Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines Page 6

  As they would be here for five days, they dug a large, deep, rectangular OP with one narrow end as the rest bay, the other, facing the MSR, for the observers and sentry, and a kit-well in the middle, holding weapons, ammunition, radio equipment, spare batteries, water cans and dry food. The OP was covered in canvas, which in turn was camouflaged with sand and gravel taken from the surrounding area, and the observation bay was screened by black hessian and contained a black-painted telescope on a tripod, as well as binoculars, night-vision aids, a camera, spare film, aerial photos previously taken by reconnaissance planes, codes and ciphers for radio transmissions, and logbooks and maps.

  The weather in that area was exceptionally harsh, much colder than expected, and before the night was over they found themselves working in a dense cloud of freezing fog. By the time a blood-red sun rose over the flat horizon, bringing with it the heat, they all realized that they were in for extremes of hot and cold, with the accompanying threat of sunstroke or dehydration in the daylight, and hypothermia in the damp, freezing night.

  Nevertheless the OP was completed just before full daylight came, with the spoil removed and scattered over the ground a good distance away. The vehicles were then covered in camouflage nets with hessian stitched in to keep out the sunlight.

  Though they all had water bottles, the men knew the water would not last long, so while Danny and Geordie kept watch for enemy activity and the others sorted out the equipment in the OP, Jock expertly constructed a desert still.

  After choosing the nearby spot where water would be most likely to collect, Jock dug a hole one metre deep and two metres wide, then filled it with vegetation soaked in his own urine. He placed a metal container in the centre, covered it with plastic sheeting with a rough undersurface, cut a hole in it and slid a drinking tube through the hole, leaving one end inside the container, the other extending out to the side. The sheeting was held down by stones placed around its circumference, with another couple of stones in the centre to depress the covering directly over the container. This simple device would provide up to a litre of drinking water every twenty-four hours by collecting the condensation that would form beneath the plastic and drip into the container.

  ‘I’m not sure I can drink this,’ Geordie said, ‘knowing that the condensation was caused by your piss.’

  ‘Right,’ Paddy agreed. ‘When we think of where that dick of yours has been, we want to know what your piss is like. These days a man can get AIDS just by breathing the air, so I think the water made from your condensation could be as deadly as cyanide.’

  ‘You don’t want to drink my water,’ Jock replied, ‘then don’t drink my water. Who’s inviting you, anyway?’

  As for their own waste, the men excreted or urinated well away from the OP and either buried it or, in the latter case, let the ground soak it up.

  ‘Personally,’ Geordie said, ‘I’m used to having a bog indoors, but Sergeant Winston, whose ancestors were not like yours and mine, probably thinks the cool breeze on his bare arse is a natural laxative.’

  ‘At least it comes out of my arse,’ Andrew replied without a pause, ‘whereas with you, being a miraculous being, it comes out the top end.’

  ‘Complete with lots of hot air,’ Paddy added. ‘Known as farting and wind.’

  ‘In Newcastle they think that’s civilized conversation,’ ‘Johnny Boy’ Willoughby butted in, getting the measure of the company he was keeping and revelling in it. ‘But up there they would, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Andrew said.

  When everything was completed and they had settled down to their surveillance – some on guard, some on watch, Hailsham and Ricketts planning their raids on the likely Scud bunkers marked on their maps – Hailsham decided to send the half-crazy young Johnny Boy off on his Honda for eyeball reconnaissance of certain areas.

  ‘You will also report on the movements of any military traffic across the desert or along the MSRs,’ Hailsham said. ‘Do you think you can do that, Trooper?’

  ‘Yes, boss!’ Johnny Boy snapped. Blond-haired, blue-eyed and handsome, he had nerves of steel and was as good as Niki Lauda on his motorbike, though more reckless. ‘Scud bunkers, mobile units and any other military traffic on the desert or along the MSRs – you want it, you’ve got it, boss.’

  ‘No derring-do,’ Ricketts warned him. ‘No personally favoured adventures. You stay out of sight where it’s possible to do so, and you don’t fire a shot unless fired upon. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, boss! Absolutely!’

  ‘We’ve heard stories about you, Trooper.’

  ‘Fame at last, boss! What stories?’

  ‘Reckless behaviour,’ Hailsham told him. ‘Courting danger for the hell of it. An irresistible impulse to be seen by the enemy and try to play cat-and-mouse with them. Any truth in it, Trooper?’

  ‘Bloody scandalous, boss. Careless tongues and idle gossip. Since I’m usually out there on my own, how would anyone know that? No, boss, I’m Al on this.’

  ‘You have the benefit of the doubt,’ Ricketts said, ‘so don’t let us down, Trooper. On your way and good luck.’

  ‘Aye, aye, boss,’ Johnny Boy said.

  He left wearing his camouflaged SAS beret without the winged-dagger badge, his shemagh to cover his mouth and nose, and tinted spectacles to protect his eyes. An M16 rifle was slung across his back, a Browning 9mm high-power handgun sat on his hip, a leather-cased Fairburn-Sykes commando knife had been slipped down the inside of one of his desert boots, and he had carrier bags on either side of his motorbike. Taking off in a cloud of sand, he soon became a mere cloud in the distance and eventually disappeared.

  As the desert was vast and relatively featureless, Johnny Boy would navigate generally with the sun compass mounted horizontally on the handlebars of his motorbike. For more precise positioning, particularly when calling in enemy positions to the OP, he would rely on the portable GPS receiver he had brought along in one of the carrier bags. By comparing coded signals from various satellites in fixed orbits around the earth, the GPS could calculate its position to within fifteen metres, but its complex electronics could fail, which is why the less accurate, though more reliable sun compass was always carried as well.

  Using short-burst transmissions on the PRC 319, Ricketts was able to keep in touch with the other patrols, first learning that they were all OK and in their OP positions, then gradually building up a coherent picture of what they were doing and finding. Some had broken the rule of not travelling during the day and already taken out Scud bunkers and mobile launchers, either by calling down air strikes or, in the case of mobile launchers, doing it themselves before the launchers moved on.

  ‘It was too damned frustrating,’ Hailsham informed Ricketts by radio, ‘to see the mobile launchers passing by untouched or the bunkers right in front of us, undefended. Time’s too short for considerations of safety. We’ve got to take them all out.’

  By the time Johnny Boy returned, in the late afternoon to beat the descending darkness, Ricketts and his men had seen a lot of military traffic passing both ways on the MSR below the ridge, though nothing that looked like a genuine Scud launcher. What they did see on the MSR were mobile Scud decoys, constructed in East Germany, complete with their own crews, only there to draw the fire of Coalition aircraft and encourage the pilots to submit false ‘kill’ reports.

  ‘When I think I’m having it rough,’ Jock said, ‘I’ll bless the fates for not making me do that job. What a way to go!’

  ‘Better than getting cancer,’ Paddy replied. ‘Even better than AIDS. One little shell, a big bang, and it’s all over before you even know it. I’d kill for that fucking job!’

  When Johnny Boy got back–‘in time for supper’, as he put it – he told them that the Scud mobile launchers were avoiding the MSRs and instead using old dirt tracks to cross the desert and evade the AWACS aircraft.

  ‘I found two separate bunkers,’ he told them, wolfing down his cold food and water
. ‘I’ve marked their positions on my maps. They’re the same as the Iraqi hardened aircraft shelters: pyramid-shaped and flat-roofed, with sliding steel doors, half buried in heaped-up earth and sand to make them blend in with the desert. The mobile Scud launchers are huge, raised up on the backs of wheeled platforms towed by trucks. They’re usually accompanied by a truck filled with armed troops, but they’d be pretty easy to take out. Just slam them with Stingers or MILANs while raking the troops with GPMGs. Piece of piss, boss.’

  Carefully covering up the OP, Ricketts and the rest went out that same night in the Pink Panthers and LSVs, led by Johnny Boy on his Honda. First, he led them to the two bunkers, located about fifteen miles apart. The exact locations of the bunkers were then relayed by SATCOM to HQ in Riyadh. Those messages were relayed in turn to the US Tactical Aircraft Control Centre, from there to an AWACS aircraft, and thence to an F-15E already in the air on nocturnal combat patrol.

  While the F-15E was en route to the bunker, Ricketts and his team illuminated the target with large, camera-like laser designators mounted on tripods. Having done this, they used the cover of darkness to quietly plant small, disposable transmitters around the bunker, jamming its communications and preventing it from radar-tracking the incoming attack plane.

  At both locations the aircraft arrived within half an hour of the original SATCOM message being relayed.

  When the plane released its GBU-15 laser-guided bombs just ahead of the grid location received from the men on the ground, the bombs, homing in on the intense spot of light ‘painted’ on the bunkers by the designators, were directed with pinpoint accuracy through their open doors or, in the second case, an open window.

  Blown to hell from inside, the bunkers belched flame, smoke and debris before collapsing in billowing clouds of sand and dust. Ricketts and his men then approached the site by foot, checking that the launchers had been taken out and that the members of the Scud teams were dead. The answer in both cases, at both locations, was brutally affirmative.

  By the second day, after another grim night in the OP, with worsening weather, including alternating bouts of sleet, snow, hail and frost, Ricketts and his men, taking note of Hailsham’s changed attitude and sharing his frustration, were patrolling the whole area in daylight and coming across many mobile Scud units. Soon learning that it took fifteen minutes or more for an aircraft to arrive on target and that often, in the case of a mobile launcher, this was too late, they began taking matters into their own hands. Rather than see a Scud escape, they blew it to hell with their Stinger or MILAN anti-tank missiles while massacring the accompanying troops with relentless fire from their machine-guns, M 16s and SLRs.

  Such attacks were made either from the weapons mounted on parked, camouflaged vehicles or from the LSV as it raced towards the convoy, its MILAN firing on the move. Even as the MILAN shells were tearing into the Scud launcher, causing it to explode with a mighty roar, the LSV would be swerving sideways and haring alongside the convoy, followed by the Pink Panther, thus enabling the GPMGs and small arms of Ricketts, Jock and Paddy – Andrew was driving the LSV, Danny the Pink Panther – to rake the surprised Iraqi troops with murderous fire.

  Usually Johnny Boy would accompany the LSV and Pink Panther on their daring run around the Scud convoy, recklessly guiding his Honda with one hand while firing his Browning pistol with the other, rarely getting off his 13 shots without taking out at least a few Iraqis. Then the Pink Panther, LSV and motorbike would race away in churning clouds of sand even before the debris from the exploding Scud launcher had stopped raining down upon the dazed, dead or dying enemy soldiers. It was a dance of death on bullet-riddled desert sands, conducted with ruthless efficiency.

  Over the next three days, encouraged by success, Ricketts and his men started going for the weak spots in Saddam’s whole communications system, hitting microwave relay towers and communications bunkers, blowing them up where they were located, either along the MSRs or by the highway that ran between Baghdad and Amman. What they could not destroy with their Stingers, MILANs or plastic explosives, they smashed with sledgehammers.

  The appalling weather was worsening, and despite their heavily padded jerkins and cloaks, the men were suffering even more from sleet, hail, frost and occasional snow. Two or three times during the night they had to light fires beneath their Land Rovers to prevent the diesel fuel from freezing. By the fourth night, fog and sand storms were added to their problems, so they were greatly relieved when, on the fifth day, they were able to pack up their gear, fill in their OPs and drive back to be resupplied, debriefed and reunited with the other patrols at the Wadi Tubal rendezvous, still inside Iraq.

  The SAS ran its own supply column overland. This consisted of ten four-ton trucks crewed by badged SAS soldiers and REME mechanics, escorted by teams drawn from B Squadron in six armed Land Rovers. The caravan was led by an eccentric captain who informed Major Hailsham that his attacks on the Scud launchers had been successful, driving them further and further into the Iraqi hinterland, all but out of range of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

  ‘The danger of Israel entering the war has receded,’ the captain said, ‘so you’re now free to look for a wider variety of targets. The green slime has suggested radar sites, petroleum refineries, storage tanks and ammunition depots. Go to it, Major.’

  When Hailsham conveyed this information to his Lurp teams, they celebrated their success by decorating their vehicles with stencilled silhouettes of individual kills, in the shape of Scud launchers and communications towers.

  Over the next five days a mobile workshop was kept busy as more SAS columns came in from the Scud box. Entire engines were replaced, tyres, brakes and suspension were checked, weapons were stripped and serviced, and lost kit was replaced. Then Hailsham called his men together for another briefing.

  ‘Having sussed from our raids that we’re in the area,’ he said, ‘the Iraqis are bound to try hunting us down. So life in Scud Alley is going to be more dangerous from now on.’

  Having given his men this grim warning, he then issued new orders, which naturally involved even deeper penetration of Scud Alley.

  ‘We leave tomorrow,’ he told them.

  Chapter 7

  The plan was to position road-watch patrols overlooking the three MSRs that ran from the crowded Euphrates Valley up a vast desert slope to the Jordanian hills in the west. These were foot patrols. RAF Chinooks put down the three separate SAS groups – known as Road Watch North, Centre and South – about twenty miles apart on a north-south axis.

  The most isolated of the teams inserted, Road Watch North, was dropped in the middle of the night in rocky terrain swept by a howling, freezing wind and pouring rain – not quite what they had expected in the desert. Though they unloaded their bergens and weapons as quickly as possible, they were still drenched even before the helicopter took off again and they could huddle in the nearest shelter available, near the head of a dry, dead-end wadi about fifteen feet deep. The wind was so strong, it practically drowned out the clamour of the departing chopper.

  ‘Christ!’ Taff exclaimed as he dropped his bergen to the ground between his raised knees and wrapped his arms around his shivering body. ‘This is worse than the Falklands!’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Geordie replied, wiping rain from his eyes and checking the waterproof wrapping around the PRC 319 radio system. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a fucking desert.’

  ‘It is desert,’ Andrew said, glancing about him in bewilderment. ‘It’s just not hot desert. There’s a lot of rock and gravel in this area and the weather’s shit-awful.’

  ‘Lots of rain, sleet and snow,’ Ricketts explained. ‘You’ll get no suntan here.’ Raising his head to peer over the rim of the wadi, squinting against the driving rain, he saw only flat terrain with the dark outline of a ridge a few hundred yards away, outlined against a black sky. No moon or stars out there. The wind was howling across the flat land, driving the rain before it. ‘It looks like hell on earth out there. We c
ouldn’t have picked a worse night.’

  ‘I want to go home already,’ Andrew said. ‘Where’s the nearest friendly territory?’

  ‘About a hundred and eighty-odd miles away.’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ Andrew said.

  Geordie laughed sardonically as he unwrapped the covering of netting and hessian required for the OP. ‘We’ll fucking stay here all right. There’s nowhere else to go. So we might as well put a roof over our heads and keep the rain out before this wadi turns into a swamp.’ Even as he spoke, he received an incoming transmission signal on the PRC 319. After switching on the receiver and listening to the message, he handed the microphone to Ricketts. ‘Road Watch South,’ he explained.

  Through an inordinate amount of static created by the storm, Ricketts just about heard the voice of Major Hailsham, who had insisted on being the commander of the road watch nearest the Saudi border. Now he was explaining over the radio that he had decided to go back to the FOB.

  ‘The terrain of this LZ’s completely featureless,’ he said, ‘and much too exposed to be useful. If we stay here, we’ll be sitting ducks for the Iraqis, so I’m calling the chopper back. Road Watch Centre might be having similar problems. How’s it with you?’

  ‘It’s too early to say,’ Ricketts responded. The combination of storm and darkness makes it difficult to see, so we’ll stay here at least until the morning.’

  ‘Read you, Sergeant-Major. Good luck. Over and out.’

  ‘He’s got good sense,’ Geordie said when Ricketts had handed the microphone back.

  ‘That’s why he’s an officer,’ Andrew said, ‘and you’re still a mere trooper. Come on, guys, let’s sort out this OP before we’re all washed away.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Danny said.

  Mercifully, the rain passed on a few minutes later and the howling wind gradually settled down to an eerie moan. While not a great comfort, this made it easier for the men to construct the OP with a camouflaged roof of netting, waterproof canvas, hessian and sand, as well as plastic sheeting to cover the waterlogged bottom of the wadi. It was long, narrow, cold and damp, but it was enough to be going on with, at least until morning broke.