Sniper one (33 page)

'Whisky 28 OK,' he finally said to a group exhale in relief. 'Extracting now.'

Somehow they had got away with it.

Many others hadn't though. A total of five Warriors were also lost with enormous battle damage throughout the operation, and there were six serious casualties.

The whole thing lasted twenty-three hours, almost double the time planned. All call signs from the battle group including those inside Cimic were contacted by the enemy no less than 103 times that day – a modern record for the British Army.

It was also appallingly hard and hot work. The entire crew and dismounts of another sorry Warrior went down as heatstroke casualties and had to go back to base early, vomiting and slurring their words.

As for the operation's outcome, nobody could say it was anything more than a score draw for each side. The pluses
were that a lot of enemy were killed. With the armour drawing them off us, we also got our little respite. It was just miraculous again that in the most intense furnace of combat, no British soldiers had been lost.

On the downside, one or two bad boys were arrested but a lot more weren't home. We also knew we wouldn't be getting Spectre again in a hurry with the conflict in Najaf still going at full tilt.

Worst of all, the thorough pasting the column got had confirmed our fears: we couldn't rely on a resupply any more because the Warriors were no longer guaranteed to get through to us. Effectively, we were on our own.

Then, the day got even worse. A double whammy was waiting for us in Captain Curry's O Group.

'I'm afraid it's the bad news, then the really bad news tonight, guys. A 21-year-old private from the Black Watch was killed earlier today in Basra. Roadside IED, followed up by small arms fire ambush.

'Unfortunately, what's happening in Najaf right now makes the loss of that poor sod pale into insignificance. The US Marines have gone and done us no favours whatsoever today.'

In their bid to crush Moqtada with an iron fist, the US Marines had surrounded and sealed off Najaf's Old City, putting the ultra-precious Imam Ali mosque fully under siege. Moqtada and the rebels barricaded themselves inside it. Then a Marine artillery shell damaged two of the mosque's golden minarets and hurled shrapnel into its courtyard.

Meanwhile, all of this was being pumped live into every Al Amarah sitting room courtesy of Al Jazeera TV. Moqtada had seen to that. Tactfully, he added: 'The final battle for humanity has begun.'

We knew we'd feel the backlash the next day, if not later
that night. Our position in Cimic was balanced on a knife edge, thanks yet again to events elsewhere controlled by our 'coalition partners'. Worse, there wasn't a damn thing we could do about any of it.

We were just holding out against the insurgency's current level of force and violence. But if the Yanks went into the mosque, it would effectively mobilize most of the male population of southern Iraq. In Al Amarah, they would descend on Cimic House like killer flies on cow shit.

Sure, we'd kill truckloads of them as they tried to get over the walls. But we couldn't kill thousands; we simply didn't have enough bullets. If the Challengers and Warriors didn't get through then, we would soon be overrun.

Charlie Curry's final bit of O Group news: the whole miserable day had been Moqtada al-Sadr's thirty-first birthday. I only hoped he choked to death on his cake.

As it turned out, we got our first vote of no confidence the next morning from our own Iraqi workers inside Cimic. Just watching Al Jazeera overnight proved enough for them. No matter what else was to happen in Najaf, they had decided our time was already up.

I was in the Ops Room discussing our ammo supply with Captain Curry when Daz ran in.

'Danny, sir; you've got to come and have a look at this. It's something else.'

Daz led us out to the balcony that overlooked the back gate, the entrance the locals used. There below us were the interpreters, the two laundry men, the gardener, the cleaners, the water plant operators and its guards. They were going backwards and forwards from the abandoned accommodation blocks to the gate in two lines like ants.

Poised precariously in their arms or over their shoulders were washing machines, spin dryers, air conditioning units, mattresses, shelves, bedside cabinets, TVs. Then they came back for second helpings. They were having away everything and anything that wasn't bolted down. It wasn't just that they were nicking our stuff, but they were doing it in broad daylight and right in front of our very eyes. Rasheed the porn merchant even waved at me with a smile when he saw us looking down.

It meant one very obvious thing. They no longer gave a ha'penny if they got fired because they were convinced there soon wouldn't be anybody left to pay them anyway. Like all
good Arabs, they weren't going to let a good business opportunity pass them by. They were taking what they could, then and there, while they still had the chance.

'Cheeky bastards!'

'Like rats abandoning a sinking ship.'

'Fuck them,' said Captain Curry, shaking his head. 'Most of that stuff is so badly fragged it's no use to us anyway. Sooner they're all out of here the better.'

He was right. Nobody had any interest in doing any washing and spin drying right then. Having Iraqis inside the camp was also no longer a great idea either. We couldn't trust any of them. After the morning's plunder, none of them came back. But two had the brass neck to ask for that day's wages.

They'd done us a favour anyway. When the frequency of attacks against us inevitably increased that day with the new developments in Najaf, Curry ordered the disposal of any loose obstacles about the compound. Anything that we might trip over while sprinting from A to B, or that could become secondary shrapnel underneath explosions. Patio chairs, the table tennis table and the gym equipment all went over the wall for locals to scavenge.

The day was filled by fresh calls of 'Allah Akbar' from around the surrounding streets. Sniper fire on us from the old town's rooftops increased to pretty much constant and the rebels turned up with renewed vigour to discharge whatever arms they had at us. From then onwards, we stopped going out at night.

Events in Najaf had perched southern Iraq on the edge of an awfully steep precipice. After smashing up the minarets, the Yanks were for the moment holding back from a full storming of the Imam Ali mosque. Nobody knew for how long though. Neither did it stop them from issuing
ever more incendiary threats against Moqtada and the Mehdi Army on an almost daily basis.

For his part, Moqtada had ordered his offices all over the nation to empty their coffers and secure the services of as many combatants as possible. Intelligence came through that young men were now being paid as much as US$50 a day to fight the coalition; a king's ransom.

Added to that, we heard that many of the new recruits to the jihad in Al Amarah were also high as a kite. OMS leaders were feeding them with a lethal combination of amphetamines and opiates that made their brains tell them they were invisible. Then they let them loose on us.

We were now so busy that the platoon's system of shifts on the roof became irrelevant. If everyone wasn't stood-to together at any given time, then the likelihood was they would be soon enough. Instead, I sent a pair or two down for a couple of hours' kip during a lull. When they came back, another lot would go down. If they were unlucky, it would be only five minutes before someone screamed 'Stand-to' again.

The other platoons would be doing the same around the rest of the camp: in the sangars, on the lower balconies or at the two Warriors. With the adrenalin kicking in the moment you woke, an hour or two of sleep a day was all we actually needed. Your body gets used to replenishing itself in the time it has. Nobody really needs eight hours' sleep. It's a bad civilian habit.

At that stage, the drug-addled loonies we could handle. However, the OMS were also training up dozens more mortar teams to ramp up their endless bombardment on us. That made things far worse. The sheer volume of stuff they began to lob in was just unbelievable. Between 11 and 13 August alone, 400 separate mortar rounds were launched
on Cimic House – an average of one every eleven minutes for three full days in a row.

Mortar shells arrived from everywhere, a 360-degree spread around us. The problem was still Cimic's water tower, as you could see it from all over the city. With the crews' work uninterrupted as we were no longer out on the streets, a decent aiming point was all they needed. We even discussed blowing the water tower up, but we couldn't be sure it wouldn't fall on the house.

The only thing that gave us even half a chance was the pop of the shell's launch. That meant we had five or six seconds to hurl ourselves into cover during its flight time. Then
boom;
and fuck, another close one.

That amount of incoming, far more than we'd ever seen in May or June, began to unnerve even our steeliest soldiers.

'I wish these fuckers would give us a break,' even Des conceded. 'Why don't they just go and shag their ugly bitch wives for a while instead?'

In May it had been exciting. Now we all knew the huge increase in volume also hugely increased our chances of getting hit. People being dead made a difference too. It reminded us of our own mortality.

Nerves started to jangle. A strict ban was imposed on doors being slammed. Any big bang was making the more jittery like Redders jump out of their fucking skin.

Yet again though, and through it all, I never once failed to get a single volunteer to go up to Rooftop or Cookhouse Sangars, the most exposed and dangerous places in the whole compound. Quite the opposite, I had to order people out of there to give someone else a turn. This was the calibre of the boys.

It certainly took mental strength to do that. Each person
would have been having his own private conversation with himself. I know I did. This is how it went:

'This is shit awful unpleasant. Yes, but hold on, this is what I'm actually here for. I'm going to fucking do this. I've got a uniform on, and I'm going to rise above it.'

You have to harness the fear and just go with it, use it to your advantage. We were snipers, we always get the shit jobs. Fucking deal with it.

It was all the more important for me not to show any fear. As a commander, it's vital you set a good lead. If you do, and you've got your blokes' trust, you can be sure they'll follow you most places. But it wasn't really about me. What really made everyone stick it out was the fact that we were all in it together. Nobody wanted to be the one to let the group down. Keeping your end up for everyone else became much more important than the fear of physical injury. If you had to die, it would be right beside your best mates anyway.

Oost put it well to Des.

'Look at it like this, brother. If you buy it, the chances are I'm going to buy it with you. Then think, you can spot for me in the sky.'

'Fucking awesome, man!'

If we were all still strong mentally, the same could no longer be said for Cimic physically. The heavens shitting down high explosives and shrapnel like rain was taking its toll. The place had begun to collapse.

Dozens of unexploded mortar blinds now littered the camp. The ones on main pathways that seriously hindered movement were all marked up on the Ops Room white board. It was now far too risky for Charlie Curry to do another of his walk rounds.

More Snatches in the vehicle park got fragged beyond
repair. A civilian Land Rover Discovery for the Civil–Military Cooperation (CIMIC) unit's use also took a direct hit right through the roof. That was going to piss off some pencil neck in the MoD.

There was barely a window in the main house that hadn't been blown in or badly cracked. Every day we seeped lower into a squalid cesspit. Among the first things to go were the satellite dishes on the roof, so no more telly, Internet or phone calls home. None of that mattered a jot. But when the water and electricity started to go off for six-hour bursts, things were getting a bit more serious.

No one could wash properly. All but one of the Portakabins had been blown up, so the only water supply left apart from the bottled drinking water was a tap on the back wall of the house. When it was working, you could put your head under it.

For peeing and pooing, there were just the two toilets in the house itself for more than 100 blokes. One was an Arab drop hole, the other a sit-down porcelain number. When the water was off they didn't flush, so you'd just have to do your business on top of the bloke's who'd been in before you. Six hours of no water and the shit really stacked up.

We stopped bothering going down from the roof for a piss. Going up and down the ladder was too dangerous. Instead, we filled up empty two-litre plastic water bottles and emptied them out later. More than once, blokes in a rush at night took a bloody great big gulp from a urine-filled bottle mistaking its contents for water. In that heat, all liquids were at the same lukewarm body temperature.

Fresh food supplies were also running out fast. To conserve what was left and cut down on movement again, the cookhouse went down to producing just one cooked
meal a day in the evening. Breakfast and lunch were out of ration boxes.

Everyone was also sleeping like tramps now. Very rarely did you ever sleep in the same place on any consecutive night. A few bunk beds had been salvaged from the accommodation blocks, but if none of them was free, you'd go for an armchair or a sofa, or otherwise just curl up where you could on the floor. If you didn't wear a head torch while moving around at night, you'd step on twenty bodies in the corridor.

When the Ops Room staff finished their long shifts, their desks became their beds, and someone else would kip on the floor beneath them. The CIMIC guys' lives had become totally meaningless with the uprising, so they had their offices torn up underneath them to make way for a little more precious living space.

With all that toil, sweat and closeness, the place properly stank.

Then there was the August heat. We didn't think it was possible for it to get any hotter than July, but it did. On bad days, the temperature even hit 60°C. That's fucking potty heat. No matter how long we'd been there, we were never going to acclimatize fully to that. We drank litres more water, but were still losing the same amount of body fluids. Salt deprivation meant more attacks of cramp in sniper fire positions, and that got properly painful.