Chris Ryan (11 page)

an ox � went off climbing with a guy called Trey, who soon stepped off a rock, and, although he only fell a couple of feet, put his back out, so that he had to be carried all the way back to camp. As a replacement, Joe got the young Rupert to go climbing with him. By the time he left for his second attempt, it was already 11a.m., and he shouldn't really have returned to the mountain, because it was a good half an hour's walk from the camp, and everyone had been told to be off it by twelve. Anyway, Ian and I were climbing away when suddenly we heard yells from round the corner. It was the officer, shout�ing down that there'd been an accident. Ian got both of us down on to a ledge, and we hurried round, to find Joe lying on the rock, having fallen about 75 feet. We ran up to him, and I tried breathing into his mouth to give him CPR � but there was frothy red blood coming out of his mouth, and when I touched the back of his head under his climbing hel�met, it felt like a broken eggshell. He was obviously dead, so we shouted down to some others to send for the Alouette helicopter, which was on stand-by. Soon the chopper came in � but further dramas began immediately. The ledge was too narrow for it to land, and the face of the mountain was so steep that the pilot had diffi-culty hovering close enough for a doctor to abseil down. The heli began rocking, so that the doctor was swinging in and out if he'd missed the ledge, he'd have gone down a couple of hundred feet. The pilot began making energetic cutting motions, telling the loadie to sever the rope � but in the end the doctor got down safely. After he'd pronounced Joe dead, we trussed his body into 144 The One That Got Away an old stretcher and prepared to lower it down the face. The drop was so long that we had to tie two ropes together, and Ian asked me to abseil down first, to make sure that we could get our figure-of-eight linking device past the knot. I was feeling quite shocked, but also excited to be involved in a real rescue. As I went over the edge, I wasn't sure where I was going to end up, but luckily it turned out that the knot was level with another flat ledge, so that passing it was easy. It should have taken no more than half an hour to get Joe down; but everything seemed to go wrong. Ropes kept get�ting snagged or broken, and several times the body nearly fell out of the stretcher. We had to keep tying him back in, and it was awful to see a person we had known and liked trussed up like a stuffed chicken. Like the rest of us he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and by the time we got him down he was in a mess, with his skin all scraped. Altogether we struggled for eight hours, and darkness was falling when we reached the plain. That evening we were all pretty subdued, and we didn't feel any better next day, when the Alouette which flew the body out broke down. Then we heard that while the guys from the Air Troop had been free-falling, the engines of their C-130 had caught fire, and the aircraft had had to land. We were starting to wonder whether there was some jinx on the exercise when one of the Air Troop produced a paperback copy of the South African explorer Laurens van der Post's book about the Bushmen, The Lost World of the Kalahari. 'Listen to this,' he said, and he read out some pas�sages describing how the author had come to this very area, maybe forty years before, in search of Bushmen. When members of his party killed an antelope and a warthog, everything went belly-up: wild bees attacked the camp at sunrise � not once, but every morning � even though it was highly unusual for them to fly at that time of day; when the expedition's cameraman tried to film some ancient cave paintings, the movie-camera repeatedly broke down; their tape-recorder also ceased to function. In the end van der Post became so scared that he decided to leave the area immediately.

Echoes Of Africa 145 First, though, he got his guide, Samutchoso, to com�municate with the spirits. After the man had gone into a trance, the answer came back: 'The spirits of the hills are very angry with you, so angry that if they had not known your intention in coming here was pure, they would long since have killed you. They are angry because you have come here with blood on your hands . . To win forgiveness, van der Post wrote a letter addressed to 'The Spirits, The Tsodilo Hills', in which he humbly begged pardon. As 'an act of contrition' he promised to bury the note at the base of the great cave painting which he had found. He then got all his companions to sign the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and placed it in a lime-juice bottle, which he duly buried in the cave. Thereafter he had no more trouble: his Land-Rovers started without difficulty, and the expedition moved on. His experience sounded uncannily like our own, and the death of that one animal seemed to have put us under the same spell. We decided to go and look for the cave, and I walked round the mountain with one other guy, Merv. We found the place easily enough � at least, we found a cave, in which there were primitive red paintings of animals on the walls. I thought it looked a bit creepy, and didn't fancy walk�ing in; but Mery decided it was all right � so we went in, and at the back we found a green bottle, corked up, with a piece of paper inside. Back at the camp, we reported on what we'd found. People made a few jokes, but Harry (the Everest climber, who had spent a lot of time in mountains, and felt sympathy for the people who lived in them) suggested that we should write a note of our own, apologising for the death of the animal, put it in another bottle, and leave it in the cave. When our message was ready, Mery and I went back to the cave with it. The old bottle was still there � but some�thing very strange had happened. Although the cork was still in place, the paper inside had been shredded, as if by a ham�ster. Of course we were disconcerted. Then we thought that some of our own guys must have been pissing around. Any�way, we left our bottle beside the first one, and went back to 146 The One That Got Away the camp � only to find that nobody else had been near the cave. Whatever had happened, the atmosphere was becoming tense. That night, as we sat round the fire, the sergeant in charge announced that we would abandon the climbing equipment that was still on the mountain: if anyone else wanted it, they could have it. But in the morning we went up to look at it again, and when we studied the place where Joe had fallen, things somehow didn't look right. There seemed to be no reason for the friends to have pulled out, as they had, all three at once; so we sent for Ian, the expert. He came up, and also thought there was something wrong; he agreed that the friends should never have come out. During the recovery of Joe's body, the sergeant had come down and told me to take pictures of the body and the ropes. I got some photos, took the film out and handed it over. Now, with Ian there, I took more pictures of the ropes. By then everyone was becoming nervous. The place had an unpleasant atmosphere; we felt as though we were being watched. Even off the mountain, mishaps kept occurring. A herd of goats came through the camp and wrecked the tents, knocking everything over and chewing up our clothes. One of the Mobility Troop fell off his motorbike and broke his collarbone. The Boat Troop was attacked by a hippo, which bit off one of the twin tails of a Gemini inflatable. The bang scared the animal off, but the boat was finished. When the RAF flew a Hercules over the top of the mountain and tried to throw out a wreath for Joe, it blew back into the aircraft. So they flew over again, and twice more it came back in. You could, at a stretch, explain that in terms of air turbulence, but it seemed uncanny, and only when they were three or four miles from the mountain did the wreath finally stay out and float away. All this could have been coincidence � but there was no doubt that the Bushmen believe in the power of the mountain spirits, and by the end of the exercise I was well on the way to doing the same. Though not religious, I appre�ciated for the first time the sheer strength of some people's Echoes Of Africa 147 beliefs, and began to feel that there were forces at work which we Europeans simply didn't understand. Through the Botswanan soldiers, the Bushmen kept sending us the message. 'Whatever you do, don't kill anything else.' We didn't tell them about our own bottle. One of the guys came with me to consult a witch doctor in the nearby village and find out what fate had in store for us. After we'd dropped a few boxes of rations in payment, a skinny, middle-aged man, wearing nothing but a loincloth, came out of his mud but carrying a small leather bag. Having swept a patch of earth clear with one hand, he tipped six or eight bones on to it, and sat staring at them for fully half a minute, muttering to himself. Through the Botswanan who was with us, the message came back that we had nothing more to worry about, and we started to feel happier. With our squadron exercise finished, we drove away, and as I looked out of the back of the Land-Rover at the mountain, I still had the feeling that there was something there, watching us, glad to see us go. We were told not to mention the story back in Hereford, for the sake of Joe's family. But that was the first incident for me in which I'd seen someone killed, and it stuck in my mind for ever. Remembering Africa helped pass the day. But cold, hunger, thirst and the pain of lying on rock continually reminded me I was in Iraq. Somehow the hours dragged by. At about five in the afternoon I moved up to the top edge of the mound and lay there gazing into the distance. Ahead of me, in the direction I needed to go, ridges of bare rock rose one behind the other, greyer and greyer as they stretched to the horizon. Close at hand the ground was rolling, and on my left hills climbed steeply towards a high plateau. Looking west, I could see an old stone fort perched on one of the ridges run�ning up from the river valley; it stood in an elevated position, and obviously commanded phenomenal views. I worried slightly that it might be a manned border post, but somehow the sight of that man-made structure gave me a lift. The fort made a sudden contrast to the barren wastes of the desert. 148 The One That Got Away I realised that, as I grew weaker, I was covering the ground more slowly, and not making the progress I ex�pected. All the same, after studying the map on and off during the day, I reckoned that one good night's march would take me across the frontier. Then a simple event gave my morale a tremendous boost. Never mind wind-noises: I really did hear a movement close at hand. Once again goats came into view below me, and I held my breath as they grazed along the contour. Then I saw their herder, working round the slope below me. Keeping well down behind a rock, I watched him. The goats tra-versed the lower side of the mound, away from me, but the man whipped round my side of it, out of sight of the road. As I looked down, from about a hundred metres away, he whipped up his dishdash, squatted down and had a big old shit. Then, quick as a flash, he wiped his arse with his left hand, gave it a brisk scrape on a rock, and was off, running back to catch up with his flock. Again I remembered how, back in the Squadron in Saudi, the SSM had said to me, 'You'll never see an Arab have a shit. They're that bloody shy about it. It's like seeing a rock�ing-horse shit. It just doesn't happen.' But here it was, happening right in front of me, and I lay there doubled up with silent laughter. 'Wait till I get out of here!' I thought. `I'm going straight to the SSM to tell him what I've seen.' seven OVER THE BORDER The crapping Arab made my day. My morale had been down, but suddenly it was back up again. I couldn't stop laughing. A simple thing like that brought me right back on line. Once again I was full of anticipation, waiting for the time to be off. Water was an urgent necessity. On the map I'd found a pumping station, and I felt I must have a good chance of get�ting a drink there. Surely a pumping station would have clean water coming out of it? Also I was buoyed up by the hope that I hadn't far to go. I really felt good. I said to myself, `Eh � you're near the end here!' This was my sixth night on the run, and in six nights and six days I'd had nothing to eat but two packets of biscuits. I was seriously dehydrated, and my feet were in ribbons. Even so, I felt pretty good, and had that sense of excitement mixed with apprehension that you get before a race or a big football match. All I had to do was go down to the pumping station, get water, and carry on. By then I'd be only about ten kilometres from the border, and I would either cross it that same night, or reach it the next day. The sight of the big hills in the distance made me think of the mountains of Wales, and I felt glad that I wasn't on ground as steep as the Brecon Beacons. Seeing how far I still had to go, I reckoned I'd never make it if the slopes were as tough as on Pen-y-fan or its neighbours. The desert might be harsh and hellishly dry, but at least it was reason�ably level. Things didn't work out as easily as I had hoped. I waited till dark and then started walking, but after only a hundred metres I came round a corner and found a small tented en�campment to my right, obviously Bedouin, the nomadic 150 The One That Got Away herdsmen of the desert. Several dogs began barking, and through the kite-sight I could see two tents and one vehicle. But nobody came out for a look round, so I moved carefully away to the left, boxed the position and carried on. As soon as I could, I swung down to the right, heading for the pumping station. I began to follow a line of telegraph-poles, which made navigation easy. But by then my feet had become really sore, and I had to keep stopping. I forced myself to do ten poles between each rest � ten lots of 150 metres, every one of them a major effort. According to my map, I was heading for a point at which the telegraph lines crossed a run of pylons. In due course I saw the pylons, coming in on my right. The wadis to my left were getting deeper; the sides steeper. Then I saw that instead of cross�ing the telegraph line, the pylons were set out parallel with it. The map wasn't making sense. So I said to myself, 'Bollocks � just cut down to the right and head for the river.' I peeled off the high ground and started on another bear�ing, confident that I'd hit the river sooner or later. As I went down I spotted a square, white building with a flat roof� the pump house. Coming close, I saw that the end facing me was open, and that a lot of pipes ran in and out of it. There was one main pipe, which I guessed was bringing water from the river, and several smaller ones. By then I seemed to have grown careless. Whether or not it was the result of exhaustion, I don't know,- but I was get�ting almost blas�When you're that tired, it's all too easy to decide you'll do yourself a favour, sling your weapon over your shoulder instead of carrying it at the ready, and just saunter along. It's hardly a conscious decision to lower your standards and sink from very, very cautious to plain un�cautious; it's just something that happens gradually, without you noticing. In any case, I walked straight into this place, lulled by the fact that it was silent and no machinery was working. I wasn't crash-banging about, but I didn't case the building as care�fully as I might have. I even got my torch out and shone it around, because I could hear water dripping from a pipe. There it was � a steady drip, glistening in the torch beam. Over The Border 151