Chris Ryan (16 page)

was a terrific relief to be able to talk to someone I knew. Presently we took off, and four hours later I landed in Riyadh for the second lime. The airport terminal was in complete disarray, full of military personnel, with areas hes�sianed off, control points set up, and people buzzing in all directions. I was puzzled to find that no one had come to meet me. The other passengers disappeared, and I was left sitting in the reception lounge on my own. Then at last a young man, in uniform but wearing no badges, came up and said, 'Are you Chris Ryan?' `That's right. Who are you?' `I'm taking you somewhere.' `No you're not. Who are you?' At last he gave me his name � Corporal Smith. `And who are you working for?' `Taff,' he said, naming the acting quartermaster. `OK,' I said. 'That's fair enough.' As we drove off in a white land-cruiser, I asked him if there'd been any news about the patrol. `Not a word,' he said. `Jesus Christ!' I asked about Scuds coming in, and he said that one had landed close to the airport a couple of nights back. He took me to a big, plush, modern hotel, where a room had been re�served for me. The place was full of RAF aircrew in their flight-suits, with pistols showing in holsters underneath. They didn't realise how well off they were, fighting the war from such a luxurious base. I went up to my room and lay down. I was still feeling weak, and lacking in decision. I only had to walk a hundred metres before I was out of breath, and felt like an old man. Within half an hour there came a knock on the door, and there was the former sergeant major, newly commissioned as Quartermaster. I'd hardly come across him before, but I knew he was a fairly unapproachable character, and he greeted me with a typically gruff, `Ullo, Chris.' He sat down and said, 'Right � I know everything's secret. But are you all right?' 216 The One That Got Away `Yeah,' I said, 'I'm fine.' `Are the rest of the lads OK?' `I don't know, Taff. It's more than a week since I saw them.' He told me that the Director and Assistant Director � the brigadier and colonel in command of Special Forces �wanted to debrief me. But before they arrived, he suggested I went downtown and got a brew, so he sent an assistant round with the equivalent of a couple of hundred pounds in local currency. Filling in time, I went out and bought a Walkman, some music tapes, including one by Eric Clap-ton, and a small radio. We then went to a burger bar, where we found a gang of young Americans wearing T-shirts with motifs on them like DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR, and that sort of crap. They were in high spirits, and going on about the war, but I couldn't help thinking, 'What a bunch of dick�heads! They haven't a clue what's going on out there.' I heard that the two guys from 'IV Squadron who'd done the recce in Syria were back in Riyadh; so I went round to see them, and immediately asked for news. All they'd heard was that I'd come out; they couldn't even discover the names of the people who were missing, such was the secrecy that had been clamped on everything. It was great to talk to them, and after some chat they suggested we should go out for a meal. `Why not have it at my place?' I said. 'I can get it on the room.' So all three of us came back to my room and ordered mixed grills. Just as we'd finished eating, a message came to say that the Assistant Director was downstairs, on his way to see me. Ignoring my pleas for them to stay, the other two promptly scarpered. After a brief opening chat, the Colonel said, 'I don't really want to know what happened. But have a good long think, because you're going to be questioned about why you ran away.' I thought he was implying that we'd all been cowards. I was too stunned to say anything except, 'Yeah � OK.' Back To Base 217 Only when he'd gone did I start to burn with resentment. That seemed to me a very strange thing for anyone to have said, let alone a senior Special Forces officer who didn't yet know exactly what had happened. Anyway, he told me that the Director was on his way to see me, so I waited up, and it wasn't until about one in the morning that the Brigadier came rolling in. He said nothing about us having run away. On the contrary, having been a `13' Squadron man himself, he saw my escape as a feather in the squadron's cap, and congratulated me. First thing next morning, he said, I was to fly up to AI Jouf on a Hercules. I couldn't come to terms with the fact that there was no news of the others. Because the Iraqis had not announced the capture of any prisoners behind the lines, it seemed more and more likely that they were all dead. The worst thing was that people kept coming up to me and asking, 'Well, what do you think happened to them?' I had no idea: all I could do was repeat the story of the contact and the break, and I told it so often that I was starting to do it parrot-fashion. Beyond that, I wanted someone to tell me what the score was. In the morning I dressed in my clean uniform, which had been through the washing-machine at the embassy in Damascus, and I felt fresh and good to have it on again. My feet were still pretty sore, but I got my boots back on, and so looked quite presentable. As the aircraft landed at AI Jouf I was so excited by the thought of seeing the guys again that I went and stood on the tailgate as it was dropping down, all teed-up to rush out and greet them. But to my surprise there was only one man there � Geordie, the SSM. It turned out that he had told everyone else to keep away, in case I was overwhelmed by emotion. In fact three of the guys had ignored his instructions and were hovering in the background. As I walked out, they came racing across and surrounded me, hammering me on the back, and calling out, 'Well done!' For a minute or two I couldn't really speak. Bob Shepherd was so shattered by my appearance that he burst into tears. In place of the fit, 218 The One That Got Away bouncing young fellow he'd seen off a couple of weeks earlier, here was a prematurely aged cripple, broken, bent and shuffling; as he graphically put it, a bag of bones. He was so upset that, instead of driving back to `13' Squadron's location, he took a solitary walk round the airfield to sort himself out. Geordie thinned the guys out, took me to one side, and said, 'Right. We've got to go in for the debriefing.' The head-shed was housed in tents alongside the perma�nent control-tower buildings. Before we went in, the SSM asked if there was anything I wanted to tell him. I said, `Yeah, there's quite a bit. I'll tell you what actually hap�pened, but I'm not going to tell the CO.' So I told him about Vince losing heart. 'If Andy or any of the others come out, they'll confirm it,' I said. 'Until then, we'll just leave it. There's no need to say it was his fault.' The sergeant major said, 'Fine,' and so we went in. We went down with a sergeant from the Int section, a nice guy, who asked me to tell the story while he wrote it down. I was a bit put out by the sight of the CO, sitting on a chair and reading The Times at the other side of the tent, but paying no attention to me. Then the Ops officer walked past, and he didn't say anything either. I became more and more con�vinced that in their view I'd done something wrong. Anyway, I got on with the debriefing, and in the middle of it half the squadron came back from the ranges, together with the OC. His behaviour was entirely different. He grabbed me, shook hands, and said, 'It's really great to see you! Terrific that you're back! Is there anything I can get you?' I said, 'No thanks � I'm just talking to this Int guy.' `Right � as soon as you've finished here, we'll get you across to the squadron, because everyone's dying to hear what happened.' The debrief lasted two hours. Once it was over, Geordie drove me round the airfield to the squadron location, point�ing out how all the light assault vehicles had been written off in training. On the way he asked, 'First things first: d'you want to go home?' F Back To Base 219 `No,' I said, 'I want to stay here and find out what's hap�pened.' The last thing I wanted to do was desert the team. Geordie also gave me amazing news about the other two Bravo patrols: they'd both come straight back. When Bravo Three Zero took stock of their location, the commander im-mediately decided that the area was impossibly dangerous. There wasn't enough cover to conceal the vehicles, and without further ado they began to drive back towards the Saudi border � a journey which took them two nights. After�wards the commander was fiercely criticised, not least because he ignored an instruction to RV with '13' Squadron � who were already in Iraq and needing reinforcement � not far off his route. Bravo One Zero stayed an even shorter time. When the Chinook landed at their drop-off point, the pilot said to the leader, 'Pete � d'you want to have a look around while I hang on a minute? We crossed a road about fifteen miles back, and I can still see the lights of vehicles along it, the desert's that fucking flat. I can't see any depressions or wadis for miles. It's like a billiard table.' To prove his point, the pilot flew twenty kilometres up and down, trying to find some broken ground into which he could drop the patrol, but the desert remained horribly bare. Pete took a decision which struck me as immensely cour�ageous. 'Right,' he said, 'we're not staying here. We're flying out.' Back at Al Jouf he was ridiculed and accused of being a coward � the word was actually used. But I and many others reckoned that of all the decisions taken by the three patrol commanders, his needed the most balls. To have stayed where he was would have been suicide � a replica of what had happened to us, if not worse. A year later people would start to say: 'Well, maybe he did the right thing after all' �but at the time he suffered. Anyway, it was a big surprise for me to hear that all three OPs had been eliminated, for one reason or another. With Bravo Two Zero, it turned out that the comms failure had been due mainly to the fact that we'd been given the wrong 220 The One That Got Away radio frequencies. This was not the fault of anyone in the Regiment, but of the signal unit attached to us. The result was that although three of Legs' messages got through in garbled form, no reply ever reached us. I also found that we'd been seriously misled about the performance of our TACBEs; their effective range was only about 120 kilo�metres, and the closest most coalition aircraft were flying was 500 kilometres to the east. During the night of 24 January � our first on the run � one American F-15 pilot did pick up a call from Andy, and he passed it on to an AWACS aircraft. But because the call originated from a location which our head-shed was not expecting, it only caused con�fusion. When the patrol went missing, tremendous pressure built up among the rank-and-file of the squadron to mount a rescue mission; volunteers were determined to make a box-search. When the CO refused to commit one of his few pre�cious helicopters immediately to the task, some of the guys were on the verge of mutiny. But middle and senior management saw that, in the circumstances, the CO was right to delay a search until the patrol's situation became clearer. The main problem was that the regimental head-shed was expecting us to strike back for the Saudi border in case of trouble, whereas after our initial feint we had set off in exactly the opposite direction. By 26 January, even though no explicit message had been received from us, it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong. At 1745 that evening a Chinook took off from Arar, with five members of the squadron on board, in an attempt to pull us out. That mission was aborted when the weather closed down. An�other took off the next day � a joint Anglo-American team on board an MH-53 � which completed its planned route and approached to within five or six kilometres of our original emergency rendezvous before flying down what seemed the most likely escape-and-evasion route to the Saudi border, and almost running out of fuel in the process. A third search-and-rescue mission was mounted on 30 Back To Base 221 January, but this was also aborted when the pilot fell ill. The CO continued trying to arrange further searches until, in the early hours of 1 February, he heard that I had turned up in Damascus � whereupon it became obvious that none of the patrol could still be trying to return to Saudi. More cheerful news was that 'A' and `D' Squadrons had crossed the border in force just one night after our insertion, and that with their heavily-armed Pinkies they were creating havoc among mobile Scud launchers and communications towers. Their key weapon was the M19 � in effect, a machine-gun firing bombs at the rate of three or four per second. The ammunition was the same as in our 203s, ex�cept that the rounds contained more high-explosive � and when volleys of those things began bursting all round them, the Iraqis turned and ran. Details of the marauding opera�tions had yet to emerge, but the squadrons' communications were working well, and from their operational reports it was clear that everyone was having a ball. By the time I returned to Al Jouf, 'IV Squadron had tents, and life was much more organised. The OC and the SSM had organised a camp-bed for me � an American cot � in their own tent, which had a heater. I was amazed by the care with which Geordie was looking after me: before our deployment he'd seemed out of his depth, but now he was well in control, and really mothering me. He put my kit on the bed and said, 'Right, d'you mind speaking to the guys?' `No, no,' I said. 'That'll be fine.' An hour later they had a big map set up at the back of one of the tents. I stood at the front, and twenty of the guys came in to sit on the ground and listen. As I told them the story they kept perfectly still, absorbed, and remained almost totally silent � but I could tell from the occasional muttered curse that they felt what it had been like. When I described how it had snowed, and how cutting the wind had been, they knew I wasn't exaggerating, because at Al Jouf the weather had grown even colder since I left. Afterwards the OC and the SSM made me dinner out of 222 The One That Got Away ration packs. Then we had to go back across to the head�quarters, because the CO wanted to see me at 2300. I thought, 'Oh, God! Not again! Why the hell didn't he listen in while I was being debriefed?' But across we went to one of the control rooms, and I was there until two in the morning. At the end he asked, 'Is there anything you think you should have done?' That nearly cracked me up. I almost burst into tears as I said, 'I should have tied Vince to me.' `Listen,' said the CO. 'It wasn't your fault.' Then he asked if I'd mind going up to Arar, to talk to 'A' Squadron of
Delta Force, the American Special Forces unit, which was about to deploy behind the lines. It meant leaving at 0530 �in about three hours' time � so we went straight back to our tent and got our heads down. As I climbed into my sleeping bag, the CO draped a big goat-herd's coat over me. I felt like a little kid. Apart from my night in Cyprus, that was the first time since the contact that I slept soundly. I don't know whether it was because I felt secure at last; for whatever reason, I went out like a light, and the next thing I knew, Geordie was shaking my shoulder. He'd already cooked a fried breakfast with the light on, but I'd been out for the count and hadn't noticed a thing. So we had sausages and bacon and a cup of tea, and set out at 0530 in a Land-Rover, accompanied by Gus, an American liaison officer. All the way up, as it got lighter, Gus was picking in�formation out of me. We'd met in Hereford, when he'd come to the UK to command one of the squadrons. At that time I was Sniper Team Commander, in charge of all the high-rise options � climbing and abseiling on the outsides of buildings, inside lift-wells, or ascending glass buildings on suckers. We were hosting the Delta Squadron, and Gus and I seemed to spend all our time together in the backs of ve�hicles. Now we were in a vehicle again � but at least this time we could have a useful conversation. Delta's target was the area round the nuclear refinery, and whenever we came to a new kind of terrain during our drive, he asked if the ground Back To Base 223 where they were heading resembled what we could see. I told him, 'At X it's that colour exactly,' and, 'at Y it's like that.' The journey took nearly three hours. Then, in the control room at Arar, I met Major. General Wayne Downing, com�mander of US Special Forces, who'd recently flown in to supervise operations. Slim, fit-looking, with a crew-cut, he was the epitome of a successful American soldier. He shook my hand and introduced me to four or five other officers. Then we sat down on Chesterfields round a coffee-table. Downing thanked me for coming up, and I told them what had happened. Again, at the end, there was silence. Then Downing said, 'That's the most amazing story I've heard in years.' There was a pause, and he asked, 'What have the doctors said?' `Well � I haven't seen a doctor yet.' He seemed shocked. With a look of worry and embar�rassment, he said, 'I sure am sorry to have dragged you up here. You ought to have seen a doctor before you came. Tell you what, though: we've got some go-faster surgeons on the base. I'll have one of them look at you.' I wasn't quite sure what he meant by a `go-faster' sur�geon, but I went to see one of them willingly enough. A quick examination confirmed that I had frost-nip in my fingers and toes. The doctor said that my feet would heal up in time, but that I needed some dental work done. When I told him about the nuclear effluent, he said I certainly should have a blood test. When I got back to Downing, he said, 'I know I'm asking a lot, but will you talk to 'A' Squadron? They're deploying tonight, and I know they'd appreciate it. You could probably give them a load of help.' Of course I agreed. So I told the story yet again, this time to about forty guys, and at the end they burst into applause, with everyone wanting to shake my hand. Before I left, I went to see Downing once more, and he asked, 'Is there anything you need?' `Well, yes,' I said. 'Have you got any of those large water bottles, and a rucksack and stuff like that?' 224 The One That Got Away `Sure have. You'd better go see the quartermaster.' So I did � and I came away with a vehicle nearly full of new kit, an embarrassing amount. Finally Downing sent me into a com�mand room, full of signals equipment, where I found an SAS officer who'd been attached to the American Special Forces. I got talking to him about our patrol, and he said the mission had been sent off without proper briefing. His point was that the Americans could call up satellite imagery of any particular area within twenty-four hours of any request. When I asked why we hadn't done that, he could only attri�bute the failure to rivalry between Brits and Americans, or a reluctance on the part of the Brits to tell the Americans what they were doing. Back at Al jouf, I found myself endlessly speculating with other guys in the squadron about what could have happened to the rest of our patrol. I said I believed in my heart of hearts that Vince was dead, and Stan the same � or possibly cap�tured. But I couldn't understand why the other five hadn't come out, or why there was no news of them. My own emo�tions were barely under control. On one occasion we were talking in a tent, and I found it was getting too much. I sud�denly felt choked and said, `Ah, listen: I'm off,' and went out. One of the others ran after me and put his arm round my shoulders. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'just get it off your chest.' People began to assume that the rest of the patrol had been written off, and I heard that I would probably have to go on a tour of New Zealand, Australia and all round England to talk to the families of the guys we'd lost. The OC told me to stand by for the trip as soon as I got back to the UK. He said I wasn't to worry about it because the CO, the adjutant, the Families' Officer and OC of the squadron would all be there; I wouldn't have to do it by myself. In spite of emotional swings, I felt reasonably well � so much so that, when 11' Squadron began getting ready to drive into Iraq as the security force on a major re-supply for `A' and D, I asked the CO if I could go with them. Luckily he realised that I was a long way from being fit, and said, `Not a chance.' Back To Base 225 The re-supply proved a memorable expedition, and when I heard how it went I was sorry to have missed it. 'B' Squad�ron provided security for a column of 10 three-ton trucks, and this gave about a dozen of our guys a chance to take part in the war. The party included specialists such as REME fit�ters and a Royal Engineer who was expert in the repair of Magellans. The column was commanded by a major called Bill � a really strong character, much respected, with a wealth of ex�perience going back to the Oman campaign of the 1970s. The final briefing which he gave in the middle of the night, in a wadi just short of the border, will never be forgotten by those who heard it. With everyone gathered round in a hud�dle on the ground, muffled in the long Arab coats they'd bought in the souk, he put over his objectives with inspiring vigour and precision. `We stop for nothing,' he announced. 'Effective enemy fire is when rounds are coming through your windscreens.' The SSM of 'B' Squadron, who was driving a Land-Rover, and thought he could score a point, said, 'I don't have a windscreen.' `OK, then,' replied Bill instantly. 'When you've got rounds coming through your goggles.' After that, there were no more questions, and the column crossed the frontier at 0300, with a couple of Land-Rovers leading the way, four motorbikes behind them to relay messages back if need be, and the trucks following at twenty-metre intervals. During the hours of darkness they made slow progress, as the ter�rain was rough and difficult; they were driving without lights, and the lorries bounced around violently over the rocks. But with the advent of daylight they forged ahead, sometimes reaching 80 or 90 k.p.h. over smooth stretches. Their route lay up two main wadis which, on previous days, had been swept by Jaguar or Tornado aircraft making low-level passes to confirm that Iraqi troops had not moved in. On its way the convoy passed numerous little Bedouin encampments. A few of the goat-herders still had camels, but most were motorised, and some owned big Mercedes 226 The One That Got Away trucks. Bob Shepherd, who had learned to speak Arabic for the Oman campaign in the 1970s, several times stopped to pass the time of day, and generally found the people friendly. Stan, whom he knew well, was much on his mind, and he kept hoping that one of the herdsmen might have news of him. The rendezvous with elements of `D' Squadron was at a Y junction, where two wadis ran together. After a run of 180 kilometres, the column reached it at about 1530. The scouts took them forward to a deep, steep-sided wadi, and for the next twenty-four hours the trucks lay up there out of sight, while everyone else came in off the ground in small parties to collect supplies of food, water and ammunition. There was plenty of fresh food � meat, bread and fruit but most of the guys were happy with the boil-in-the-bag rations. There were also numerous broken vehicles for the REME mechanics to repair. When the time came for the column to return, Bob jumped ship, unilaterally transferring himself to `D' Squad�ron for the remainder of the operation. Back at Al Jouf he'd been told that if he did this he would risk being RTU'd, but he was determined to take part in the war. As he said, 'This was what I joined the regiment for. This is my big chance.' On only his second day with his new unit, `D' Squadron had a major success. It was a bright morning, and by noon the desert was shimmering under a heat-haze as eight SAS vehicles cruised forward on the lookout for targets. The raiders saw what they thought was an enemy convoy. As they crept closer, they managed to convince themselves that they could identify two tanks and one other vehicle, all moving very slowly. Then, at a range of only two kilometres, they realised that what they could see was a couple of tarmac-laying trucks which were not moving at all; they had been working on a road, but had been abandoned for the time being. Later that day the marauders came on the real thing: two TELs � transporter-elevator-launchers � with their Scud missiles in the horizontal attitude. They were about twelve Back To Base 227