Chris Ryan (3 page)

all three, the quartermaster took one look at him and said in a menacing voice, 'Get it right, cunt.' Bob, not knowing the man from Adam, was about to say something, or even to grab hold of him. I looked at him and shook my head, silently praying, 'Please! Don't say a thing, or he'll kill you.' Someone told us we'd be sleeping that night in the grassy area; so we sorted out bivvy bags and sleeping bags, made a brew, and got our heads down in the open. The night sky was clear, and as we lay there we watched streams of B-52s crossing high above us, with fighters skimming like min�nows alongside. The sight sent my mind straight back to the time when, as a boy, I'd watched television pictures of B-52s going over in streams to bomb Vietnam. Now, as the aircraft reached the Iraqi border, their flashing lights were suddenly extinguished, but we heard the roar of massed jet engines rumble away into the distance. It was comforting to know that our aircraft were bombing the shit out of the enemy, and we hoped they would do enough damage to make Sad-dam capitulate before we were even deployed. Morning showed that the airfield was surrounded by security wire and primitive, flat-roofed wooden towers with glass windows, which reminded us of the German con-centration camps we'd seen in World War Two films. Eight A-10 pilots were stationed on the base, flying their tank-buster aircraft in and out all the time. There were also a couple of small Saudi jets coming and going. There was one main terminal, quite small, with a few 30 The One That Got Away other buildings attached to it. Our regimental head-shed and all our stores were there, but we were billeted on the other side of the airfield, where there was a cement building with a single washbasin and a hole in the ground to act as a toilet, which inevitably became blocked. The SSM had been told to bring the squadron tents, but he had decided that, because we were in the desert and the weather would be hot, we wouldn't need them. In fact it wasn't hot at all. It was bloody cold, and the dust was phenomenal. All we could do was sling cam nets from our vehicles for a bit of shelter, and we lived on the ground like pigs, huddled round the Land-Rovers. We had no tables or chairs, so we ate our meals sitting on the deck, with the dust blowing around everywhere, covering us, our kit and our food. We'd hardly got our bearings when the RSM came across for a chat. He was a bit deaf, and as he was talking to one of the lads, a clerk from the HQbuilding came past and made some remark. The RSM thought he heard 'Good morning', so he politely said, 'Aye, good morning' back. In fact what the clerk had said was, 'Scud warning'. Suddenly, through the hedge, we saw groups of people running like hell, and one of the last of them yelled, 'There's a Scud coming in!' Some of the squadron stayed where they were, drinking their tea on the grass, not bothering., Others ran left and right for the shelters, some struggling to pull respirators on, others to don NBC suits. Soon afterwards the all-clear came. We rapidly learned the drill: the operators in Riyadh were monitoring every launch and putting out general alerts, then a few seconds later, as soon as they had determined the missile's track, they began to call 'Stand down here, stand down there' to the areas not under threat. Every now and then the SSM would tell us to dig slit-trenches, but the guys just said, `Ah, bollocks!' The airfield was remote and unimportant, and the possibility of a Scud landing on it was infinitesimal. When warnings came in the middle of the night, we soon decided to ignore them. The OC would run round all our positions shouting, 'Scud warning!' and he himself would run for the Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 31 shelter. At first some of the guys did the same, but it soon reached the point at which we all just zipped up our sleeping bags and stayed where we were. In the end the OC went berserk and gave us all a bollocking but then we deployed across the border, and that was the end of it. We had no time for detailed planning � but that hardly seemed to matter, because we knew what we wanted to do, and the task seemed fairly simple. The site we had chosen for our LUP was opposite a slight bend in the MSR, at a spot where it looked from the map as though we could dig into the bank of a wadi and have a view straight up the gully to the big road. If we saw a Scud on the move, we were to report it im�mediately by voice over the Satcom telephone, and follow up with a message on the 319, so that the sighting was doubly confirmed. Then aircraft would be launched or vectored to take the missile out. A brief on the missiles gave us an idea of what big beasts they were. Nearly forty feet long and three feet in diameter, they would look a bit like fuel-tankers when in the horizontal position on their trailers. Apparently the Iraqis' habit was to park them alongside embankments or under road bridges so that they were all but invisible from the air. When on the move, a TEL would always be accom�panied by several other vehicles in a little convoy. Privately, we agreed that if we did find a convoy we would allow a few minutes to elapse after it had gone past us �otherwise the Iraqis might pinpoint the source of the in-telligence which had brought an attack down on their heads. There was also anxiety about what the Scud warheads might contain: if they were nuclear, or full of gas or biological agents, we didn't want to be around when they came apart. We were also nervous of using satellite communications, because they give a hell of a splash-off, and a good direc�tion-finding station can locate a transmitter within twenty seconds. So we practised getting on the phone and putting over the bare essentials of a Scud sighting in as few seconds as possible. Bravo One Zero and Bravo Three Zero had decided to take 32 The One That Got Away vehicles in with them, but at the last minute we opted to go without. Over the past few days the matter had been the subject of intense debate. Obviously vehicles would give the patrol far greater mobility and enable us to drive out of trouble and back over the border if things went wrong. On the other hand, they would be hard to conceal, and might easily give away our presence. At one point we were posi�tively ordered to take them, but the order was rescinded, and in the end we elected to go in on foot. In Bravo One Zero and Three Zero the decision went the other way, and they took Dinkies with them. (The vehicles that we had pre�pared for ourselves were eventually used by 'A' and 'D' Squadrons.) In our patrol, as usual, the matter was decided by Chinese parliament, with every man having his say. Opinion was evenly divided, and nobody insisted that vehicles were essential. Looking back, I realise that I had a strong in�fluence on the decision. I had built countless OPs in Europe. In the Territorial Army I'd made more OPs than all the rest of the guys in the patrol put together, and I'd specialised in what we called hasty hides � we'd dig in, put logs across the top of the hole, and bury them. Altogether, I considered myself something of an expert at the job; but I had never operated in the desert, and just couldn't see a small patrol like ours escaping detection if we were saddled with vehicles. Looking back, I realise it was a cardinal mis�take to go without. What we should have done was to drive in, install an OP with a couple of men, change them over every night, and pull off to a safe distance during the days, hiding the vehicles under cam nets in the bottom of some deep wadi. Mobility apart, the advantage of vehicles would have been that we could fit them up with powerful arma�ments, including heavy machine-guns. The penalty of leaving our Dinkies behind was that we were saddled with huge individual loads. The average weight of a bergen was 60 kilos, or 150 lbs: with that lot on, you had to walk with your head down like a donkey, so that you'd be useless in a contact, and if you fell over you'd be Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 33 knackered. No wonder straps were breaking and stitches starting to pull out. But that wasn't all. Apart from the bergens, each of us had a belt-kit of pouches weighing 20 kilos, and a whole load more gear that wouldn't fit in anywhere else: seven days' rations in one sandbag, two NBC suits in another, an extra bandolier of ammunition, extra grenades for the 203 launchers, and a jerrican of water. Altogether we had nearly 120 kilos of kit apiece. Talking to the RAF helicopter pilots who were going to fly us, we heard how they planned their routes into Iraq to avoid known anti-aircraft positions, and with their help we identified the precise spot at which we wanted to be dropped. At first we chose a point five kilometres short of our LUP, but later, because of the phenomenal weight of our kit, we changed our minds and asked to be put down only two or three kilometres short. Arrangements for evacuation seemed straightforward enough. If we had not come on the air within forty-eight hours of being dropped off, a chopper would come back to pick us up. If we needed casevac, a heli would come within twenty-four hours of any call. If we had a contact and needed assistance, half the squadron would be on board the helicopter to pull us out. The OC tried to reassure us. 'Don't worry,' he said. `You've got your 319. You've got your Satcom. You've got your TACBEs. "A" and "D" Squadrons are going to be in your area. Also you've got your forty-eight-hour Lost Comms procedure, and your twenty-four-hour Casevac.' That all sounded fine � but, as will become apparent, things didn't turn out as we hoped. One detail to which we should have paid more attention was our cover-story. We agreed that if we were captured, we would claim to be members of a medical team, sent in to re-cover downed aircrew � or possibly members of a team sent to provide security for medics, and that our chopper had been forced down. The general idea was to stick as close to the truth as possible, but to say that we were reservists or 34 The One That Got Away ordinary infantrymen, and that we'd been brought into the war because we worked in a medical centre. Yet we never had time to work things out in any depth � for instance, about which fictitious regiment we belonged to. We went off in such a rush, in fact, that when we boarded the Chinook on the evening of 19 January, Andy went on getting his final briefing on the ramp at the back of the heli-copter. (Bravo One Zero and Three Zero were to go in the next night.) Guys from 'B' Squadron threw our kit into vehicles and came with us to the helicopter. Among them was Bob Shepherd, and as he helped me with my equipment I said, only half joking, 'Bob, I wish you'd fucking well failed me during selection!' `Yes,' he said. 'So do I!' I sensed a peculiar atmosphere. Nobody had much to say. As we were going on board, our mates were all around us, but I got the feeling that they thought this was a one-way ticket. Somebody said to me, 'This is bloody ridiculous � it's not on, to carry loads like this.' But by then it was too late to change things. Off we went into the dusk, and after half an hour we landed at Arar, an airfield just inside the border, to refuel. When the pilot shut down his engines, we stayed where we were, in the back. Then came an incredible let-down. The engines started turning and burning again, we lifted off and were almost over the frontier when the pilot radioed for per-mission to cross � and it was denied. He came on the intercom to announce, 'Sorry, guys � mission aborted.' Because the Americans were saturation-bombing targets on our route, he had to deconflict and keep out of the way. Having psyched ourselves up to a high level of pre�paredness, we somehow had to come down. Although everyone pretended to be disappointed, in fact the guys were immensely relieved. We all looked at each other, and grins spread over our faces as we headed back to Al Jouf. two CONTACT! As soon as we landed back, the guys started stripping their kit in an all-out effort to save weight. Until the final moment all eight of us went on sorting and repacking, throwing out anything that didn't seem essential as we tried to lighten our loads. Out went luxuries like sleeping bags and most of our warm clothes. We realised that the weather was much col-der than at Victor, but we simply had to cut down on our weights, which had reached ridiculous proportions: our bergens were so heavy that the only way we could get them on was to sit down, settle the straps over our shoulders, and have a couple of the other guys pull us to our feet, as if they were hoisting knights in armour on to their chargers. I became obsessed with the need for ammunition. Pres�sured by the thought that we were going to be on our own behind enemy lines, I left food out of my belt-kit in favour of more rounds. Normally I carried 24 hours' worth of rations in a belt-pouch � enough to spread over four days at a pinch � but now I reckoned that if we did get compromised, I could reach the Syrian border in two nights. All I would need on me in that case would be two packets of AB (army issue) biscuits; so I put the rest of the food into my bergen and filled my belt-kit with extra ammunition. Altogether I had 12 magazines of 28 rounds each, and also about 90 loose rounds, including a few armour-piercing, which I'd brought from Hereford. One of the items I threw out was my brew-kit: tea-bags, sachets of coffee, orange powder, sugar and inflammable hexi-blocks. Since we were going in on hard routine � which meant no cooking, no fires and no smoking � I thought I would have no chance to use anything like that. Another serious omission was puritabs, for sterilising water. If we'd 36 The One That Got Away been going into the jungle, where you use local water all the time, I'd certainly have taken some � but I thought that in the desert we'd be drinking out of jerricans; it never occurred to me that I might have to rely on the Euphrates. Certainly we wouldn't risk drinking from wells: in the light of how Saddam had treated his own people, especially the Kurds in the north, there seemed a good chance that wells might have been deliberately poisoned. Gradually more guys from Hereford floated in, building up the squadron's numbers, and at the last minute a British Telecom fibre-optic detector turned up, looking rather like one of the metal-detectors that treasure-hunters use to sweep the fields. We also got one Magellan GPS (global positioning system) � a hand-held navigation aid, not much bigger than a mobile telephone, which locks on to satellites as they pass overhead and gives you your position to within a few feet: altogether an excellent device. The atmosphere in the patrol remained tense but cheer�ful. If the guys bitched, it was at the lack of equipment. Until the last moment
we kept demanding satellite pictures of the area for which we were heading, and in the end some did arrive. They were of poor quality, but they appeared to con�firm our decision to leave vehicles behind, since they showed that the desert was extremely flat and open. What we failed to realise, through lack of proper instruction, was that we were reading the imagery upside-down, mistaking low ground for high ground, wadis for ridges and so on. As time ran out, I was thinking a good deal about escape and evasion. At one Int briefing I asked the officer if he had any information about enemy movement or positions along the border with Syria. `No,' he said, 'as far as I know, there are no defences along. it.' `Can you tell us what the border looks like?' `Sorry � I just don't know.' When we discussed crossing this border among our�selves, the guys began joking. 'Aye,' said someone from another patrol, 'if we get compromised, we'll all meet up at Contact! 37 the Pudding Club in Istanbul (the caf�here, in Midnight Express, the guy says you can always leave a message).' For someone like myself with a sweet tooth, that seemed a good enough rendezvous. The second time, our departure was set for the evening of Tuesday 22 January 1991. Just as we heard we were to fly that night, the mail came in. I thought, 'Christ � I don't want this.' I'd been waiting for the post, and normally I looked forward to getting a letter from Jan; but for the past couple of days I'd been trying not to think about home, because it upset me. So I read the letter quickly, and glanced at the new photos of Sarah, who was walking well and stringing quite a few words together. Then I put the letter and the snaps into the bag of equipment I was leaving behind in the SQMS's tent. Just seeing the pictures made me realise what I was missing, and what I might be throwing away. Before we left, we had a big meal of fresh food, which we ate sitting on the ground � there still being no tables or chairs. Then came last-minute checks as we went through all our pockets to sterilise ourselves, and make sure that we were carrying no scrap of paper that would give away who we were or where we came from. The only identification I had on me was the pair of metal discs slung on a chain round my neck, bearing my name, army number, blood group and re�ligion (Church of England). To stop them clinking, I'd covered them in black masking tape, and on each I'd taped a good-luck talisman. One was a new five-pence piece given to me by my mother-in-law, to accompany her Christmas present of a Samurai sword � for the Japanese reckon it's bad luck to give a sword without a coin. The other was a big old British penny which I'd found lying head-up in the sand of the training area near the camp at Victor. It must have been dropped there by a Brit many years earlier � and if that didn't bring luck, what would? I'm not really superstitious but thought I might as well give myself any advantage I could. Again, our mates in 93' Squadron came to see us off, and 38 The One That Got Away the atmosphere became fairly emotional. This time all three Bravo patrols were deploying simultaneously, in two Chi�nooks. Because we were sharing our aircraft with half of Bravo Three Zero, and they were due to drop off first, we hauled our own gear to the front of the fuselage, leaving room for four guys, their kit and two Dinkies at the back. On the tailgate one of the lads said, 'Hey � I'm getting a picture of you lot,' and he took the patrol photograph which appears in the illustrations. Earlier, we'd been joking with the loadies, saying, 'Can't you damage this fucking chopper so that it won't take off?' Unfortunately, there was nothing wrong with it � but it was so heavily laden that the pilot had to taxi it like a fixed-wing aircraft in order to get it off the ground. Then, as he had it rolling, the tail came up a bit and we lifted away. The noise in the back was horrendous: the roar of the engines, backed by the thudding boop, boop, boop of the rotors, made normal conversation impossible. But a few headsets, plugged into the intercom system, hung down from the sides of the cabin and made it possible to listen to the pilots talking. When we landed to refuel at Arar, the pilot shut down his engines, and I sat there thinking, 'I hope this damn thing doesn't start up again!' Once again we waited where we were, and no one had much to say. My mind wandered back to the occasion when, on a training exercise with the SP team, we were aboard a Puma, going in to attack a runaway coach. In the back of the heli we were all dressed up in black kit with respirators on; two guys were sitting at the open door with the fast ropes bundled up under their legs. In front of me was a young Scots fellow, and when we went into a hard turn, I put a hand on the back of his equipment, to keep him steady. He shook his shoulder to show he didn't need holding. All of a sudden the noise changed to a high-pitched screech and the padding inside the roof started to fall off. The pilot had banked round so steeply that we were looking straight down at the ground through the open door. The Scots lad began yelling, 'Get a fucking grip of me!' In a couple of seconds it Contact! 39 was clear that the aircraft didn't have the power to pull out of its turn, and we went crashing down on to a bankside, bounced, narrowly missed some telephone lines and smashed down into a field. On the bounce, one of the fast ropes fell out and wrapped itself round a fence; it could easily have dragged the chopper back down, but as the air-craft was rising, the rope slowly uncoiled itself. After the final impact we all jumped off and began run�ning after the coach, continuing the exercise. But we'd only gone about twenty metres when someone stopped, threw his respirator off and shouted, 'What the fuck are we doing? For Christ's sake, bin the training!' We all stood round laughing, partly out of relief: having narrowly escaped death, we'd still been hell-bent on chasing the target. The Puma was written off, with its whole tail section cracked away. By a miracle, when it hit the bank, the rotor blades still had room to turn, because there was a ditch at the foot of the bank. If the ditch hadn't been there, the blades would have been ripped off, and we'd probably have gone in upside-down. This time there were no such dramas. With the refuelling complete, the Chinook's engines re-started faultlessly and off we went. By then darkness had fallen, and we'd flown for only a few minutes when the pilot came on the intercom to announce, 'Congratulations, guys, we've just crossed the border. You're now in Iraq.' I thought, 'Great! This is cool, flying three hundred kilometres into enemy territory. No�body else is doing this. Nobody else knows we're going in.' But at the same time I was thinking, 'Jesus! This is real! This is bloody dangerous.' During my time in the SAS I'd been in some hairy situations on exercises in various parts of the world, and on operations in Northern Ireland, but nothing as dramatic as this. This was the first time I'd been to war. To keep under the radar, we were flying only ten or twenty metres off the ground. I took my hat off to the pilots, who were prepared to go into hostile airspace so lightly armed; apart from our own weapons, the only armaments on board were the two SA 80 automatic rifles which the loadies could fire through the portholes. SA 80s are poor-quality, 40 The One That Got Away unreliable weapons at the best of times, prone to stoppages, and it seemed pretty tough to have to rely on them. We'd told the pilots that if we were attacked when we landed, we would handle the firefight, and bring the aircrew back with us on our escape and evasion, so all they had to do was stick with us. The red canvas sling-seats along each wall had been pushed back to make room for the vehicles, and we sat on our bergens, squashed into any space available, each man busy with his own thoughts. A good deal of room was taken up by the extra fuel tanks � two fat black cylinders, like pro�pane gas containers. I had my back to one of them, with one of the Land-Rovers in front of me, chained down to D-rings in the floor to stop it shifting during the flight. In the dim light I watched my mates' faces, all pre�occupied with their own thoughts. Then in my headphones I heard the pilot start shouting. A SAM site had locked on to us. With such a heavy load, no violent evasive tactics were possible; what he did was to go right down and hover only a foot or two above the desert. He had chaff, which he could fire off if necessary, to confuse incoming missiles, but I felt quite scared by the realisation that someone else was in the driving seat, and I wasn't in charge of my own destiny. Time slowed to a crawl. We seemed to hover for an eter�nity, and when I looked out through one of the portholes, I was appalled to see how bright the moonlight was. The desert looked totally flat, without cover anywhere. Then after a minute or two we lifted again and carried on. In my head I ran over the rations that I'd chosen and stowed in a sandbag. Deciding what you're going to eat for ten days ahead isn't easy. We'd done it by breaking down standard army ration packs and laying out our selection for each day on the ground � Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on. I knew from experience that when you're sitting around in an OP, boredom makes you want to eat; for most of the time there's nothing else to do. But I'd resisted the temptation to overload, and restricted myself to a daily ration of one main meal, two packets of biscuits, and some Contact! 41 fruit like pineapple or pears in syrup. The main meals were boil-in-the-bag � things like beef stew, chicken and pasta, pasta and meat balls, bacon and beans � pre-cooked and sealed in tough silver foil sachets, which you could roll up and squash down. Because we would be on hard routine, I'd gone mainly for lighter meals like pasta, which are easier to eat cold than solid meat. We'd also done some swaps with the Americans on the base, and I had one MRE (meal ready to eat) of corned beef hash to make a change. But our own boil-in-the-bag stuff was good � tasty and satisfying. I thought wistfully of the brew-kit I'd left behind. Most of the other guys had brought theirs, because for them brew�ing-up is an ingrained habit; they do it automatically whenever they stop for a break, as much for social reasons as the need for refreshment. But I, not being a great tea or coffee drinker, had decided to go without. As for personal kit, I was dressed, like the rest of the guys, in regular DPMs (disruptive pattern material combat fatigues). We'd also been issued with lightweight, sand-coloured desert smocks which � unbelievably � dated from the Second World War. I had worked my silk escape map into the waistband that held the draw-string of my trousers, and taped the twenty gold sovereigns given each of us for E & E purposes on to the inside of my belt. On my head I was wearing a German Army cap � a souvenir of my Alpine guide course � and on my feet a pair of brown Raichle Gore�tex-lined walking boots, with well insulated uppers and soles, which I'd also acquired in Bavaria at a cost of more than �100. On my hands I had a pair of green aviator's gloves, made of fine leather. As useful extras I had the two shamags I'd bought in Abu Dhabi. One was very light coloured, like a biscuit, and I'd made vain efforts to darken it by dyeing it in tea. The other was thicker and altogether more suitable, being oatmeal and purple, with the design favoured by the special forces of Oman. In my right arm I was cradling my chosen weapon, a 203, which I'd fitted with a makeshift sling made of nylon para�cord. Four of the patrol had 203s, and the rest Minimis, the 42 The One That Got Away allocation being determined largely by the other burdens that each of us was carrying. Since the 203 weighs 10 lbs and the Minimi 16 lbs, those with less to carry had the machine-guns. I, being the patrol medic and saddled with the 12-lb medical pack, had a 203, as did Legs Lane, who had the 30-lb radio. Stan, on the other hand, who was exceptionally strong, had a Minimi. On board the Chinook we kept the rifles loaded, with bullets up the spout and safety catches on, in case of sudden action. Each of us also had a 66 rocket launcher � a brilliantly simple, disposable American device, which you throw away after firing. In its folded state it looks like a simple tube, with the rocket pre-packed inside it; you can carry it either slung over your shoulder on a strap, or, as I had mine, laid across the top of my bergen, under the flap. When the time comes to fire, all you have to do is pull out the second half of the tube to make a longer barrel, flip up the sight and pull the trigger. As the chopper clattered on through the night, I was try�ing to think ahead, mainly about E & E. We should have had written orders, and a definite plan, but all that seemed to have been bypassed in the rush, and in the end everything had been word of mouth. The regiment's official line was that if the patrol was compromised, we should head back towards Saudi Arabia. But since Saudi would be nearly 300 kilometres off, and the Syrian border was only 130 kilo�metres to the west, we had already decided that if things went tits-up, we'd leg it for Syria (Stan had asked the pilots to measure the distance on their map, so that we knew exact�ly). That would make obvious sense � especially as the Syrians had publicly shown their defiance of Saddam Hus�sein by announcing that if they picked up downed aircrew from any of the allied nations, they would hand them back to the coalition forces. Talking it over at Al Jouf, we reckoned that if we went all-out in light order, jogging and running, jogging and run�ning, we could make the border in two nights. I'd even considered packing a set of shorts, in case we had to go for it. Contact! 43 What we had failed to take into consideration was the lack of water; you can't jog carrying full jerricans, and there was no other source around. Nor had we bargained for the cold. Five minutes out from Bravo One Zero's location, the loadie gave a thumbs-up signal. I unshackled the chain nearest to me, and smelt rather than heard the Land-Rover engine start up. One member of the other patrol, Paul, was wearing a single glove � for a special reason. Two days earlier he'd burnt the palm of his hand on a metal mug while making tea, raising a blister the size of a fried egg. The only treatment possible was to take the fluid out, apply some Flammazine ointment, and keep the wound clean. Paul wouldn't let the OC or the SSM see it, because if he had, he'd have been taken off the patrol. I found him holding his hand in a bucket of cold water, and as I dressed the burn for him, I said, 'Paul, you're an idiot. Just step