUP-cum-cache position. There's no point
screaming 'banzai!" and getting our arse kicked just for the sake of a bit
of bravado and a solitary Scud. Better to take our time and do more damage.
So we sort ourselves out, then we go and give it max. After fourteen days
we'll exfiltrate to a pickup point prearranged with the aircrew before we
infil, or we will give them an RV with our Sit Rep. They will come and
either resupply us and redeploy us, or bring us back for re tasking All very
simple really."
And so it was. You must keep things that way if you can; then there's
less to forget and less to go wrong. If a plan has many facets and depends
on split second timing--and sometimes it does--it's more likely to fuck up.
Plenty of plans have to be like this, of course, but you must always try to
keep it simple. Keep it simple, keep it safe.
We had a patrol radio for com ms between the FOB (forward operating
base) in Saudi and the patrol. There was unlikely to be room for a spare
because of the weight. Having just one was no problem because we were
working as one patrol. We also had four TACBEs; it would have been ideal to
have one each, but the kit just wasn't available. They are dual-purpose
devices. Pull one tab out, and it transmits a beacon which is picked up by
any aircraft.
"I remember a story about a unit in Belize," I said. "Not from the
Regiment, but they were jungle training. They were issued with TACBEs while
they were in the jungle. One officer put his TACBE in his locker, and as he
put it in, the tab of the distress beacon was pulled out and set off.
Commercial aircraft were radioing in, everybody was running around. It took
two days for them to find the beacon in his locker."
"Dickhead."
Pull out another tab, and you can use it like a normal radio, speaking
within a limited range to aircraft overhead. You can also use TACBE to
communicate with each other on the ground--a system known as working
one-to-one--but it has to be line of sight and has a limited range. Its main
use, however, would be to talk to AWACS if we were in trouble. We were
informed that AWACS would be giving us twenty-four hour coverage and would
answer our call within fifteen seconds. It was comforting to know that
there'd be someone talking back to us in that nice, sedate, polite voice
that AWACS always use to calm down pilots in distress. The problem was,
TACBE was very easily DF'd (detected by direction-finding equipment). We'd
only use it in an emergency, or if everything was going to rat shit on the
air strikes.
We also had another radio, operating on "Simplex" --the same principle
as TACBE but on a different frequency, which worked over a range of about a
kilometer. This was so we could talk to the helicopter if we had a major
drama and call him back, or to direct him in. Because the transmission
wattage was minuscule, it was almost impossible to DP, and we could use it
quite safely.
The main elements in our belt kit would be ammunition, water, emergency
food, survival kit, shell dressings, a knife, and a prismatic compass as a
backup for the Silva compass and for taking a bearing off the ground. Water
and bullets: those are always the main considerations. All other kit is
secondary, so personal comfort items would be the last to go in--and only if
we had room. Survival kit is always suitable to theater and task, so out
came the fishing lines, but we kept the heliograph, thumb saw, and
magnifying glass for fire making. We also carried basic first aid kit,
consisting of suture kit, painkillers, rehydrate, antibiotics, scalpel
blades, fluid, and fluid-giving sets. The SOP (standard operating procedure)
is to carry your two Syrettes of morphine around your neck, so that
everybody knows where it is. If you have to administer morphine, you always
use the casualty's, not your own: you might be needing your own a few
minutes later.
We wouldn't bother with sleeping bags because of the bulk and weight,
and because the weather would not be too bad. I would take a set of
lightweight GoreTex, however, and everybody else took their poncho liner or
space blanket. I also took my old woolly hat, since you lose a massive
amount of body heat through your head. When I sleep, I pull it right over my
face, which has the added advantage of giving that rather pleasant sense of
being under the covers.
In our berg ens we carried explosives, spare batteries for the patrol
radio, more intravenous fluids and fluid giving sets, water, and food. Bob
was elected to carry the piss can, a one-gallon plastic petrol container.
When it was full, one of us would carry it a mile or so into the bush
while on patrol, move a rock and dig a hole underneath it, empty the can,
and replace the earth and rock. This would prevent detection by smell,
animal interest, or insect activity.
I delegated various other tasks.
"Chris, you sort out the medic kit."
He would automatically get trauma equipment, including a complete
intravenous set and field dressings for everybody.
"Legs will sort out the scaley kit."
For some reason unknown to me, signalers are usually called scaleys. I
knew that among other tasks Legs would make sure we had spare antennas for
the patrol radio, so that if we were compromised when the antenna was out we
could just leave it out and move. We would still be able to communicate
using the spare antenna. He would also check that everything had a fresh
battery, that we had spare batteries, and that everything was actually
working.
"Vince and Bob, can you sort out the dems kit?"
They would take the PE out of all its packaging and wrap it in masking
tape to keep its shape. This would save the noise of unpacking in the field
and any risk of compromise as a result of dropped rubbish, "If the enemy see
as much as a spent match on the ground in front of them, they'll know you
were there," the instructor on my Combat Survival course had said. "And if
they find it behind them they'll know it was Special Forces."
"Mark, you can sort out the food and jerricans."
The Kiwi would draw eight men's rations for fourteen days from Stores.
You strip it all down, and keep just one set of brew kit in your belt kit. I
throw away the toilet paper because in the field I shit by squatting and
therefore don't need it. But everybody keeps the plastic bags for shitting
into. You simply tie a knot in them after use and put the contents into your
bergen.
Everything must go with you, as nothing can be left to compromise your
position, old or present. If you just buried shit it would create animal
interest, and if discovered the ingredients could be analyzed. Rice content,
for example, would indicate Iraqis; currants or chili would point to
Westerners.
There's always a lot of banter to swap menus. The unwritten rule is
that whatever you don't want you throw into a bin liner for the other blokes
to sort through. Stan didn't like Lancashire hot pot but loved steak and
vegetables, so unbeknownst to him we swapped the contents. He would go over
the border with fourteen days' worth of his least favorite meal. It was just
a stitch; once we were out there we would swap around.
We still needed cam nets to conceal ourselves and our kit.
"I'll do it," Dinger volunteered.
He would cut rolls of hessian into six-by six-foot squares. Brand-new
hessian needs to be messed up with engine oil. You put the hessian into a
puddle of it and rub it in well with a broom. Then you turn it over and put
it in the mud and rub it all in. Give it a good shake, let it dry, and Bob's
your uncle--your very own cam net.
"Everything to be done by 1000 tomorrow," I concluded.
We would check and test, check and test. This wouldn't prevent things
going wrong or not working, but it would at least cut down the odds.
It was about 2230, and Dinger announced that he had just run out of
fags.
I got the hint. We'd covered everything and to carry on would just be
reinventing the wheel. As the blokes left, they put every scrap of paper
into a burn bag to be destroyed.
Vince and I stayed behind. We still had to go into the Phases (outline
plan) with the squadron OC and sergeant major. They would hit us with a lot
of questions of the "what if?" variety, and their different track of
thinking might put a new angle on things. With luck, they might even approve
the plan.
4
I couldn't sleep because my mind was going at a hundred miles an hour.
It was people's lives I was playing with here, my own included. The squadron
OC had given the plan his approval, but that didn't stop me wondering if
there was a better way of going about it. Were other people just nodding and
agreeing with what I said? Probably not, since they all had a vested
interest in our success and they were outspoken individuals. Was there
anything I'd left out or forgotten? But you reach the point where you have
to press on regardless. You could spend the rest of your life thinking about
the different options.
I got up and made a brew. Legs had just finished sorting out the
signals kit, and he came over and joined me. There was no sign of Stan or
Dinger. Those two could sleep on a chicken's lip.
"The signals Head Shed have just given me our call sign," Legs said.
"It's Bravo Two Zero. Sounds good to me."
We had a bit of a chat about possible shortages. As I watched him head
back to his bed, I wondered if he was thinking about home. He was a strong
family man, with a second child that was just five months old. My mind
drifted to Jilly. I hoped she wasn't getting upset by anything she was
reading in the media.
There was the constant noise of kit being lugged and blokes mooching
around sorting themselves out. I put my Walkman on and listened to Madness.
I wasn't really listening because my mind was screaming in so many
directions, but I must have nodded off at about three, because at six, when
I woke, the lead singer had dropped two octaves and they were just about
grinding to a halt.
It was quite a frenzy that morning. We checked that we still knew how
to activate the distress signals on the small TACBE radios and use them
one-to-one so we could actually talk line of sight on them.
Vince had collected the 5.56 ammunition for the Armalites and as many
40mm bombs for the grenade launchers as he could get his hands on. We had a
lot of shortages on these bombs because the grenade launcher is such a
formidable, excellent weapon. The bombs are quite a commodity; when you've
got them, you hoard them. I explained the problem to a mate in A Squadron,
and he poached about and got us some more.
All the 5.56 had to be put into magazines, and the magazines checked to
make sure they were working. The magazines are as important as the weapon
itself, because if the springs don't push the round into position, the
working parts can't push the round into the breech. So you check and recheck
all your mags, and then recheck them a third time. The Armalite magazine
normally takes 30 rounds, but many of us choose to put in just 29, which
gives a little bit of extra push in the spring. It's easier and quicker to
put on a new mag than to clear a stoppage.
We checked the 203 bombs and explosives. PE4 doesn't smell and feels
very much like plasticine. It's surprisingly inert. You can even light a
stick of it and watch it burn like a frenzied candle. The only trouble with
PE4 is that when it's cold, it's quite brittle and hard to mold into shapes.
You have to make it pliable by working it in your hands.
We checked and rechecked all the detonators. The nonelectric ones that
we'd be using for the compromise device are initiated by the safety fuse
burning into them, and cannot be tested. Electric dets can be put on a
circuit tester. If the electric circuit is going through the det, we can be
sure that the electric pulse will set off the explosive inside and, in turn,
detonate the charge. Fortunately, misfires are very rare.
It takes quite a while to test the timers. You have to set the time
delay and check that it's working. If it works for one hour, it will work
for forty-eight hours. Then you time the device and see if it is working
correctly. In theory, if it is more than five seconds early or late, you
exchange it for another. In practice, I bin any timer that I have doubts
about.
The last item for testing was the wiring for the claymore antipersonnel
mines, which was also done on a circuit tester.
We then ran through the rigging and de rigging of the little Elsie
antipersonnel mines. For many of us it had been a while since we'd had our
hands on this sort of kit. We made sure we could remember how to arm them
and, more importantly, how to disarm them. There might be a situation where
we'd lay the explosive and Elsie mines on target, but for some reason have
to go in and extract them. This makes life more difficult when you're
placing them, because not only do you have to keep a record of where they
are on the ground, but also the person who sets the anti handling device
should be the one to lift it.
There was a severe shortage of claymores, which was a problem because
they are excellent for defense and . The solution was to go round to the
cook house get a pile of ice-cream containers, and make our own. You make a
hole in the center of the carton, run a det cord tail into it, and tie a
knot inside the container. You make a shaped charge with PE4 and put it in
the bottom of the tub, making sure that the knot is embedded. You then fill
the carton with nuts and bolts, little lumps of metal, and anything else
nasty you can find lying around, put on the lid, and wrap lots of masking
tape around to seal it. Once the claymore is in position, all you have to do
is put a det onto the det cord and Bob used to be your uncle.
Next, we sorted out the weapons, starring with a trip down to the range
to "zero" the sights. You lie down in the prone position, aim at the same
place on a target 300 feet away, and fire five rounds. This is then called a
group. You look where the group has landed on the target and then adjust the
sights so that the next group will land where you want it to--which is where
you are aiming. If you do not zero and the group is, say, 4 inches to the
right of where you are aiming at 300 feet, then at 600 feet it will be 8
inches to the right, and so on. At 1200 feet you could easily miss a target
altogether.
One individual's zero will be different from another's because of many
factors. Some are physical size and "eye relief"--the distance between the
eye of the firer and the rear sight. If you used another person's weapon the
zero could be off for you. This is not a problem at short ranges of up to
900 feet, but at greater distances it could be a problem. If this was the
case and you could see where the rounds were going, you could "aim off" to
adjust.
We spent a whole morning down at the range--first to zero the weapons,
and second to test all the magazines. I was going to take ten magazines with
me on the patrol, a total of 290 rounds, and every magazine had to be
tested. I would also be carrying a box of 200 rounds for a Minimi, which
takes the same round as the Armalite and can be either belt- or
magazine-fed.
We also fired some practice 203 bombs, which throw out a chalk puff
when they land to help you see if you've got to aim higher or lower--it's a
crude form of zero.
We rehearsed for many different scenarios. The situation on the ground
can change very rapidly, and you have to expect everything to be rather
fluid. The more you practice, the more flexible you can be. We call this
stage of planning and preparation "walk through, talk through," and operate
a Chinese parliament while we're doing it. Everybody, regardless of rank,
has the right to contribute his own ideas and rip to shreds those of others.
We practiced various kinds of LUP because we weren't sure of the lie of
the ground. The terrain might be as flat as a pancake, in which case we'd
LUP in two groups of four that gave each other mutual support. We discussed
the way we would communicate between the two groups--whether it would be by
com ms cord, which is simply a stretch of string that can be pulled in the
event of a major drama, or by field telephone, a small handset attached to a
piece of two flex D10 wire running along to the next position. In case we
decided to go ahead with the landline, we practiced running the D10 out and
how we were actually going to speak. Legs went off and came back with a pair
of electronic field telephones that even he wasn't familiar with. They had
been running from one office to another between Portakabins before he nicked
them. We sat with them like children with a new Fisher-Price toy, pressing
this, pushing that. "What's this do then? What if I push this?"
The priority when filling a bergen is "equipment to task"--in our case,
ordnance and equipment that could help us to place or deliver that ordnance.
Next came the essentials to enable you to survive--water and food,
trauma-management equipment, and, for this op, NBC protection.
The equipment in our berg ens was what we would need on the ground to
operate. However, radio batteries run down and, along with many other
things, would have to be replaced during our two weeks of being
self-sufficient. Therefore more equipment had to be taken along and cached,
simply to resupply the berg ens This was what was in the jerricans and two
sandbags, one containing more NEC kit, the other more food plus any
batteries and odds and sods.
It added up to an awesome weight of kit. Vince was in charge of
distribution. Different types of equipment have to be evenly placed in the
patrol. If all the explosives were placed in one bergen and that was lost,
for whatever reason, we would then lose our attack capability using
explosives. In the Falklands, the task force's entire supply of Mars bars
was sent on one ship, and everybody was flapping in case it sank. They
should have got Vince to organize it. Besides the tactical considerations
behind equal distribution, people want and expect equal loads, whether
they're 5'2" or 6'3". We have a scale that weighs up to 200 Lb, and it
showed that we were carrying 154 Lb per man in our berg ens and belt kit. On
top of that we had a 5gallon jerrican of water each--another 40 Lb. We
carried our NEC kit and cache rations, which weighed yet another 15 Lb, in
two sandbags that had been tied together to form saddlebags that could go
around our necks or over our shoulders. The total weight per man was
therefore 209 Lb, the weight of a 15-stone man. Everybody packed their
equipment the way they wanted. There's no set way of doing this, as long as
you've got it and can use it. The only "must" was the patrol radio, which
always goes on top of the signaler's bergen so that it can be retrieved by
anybody in a contact.
Belt kit consists of ammunition and basic survival requisites--water,
food, and trauma-care equipment, plus personal goodies. For this op we would
also take TACBEs in our belt kit, plus cam netting to provide cover if we
couldn't find any natural, and digging tools to unearth the cables if
necessary. Your belt kit should never come off you, but if it does it must
never be more than an arm's length away. At night you must always have
physical contact with it. If it's off, you sleep on top of it. The same goes
for your weapon.
The best method of moving the equipment proved to be a shuttle service
in two groups of four, with four giving the protection, four doing the
humping, and then changing around. It was hard work, and I didn't look
forward to the 12 mile tab that first night--or maybe two--from the heli
drop-off to the MSR. We certainly wouldn't practice carrying it now: that
would be a bit like practicing being wet, cold, and hungry, which wouldn't
achieve anything.
We did practice getting off the aircraft, and the actions we would
carry out if there was a compromise as it was happening or the heli was
leaving.
Everything now was task-oriented. If you weren't physically doing
something to prepare for it, you were thinking about it. As we "walked
through, talked through," I could see the concentration etched on
everybody's face.
We were getting centrally fed, and the cooks were sweating their butts
off for us. Most of the Regiment had already disappeared on tasks, but there
were enough blokes left to pack the cook house and slag each other off. The
boys in A Squadron had given themselves the most outrageous crew cuts right
down to the bone. They had suntanned faces in front and sparkly white domes
behind. Some of them were the real Mr. Guccis, the lounge lizards downtown
of a Friday, and there they were with the world's worst haircuts, no doubt
desperately praying the war was going to last long enough for it to grow
again.
Because a lot of Regiment administration was also being run centrally,
I kept bumping into people that I hadn't seen for a long time. You'd give
them a good slagging, see what reading material they had, then nick it. It
was a really nice time. People were more sociable than usual, probably
because we were out of the way, there were no distractions, just the job at
hand. Everybody was euphoric. Not since the Second World War and the days of
David Stirling had there been so much of the Regiment together at any one
time in one theater.
We had some very nasty injections at one stage against one of the
biological warfare agents it was thought Saddam Hussein might use. The
theory was that you got one injection, then waited a couple of days and went
back for another, but the majority of us were out of the game after the
first jab. It was horrendous: our arms came up like balloons, so we didn't
go back.
We were told on the 18th that we were going to move forward to another
location, an airfield, from where we would mount our operations. We sorted
out our personal kit so that if it had to be sent to our next of kin
anything upsetting or pornographic had been removed. This would be done by
the blokes in the squadron as well, to make sure your rubber fetish was
never made public. To make less drama for your family you usually put
military kit in one bag and personal effects in another. We labeled it and
handed it in to the squadron quartermaster sergeant.
We flew out from the operating base on a C130 that was packed with
pinkies and mountains of kit. It was tactical, low-level flying, even though
we were still in Saudi airspace. There was too much noise for talking. I put
on a pair of ear defenders and got my head down. It was pitch-dark when we
landed at the large Coalition airbase and started to unload the kit. Noise
was constant and earsplitting. Aircraft of all types took off and landed on
the brightly lit runway--everything from spotter aircraft to A10
Thunderbolts.
We were much closer to the Iraqi border here, and I noticed that it was
much chillier than we had been used to. You definitely needed a jumper or
smock to keep yourself warm, even with the work of unloading. We laid out
our sleeping bags on the grass under the palm trees and got a brew going
from our belt kit. I was lying on my back looking up at the stars when I
heard a noise that started as low, distant thunder and then grew until it
filled the sky. Wave after wave of what looked like B52s were passing
overhead enroute to Iraq. Everywhere you looked there were bombers. It could
have been a scene from a Second World War recruitment poster. Tankers
brought out their lines and jets moved in to fill up. The sky roared for
five or six minutes. Such mighty, heart-stirring air power dominating the
heavens--and down below on the grass, a bunch of dickheads brewing up. We
had been self contained and self-obsessed, seeing nothing of the war but our
own preparations. Now it hit home: the Gulf War was not just a small number
of men on a task; this was something fucking outrageously major. And bar one
more refuel, we were within striking distance of adding to the mayhem.
Just before first light Klaxons started wailing, and people ran in all
directions. None of us had a clue what was going on, and we stayed put in
our sleeping bags.
"Get in the shelter!" somebody yelled, but it was too warm where we
were. Nobody budged, and quite rightly so. If somebody wanted us to know
what was going on, they'd come and tell us. Eventually somebody shouted,
"Scud!" and we jumped. We'd just about got to our feet when the order came
to stand down.
Every hour on the hour during the day, somebody would tune in to the
BBC World Service. At certain times you'd hear the signature tune of the
Archers as well. When you're away there's always somebody who's listening to
the everyday tale of country folk, even if they will not admit it.
We were told we were going in that night. It was quite a relief. We'd
got to the airfield with only what we stood up in.
In the afternoon I gave a formal set of orders. Everybody who was
involved in the task was present--all members of the patrol; the squadron
OC; the OPS officer who oversees all the squadron's operations.
After I had delivered them verbally, the orders would be handed over to
the operations center. They would stay there until the mission was
completed, so that if anything went wrong, everybody would know what I
wanted to happen. If we ought to have been at point A by day 4, for example,
and we weren't, they'd know that I wanted a fast jet flying over so I could
make contact by TACBE.
The top of each orders sheet is overprinted with the words Remember
Need to Know to remind you of OP SEC It's critically important that nobody
should know anything that does not concern him directly. The pilots, for
example, would not attend the orders.
I started by describing the ground we were going to cover. You have to
explain your orders as if nobody's got a clue what's going on--so in this
case I started by pointing out where Iraq was and which countries bordered
it. Then you go into the area in detail, which for us was the bend in the
MSR. I described the lie of the ground and the little topographical
information I had. Everything that I knew, they had to know.
Next I gave times of first and last light, the moon states, and the
weather forecast. I had been confidently informed by the met blokes that the
weather should be cool and dry. Weather information is important because if,
for example, you have been briefed in the orders that the prevailing wind is
from the northeast, you can use that information to help you with your
navigation. Since the weather was still forecast as fairly clement for the
duration of our mission, we had again elected to leave our sleeping bags
behind. Not that there would have been any room to take them anyway.
I now gave the Situation phase of the orders. I would normally tell at
this point everything I knew about the enemy that concerned us--weapons,
morale, composition, and strengths, and so on--but the intelligence was very
scanty. I would also normally mention the location of any friendly forces
and how they could help us, but for our op there was nothing to tell.
Next was the mission statement, which I repeated twice. It was just as
the OC had given it to us in the briefing room: one, to locate and destroy
the landline in the area of the northern MSR, and two, to find and destroy
Scud.
Now came Execution, the real meat of the orders-how we were actually
going to carry out the mission. I gave a general outline, broken down into
phases, a bit like telling a story.
"Phase 1 will be the infiltration, which will be by the Chinook. Phase
2 will be moving up to the LUP-cum cache area. Phase 3 will be LUP routine.
Phase 4 will be the recce, then target attack on the landline. Phase 5 will
be the actions on Scud location. Phase 6 will be the exfiltration, or
resupply and re tasking
Then, for each phase, I would go into the detail of how we were going
to do it. This has to be as detailed as possible to eliminate gray areas.
After every phase I then gave the "actions on"--for instance, actions on
compromise during the drop-off, if the patrol came under fire just as the
heli.took off again. Then people would know what I wanted to happen when
there was no drama, and they'd also know what needed to happen if there was.
That was all very fine in theory, of course, but for each of these
actions on, you also need to describe every detail of how you want things to
be done. All of this had to be talked about and worked out beforehand and
then given in the formal orders. Forward planning saves time and energy on
the ground because people then know what is required of them. For example,
what happens if the heli is required to return to the patrol at some stage
to replace a damaged radio? When the heli lands do we go around to the back
of the aircraft? Do we take the new radio out of the load master side door?
How do we actually call the heli in? What is the authentication code? The
answer to this one was that we'd give a phonetic code, the letter Bravo, as
recognition. The heli pilot would know that at a certain grid, or in a
certain area within that grid, he was going to see us flashing Bravo on
infrared. He'd be looking through his PNG (passive night goggles), and
because I'd told him so, he'd know he would land 15 feet to the left-hand
side of the B when he saw it. Then, because he was landing on my right hand
side, all I'd have to do was walk past the cockpit to the load master door,
which is behind the cockpit on the left-hand side on the Chinook, throw a
radio in, and catch the radio that they threw out. If there were any
messages they'd grab my arm and give them to me on a bit of paper. The
exchange would be all over in a minute.
It took about an hour and a half to go through all the details of each
phase. Next were coordinating instructions, the nitty-gritty details like
timings, grid references, RVs, locations of interest. These had already been
given but would be said again to confirm. This stage also included actions
on capture, and details of the E&E plan.
I covered service support, which was an inventory of the stores and
equipment we were taking with us. And finally I described the chain of
command and signals --types of radio, frequencies, schedules, codes and code
words and any field signals that were unique to the task.
"As I'm sure you all know by now," I said, "our call sign is Bravo Two
Zero. The chain of command is myself as patrol commander and Vince as 2 i/c.
The rest of you can fight for it."
It was now the patrol's chance to ask questions, after which we
synchronized watches.
The air brief was given by the pilot, since he would be in command
during the infil and exfil phases. He showed us a map of the route we were
going to take, and talked at some length about the likely difficulty of
antiaircraft sites and attack by Roland ground-to-air missiles. He told us
what he wanted to happen in the back of the aircraft, and the actions on
crashing. I had talked to him about this before and was secretly glad that
he wanted us to split up, with the aircrew and the patrol taking their own
chances. To be honest, we wouldn't have wanted a bunch of aircrew with us,
and for some reason they were not particularly keen to come with us anyway.
He spoke, too, about deconfliction, because there were going to be air raids
going in on surrounding targets--a number of fixed-launch sites were going
to be hosed down within 6 miles of our drop-off point. Our deconfliction was
arranged to enable us to slip in under these air strikes and use them for
cover.
The orders group ended at about 1100. Everybody now knew what they had
to do, where they were doing it, and how they were going to do it.
At lunchtime, we were told that because of deconfliction we might not
be able to get in. However, we were going to attempt it anyway--you don't
know until you try. We would refuel just short of the Saudi/ Iraq border,
then go over with full tanks. We did a final round of checks, loaded the kit
onto wagons, and ate as much fresh food as we could get down us.
We were eager to go. The mood was very much one of let's just get in
there and do it. We'd leave it to the other blokes to run round stealing
tents and kit and generally square everything away. The camp would be sorted
out by the time we returned.
At 1800 we climbed into the vehicles and drove across to the Chinook.
It was all rather casual, with blokes from the squadron coming up and
saying, "What size are those new boots of yours--you won't be needing them
again, will you?" At our first location four or five of us had nicked some
foam mattresses, operating on the usual principle: if it's there and it's
shiny, take it. Now some of the other patrols started coming over and
saying, "You won't be needing it ever again, will you, so you can leave it
for us." They accompanied it with the motion of digging our graves.
Even the RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major) appeared. "Get in there, do
the business, and come back." That was the extent of his brief.
Bob suddenly remembered something. "I've fucked up," he said to a mate.
"I haven't completed the will form. My mum's name is down and I've signed
it-you'll have to dig in my kit for her address. Can you make sure it's all
sorted and handed in?"
I had a quick chat with the pilots. They'd been given sets of body
armor and were going through big decisions about what to do with it--whether
to sit on it so they didn't get their bollocks shot off, or actually wear it
so they didn't get shot in the chest. They came to the conclusion that it
was better to wear it on the chest, because they could live without their
balls.
"Not that he has any," said the copilot, "as you will soon find out."
It was still light and we could see the downwash of the rotors kicking
up a fierce sandstorm as the helicopter took off. When the dust settled, all
we could see was blokes looking skywards and waving.
We flew low-level across the desert. At first we watched the ground,
but there wasn't much to see-just a vast area of sand and a few hills.
Dotted across the desert there were peculiar circles that looked like corn
circles in reverse--crops growing up rather than pushed down. They were
horticultural sites that looked from the air like green sewage-treatment
plants, with large watering arms turning constantly to irrigate the crops.
They looked so out of place in the barren landscape.
It was last light and we were about 12 miles short of the border when
the pilot spoke into the headsets.
"Get the blokes up to the window and have a look at this."
Countless aircraft were in the sky a thousand feet above us.
Orchestrated by AWACS, they were flying with split second timing along a
complex network of air corridors to avoid collision. Every one of them had
its forward lights on. The sky was ablaze with light. It was like Star Wars,
all these different colored lights from different sizes of aircraft. We were
doing about 100 knots; they must have been flying at 500 or 600. I wondered
if they knew about us. I wondered if they were saying to themselves: let's
hope we can do a good job so these guys can get in and do their thing. I
doubted it.
Two fighters screamed down to check us out, then flew back up.
"We're 5Ks short of the border," the pilot said. "Watch what happens
now."
As he spoke, and as if a single fuse controlling the Blackpool
illuminations had blown, the sky was suddenly pitch-black. Every aircraft
had dowsed its lights at once.
We landed in inky blackness for a hot refuel, which meant staying on
board with the rotors moving. We were going to receive the final "go" or "no
go" here regarding the vital deconfliction, and as the ground crew loomed
out of the darkness, I watched anxiously for somebody to give an encouraging
signal. One of them looked at the pilot and revolved his hand: Turnaround.
Bastard!
Another bloke ran up to the pilot with a bit of paper and pushed it
through the window.
The pilot's voice came over our headsets a moment later: "It's a no go,
no go; we've got to go back."
Dinger was straight on the intercom. "Well, fuck it, let's get over the
border anyway, just to say we've been over there--come on, it's just a
couple of Ks away: it won't take long to get there and back. We need to get
over, just to stop the slagging when we return."
But that wasn't the way the pilot saw it. We stayed on the ground for
another twenty minutes while he did his checks and the refueling was
completed; then we lifted off and headed south. Wagons were waiting for us.
We unloaded all the kit and were taken to the half-squadron location, which
by this time had been moved to the other side of the airfield. People had
dug shell scrapes and covered them with ponchos and bits of board and
cardboard to keep out the wind. It looked like a dossers' camp, bodies in
little huddles everywhere, around hexy-block fires.
The patrol were in dark moods, not only because of the anticlimax of
not getting across the border, but also because we weren't sure what was
going to happen next. I was doubly unimpressed because I had given my
mattress away.
All during the day of the 20th we just hung loose, waiting for
something to happen, waiting for a slot.
We checked the kit a couple more times and tried to make ourselves a
bit of a home in case we had a long wait. We got some camouflage netting
up--not from the tactical point of view, because the airfield was in a
secure area--but just to keep the wind off and give us some shade during the
day. It gives you an illusion of protection to be sheltered under something.
Once we had made ourselves comfy, we screamed around the place in LSVs
(light strike vehicles) and pinkies seeing what we would nick. The place was
a kleptomaniac's dream.
We did some good exchanges with the Yanks. Our rations are far superior
to the American MREs (meals ready to eat), but theirs do contain some
pleasant items --like bags of M&M's and little bottles of Tabasco sauce to
add a little je the sais quoi to the beef and dumplings. Another fine bit of
Yank kit is the strong plastic spoon that comes with the MRE pack. You can
burn a little hole through the back of it, put some string through, and keep
it in your pocket: an excellent, almost perfect racing spoon.
Because our foam mattresses had been whisked away to a better world
during the abortive flight, we tried to get hold of some comfy US issue
cots. The Americans had kit coming out of their ears, and bless their cotton
socks, they'd happily swap you a cot for a couple of boxes of rations.
Little America was on the other side of the airfield. They had
everything from microwaves and doughnut machines to Bart Simpson videos
screening twenty four hours a day. And why not--the Yanks sure know how to
fight a stylish war. Schoolkids in the States were sending big boxes of
goodies to the soldiers: pictures from 6-year-olds of a good guy with the US
flag, and a bad guy with the Iraqi flag, and the world's supply of soap,
toothpaste, writing material, combs, and antiperspirant. They were just left
open on tables in the canteen for people to pick what they wanted.
The Yanks could not have made us more welcome, and we were straight in
there, drinking frothy cappuccino and having a quick root through. Needless
to say, we had most of it away.
Some of the characters were outrageous and great fun to talk to,
especially some of the American pilots who I took to be members of the
National Guard. They were all lawyers and sawmill managers in real life, big
old boys in their forties and fifties, covered in badges and smoking huge
cigars, flying their Thunderbolts and whooping "Yeah boy!" all over the sky.
For some of them, this was their third war. They were excellent people, and
they had amazing stories to tell. Listening to them was an education.
During the next two days we went over the plan again. Now that we had a
bit more time, was there anything we could improve on? We talked and talked,
but we kept it the same.
It was frustration time, just waiting, as if we were in racing blocks
and the starter had gone into a trance. I was looking forward to the relief
of actually being on the ground.
We had a chat with a Jaguar pilot whose aircraft had been stranded at
the airfield for several days. On his very first sortie he had had to abort
because of problems with a generator.
"I want to spend the rest of the war here," he said. "The slagging I'll
get when I fly back will be way out of control."
We felt quite sorry for him. We knew how he felt.
Finally, on the 21st, we got the okay to go in the following night.
On the morning of the 22nd we woke at first light. Straightaway Dinger
got a fag on.
Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I were all under one cam net, surrounded by
rations and all sorts of boxes and plastic bags. In the middle was a little
hexy-block fire for cooking.
Stan got a brew going from the comfort of his sleeping bag. Nobody
wanted to rise and shine because it was so bloody cold. We lay there
drinking tea, gob bing off, and eating chocolate from the rations. Our
beauty sleep had been ruined by another two Scud alerts during the night. We
were sleeping with most of our kit on anyway, but it was a major
embuggerance to have to pull on your boots, flak jacket, and helmet and leg
it down to the slit trenches. Both times We only had to wait ten minutes for
the all clear.
Dinger opened foil sachets of bangers and beans and got them on the go.
Three or four cups of tea and, in Dinger's case, three cigarettes later, we
tuned in to the World Service. Wherever you are in the world, you'll learn
what's going on from them before any other bugger tells you. We take small
shortwave radios with us on all operations and exercises anyway, because if
you're stuck in the middle of the jungle, the only link with the outside
world you ever get is the World Service. Everywhere you go, people are
always bent over their radios tuning in, because the frequencies change
depending on the time of day. We were going to take them out on this job as
well, because the chances were that it was the first we'd know that the war
had ended. Nobody would be able to tell us until we made com ms and that
could be the day after Saddam surrendered. We took the piss out of Dinger's
radio because it's held together with bits of tape and string. Everybody
else had a digital one, and Dinger still had his old steam-powered thing
that took an age to tune in.
We had heard rumors that there was going to be some mail in that day,
our first load since arriving in Saudi. It would be rather nice to hear from
home before we went off. I was in the process of buying a house with Jilly,
and I had to sign a form giving her power of attorney. I was hoping that was
going to come through; otherwise, there would be major dramas for her to
sort out if I got topped.
The pilot and copilot came over, and we had a final chat about stowing
the equipment. I went through the lost com ms routine and actions on contact
at the OOP again, to make doubly sure we were both clear in our minds.
We spoke to the two loadies, lads in their twenties who were obviously
great fans of Apocalypse Now, because the Chinook had guns hanging off it
all over the place. The only things missing were the tiger-head emblems on
their helmets and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" coming out of their
intercom speakers. For them, getting across the border was a once
in-a-lifetime opportunity. They were loving it.
The pilots knew of some more Roland positions and had worked out a
route around them, but from the way the loadies were talking you'd have
thought they actually wanted to be attacked. They were gagging to get in
amongst it. I imagined it would be a huge anticlimax for them if they
dropped us off and came back in one piece.
I checked my orders at a table on the other side of the airfield,
undistracted. Because the first infil had been aborted, I would have to
deliver an orders group all over again that afternoon--not in as much
detail, but going over the main points.
We waited for the elusive mail. The buzz finally went round that it had
arrived and was on the other side of the airfield about half a mile away. It
was 1730, just half an hour to go before moving off to the aircraft. Vince
and I got into one of the LSVs and screamed round and grabbed hold of the B
Squadron bag.
One of the blokes received his poll tax demand. Another was the lucky
recipient of an invitation to enter a
Reader's Digest draw. I was luckier. I got two letters. One was from my
mother, the first letter from either of my parents since I was maybe 17.
They didn't know I was in the Gulf, but it must have been obvious. I didn't
have time to read it. If you're in a rush, what you can do is slit the
letters open so that they appear to have been read, so as not to hurt
anybody's feelings if you don't return. I recognized an A4 envelope from
Jilly. Inside were some toffees, my favorite Pie 'n Mix from Woolies. Oddly
enough there were eight of them, one for each of us in the patrol. There was
also the power of attorney letter.
The Last Supper is quite a big thing before you go out on a job.
Everybody turns up and takes the piss.
"Next time I see you I'll be looking down as I'm filling you in,"
somebody said, going through the motion of shoveling earth onto your grave.
"Nice knowing you, wanker," somebody else said. "What sort of bike you
got at home then? Anyone here to witness he's going to give me his bike if
he gets topped?"
It was a very lighthearted atmosphere, and people were willing to help
out if they could in any preparation. At the same time, another lot of
"fresh" turned up. The regimental quartermaster sergeant had got his hands
on a consignment of chops, sausages, mushrooms, and all the other
ingredients of a good fry-up. It was fantastic scoff, but one unfortunate
outcome was that after being on rations for so long, it put us all in need
of an urgent shit.
5
The ground crew had been up all night re camouflaging the Chinook a
splashy desert pattern that drew wolf whistles and applause from the blokes
who'd come to see us off.
It was time for passing on last minute messages again. I saw my mate
Mick and said: "Any dramas, Eno has got the letters. Make sure you look
after the escape map because it's signed by the squadron. I don't want that
to go missing: it would be nice for Jilly."
I overheard Vince saying: "Any drama, it's down to you to make sure
Dee's sorted out."
Mick had a camera round his neck. "Do you want a picture?"
"Madness not to," I said.
We posed on the tailgate of the Chinook for the Bravo Two Zero team
photo.
The blokes were busy taking the piss out of the aircrew, especially the
loadies. One of them was a dead ringer for Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet,
even down to the 1980s sideboards. Two or three blokes from the squadron
were standing by a wagon doing the old shu-wap, shu-wap routine, singing
"You are gold.. .." The poor lad was getting well embarrassed.
Some blokes got together and-practiced doing the pallbearer bit,
humming the death march. Others did a takeoff of the Madness video "It must
be love," where the singer is standing over a grave and the undertaker's
jumping up and down and across measuring him.
Interspersed with the banter was the odd muttering of "See you soon"
and "Hope it all goes well."
The aircrew came round for a final quick chat in their body armor, and
we climbed aboard.
Nobody flies Club Class in a Chinook. The interior was spartan, a bare
hull with plastic coating over the frame. There were no seats, just nonslip
flooring to sit on. The deck was littered with sand and grease. A large
inboard tank had been fitted to allow us to carry extra fuel. The stink of
aviation fuel and engines was overpowering, even at the back near the ramp.
It was like sitting in an oven. The loadies kept the top half of the
tailgate down to circulate air.
The engines sparked up, coughing fearsome clouds of fumes to the rear.
From our position on the ramp we saw blokes dropping their kecks and mooning
in the heat haze, and the Spandau Ballet gang were giving it some again. As
the Chinook lifted, its downwash created a major sandstorm. By the time the
dust had settled we had reached a hundred feet, and soon all we could see
were the flashing headlights of the pinkies.
It was hot and I started to sweat and stink. I felt tired, mentally as
well as physically. So many things were running through my mind. The
infiltration worried me because we had no control over it: we'd just have to
sit there and hope for the best. I've never liked it when my life was in
somebody else's hands. There were Roland antiaircraft missiles along our
route, and the bigger the machine, the bigger the chance of getting shot
down. Chinooks are massive. There was also the added risk of getting hosed
down by our own aircraft, since we were going in with the cover of three air
raids.
I looked forward to getting on the ground, however. It felt good to be
in command of such a classic SAS task. Everybody hopes for a major war once
in his life, and this was mine, accompanied by a gang that the rest of the
squadron was already calling the Foreign Legion.
The berg ens were strapped down to stop them flying through the air and
landing on top of us if the pilot had to take evasive action or crashed.
Just before last light, the loadies cracked cyalume sticks and put them
around the kit so we could see where it was, mainly to prevent injury. The
sticks are like the ones kids buy at fun fairs--a plastic tube that you bend
to crack the glass phials inside and bring two chemicals together to make a
luminous mixture.
I put on a pair of headsets and talked to the pilot while the rest of
the blokes rooted through all the R.A.F kit, sorting out the crew's
sandwiches, chocolate, and bottles of mineral water.
We had a brief recap on the landing scenarios. If we came into a
contact as we landed, we should stay on the aircraft. If we were getting off
the aircraft, we should jump back on. But if the heli had already taken off
and we had a contact, the Simplex radio gave us about a range of a mile to
talk to him and summon him back.
"I'll just turn the aircraft and come screaming back in," he said, "and
you just get on it however you can, fuck all the kit."
The R.A.F are sometimes thought of as glorified taxi drivers, taking
you from point A to point B, but they're not: they're an integral part of
any operation. For a pilot to bring in a Chinook like that would be totally
outrageous. It's a big machine and an easy target, but he was willing to do
it. Either he had no idea what would be happening on the ground, or he was
blase because that was his job. He obviously knew what he was talking about,
so he was blase\ And if he was willing to do it, I wouldn't give a damn: I'd
jump back in.
As we were flying across Saudi, we started to appreciate the lie of the
ground. It looked like a brown billiard table. I'd been in the Middle East
lots of times, but I'd never seen anything like this.
"We're on Zanussi," Chris said into his headset, using the Regiment
term for somebody who's so spaced out and weird you can't get in touch with
him; he's on another planet.
And Zanussi was what this looked like--another world. Our map studies
told us the ground was like this all the way up. We were going to have
problems, but it was too late to do anything about it. We were committed.
Now and again there'd be a bit of chat on the headphones as the pilots
talked to AWACS. I loved watching the two lo adie warlords getting ready for
the Big One, checking their guns and hoping, no doubt, that they would get
shot at soon.
All the time, there was the deafening zsh, zsh, zsh of the rotor
blades. Not much was said between ourselves because of the noise. Everybody
was just pleased that they weren't rushing around any more, that we were
just lying around on the kit drinking water or pissing into one of the
bottles we'd just emptied. I was wondering if my life might have been
different if I'd stayed at school and got my CSEs. I might have been sitting
up in the cockpit now, chatting away, looking forward to a pie and a pint
later on.
The front lo adie door was half open, like a stable door. Wind rushed
through it, cool and refreshing. The straps hanging off the insides of the
Chinook flapped and slapped in the gale.
We got to the same refueling point as before. Again, the pilot kept the
rotors turning. An engine failure at this stage would mean canceling the
operation. We stayed on the aircraft, but the back lo adie was straight off
into the darkness. The Yanks, God bless 'em, have so much kit they just
throw it at you. He returned with Hershey bars, doughnuts, and cans of Coke.
For some unaccountable reason, the Yanks had also given him handfuls of
Biros and combs.
We waited and waited. Bob and I jumped down and went for a dump on the
side of the tarmac about 100 feet away. When we got back the lo adie
motioned for me to put on my headsets.
"We have the go," the pilot said, with just the faintest detectable
hint of excitement in his voice.
We started to lose altitude.
"We're over the border," the pilot said matter-of factly I passed the
message on. The blokes started putting their webbing on.
Now the aircrew really started earning their money. The banter stopped.
They were working with night viewing goggles, screaming along at 80 knots
just 70 feet off the ground. The rotor blades had a large diameter and we
knew from the map that we were flying in amongst a lot of power lines and
obstructions. One lo adie looked out the front at the forward blades, and
the other did the same at the rear. The copilot continuously monitored the
instruments; the pilot flew by visual and instructions received from the
rest of the crew.
The exchange between pilot, copilot, and loadies was nonstop as they
flew low between features. The tone of the voices was reassuring. Everything
was well rehearsed and well practiced. It was all so matter-of fact they
could have been in a simulator.
Copilot: "100 feet ... 80 feet ... 80 feet." Pilot: "Roger that, 80
feet." Copilot: "Power lines one mile." Pilot: "Roger, power lines one mile.
Pulling up." Copilot: "120 ... 150 ... 180 ... 200. That's half a mile. 500
feet now." Pilot: "500 feet. I have the lines visual .. . over we go-"
Loadie: "Clear." Pilot: "Okay, going lower." Copilot: "150 ... 120 ...
80 feet. 90 knots." Pilot: "Roger, staying at 80 feet, 90 knots." Copilot:
"Reentrant left, one mile." Pilot: "Roger that, I have a building to my
right." Loadie: "Roger that, building right." Copilot: "80 feet. 90 knots.
Power lines five miles." Pilot: "Roger that, five miles. Breaking right."
The loadies were looking at the ground below as well. Apart from watching
for obstructions, they checked for any "incoming."
Copilot: "80 feet. Metal road coming up, two miles." Pilot: "Roger
that. Metal road, two miles." Copilot: "One mile to go. That's 100 knots, 80
feet." At anything below 80 feet the blades would hit the ground as the
aircraft turned. Meanwhile, the load masters were looking for obstructions
and trying to ensure the blades had enough room to rotate as we hugged any
feature that would give the heli some protection.
Pilot: "Break my right now. That's nice." Copilot: "Right, that's 70
foot, 100 knots. 70 foot, 90 knots."
We had to cross a major obstruction that ran east west across this part
of the country.
Copilot: "Okay, that's the dual carriage way 5 miles."
Pilot: "Let's go up. 200 foot." Copilot: "Okay, got it visual."
Us passengers were just sitting there eating Hershey bars when all of a
sudden the front lo adie manned his guns. We grabbed our rifles and jumped
up as well. We didn't have a clue what was going on. There wouldn't be much
we could do because if you put the barrel of your gun out into the
slipstream, it's like putting your hand out of a car traveling at 100 mph.
We could have done jack shit really, but we felt we had to help him.
There wasn't actually a drama. It was just that we were getting near
the road and the lo adie was hoping that somebody was going to fire at us so
he could have a pop back.
It was the main carriage way between Baghdad and Jordan. We crossed it
at 500 feet. There were a lot of lights from convoys, but we were unlit and
they certainly couldn't hear us. It was our first sight of the enemy.
Sighting the road gave us a location fix because we knew exactly where
it was on the map. I was just trying to work out how much longer we'd be in
the air when I heard a Klaxon.
Dinger and I both had headsets on, and we looked at one another as we
listened to the crew.
"Break left! Break right!"
All hell was let loose. The helicopter did severe swings to the left
and right.
The loadies jumped around, torches on, pressing buttons all over the
place as chaff was fired off.
The pilots knew where most of the Rolands were, but they obviously
hadn't known about this one. The ground-to-air missile had "illuminated" us
and set off the inboard warnings. To complicate matters, we were going
fairly slowly when it locked on.
I saw the expression on Dinger's face in the glow of the cyalume
sticks. We'd been lulled into a false sense of security listening to all the
confident banter. Now I had the feeling you get when you're driving a car
and you glance down for a moment and look back up and find that the
situation ahead has suddenly changed and you have to jump on the brakes. I
didn't know if the missile had actually fired, or locked on, or what.
"Fuck this!" he said. "If it's going to happen, I don't fucking want to
hear it!"
Simultaneously, we threw our headsets on the floor. I got down and
crunched up into a ball, ready to accept the landing.
The pilot threw the aircraft all over the sky. The engines groaned and
strained as it did its gymnastics.
The Chinook leveled out and flew straight ahead. The look on the
loadies' faces told us that we'd got away with it.
I put the headphones back on and said, "What the fuck was that?"
"Probably a Roland, who knows? Not the best of things. It's all right
for you lot: we've got to come back this way."
I wanted to get off this aircraft and be back in control of my own
destiny. It's nice getting chauffeured to a place, but not like this. And it
wasn't over yet. If the Iraqis on the ground reported a lock-on, their
aircraft might come looking for us. Nobody knew if the Iraqis were getting
aircraft into the sky, or if they had night flying capability, but you have
to assume the worst scenario. I was sweating like a rapist.
Half an hour later, the pilot gave us a two-minute warning that we
would be landing. I held up two fingers to the blokes, the same warning as
for a parachute drop. The rear lo adie started to undo the straps that held
down the kit. The red glow from the penlight torch that he held in his mouth
made him look like the devil at work.
Four of us had 203s, the American M16 Armalite rifle with a grenade
launcher attached that fires a 40mm bomb that looks like a large, stubby
bullet; the others had Minimis, a light machine gun. For our purposes, the
Armalite is a superior weapon to the Army's new SA80. It's lighter and is
very easy to clean and maintain. It's a good, simple weapon that has been
around in different variants since Vietnam days. The Regiment tried SASOs in
jungle training when they came out, and found it not best suited to its
requirements. With the M16 everything's nice and clean; there are no little
bits and pieces sticking out. The safety catch is very simple and can be
operated with the thumb--with the SA80 you have to use your trigger finger,
which is madness. If you're in close country with the M16, you can flick the
safety catch off easily with your thumb, and your finger is still on the
trigger. What's more, if the safety catch will go to Automatic on your M16,
you know it's made ready: this means it is cocked, with a round in the
chamber. You see people patrolling with their thumbs checking the safety
catch every few minutes; the last thing they want is a negligent discharge
within earshot of the enemy.
The M16 has a quiet safety catch--another plus if you're
patrolling--and there are no parts to go rusty. If rifles were cars, instead
of going for a Ford Sierra 4x4 --good, reliable, tested, and enjoyed by the
people who drive them--in the SA80 the Army went for a Rolls-Royce. But at
the stage when it was first brought into service, it was still a prototype
Rolls-Royce, and there were plenty of teething problems. In my opinion the
one and only drawback with a 203 is that you can't put a bayonet on because
of the grenade launcher underneath.
We didn't have slings on the M16s. A sling means a rifle is going over
your shoulder: on operations, why would you want to have a weapon over the
shoulder rather than in your hands and ready to fire? When you patrol with a
weapon you always move with both hands on it and the butt in your shoulder.
What's the point of having it if you can't bring it to bear quickly?
I'm not interested in how or where a weapon is made, as long as it does
the job it needs to do and I know how to use it. As long as it fires
ammunition and you've got lots of it, that's all you should be concerned
about.
Weapons are only as good as their handlers, of course. There's a lot of
inbred rivalry between the blokes when it comes to live firing drills. All
our weapon training is live firing, and it has to be that way because only
then do you get a sense of realism and perspective. In a firefight, the
awesome noise will impair your ability to act if you're not well and truly
used to it. An Armalite sounds surprisingly tinny when it fires, and there's
not much kick. You tend to hear other people's weapons rather than your own.
When the 40mm bomb fires, you just hear a pop; there's no explosion or
recoil.
We had four Minimis, which are 5.56 light-support machine guns They can
take belted ammunition in disintegrating link in boxes of 200, or ordinary
magazines. The weapon is so light that it can be used in the attack like a
rifle as well as giving support fire, and it has a fearsome rate of fire. It
has a bipod to guarantee good, accurate automatic fire if needed. The
plastic prepacked boxes of ammo for the weapon are not its best design
feature. As you're patrolling, the box is across your body; it can bang
against you and fall off, but you just have to guard against it. Another
problem can be that the rounds are not completely packed in the boxes and
you get a rhythmic, banging noise, which is bad news at night as noise
travels more easily. Each man in the patrol also carried a disposable 66mm
rocket. American-made, the 66 is designed for infantry antitank use. It's
just over two foot long and consists of two tubes inside each other. You
pull the two apart and the inner tube contains the rocket, all ready to go.
As you pull it apart, the sights pop up.
You just fire the weapon and throw it away. It's good because it's
simple. The simpler something is, the more chance there is that it'll work.
The round has a shaped charge on the end, which is designed to punch through
armor. The fuse arms itself after about 30 feet; even if you just graze the
target, it blows up. The 66 doesn't explode in a big ball of fire as in the
movies. HE never does that unless there is a secondary explosion.
We carried white phos grenades as well as the ordinary L2 explosive
grenade. Phosphorus burns fiercely and lays down a rather good smokescreen
if you need time to get away.
Grenades no longer have the old pineapple shape that people tend to
think of. White phos is cylindrical, with the letters WP written across it.
The L2 is more egg shaped and consists of tightly wound wire around an
explosive charge. We splay the pins even more than they already are so that
it takes more pressure to extract them. We also put masking tape around the
grenade to hold the handle down as an extra precaution in case there's a
drama with the pin. White phos is not much used in training because it's so
dangerous. If you get it on you, you have to pour water very slowly from
your water bottle to stop it getting oxygen, then pick it off. If you're not
successful, it's not a nice way to die.
We had at least 10 magazines each, 12 40mm bombs, L2 and phos grenades,
and a 66. The four Minimi gunners had more than 600 rounds each, plus 6
loaded mags. For an 8-man patrol it was a fearsome amount of firepower.
Those of us with 203s checked there was a bomb loaded. Bob was checking
that the belts of ammunition for his Minimi weren't kinked--the secret of
belt-fed ammunition is that it goes into the weapon smoothly. If it's
twisted, you'll get a stoppage. I saw Vince checking the box of ammunition
that clips on to the side of the weapon to make sure it was not going to
fall off. His gang were going to provide all-round cover by moving straight
out to points just beyond the wash of the aircraft. As they were running
out, the rest of us would be throwing the kit off the tailgate as fast as we
could.
Stan checked his white phos to make sure it was easy to get at.
Everybody was mentally adjusting himself ready to go. Blokes jumped up and
down to check that everything was comfy. You do simple things like undo your
trousers, pull them up, ruck everything in, redo them, tighten your belt,
make sure your belt kit is comfortable, make sure your pouches and buttons
are done up. Then you check and recheck that you've got everything and
haven't left anything on the floor.
I could tell by the grind of the blades that the heli was maneuvering
close to the ground. The tailgate started to lower. I peered out. You're
incredibly vulnerable during the landing. The enemy could be firing at the
aircraft, but because of the engine noise you wouldn't know until you were
on the ground. The ramp came down more. The landscape was a black-and-white
negative under the quarter moon. We were in a small wadi with a 13-foot rise
either side. Clouds of dust flew up, and Vince and his gang moved onto the
tailgate, weapons at the ready. There was a strong smell of fuel. The noise
was deafening.
The aircraft was still a few feet off the ground when they jumped. If
there was a contact, we wouldn't know about it until we saw them jumping
straight back on.
The pilot collapsed the Chinook the last couple of feet onto the
ground. We hurled the kit, and Stan, Dinger, and Mark jumped after it. I
stayed on board while the lo adie went across the floor with a cyalume stick
in his hand in a last-minute sweep. The noise of the rotors increased, and I
felt the heli lift its weight off the undercarriage. I waited. It's always
worth the extra ten seconds it takes to make sure, rather than discover when
the heli has gone that you've only picked up half the equipment. The
balance, as ever, is between speed and doing the job correctly.
The lo adie gave the thumbs up and said something into his headset. The
aircraft started to lift and I jumped. I hit the ground and looked up. The
heli was climbing fast with the ramp still closing. Within seconds it was
gone. It was 2100 and we were on our own.
We were on a dried-up riverbed. To the east was flatness and dark. To
the west, the same.
The night sky was crystal clear, and all the stars were out. It was
absolutely beautiful. I could see my breath. It was colder than we had been
used to. There was a definite chill in the air. Sweat ran down the side of
my face, and I started to shiver.
Eyes take a long time to adjust in darkness. The cones in your eyes
enable you to see in the daytime, giving color and perception. But they're
no good at night. What takes over then are the rods on the edge of your
irises. They are angled at 45 degrees because of the convex shape of the
eye, so if you look straight at something at night you don't really see it:
it's a haze. You have to look above it or around it so you can line up these
rods, which then will give you a picture. It takes forty minutes or so for
them to become fully effective, but you start to see better after five. And
what you see when you land and what you see those five minutes later are two
very different things.
Vince with his hoods was still out giving cover. They had gone out
about 30 meters to the edge of the rise of the wadi and were looking over.
We moved off to the side to make a more secure area. It took each of us two
trips to ferry the berg ens jerricans, and sandbags.
Mark got out Magellan and took a fix. He squinted at it with one eye.
Even small amounts of light can wreck your night vision, and the process
must start all over again. If you have to look at something, you close the
eye that you aim with, the "master eye," and look with the other. Therefore
you can still have 50 percent night vision, and it's in the eye that does
the business.
We lay in all-round defense, covering the whole 360degree arc. We did
nothing, absolutely nothing, for the next ten minutes. You've come off a
noisy, smelly aircraft, and there's been a frenzy of activity. You have to
give your body a chance to tune in to your new environment. You have to
adjust to the sounds and smells and sights, and changes in climate and
terrain. When you're tracking people in the jungle you do the same: you stop
every so often and look and listen. It happens in ordinary life, too. You
feel more at ease in a strange house after you've been in it a little while.
People indigenous to an area can sense instinctively if the mood is ugly and
there's going to be trouble; a tourist will bumble straight into it.
We needed to confirm our position because there's often a difference
between where you want to be and where the R.A.F put you. Once you know
where you are, you make sure that everybody else in the patrol knows.
Passage of information is vital; it's no good just the leader having it. We
were in fact where we wanted to be, which was a shame, because now we
couldn't slag the R.A.F when we got back.
The ground was featureless. It was hard bedrock with about two inches
of rubbly shale over the top. It looked alien and desolate, like the set of
Dr. Who. We could have been on the moon. I'd been in the Middle East many
times on different tasks, and I thought I was familiar with the ground, but
this was new to me. My ears strained as a dog barked in the distance.
We were very isolated, but we were a big gang, we had more weapons and
ammunition than you could shake a stick at, and we were doing what we were
paid to do.
Bombing raids were going on about 10-20 miles to our east and our
northeast. I saw tracer going up and flashes on the horizon, and seconds
later I heard the muffled sound of explosions.
Silhouetted in one of the flashes I saw a plantation about a mile to
our east. It shouldn't have been there, but it was--trees, a water tower, a
building. Now I knew where the barking had come from. More dogs sparked up.
They would have heard the Chinook, but as far as any population were
concerned a helicopter's a helicopter. Problems would only come if there
were troops stationed there.
I worried about how good the rest of our information was. But at the
end of the day we were there now: there wasn't a lot we could do about it.
We lay waiting for signs of cars starting up but nothing happened. I looked
beyond the plantation. I seemed to be staring into infinity.
I watched the tracer going up. I couldn't see any aircraft, but it was
a wonderful, comforting feeling all the same. I had the feeling they were
doing it just for us.
"Fuck it, let's get on with it," Mark said quietly.
I got to my feet, and suddenly, to the west, the earth erupted with
noise and there was a blinding light in the sky.
"Fucking hell, what's that?" Mark whispered.
"Helicopter!"
Where it had sprung from I didn't have a clue. All I knew was that we'd
just been on the ground ten minutes and were about to have a major drama.
There was no way the heli could be one of ours. For a start, it wouldn't
have had its searchlight on like that. Whoever it belonged to, it looked as
if it was coming straight towards us.
Jesus, how could the Iraqis be on to us so quickly?
Could they have been tracking the Chinook ever since we entered their
airspace?
The light seemed to keep coming and coming. Then I realized it wasn't
coming towards us but going upwards. The bright light wasn't a searchlight;
it was a fireball.
"Scud!" I whispered.
I could hear the sighs of relief.
It was the first one any of us had seen being launched, and now that we
knew what it was, it looked just like an Apollo moon shot, a big ball of
exhaust flames about 6 miles away, burning straight up into the air until it
finally disappeared into the darkness.
"Scud alley," "Scud triangle," both these terms had been used by the
media, and now here we were, right in the middle of it.
Once everything had settled down, I went up and whispered in Vince's
ear for him to call the rest of the guns in. There was no running or
rushing. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, movement, and noise are some of
the things that will always give you away. Slow movement doesn't generate
noise or catch the eye so easily, which is why we patrol so slowly. Plus, if
you run and fall over and injure yourself, you'll screw everybody up.
I told them exactly where we were, and confirmed which way we would be
going, and confirmed the RV that was forward of us. So if there was any
major drama between where we were now and our proposed cache area and we got
split up, everybody knew that for the next twenty-four hours there was a
meeting place already set up. They would go north, eventually hit a half
buried petroleum pipeline and follow that till they hit a major ridgeline,
and we'd meet there. It had to be that vague because anything more precise
would mean nothing to a bloke in the middle of the desert with just a map
and compass: all the map shows is rock. After that, and for the next
twenty-four hours, the next RV would be back at the point of the landing
site.
Now we had to patrol up to the proposed cache area. We did it in a
shuttle, as we had practiced, four blokes ferrying the kit, the other four
giving protection, then swapping over. Because we were patrolling,
everything had to be done tactically: we'd stop, check the ground ahead, and
every couple of miles, when we stopped for a rest, the 4-man protection
would go out; then we'd check the kit to make sure that we hadn't dropped
anything, that all pouches were still done up, and none of the sandbags had
split.
The water was the worst because it was like carrying the world's
heaviest suitcase in one hand. I tried mine on the top of my bergen until
the strain on my back got too outrageous. But then, nobody said it would be
easy.
Moving as quickly but as tactically as we could, we had to get to the
MSR well before first light to give us time to find somewhere to cache the
kit and hide up. In my orders I'd put a cutoff time of 0400 the next
morning; even if we hadn't reached the proposed cache area by then, we'd
have to start finding an LUP. That would give us an hour and a half of
darkness to work in. The ground worried me. If it carried on like this it
was going to be too flat and too hard to hide up in. If we had to lie in
open ground in broad daylight we'd stick out like the balls on a bulldog.
We navigated by bearings, time, and distance. We had Magellan, but it
was only an aid. Patrolling as we were was not a good time to use it. Apart
from the fact that it could not be depended upon, the machine emitted
telltale light, and it would not be tactical anyway for the operator to be
looking at a machine rather than the ground.
Every half hour or so we fixed a new ERV emergency rendezvous), a point
on the ground where we could regroup if we had a contact and had to withdraw
swiftly. If we came to a prominent feature like a pile of old burial ruins,
the lead man would indicate it as the new ERV by a circular motion of the
hand and this would be passed down the patrol.
All the time, you keep making appreciations. You've got to say to
yourself: What if? What happens if we get an attack from the front? Or from
the left? Where will I go for cover? Is this a good ambush point? Where was
the last emergency RV? Who have I got in front of me? Who have I got behind
me? You have to check all the time that you're not losing anyone. And you
always have to cover your arcs and be conscious of the noise you're making.
As you patrol you start to get hot. When you stop you get cold again.
You're sitting there with all the coldness down your back and under your
armpits, and your face starts to feel it. The back of your hair starts to
get that horrible, uncomfortable, sticky feeling, and the clothing around
your belt is soaked. Then you move off again because you want to be warm.
You don't want to stop for too long because you don't want to freeze. You've
been like this plenty of times before, and you know that you'll dry out
eventually, but that doesn't make it any less of a pain in the arse.
We finally got into the area of the bend of the MSR at about 0445. We
couldn't see any lights or vehicles in the pitch-black. We cached the
equipment, and Vince's gang stayed to protect it. The rest of us were going
to go forward for a recce to find a place to hide.
"My cutoff time to be back here will be 0545," I whispered to Vince, my
mouth right against his ear so that the sound didn't carry.
If we failed to return but they knew there hadn't been a contact
because they hadn't heard any noise, we would meet at the patrol RV near the
oil pipeline. If we weren't at the patrol RV by the twenty-four-hour cutoff
time, Vince was then to move back to the RV at the heli-landing site, then
wait a further twenty-four hours before requesting an exfil. If we weren't
there, he'd just have to get on the helicopter and go. They should also move
back to the helicopter RV if they heard a contact but it wasn't close enough
for them to give support.
I went through the actions on return. "I will come in the same
direction as I leave," I whispered to Vince, "and as I come in I'll approach
just on my own with my weapon in my right arm and walk in as a crucifix."
I would then come forward and confirm with the stag and go back and
bring the other three in. I would do all this on my own because as well as
confirming that it was me, I would want to confirm that it was safe to come
in--they might have been bumped, and the enemy could be waiting in ambush.
The other three would be out supporting, so if there was any drama, they
would lay down fire and I could withdraw to them.
We set out on our recce patrol, and after about half an hour we found a
good site for the LUP--a watershed where flash floods over thousands of
years had carved a small reentrant about 15 feet high into the rock so that
there was an overhang. We would be in dead ground, covered from view and
with limited cover from fire. I couldn't believe our luck. We patrolled
straight back to fetch the others.
We moved all the equipment into the LUP. The cave was divided by a
large rock, so we centralized the equipment and had the two gangs either
side. At last I felt secure, even though the problem with finding an LUP at
night is that in the morning everything can look different. You can find
that what you thought was the perfect LUP is smack in the middle of a
housing estate.
Now was another period of stop, settle down, be quiet, listen to what's
going on, tune in to the new environment. The ground did not look so alien
now, and we were feeling more confident.
It was time to get some sleep. There's an army saying, "Whenever
there's a lull in the battle, get your head down," and it's true. You've got
to sleep whenever you can, because you never know when you're going to get
the opportunity again.
There were two men on stag, changing every two hours. They had to look
and listen. If anything came towards us, it was their job to warn us and get
us stood to. The rest of us slept covering our arcs, so we'd just have to
roll over and start firing.
More jets went over that night. We saw flak going up and Baghdad
erupting to our half right about 100 miles away. There were no incidents on
the ground.
Just as it was coming up to first light, two of us moved out of the LUP
position and checked that we hadn't left footprints on our way in to the
LUP, dropped any kit, disturbed anything, or left any other "sign" to betray
us. You must assume that everybody is better at everything than
you--including tracking-and make your plans accordingly.
We arranged our claymores so that both men on stag could see them and
their field of view, and be ready to detonate them with hand-held
"clackers." If the stag saw or heard movement, he'd wake everybody else.
There wouldn't be hectic running around, we'd just stand to. Everything is
always done at a slow pace. You'd know if it had to be rushed because you'd
hear the stag firing. If somebody was in a position to be hit with a
claymore, we were in a position to be compromised, so it was down to the
sentry whether or not he pushed the clackers. If they came as close as the
kill zone of the claymores, which were positioned as a protection of last
resort, we'd just have to initiate the contact. But still the best weapon we
had was concealment.
I went up onto the dead ground to double-check. Looking north towards
the MSR, I saw a flat area of 2000 feet, then a slight rise of about 15
feet, and then, another 1300 feet away, a plantation. Looking east and west,
the ground was flat as far as the horizon. South, to my rear, I saw another
plantation about 1500 meters away, with a water tower and buildings.
According to the map and Bert's briefing these locations shouldn't have been
there, but they were, and they were far too close for comfort.
I heard vehicles moving along the as yet unconfirmed MSR, but that was
of no concern. The only way anybody could see us was if they were on the
opposite lip looking down. No one on our side of the wadi could see us
because of the overhang. They could only see us if we could see them.
I went down and briefed everybody on what was above us. Only one man
was needed on stag because from his vantage point he could look down the
wadi as well as up on the lip. He had his back to us as I did the briefing,
covering his arcs. I described what I'd seen on the high ground and went
through our actions on if we had a contact during the day.
It was time to transmit the Sit Rep (situation report) to the FOB.
Until we did, nobody knew where we were or what state we were in. On this
task we would try to send a Sit Rep every day, telling them where we were,
everything we had learned about the enemy in the area or done with them, our
future intentions, and any other information. They would come back to us
with instructions.
As I wrote it out, Legs prepared the radio. He encoded the message and
typed it in ready for transmission. The patrol radio would transmit in a
single, very short burst that was virtually undetectable by the enemy. The
burst would bounce off the ionosphere, and we would wait for some kind of an
acknowledgment.
We got jack shit.
Legs tried again and again, but nothing happened. It was annoying but
not desperate, because we had a lost com ms procedure. The following night,
we'd simply go back to the landing site and RV with a heli at 0400 to
exchange the radios.
For the rest of that day we tried different antennas-everything from
sloping wire to half-wave dipole. All of us were signals trained and we all
had a go, but without success.
We each did two hours' stag, and half an hour before last light we
stood to. The ideal conditions for an attack are just before last light and
just before first light, so it is an SOP that everybody is awake at those
times and everything is packed away ready to go. We got into the fire
position with our weapons and prepared our 66s, removing the top cover and
opening up the tube so it was ready to fire. Once last light had come, we
closed everything up again and got ready for our recce patrol.
I left with my gang at 2100. Our cutoff time was to be 0500. If we
weren't back by then, it would be because we'd had a drama--we'd got lost,
got an injury, or had a contact, which Vince's lot should hear. If they
didn't hear a contact, they were to wait at the LUP until 2100 the following
night. If we weren't back by then, they were to move to the heli RV. If
there was a contact, they were to move back to the heli RV that night, and
we'd make our way back there as best we could, to get there for the
following 0400 pickup.
Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I climbed over the lip of the wadi in total
blackness. The task was to confirm the position of the Main Supply Route and
to locate the landline. It's no good just sitting there on top of what you
think is your objective unless you have checked. One mile further on for all
we knew, there could be the proper MSR, so it had to be physically checked.
We would patrol in an anticlockwise direction, generally heading north,
using the lie of the ground, to see if we hit anything else which resembled
the MSR.
First, we needed to locate a marker that would guide us back to the LUP
if we got lost. We would take a bearing due north until we hit the other
side of the road, where we'd try to find a rock or some other feature. Then
if we did get lost, we'd know that all we'd have to do was go along the high
ground, find the marker, and move due south back onto the watershed.
It was going to be difficult to map-read because there were no definite
features. In most countries there's high ground that you can take reference
points off, there are roads, or there are markers, and it's all quite easy.
In the jungle, too, it's simple, because you've got lots of rivers and you
can use contour lines. But here in the middle of the desert there was
absolutely bugger all, so it was all down to bearings and pacing again,
backed up by Magellan.
We found a suitable marker, a large rock, and started heading west on
our anticlockwise loop. Within minutes we spotted our first location of the
night and immediately heard a dog. Bedu throw their hand in at night; when
the sun's down, they go to bed. So if a dog barks, they know there must be
something afoot. Within seconds, this one had been joined by two others.
I had been the first to hear the low growling. It reminded me of
patrolling in Northern Ireland. You stop and assess what's happening. Nine
times out of ten you're intruding on a dog's territory, and if you back off,
sit down, and just wait for everything to settle down, it will. Our problem
was that we had to recce the location properly. The dogs could be part of a
Scud site for all we knew.
As we sat down we pulled our fighting knives from their sheaths. They
would be called upon to do the business if the dogs came to investigate and
either started barking in earnest or decided to attack. Either way, we'd
kill them. We'd take the bodies with us, so that in the morning the owners
would assume that their animals had run away or wandered off. They would
find it strange, but that would be the best we could make of a bad
situation.
We listened, waiting for lights as people came to see what the dogs
were barking at. Nothing happened. We started to box around the position,
circumnavigating to see if we could get in another way to confirm what it
was. We got around the other side and found it was just some local
population. There were tents, mud huts, Land Cruisers, and a hash mash of
other vehicles, but no military indication. We got a fix on it with Magellan
so that when we returned to the LUP we could inform the others, then headed
off northwest using the ground. We wanted to avoid until later the
plantation that we knew to be to our north.
I was leading when I saw something ahead. I stopped, looked, listened,
then slowly moved closer.
Four tents and vehicles were parked next to two S60 antiaircraft guns,
indicating a setup of about platoon strength. All was quiet, and there
didn't seem to be any stags. Mark and I moved slowly forward. Again, we
stopped, looked, listened. We didn't want to get right on top of the
position, just close enough to learn as much about it as we could. Nobody
was sleeping on the guns or in the vehicles. The whole platoon must have
been in the tents. We heard men coughing. The location wasn't an immediate
danger to us, but what worried me was that antiaircraft guns are sited to
guard something. If it was just the MSR that would be no problem. The danger
was that it could be part of an armored battle group or whatever. Mark fixed
the position with Magellan, and we headed north.
We went for 2 miles without encountering anything, and came to the
conclusion that what we had crossed earlier must indeed have been the MSR.
Magellan gave our LUP position as a half mile north of where the map said
the MSR was, which was nothing to worry about. The map stated that roads,
pylons, and pipelines were only of approximate alignment.
We now knew for sure that we had correctly found the bend in the MSR,
but unfortunately we also knew that the area was full of population: we had
plantations north and south of us, the civilians further down the road, and
an S60 site to the northwest of our LUP. From a tactical point of view, we
might as well have sited our LUP in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Still,
nobody said it would be easy.
We moved back to look around the buildings at the plantation to the
north of the LUPI had planned to look at this last as it was the most
dangerous location we knew about prior to the recce. We had a bit of a mince
around the plantation and found that it consisted of just a water tower and
an unoccupied building that sounded as if it housed an irrigation pump.
There were no vehicles, no lights, no signs of life, so we were fairly
pleased. It was clearly something that was tended rather than lived around.
As we moved back to the LUP, we witnessed another Scud launch to our
northwest, about 3 miles away. We seemed to be in the middle of a mega
launch area. We were going to have a fluffy old time of it. Again, we got a
fix.
We patrolled back towards the LUP, found the marker, and walked due
south towards the wadi. I approached, arms out in the crucifix position, as
I came up to the lip of the watershed.
Bob was on stag. I stood there and waited for him to come up. He
grinned at me, and I went back and got the rest of the blokes. I checked my
watch. The patrol had lasted five hours.
It wasn't worth briefing the blokes at this moment because those not on
stag had got their heads down, and to brief everybody at night just
generates noise. It was important, however, that everybody knew what we had
seen. Everything we had done and seen, everybody else had to know about. I
decided to wait until first light.
The stag stood us to, and we covered our arcs as first light came.
After that, and before I did the brief, I wanted to check the dead ground
again, even though we'd covered it last night. I knew we were definitely on
the MSR, but I wanted to look for any form of identification which would
give us the landlines. It was also a personal thing; I wanted to check that
there had been no changes above us. Shielded from sound by the walls of the
cave, we could have sat there with Genesis giving an open-air concert and we
wouldn't have heard a thing.
Chris covered me while I scrambled up the rocks and peered over the
brim. It was the last time I'd risk doing this in daylight.
I looked northeast and there, just on the far edge of the MSR, were
another two S60s. They must have arrived during the night. I could see two
wagons, tents, blokes stretching and coughing--all just 1000 feet from our
position. I couldn't believe it. This was getting unreal. Our recce patrol
must have missed them by about 150 feet. I came down and told Chris, then
went to brief the rest of the patrol. Mark went up and had a quick squint to
confirm that I wasn't hallucinating.
I was not really impressed by this development. It was quite scary
stuff, because these characters were right on top of us. They were going to
inhibit us badly.
I spread out the map and showed all the locations we had
discovered--including the new S60 sites. We spent the rest of the day trying
to transmit our Sit Rep again. The new S60s were obviously there to protect
the MSR. There was no reason, however, why they should send out clearing
patrols. They were in their own country and they had mutual support. We
reassured ourselves that we could only be compromised from the opposite lip,
and even then only if someone was literally standing on it, looking down.
Again we all had a go with the radio, but to no avail. Our lost com ms
contingency would have come into effect by now, and the helicopter would
have been briefed to meet us the following morning at 0400.
There was no concern. We were in cover, and we were an 8-man fighting
patrol. When we met the aircraft we would get a one-for-one exchange, or get
on the aircraft and relocate.
In my mind I ran through the heli RV procedure again. The pilot would
be coming in on NVG (night viewing goggles), watching for a signal from my
infrared torch. I would flash the letter Bravo as a recognition signal. He
would land 15 feet to my right, using the light as his reference point. The
load master door was just behind the pilot, and all I would have to do was
walk up to it, put the radio in, and receive the new radio that was handed
to me. If there was any message for us, he would grab hold of my arm and
hand me the written message. Or, if a longer message was involved, the ramp
would come down and the lo adie would come and drag me round to the back.
The rest of the patrol would be out in all-round defense. If I had to go and
get them in, they knew the drills. If I wanted to get us relocated, I would
grab hold of the lo adie and point to the rear of the ramp. The ramp would
then come down, and we'd all get on.
And that was the plan. No drama. We would move back that night and
relocate.
6
We'd been listening to vehicles bumbling up and down the MSR all day.
They posed no threat. Around mid-afternoon, however, we heard a young voice
shout from no more than 150 feet away. The child hollered and yelled again;
then we heard the clatter of goats and the tinkle of a bell.
It wasn't a problem. We couldn't be compromised unless we could see the
person on the other side of the lip. There was no other way that we could be
seen. I felt confident.
The goats came closer. We were on hard routine, and everybody had their
belt kit on and their weapons in their hands. It wasn't as if we'd been
startled in our sleeping bags or caught sunbathing. Just the same, I felt my
thumb creep towards the safety catch of my 203.
The bell tinkled right above us. I looked up just as the head of a goat
appeared on the other side. I felt my jaw tighten with apprehension.
Everybody was rock still. Only our eyes were moving.
More goats wandered onto the lip. Was the herder going to follow them?
The top of a young human head bobbed into view. It stopped and
swiveled. Then it came forward. I saw the profile of a small brown face. The
boy seemed preoccupied with something behind him. He was half looking over
his shoulder as he shuffled forwards. His neck and shoulders came into view,
then his chest. He can't have been more than a 3 feet from the edge of the
lip. He swung his head from side to side, shouting at the goats and hitting
them with a long stick.
I silently shouted at him not to look down.
We still had a chance, as long as he kept looking the other way.
Please, no eye-to-eye, just look at what you're doing .. .
He turned his head and surveyed the scene.
I slowly mouthed the words: Fuck .. . off!
He looked down.
Bastard! Shit!
Our eyes met and held. I'd never seen such a look of astonishment in a
child's eyes.
Now what? He was rooted to the spot. The options raced through my mind.
Do we top him? Too much noise. Anyway, what was the point? I wouldn't
want that on my conscience for the rest of my life. Shit, I could have been
an Iraqi behind the lines in Britain, and that could have been Katie up
there.
The boy started to run. My eyes followed him, and I made my move. Mark
and Vince, too, were scrambling like men possessed in an attempt to cut him
off. Just to get him, that had to be the first priority. We could decide
later what to do with him--to tie him up and stuff his gob with chocolate,
or whatever. But we could only go so far without exposing ourselves to the
S60 sites, and the child had too much of a head start. He was gone, fucking
gone, hollering like a lunatic, running towards the guns.
He could do a number of things. He might not tell anybody because it
would get him into trouble-maybe he shouldn't have been in the area. He
might tell his family or friends, but only when he got home later. Or he
might keep running and shouting all the way to the guns. I had to assume the
worst. So what? They might not believe him. They might come and see for
themselves. Or they might wait for reinforcements. I had to take it that
they would inform others and then come after us. So what? If they discovered
us, there would be a contact before dark. If they didn't discover