Chris Ryan (7 page)

looming. It looked like a strip of concrete, and we thought we'd come on some form of installation. As I fol�lowed the line of the fence with the sight, I muttered, 'Christ � it must be a massive place. This bloody barrier goes on for ever.' Then at the last minute we realised that what we could see was a railway line, fenced to keep animals off the track. 86 The One That Got Away The chain-link was only about six feet high. Any other time, we'd have scaled it in seconds. But we were that cold and pissy helpless we just couldn't climb it. Our hands and arms were almost useless, and wouldn't pull us up and over. Stan brought out his set of folding Leatherman pliers and, with an all-out effort to make his hands work, cut a vertical slit in the mesh. We knew it was wrong, and a departure from the SOP, because anyone who came along and saw the gap would realise that somebody had been through there �but it was the only way we were going to cross the track. Anyway, we squeezed through the gap and found our�selves on the railway line. 'Jesus!' we thought. 'Shall we walk along it?' It would have been easy going, tabbing on the con-crete sleepers. A check on the map showed that it ran straight to a town on the Syrian border. But then we reckoned that probably the line would be patrolled, or that someone on a train would be bound to see us. There was no�where to hide near the track, and if a train came along, we'd be caught in the open. We decided to continue northwards. At the fence on the far side of the line Stan gave me the pliers and said, 'Your turn.' My fingers were so numb that I could hardly grip the handles, and putting pressure on them hurt like hell. But wire by wire I cut a slit, and we wormed through, pulling the chain-link back into place behind us so that the gap wasn't too obvious. With any luck it would be days before anyone noticed the damage. Leaving the railway, we found a big, rounded hill ahead of us and started up it. A few yards short of the summit we stopped, both in the same stride. In that split second we'd spotted that AA gun barrels were pointing into the sky no more than four or five metres in front of us. Standing still and staring at them, we realised we could see the top of a wall of sandbags, almost under our noses. Obviously there were Iraqis inside the sangar but, thank God, they seemed to be asleep. Without a word, without turning, we back-tracked down the slope, inches at a time, watching for any movement to Down To One 87 our front. Nothing stirred. Once we were clear, we pulled away eastwards in a big loop, leaving the mound on our left, and then came back on to our northerly heading. But the in�cident gave us a fright, because we'd been walking carelessly, not worrying about the scrunching noise our boots were making on the loose rock and gravel. By the early hours of the morning we were back into a system of shallow wadis and dry channels maybe thirty feet wide, but only two or three deep. These river beds were full of little bushes which threw thick, black shadows in the moonlight, so that every hollow seemed to be full of quite dense vegetation. I thought, 'Great � we'll be able to get our heads down in here. It should be warmer, too.' About 0530 we started looking for a place to lie up, and settled in a hollow. As I lay down next to Stan, I pulled out my hip flask and offered it to him. I thought the dickhead would realise what was in it, but no: he expected it to be water. I watched as he put it to his lips, and then � his face! His eyes bulged. He went pwhhhoohhh! mphhhh! and then `Fucking hell! What the hell's that?' `Whisky, you clot!' `Bloody hell! I thought it was water.' `You dick, no.' I took a sip myself and told him, 'That's the last time you're getting offered any of this stuff.' So I whacked the flask back into my pocket. Stan took off his webbing and laid it down in the middle of some bushes, and we cuddled down together on top of it. It was really embar�rassing, because we were front to front, with our arms round each other, and we had to take turns on whose head was at the bottom. So we lay there, shuddering, drifting off into sleep, waking with a start, shaking all over, until dawn broke. By then I was bitterly regretting some of the mistakes I'd made in choosing and packing my kit. Apart from the brew-kit, which would have been a great morale-booster, I should have had a Goretex bivvy bag or at least a space blanket in one of my pouches. When daylight came, we found that some of the mud had 88 The One That Got Away dried on us, aided by our body heat, and our clothes were all stiff and covered with ice-crystals, as if they'd been left out on a frosty night. Looking up, I saw that the sky was clear and blue, and thought, 'Thank God, it's going to be a fine day.' Light revealed that the bushes which had looked pro�mising at night were nothing but thorny skeletons, eaten down by goats; there wasn't a leaf on them, and they weren't going to hide us from anyone. So we crawled across and tucked ourselves into the wall of a wadi that ran north and south. At ten o'clock the sun came up and shone on us as we lay against the western wall. I'm sure that saved our lives. One more wet, windy day, and we would just have drifted off into unconsciousness and never come round. The sun never felt very warm, but it definitely made the air less cold, and we began to sort ourselves out a bit. We took off our webbing, and I spread out my map case to dry. We also cleaned the mud off our weapons and reloaded magazines. I found I'd fired about 70 rounds during the contact. Stan produced a sachet of American corned-beef hash from his belt-kit, and as I watched him eat it, I was thinking, 'Why the hell didn't I bring my own rations with me?' All I had was two biscuits, my last. At one point I said, 'Stan � can you tell me, what the fuck are you doing sitting in the middle of Iraq? You're supposed to be a dentist, with a Porsche 911, living in the middle of Sydney � and now you're in fucking Iraq, with nothing!' `You know, Chris,' he replied, 'I'm asking myself that, right this very minute' � and he burst out laughing. 'I bet we look a bloody state now.' `Too right we do.' `What about you, then? What are you doing here?' It was a good question � and when I thought about it, I saw that my involvement in the SAS could be traced back to my love of being in open country. It was that, more than anything else, which had determined the course of my career. Down To One 89 I grew up in Rowlands Gill, a small village in the country just outside Newcastle, and went to the junior school there. From our house, I could walk straight out across the fields and into the forest, and the result was that as a kid I was con�stantly playing in the woods, making camps and sleeping out. My father worked on construction sites, driving plant machinery, but he generally got laid off during the winter, when work on the sites shut down, and that suited him fine, because all his life he'd been keen on shooting. He'd been brought up in the hamlet of Blanchland nearby, where his uncle had been a gamekeeper, and he'd spent his own boy�hood roaming the woods and fields. He'd take me with him out into the country round Rowlands Gill, where he had permission from the farmers, and also near Blanchland, where he was friendly with a farmer called Clive. We used to build hides, in which we'd wait for pigeons, or ferret rabbits out of burrows in the hedges. On winter evenings we'd stand in the woods and flight pigeons as they came into roost. My dad had a five-shot Browning automatic 12-bore. Once, as we came round a corner, we saw five rabbits on the edge of a field. He got them all, one after another. With feats like that he soon became my hero, and I loved every minute of our expeditions. Whatever we shot, we ate. My dad would skin the rabbits or pluck the pigeons � as well as the odd pheasant, partridge and grouse � and my mum would cook them. I used to listen fascinated to the stories he told about himself and my cousin Billy, and the times they used to go shooting together as young men. In time I came to resent the fact that Billy seemed closer to him than I ever was, and had got a lot more out of him. But then came a great change. Some time in his thirties, my dad decided it was wrong to shoot birds and animals, and stopped altogether. By then I was mad keen, and kept sug-gesting we should go out, but he said, 'No � you're better off just watching them or taking pictures, capturing them on film. If you want to go, shoot with a camera.' It may have been something to do with the fact that myxomatosis was at its height. The sight of sick rabbits blundering about, 90 The One That Got Away bouncing off each other, with their eyes closed by purulent swellings, disgusted him, and he was upset by the thought of so many animals dying in pain. As we drove into Blanchland, he'd say, 'God � that bank used to be covered with rabbits, and now there's nothing.' He may have thought that if he laid off, it would help the rabbits recover. At an early age I started asking if I could have an air-rifle, and my parents kept saying no. At one point my dad bought me a .410, but I was only allowed to take it out with him, under close supervision. Later, when I was thirteen or four�teen, I saved up my pocket money and asked again if I could buy an air-rifle. Still the answer was no, so my brother Keith and I went out with some older boys and bought one, a BSA .22. I kept the precious weapon in the loft, along with a few dirty magazines and bottles of cider that we'd managed to tuck away. Again I asked my mum, 'Can I buy an air-rifle?' and when she answered, 'No,' I said, 'What if I just get one?' `You wouldn't be able to keep one in this house, without your dad and me knowing.' Keith and I were looking at each other, thinking, 'Yeah �right!' What we used to do was smuggle the air-gun out over an outbuilding at the back. Keith would wait on the ground, while I climbed out of my bedroom window and handed the gun down to him. Then we'd run off into the woods and go shooting. One day, as I came home from school, I found that Keith had got there before me; he grabbed me, his face all fearful, and said, `Dad's just bought a new TV, and the man's in the loft, putting up the aerial. You'd better get up there quick.' The hatchway going up into the loft was in my bedroom. I stood there with Keith, waiting anxiously, when my dad called cheerily up to the fitter from downstairs, 'I don't sup�pose there are any bottles of beer hidden up there?' `No,' the man answered, 'just a couple of dirty books and . . . some cider.' Keith and I stared at each other in horror. Luckily my Dad took the answer as a joke and started laughing. The aerial guy said, 'No, no � there's nothing up here.' Down To One 91 The rifle was never discovered � but when I was sixteen or so I declared it, and by then it was too late for anyone to worry. My Mum came from Lynemouth, a mining village on the coast of Northumberland. A quiet, very modest woman, she had the patience of a saint, and a tremendously strong sense of right and wrong. Nothing on earth would make her break the law � and sometimes she drove the rest of us crazy by her insistence on absolute honesty, even in the smallest things. But I grew up with enormous respect for her integrity. In bringing up three boys, without any modern appliances, she worked all hours of the day � and I'm ashamed to think how little help we gave her. At school I was quite soft, and used to get bullied. If a girl started making up to me, I'd have the shit kicked out of me by someone else who fancied her. If there was going to be a fight, it took place when school finished. There'd always be a big crowd gathering at the gate, waiting for the action, and I'd be nearly trapping myself as I approached. Sometimes if my brother Keith got the worst of an argument, he would say, 'Right � my big brother'll see to you.' Then he'd find me at playtime and say, 'By the way, you're to have a fight tonight.' Sometimes I'd go over the back fence and do a run�ner across the fields to avoid facing the music. But then came a transition. When I was sixteen I decided that this sort of thing had to stop, and I began fighting back. It wasn't a personality change; just that I went on the offen�sive. I realised that if you have a fight, you probably get hurt, but it doesn't last for ever. Listening to my dad, and taking a grip of myself, I put a stop to the bullying. I also started judo lessons, and couldn't get enough of them. At first, for a couple of months, I was taught by a Japanese who practised a pure form of the ancient martial art, but then I progressed to an instructor in Newcastle, an ex-Olympic champion who taught me to fight dirty � how to disable an opponent by kicking him in the balls, and how to knock somebody's head off. I became so keen that I'd go into town almost every night, and I started winning com�petitions; in my first fight I floored my opponent within 92 The One That Got Away seconds, and hurt him quite badly. But I gave up judo when, in a fight with a bigger boy, my clavicle became detached from the rib cage. Although I finished the fight, I lost on points � and afterwards the injury caused me so many prob�lems that I thought I'd better stop. I found judo a wonderful means of channelling aggres�sion to a useful end. Not that I see myself as aggressive �determined, yes, perhaps a bit short-tempered, but not aggressive. If things start going wrong, and I tell someone not to do something, and he does it again, I might have an emotional outburst � but on the whole I'm easygoing. With a jolt I remembered the sick fear I once felt when I was a kid of about thirteen. We were playing Knocking Nine Doors, and a big guy rushed out and chased us down the street. He was known as a really hard man, and when we belted on his door, he was waiting behind it. He flew out, and we went hurtling down the road. He chased us for a couple of hours, and the terror I'd felt then was exactly the same as what I experienced during the contact in the wadi. That wasn't by any means the only time I'd been on the run. Once my younger brother Keith and I had been playing football with some boys in Blanchland. I must have hurt one of the locals in a tackle, and he went off in a rage. Later, Keith and I set out with our cousin to get conkers. I'd just climbed the tree and started hitting the conkers down, when Keith gave a hoarse cry: 'Chris � look!' Peering down through the leaves, I saw a gang of ten or twelve kids from the village, all armed with sticks, heading for us at a run. `There they are!' the raiders shouted as they spotted us. `There they are!' I jumped down from the tree. 'You run back up home that way,' I told Keith, and I took off in the other direction. The pack came after me and it was
like hare and hounds for the rest of the day, four hours at least. I ran until I thought I was going to die. I ran through the forest, waded the river, ran up on to the moors � and still the little bastards were after me, determined to get me. In the end I spotted a neighbour of Down To One 93 my aunt's, a man who worked as a gamekeeper. I came tear�ing down the road with the hunters close behind and threw myself into his arms, unable to speak. I hated school work. I was all right at maths and technical drawing, but never much good at basics like reading and writing, and I took little interest in most of my lessons. Part of my trouble, I suspect, was that the school was in a period of transition, changing from grammar school to compre�hensive, and the teachers were not interested in the less able children, so that it was easy to sit at the back of the class and do whatever one wanted. Afterwards, I bitterly regretted my lack of motivation, es�pecially when I found that, as an adult, I had a perfectly good brain. When I joined the army, I realised I had to pass the exams in order to survive, and so I really got down to work. I found the German course, which I took before going on the Alpine guides' course, a severe effort, as I had no real grounding in English grammar and vocabulary, let alone German. So I had to learn English properly first � and there I was, sitting alongside brigadiers and colonels in Beacons�field, struggling to keep up. But in the end I surprised myself by passing, and in Mittenwald I went on to receive lessons in Bavarian-accented German on the weather, rock-forma�tions and so on. As a boy, though, I was more interested in making a camp in the woods or racing about with the other kids on the estate at home than in going to school; every now and then I'd play truant, or try it on at home by pretending to feel ill. My father never took much interest in my education, and it was my mother who always read my school reports first. She was forever disappointed � and I'd beg her not to show them to my dad. After reading one report, she made an extraordinarily prophetic remark. 'Chris,' she said, 'I hope you've got a sturdy pair of boots.' `Why?' I said. `Because you're going to have to do an awful lot of walk�ing one day.' She meant that I'd have to walk round looking for jobs, and she started singing that song, 'These Boots are 94 The One That Got Away Made for Walking'. I remember pulling faces behind her back, mouthing, 'Shut up! Shut up!' � but she went on sing�ing and laughing. By the time I was sixteen, all I wanted was to join the army. I didn't get much encouragement from my dad, because when he'd been caught for National Service in the Royal Horse Artillery, he hadn't liked the army one bit. Probably it was because he was the youngest child, and a bit spoilt. The sudden strict discipline kicked him into shape, but also it gave him an unpleasant shock, and once he came out he had nothing more to do with the military. At least he didn't oppose me when I wanted to join up. At the local recruiting office I did the first tests to become a boy soldier, and passed them fine. For the final tests I was due to travel to Sutton Coldfield, but because I went down with jaundice, I missed the interviews. I felt destroyed at having lost the chance of joining. I remember lying in bed, feeling lousy, and seeing two men in uniform, an officer and an NCO, come to the house, to tell my parents that the army suggested I should join up for man's service when I was seventeen or eighteen. Luckily at that point my cousin Billy was in 23rd SAS, the territorial unit, and one day he said, 'Well, why not come up, and we'll get you out on a couple of weekends? Then you'll see what it's like to be in the army.' Until then I'd only been in the Air Cadets, and knew practically nothing. When Billy came down to pick me up, I was still at school. I said, 'What do I need?' `Oh, just get a set of spare socks.' My mum was clucking round me, getting out tins of soup and making sandwiches, but Billy said, 'Don't worry � he'll be fine.' So we went up to Prudhoe, in Northumberland, where 'C' Squadron of 23 SAS had its base. At that time �the late 1970s, before the siege of the Iranian Embassy in Princes Gate � the SAS was nothing like as well known as it later became; but the Regiment was flourishing, and there was much territorial activity. I was just a naive lad of sixteen, and as I walked through the doors of the drill hall, I saw all Down To One 95 these guys who looked tremendously old. Probably their ages ranged from thirty to forty-five, and a lot of them had seen service in Suez and other campaigns, having served in the regular army. No doubt I looked a bit of a twerp to them. But nothing could damp down my excitement; when the SQMS took me into the stores and gave me a camouflage suit, a set of webbing pouches, a poncho and a bergen, I was over the moon. A bunch of recruits had assembled for a weekend's train�ing � some were civilians, others from regular army units. Their average age must have been about twenty-five. As I arrived, they were about to have a map-reading lesson, so I sat down with them and did that. Next, we all scrambled on to trucks and drove up to Otterburn, where we walked out on to the moors. 'Right,' somebody said, 'tonight we're going to sleep against this wall, under ponchos.' I thought it was terrific � to spend the night outdoors. I was so excited that I couldn't go to sleep, and I lay for ages gazing up at the stars. Next morning, after no more than a couple of hours' sleep, I was up early, and we spent the day walking. We'd walk for a while, have something to eat, get another lesson in map-reading, then go on again. The exercise ended with a long hike, which left me knackered. Back at Prudhoe, I thought, 'Well � that was great. But that's it.' I imagined that after my introduction to the army, I wouldn't be asked again. But luckily for me the OC happened to be there. He was a scary-looking guy, with ginger hair and little milky-bar glasses, and looked a right hard nut. He came over to speak to me and said, 'You're Billy's cousin, aren't you? Would you like to come back up?' `Fine,' I said. 'Great.' `Good,' he replied. 'But you must understand that you won't be on the books. You shouldn't be here, really, because we're breaking the law. If anything happens, you won't be able to lay claim on the army.' That didn't worry me one bit, and from then on I went up to Prudhoe every weekend. The selection course went on 96 The One That Got Away over a period of three months, with the recruits assembling only at weekends. At first the group had consisted of sixty people, but every week a few of them decided they'd had enough and threw their hand in. Whenever I got out of the wagon at the start of a new exercise, the number had gone down. But for me things became more and more exciting, because we went from being in a big group to working in pairs, and in the end I was on my own. It was a big thrill when someone told me to walk alone from Point A to Point B; I had become confident with my map-reading, and between Friday night and Sunday morning we'd cover up to 60 kilo�metres, carrying a bergen. On the last weekend of the course there were only four of us left, and I was the only one who finished the march. Completion of that march was the prerequisite for going on to a Test Week in Wales. Normally, anyone who passed would be tested for two weeks down the Brecon Beacons. But I was too young to go, and they told me that I wouldn't be ready to take selection for 23rd SAS until two more terri�torial selection courses had gone through. In other words, I was going to have to wait a whole year. That was disappointing, but I was so keen that I volun�teered to keep going out on the territorial weekends when the next course started. By that time I knew all the routes, and I could run from one check-point to another without having to consult a map. I'd also learnt how to cut corners and cheat a bit. At the end of that course only one man passed: he and I were the sole survivors. By then I'd become a bit of a joke in the Squadron. None the less, on the third course I had a still greater advantage. I was so fit, and knew the ground so well, that I finished each leg before the other guys were half-way. Now at last I was old enough to go down to Wales for the Test Week. After two weeks on the hills, based at Senny�bridge, I passed out and at last became a member of 'C' Squadron. My aim, of course, was to join 22, the regular SAS; normally, to do that, you have to enrol in another regi�ment first, and then obtain secondment. My best course Down To One 97 seemed to be to join the Parachute Regiment � but all the guys said, 'Don't bother with that. Once you've served here in 23 for a bit, you can go straight on to selection for 22.' Apart from that, 22 were holding a lot of courses and exer�cises down at Hereford, and there were often spare places � so I was going south a good deal. Between all my outdoor activities at weekends, I had various jobs. I worked in a fibre-glass factory, then in a garage, where I got an apprenticeship as a mechanic. But I really had very little interest in the work. Instead of con�centrating on the job, I'd be thinking about morse code or demolitions, and in the evenings I'd listen to tapes or study manuals on such subjects. The result was that I could never hold down a job for long; I was always wanting to go off with the TA, and my employers wouldn't give me the time. Someone would ring up from Hereford and say, 'Right, we've got three slots here on a jungle trip. Send two guys down.' But if I went into work and said, 'Listen � can I have four weeks off, from tomorrow?' of course the answer would be no. One day I went in knowing there was a possibility of an exercise in Belgium. After that I was planning a summer holiday in Greece, and immediately after that, there was an exercise in America which would last six weeks. When I asked my manager if I could have the time off, he said, 'Not a chance,' so I said, 'OK � stick your job,' and packed it in. During the exercise in Belgium our patrol commander began breaking SOPs by walking during daylight. We were moving up the edge of a field on a hot, sunny summer's day when suddenly we got a contact. As I was coming over the brow, a line of red berets popped up out of the golden corn, and we were captured by Belgian paras. I spent my eighteenth birthday being interrogated, put through TQ (tactical questioning) in stress positions, and I thought, `There's no way I'm ever going to get captured again.' Back from exercises, I started labouring on building sites for a friend of my father who had his own business. He allowed me to work for him more or less when I wanted, and the money was all under the table. If a TA exercise came up, and I wanted three weeks off, there was no problem. 98 The One That Got Away By this time I was extremely fit. Every day I'd do a ten-mile run, followed by a 16-mile bike ride, and then swim for a mile, and run the three miles home. I seemed to go through this routine with the greatest ease, and maintained it for months on end. Out running, I had the lovely feeling that it was no effort, but that I was coasting comfortably through the country lanes. One day, for some reason, I didn't go out � and in the house I simply couldn't sit down. My mum was cooking dinner, and I was driving her crazy by jumping up and down. Tor God's sake, go for a run, will you?' she said, and I ended up doing just that and after ten miles I felt fine. When I asked at Hereford to go on selection for 22 SAS, there was no problem. But first I was taken on an LTM (laser target marker) exercise by Jack, one of the permanent staff instructors. It was here I met a few of the Regiment's characters, not all of them admirable. We went out to the Black Forest in southern Germany, where our patrol's task was to put a marker on a farm building, so that a jet could fly across and bounce a signal off the target. I was mustard keen, but there was a guy from 22 who just sat out in the middle of a field smoking, not bothering even to unpack his equipment from its plastic bag. I didn't think that was very professional, and when he said, 'You're a dickhead to get your LTM out � you'll just have to clean it,' I felt quite annoyed. I couldn't see the point of going to Germany and being deployed into the field, and then not doing the exer�cise properly. Later someone explained that I was doing what I was doing as a hobby, and that once I'd joined up it would become a job and I'd think differently. But Jack turned round and said, 'Don't take any notice of what hap�pened here. That isn't the Regiment.' At last the time came for me to go down to Hereford and take the 22 Selection course, which was spread over six months. We did four weeks on the hills, two weeks' tactics training, five weeks in the jungle in Brunei, then combat survival followed by continuation training. In the hills there were some days when I felt we were being crucified, but on Down To One 99 the whole it wasn't too bad. In tactics training, I found I was confident with a weapon, but I was shocked by the state of some of the troops who came up: their weapon-handling drills were poor, to say the least. In the jungle we were put into six-man patrols, and sent to live in a basecamp from which we moved out every day to do range work, navigation or RV drills. I found it tough going. Navigation posed no problem, and I discovered that I could mix with other guys easily enough; but I didn't like the physical difficulties of living in the jungle, where you're wet, filthy and stinking for weeks on end. Also, I had difficulty assimilating spoken orders. Many of the other guys had led patrols in Northern Ireland, and some had been in the jungle before, so that they were all more experienced than me. Back at Hereford, at the end of the course, we were all taken into the camp cinema. Nothing had been said about who had passed or failed. Then the sergeant major, whose sense of humour was all his own, announced that he would read out a list of names. The people on it were to go back to the accommodation block, wait there, and return in fifteen minutes' time. He read out twenty names, including mine �more or less half the people on the course. Had we passed or failed? Nobody knew. We walked across to the accommoda�tion block silent and numbed. Then someone said, 'Well �hell! So-and-so's a wanker, and he's still over there. He can't have passed.' Somebody else said, 'But Smith's over there too, and he's a good bloke.' Returning to the cinema a quarter of an hour later, we found that the other half of the course had disappeared, and we sat down again. The sergeant major stood up and said, `Right, you lot. You haven't passed . . .' There was an intake of