The Easy Day Was Yesterday (38 page)

I shook his hand and we sat in the hallway. I was still concerned about my cell phone, so steered him away from my room. He told me that he had come to organise my escort to New Delhi. He had brought one of his officers with him to escort me on the train. I asked if it was possible for me to be released to the Nepali border. He said that I had to be released into the custody of the Australian High Commission. I let it go at that because I knew Sallie and the team would deal with this when I told them. I asked how I was going to get to New Delhi and was told that we’d take the train. ‘First class?’ I asked jokingly. ‘No,’ he said, missing my joke altogether. I had images of this cop and me sitting on top of the train all the way to New Delhi. ‘How far is it to New Delhi?’ I asked.

‘About 14 hours.’

‘Bloody hell!’

I then decided I’d try to pay for good seats because that was a long time to be stuffed in with everyone else and I could imagine them all staring at the white man in shackles.

My breakfast arrived just in time, as the conversation with Shankar had died very quickly. Shankar left me to my food and went off to make arrangements. I quickly scribbled a note explaining my conversation with Shankar and gave it to Bala’s cook to give to Sallie. As I ate my breakfast it occurred to me that maybe I would be released today. I had received a text from Sallie telling me that I would be, but the question was now where I’d be released. Personally, I hoped I was going to Nepal, but didn’t care as long as I was released.

I decided to sit out front today and watch life go by as it was just too hot in the room. There was obviously a specialist clinic on as there were a number of mentally and physically challenged people gathering at the front of building. I’d never seen anything like it. Their tortured limbs bent and pointed in all directions except the right one. Some couldn’t walk, so they crawled with their legs dragging behind them. There were others with no arms, some with no legs and others with feet that just didn’t work. A pretty young girl came close. She was wearing a beautiful purple and orange sari, but she had no feet and her toes were attached directly to the bottom of her leg. There wasn’t a wheelchair in sight, but plenty of lengths of bamboo to help these poor bastards get around. To be born in India to a poor family and with a deformity was a real curse. I looked at some of the useless legs these people were dragging around; had they been in Australia, they would have had these limbs amputated and a usable prosthetic attached. I’ve seen some terrible things in my life; things that no man should ever have had to see. Rwanda was one; the Iraq War was another.

On 8 March 2003, I arrived in Kuwait. It was my first trip to Kuwait, and the Middle East for that matter, and I had no real idea what to expect. So I exited the airport with a heightened level of awareness — I suppose I naively expected everyone to be remotely related to Osama Bin Laden. In situations like this, I trusted no-one. I was supposed to be met by a couple of Brits who worked for the same security company as I did. Apparently they’d been here for a few weeks already, helping CNN prepare to cover the impending war in Iraq. These guys told me a driver would be there as well and the driver’s name would be written on a board. As I left the terminal I immediately caught sight of the driver and the Brits approached a few moments later. After the introductions, they said we were going back to the hotel that CNN had taken over.

I checked into the hotel and we hit the buffet for lunch and had a chat about what was going on. One thing was clear, CNN were really chucking some money at this war. They’d taken over the hotel and occupied almost every room. All meals were covered by CNN by way of a buffet, and they’d already purchased two old humvees and two land rovers for those crews embedding with the US military. The Brits told me I’d be going with one of those embedded crews. Bugger; I wish I had been told this prior to leaving Australia because I knew what I needed to survive on operations and had most of the stuff stored at home.

Everyone was preparing as if the war was going to happen so I did the same. I started putting maps together of the whole country and using a highlighter pen to mark the latitude and longitude numbers for rapid identification. I had a medical kit to prepare, a GPS to sort out, two different satellite phones to program, body armour and cold weather gear to prepare. Fortunately, I had gone to a military disposal shop in Hereford the week before and bought a cold weather sleeping bag, a pack for all the gear, a bivvy bag, thermal underwear, cold weather jacket and a good set of walking boots.

That afternoon I met the rest of the crew with whom I would be embedded. There was Walter Rogers, an elderly reporter who had been around for a long time and had a lot of experience. Charlie Miller, the cameraman, was a freelancer and had worked with Walt on a few previous jobs. Charlie also had some previous experience with the British Army. Jeff Barwise, the satellite engineer, was from the south and had that real Bogart twang to his accent. I immediately liked Jeff and his very relaxed nature. This was to be Jeff’s first exposure to war.

Jeff showed me the old bucket of shit humvee I’d be driving through this war. She was a real shocker and still had the original army seats and instruments. Jeff had already fitted the satellite dish and communication gear to ‘Old Betsy’, as we nicknamed her, and had purchased two generators to power everything, so I went shopping to buy those things that would make life more comfortable in the desert during the war.

I bought a small gas burner and three extra disposable butane cylinders, steel drinking mugs for all, cooking pots, extra food, tea, coffee, sugar, drinking chocolate, muesli bars and anything else I could throw into the trolley. Having the ability to make a hot cuppa whenever we had the chance was going to be good for morale, especially first thing in the morning when we would be tired and cold. I went shopping with the CNN logistics guy and a few others. The logistics guy had a pocket full of money and was happy to spend it on whatever we wanted. The local Kuwaiti businesses were making a killing on this war and CNN had a huge budget to throw at the Kuwaiti merchants.

Some of the other guys had plain, military-style uniforms made by the local tailors and, as we collected them, the logistics guy told the tailor to measure me for a set as well. This was great as it meant I could have something made that was more akin to a military style without the camouflage pattern. I liked the idea of lots of big pockets to hold all my life-saving kit, so I jumped at the chance.

A few days later, Walt and Charlie were called forward to their US Army embed unit. Officially, only Charlie and Walt were to be embedded without the hummer or Jeff and me. So off they went and Jeff and I continued to tinker with the car just waiting for the call to move forward. A few hours later we received it. We were told to move to KM 21 on the main highway to Iraq and to be there by 5.00 pm. Jeff and I arrived with plenty of time to spare and waited with a heap of others who were also waiting to be met by their embed units. Like CNN, the other media companies had employed ex-soldiers to drive their cars; there was certainly some testosterone floating around that waiting area.

Some groups were collected after 20 minutes while we waited until 9.00 pm. We followed another humvee through the desert for an hour heading west and eventually arrived at Camp New York. We stopped there for 15 minutes and then drove further into the desert to another camp and arrived at midnight. By now Jeff and I were well and truly buggered and were looking for a rack to get some sleep. Charlie and Walt were there so we grabbed a stretcher each, found some clear space in their tent and fell asleep.

We were up at 6.00 am for shit, shower and shave, followed by a greasy breakfast. Then we waited and waited and waited some more for someone to come for us. Eventually the unit padre came to get us and we followed his humvee further into the desert to the 7th Cavalry location which, according to my GPS, was 25 kilometres from the Iraqi border.

We met the Squadron Commanding Officer (SCO), Terry Ferrel, and I let Walt do his journalist thing and sat in the background waiting for any tactical discussions to begin. The SCO was a big man, maybe 6 feet 3 inches (190 centimetres), and very welcoming to us all. We sat in the operations room getting a brief from the SCO, and I ran my eye over the maps in the ops room looking for any dates that would give me something to work towards, but there was nothing; good for them. The SCO said all would be revealed when it was necessary. We drove to the Apache Company position and set up next to the Company Commander’s Abrams tank.

The Company Commander of Apache Company was Captain Lyle. He was a short guy, which was probably good for a tank commander, had blonde hair and seemed like a decent bloke.

That afternoon we practised a ROM (refuelling on the move). Apparently we would be charging into Iraq and, when we were just about to run out of fuel, we would stop, the fuel tankers would catch up and we would just drive through like a petrol station. Sure enough, that’s what we did and it worked very well. The Americans are great at mobilising large numbers of people and equipment.

We started to hear word that George W Bush was going to make a speech the next day. The SCO thought we would drive into Iraq at 3.00 am the following morning and drive on for a few hours until Saddam capitulated. He asked where we wanted to position ourselves. ‘As far forward as possible,’ I answered, without giving the crew the chance to debate the question. The SCO said we couldn’t be in front of the forward troop commander’s vehicle, but could sit just behind him. Perfect. So that was it. Our position was vehicle number 11 in a convoy of about 400 vehicles.

George W. made his big speech the next day as the crew and half of Apache Troop sat around Walt’s radio listening to the BBC. Bush told Saddam that he had 48 hours to capitulate. He told the Iraqi soldiers not to fight, the Iraqi commanders not to fire their weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and that the US military was bringing help.

Captain Lyle told us that we were moving forward to the attack position the next day, so Jeff and I gave Betsy the once over to ensure we were ready to roll. We checked that the four fuel jerries were full and well secured on the roof and that our water jerries were also full and secured in the back. That afternoon, Apache Troop issued us with 20 individual meals ready to eat (MREs) to keep us going for the first few days of the war.

When we departed for the attack position it was still dark — as it generally is at 4.00 am. We drove for a few hours in the dark and it was a good opportunity to get the night vision goggles (NVGs) on and practise following the tank in front. Only I could see where we were going — the others were driving in complete darkness. At 9.00 am we seemed to arrive in the middle of nowhere when the convoy stopped its armoured vehicles in all-round defence, so I parked Betsy in the middle of A Troop’s defensive position about 20 metres from Captain Lyle’s Abrams.

Later that day we heard a news report over the short wave radio that the coalition had bombed strategic targets in Baghdad the previous night. The air war had started, so it wouldn’t be long before this show would get underway. I was surprised and couldn’t believe this was really going to happen. I suppose up until now I was just earning my day’s pay and subconsciously thought I’d be back in Kuwait City in a few days.

Captain Lyle started talking about a 16 to18-hour drive to the first objective. It seemed the strategy had changed from simply crossing the border and waiting for capitulation to full-on invasion. This was confirmed when we went to a briefing by the SCO. The SCO told us that the ground war was set to begin on the night of 21 March at midnight — 36 hours away. I was relieved as I wanted to get some rest before the big drive. He continued to describe the battle plan and that the Squadron’s first objective was the town of As’ Samawah in the southern central region of Iraq. The drive would probably take some 27 hours. Again, I was glad we were leaving in 36 hours so I could try to bank some sleep.

At 1.30 pm, we were back at Betsy heating some MREs and getting a brew on when I heard five patriot missiles launched to the north-east of our position. Immediately the call went around to get into MOP 4 — full NBC suit (a nuclear, biological, chemical protective suit). Something big impacted close to our north. It took the crew and me about three minutes to get completely kitted up, conduct the checks on one another and get inside Betsy. After one hour we stood down. Apparently Saddam had a bit of a go and fired six tactical ballistic missiles (TBM) and the patriots failed to catch one. It landed 10 kilometres to the north of our position.

The result of all this activity was to bring H-hour forward 24 hours. My idea of getting any rest was gone. At 8.30 pm, we decamped our position and moved closer to the border and waited for the crossing point to be cleared. A huge explosion detonated a few kilometres to the south. Saddam had fired another TBM. It seems this speculator bomb had been launched just to see what he could kill on the border. At 1.53 am local time, we crossed into Iraq and, after some initial navigation problems, began the marathon drive to the objective — As’ Samawah.

I drove on NVGs until 4.30 am local time, then used the rising sun for light continuing until 8.00 am when we did the first ROM. I was rooted by now; I’d been awake for 29 hours. When we stopped and waited for all vehicles to refuel, I flopped out of the driver’s door onto the desert floor to steal a few minutes of shut-eye. After that, we drove and drove and then drove some more. I looked forward to the next ROM. We continued in arrowhead formation across the desert plain. The whole time Charlie was on the bonnet filming the ‘wave of steel cross the southern Iraqi plain,’ said Walt, commentating from the back seat.

We drove past Bedouin camps with the families looking on in awe as the Abrams and Bradleys flew across the sand doing about 60 kph. I struggled with Betsy trying to stay in one track of Captain Lyle’s tank and trying to maintain some speed. The day passed without any sign of the Iraqi army. At night we refuelled and continued the push for As’ Samawah.