Энди МакНаб. Браво два-ноль (engl)

     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
     CRISIS FOUR
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     ANDY MCNAB
     DCMMM



     BRAVO TWO
     ISLAND  BOOKS  Published  by  Dell  Publishing  a  division  of  Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036
     If you purchased this book without  a  cover  you should  be aware that
this  book  is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to
the publisher and  neither  the  author  nor the publisher has received  any
payment for this "stripped book."
     Copyright 1993 by Andy McNab
     All  rights reserved.  No  part  of this  book  may  be  reproduced  or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without the  written permission of the Publisher,  except where permitted by
law.  For  information  address:  Bantam  Press,  a  division  of Transworld
Publishers Lid." London, England.
     The  trademark  Dell is  registered in  the  U.S. Patent and  Trademark
Office.
     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