Читать книгу: «Behind Iraqi Lines»

1

On 1 January 1991, almost four months to the day after Saddam Hussein’s bloody take-over of Kuwait City, an RAF C-130 Hercules transport plane secretly took off from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. It was transporting members of the SAS (Special Air Service) and the SBS (Special Boat Squadron) to a holding area in Riyadh – the joint capital, with Jeddah, of Saudi Arabia – located in the middle of the country and surrounded by desert.

Though the SAS men were pleased to be back in business, the fact that they had been called back to their Hereford base on Boxing Day, when most of them were at home celebrating with family or friends, had caused some of them to voice a few complaints. Now, as they sat in cramped conditions, packed in like sardines with their weapons, bergens, or backpacks, and other equipment in the gloomy, noisy hold of the Hercules, some of them were passing the time by airing the same gripes.

‘My missus was fucking mad,’ Corporal Roy ‘Geordie’ Butler told his friends, in a manner that implied he agreed with her. ‘No question about it. Her whole family was there, all wearing their best clothes, and she was just putting the roast in the oven when the telephone rang. When I told her I’d been called back to Hereford and had to leave right away, she came out with a mouthful of abuse that made her family turn white. They’re all Christian, her side.’

‘Don’t sound so hard done by, Geordie,’ said Corporal ‘Taff’ Burgess. ‘We can do without that bullshit. We all know your heart was broken a few years back when your missus, after leaving you for a month, returned home to make your life misery. You were having a great time without her in the pubs in Newcastle.’

That got a laugh from the others. ‘Hear, hear!’ added Jock McGregor. ‘Geordie probably arranged the phone calls to get away from his missus and her family. Come on, Geordie, admit it.’

‘Go screw yourself, Sarge’. She’s not bad, my missus. Just because she made a mistake in the past, doesn’t mean she’s no good. Forgive and forget, I say. I just think they could have picked another day. Boxing Day, for Christ’s sake!’

But in truth, he’d been relieved. Geordie was a tough nut and he couldn’t stand being at home. He didn’t mind his wife – who had, after all, only left him for a month to go and moan about him to her mother in Gateshead – but he couldn’t stand domesticity, the daily routine in Newcastle – doing the garden, pottering about the house, watching telly, walking the dog, slipping out for the odd pint – it was so bloody boring. No, he needed to be with the Regiment, even if it meant being stuck in Hereford, doing nothing but endless retraining and field exercises. And now, with some real work to do, he felt a lot happier.

‘What about you, Danny?’ Geordie asked Corporal ‘Baby Face’ Porter. ‘What about your missus? How did she take it?’

‘Oh, all right,’ Danny answered. He was a man of few words. ‘She understood, I suppose.’

‘I’ll bet she did,’ Corporal Paddy Clarke said.

Sergeant-Major Phil Ricketts smiled, but kept his mouth shut. He knew Danny’s wife, Darlene, and didn’t think much of her. Danny had married her eight years earlier, just after the Falklands war. Having once spent a weekend leave with Danny and his parents in the Midlands, a few weeks before Danny proposed to his Darlene, Ricketts felt that he knew where Danny was coming from. Always intrigued by the contradiction between Danny’s professional killer’s instincts and his naïvety about personal matters, he had not been surprised to find that Darlene’s father was a drunken loudmouth, her mother a tart and Darlene pretty much like her mother.

Nevertheless, blinded by love, Danny had married Darlene and was now the proud father of two children: a boy and a girl, seven and six respectively. While Danny had never been one for talking much, it was becoming increasingly evident from his unease at the very mention of Darlene’s name that he was troubled by secret doubts which he could not articulate. The marriage, Ricketts suspected, was on the rocks and Danny didn’t want to even think about it.

No such problem, however, with the big black sergeant, Andrew Winston, formerly of Barbados, who was sitting beside Danny, looking twice his size, and crafting poetry in his notebook, as he usually did to pass the time. In fact, since the Falklands campaign, Andrew had become something of a celebrity within the Regiment, having had his first book of poems published by a small company based in London’s Notting Hill Gate, and even receiving a good review in the highly respected magazine Orbit. When most of the book’s print-run was remaindered, Andrew bought the books himself, and sold them off cheaply, personally signed, either to his friends in the Regiment or, more often, to their wives, who clearly were deeply interested in six-foot, handsome, black poets.

As the poems were about Andrew’s experiences with the Regiment, he had also sent copies of the book to the Imperial War Museum. When the curator wrote back, thanking him for his contribution and assuring him that the three signed copies would be placed in the museum’s library, Andrew was so thrilled that he rushed straight out and married his latest girlfriend, a beauty from his home town in Barbados. Now he too was a father – in his case, of three girls – and he appeared to have no complaints.

‘I used to spend so much time chasing nooky,’ he explained to Ricketts, ‘that I didn’t have any left for my poetry. Now I’ve got it on tap every night and I’m much more creative. Marriage has its good points, Sarge.’

In the intervening years, Ricketts had been promoted to sergeant-major, Andrew to corporal and then sergeant, while Jock McGregor, Paddy Clarke and the reticent Danny had become corporals. Geordie Butler and Taff Burgess, however, although experienced soldiers, had repeatedly been denied promotion because of their many drunken misdemeanours. Also because, as Ricketts suspected, they simply didn’t want responsibility and preferred being troopers.

As for Ricketts, now nearing 40, he was increasingly fond of the comforts of home, appreciating his wife Maggie more than ever, and taking a greater interest in his two daughters. It still surprised him that they were now virtually adults: Anna, 19, was working as a hairdresser in Hereford, while Julia, a year younger, was preparing to take her A levels and hoping to go to art school. Though he was proud of them, they made him feel his age.

Now, thinking about his family, and surrounded by his men in the cramped, clamorous hold of the Hercules, Ricketts was forced to countenance the fact that the battle for Kuwait might be his last active engagement with the Regiment. In future, while still being involved, he was more likely to be in the background, planning and orchestrating ops, rather than taking part in them. For that reason, he was looking forward to this campaign with even more enthusiasm than usual. It marked a specific stage in his life, and a very important one. After this he would settle down.

‘How much longer to go?’ Andrew asked no one in particular, suffering from a creative block and just needing someone to talk to.

‘About twenty minutes,’ Ricketts replied. ‘We’re already descending.’

‘Thank Christ,’ Andrew burst out. ‘I can’t stand these damned flights. You can burn me or freeze me or shoot me, man, but keep me out of these transports. I can’t bear being cooped up.’

‘You’re going to be cooped up when we land,’ Paddy gloated. ‘In a fucking OP in the fucking desert – hot by day, cold by night. How’s that grab you, Sergeant?’

‘I don’t mind,’ Andrew replied. ‘I’m a man who likes his privacy. Just stick me in a hole in the ground and let me live with myself. Since I’m the only man here worth talking to, I’d rather talk to myself.’

‘You might find yourself talking to an Iraqi trying to cut your black throat.’

‘Lord have mercy, hallelujah, I is ready and waitin’. Ever since that Saddam Hussein pissed on Kuwait City I’s bin dyin’ to come to the rescue. It’s part of my imperialist nature. My noble English blood, brothers!’

As the customary repartee – bullshit, as they always called it – poured from the other troopers, Ricketts thought of the march of events that had followed Saddam’s invasion. When the news broke, Ricketts had been sceptical about Saddam’s remaining in Kuwait City, assuming it to be a bluff designed to get him his way in other matters. Since then, however, Saddam had stuck to his guns. Because of his intransigence, the UN had imposed economic sanctions and a trade ban on Iraq; President Bush had ‘drawn a line in the sand’ and sent thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia; 12 Arab states, along with Britain and France, had done the same; over 100,000 refugees had crossed into Jordan; Saddam had used British hostages as a ‘human shield’, paraded others on television, and then declared Kuwait Iraq’s nineteenth province and released the hostages as a political gesture; and the UN Security Council had voted for the use of force against Iraq if it did not withdraw from Kuwait by 15 January.

By 22 December, shortly after the UN General Assembly had condemned Iraq for violating human rights in Kuwait, Saddam had vowed that he would never give up Kuwait and threatened to use atomic and chemical weapons if attacked. As he was still showing no signs of relenting, war was almost certainly on the cards.

‘Scuse me for asking, boss,’ Geordie said to Major Hailsham, ‘but is it true we’re not the first to be flown in?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Major Hailsham replied. He had been promoted shortly after his return from the Falklands, when Major Parkinson was transferred to another unit. With his sardonic sense of humour and excellent operational record, he was a popular commanding officer of the squadron.

‘You don’t?’

‘No, Trooper, I don’t. If any other members of the Regiment have been inserted, I wasn’t informed.’ Mike Hailsham was still a handsome schoolboy with a wicked grin. ‘But since I’m only the CO of this benighted squadron, they wouldn’t even think to inform me, would they?’

‘I guess that’s right, boss,’ Geordie responded, deadpan. ‘We’ll all have to accept that.’

In truth they all knew, and were envious of the fact, that other members of the Regiment had been working undercover in Iraq since a few days before the invasion, having flown incognito, in ‘civvies’, on British Airways flight 149 from London to Delhi, with a fuelling stop in Kuwait. Finding themselves in the middle of Saddam’s invasion, which had begun in the middle of that same morning – slightly earlier than anticipated by the ‘green slime’, the Intelligence Corps – the SAS men had melted away, dispersing in two directions, some to send back information from behind Iraqi lines, others to do the same from Kuwait itself, where they would now be hiding in a succession of ‘safe’ houses and operating under the very noses of the Iraqis. Naturally, their presence in Kuwait was unofficial and therefore remained resolutely unacknowledged.

‘We’re coming in to land.’ Hailsham observed needlessly as the overloaded Hercules began its shuddering descent. ‘Check your kit and prepare to disembark. I want no delays.’

‘Aye, aye, boss,’ Ricketts said, then bawled the same order along the hold of the aircraft.

Cumbersome at the best of times, though always reliable, the Hercules shuddered even more as it descended, groaning and squealing as if about to fall apart. Eventually it bounced heavily onto the runway, bellowed, shook violently and rattled as it taxied along the tarmac, before finally groaning to a halt.

Letting out a united cheer, the men unsnapped their safety belts and stood up in a tangle of colliding weapons and bergens. After a lot of noise from outside, the transport’s rear ramp fell down, letting light pour in, and the men clattered down onto the sunlit, sweltering tarmac of Riyadh airport.

It was not the end of the SAS men’s long journey. Lined up along the runway of the airport were RAF Tornado F-3 air-defence aircraft which had arrived four months ago, shortly after the fall of Kuwait, flying in from the massive Dhahran air-base. There were also a dozen RAF CH-47 Chinook helicopters of 7 Squadron’s Special Forces Flight.

The Regiment’s recently acquired, state-of-the-art desert warfare weaponry, including Thorn-EMI 5kg hand-held thermal imagers, Magellan satellite navigation aids – SATNAV GPS, or Global Positioning Systems – laser designators and other equipment, was unloaded from the Hercules and transferred to the Chinooks. When the transfer was over, the men, who had been milling about on the tarmac, stretching their legs and breathing in deeply the warm, fresh air, also boarded the helicopters and were flown on to Al Jubail, an immense, modern port on Saudi Arabia’s east coast, some four hundred miles from Riyadh and about five hundred from Kuwait City. They emerged from the Chinooks a couple of hours later, glad to be back on solid ground.

Though originally built as a centre for oil and light industry, Al Jubail had never been developed properly and was now being used fully for the first time as a receiving port for the Allied equipment and supplies being brought in on more than a hundred ships, mostly from European ports, but also from Cyprus, Liberia and Panama. While some of the British servicemen in transit, mainly those of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars and the 7th Armoured Brigade, were billeted in huts and sheds originally intended for the industrial workers, most were housed in the enormous, constantly growing ‘Tent City’ located in the port area and already equipped with camp-beds, showers, chemical toilets and a field kitchen run by the Americans.

‘Home sweet home!’ Sergeant Andrew Winston said, dumping his bergen on the floor beside a camp-bed in the sweltering late-afternoon heat of the space allocated to the Regiment for the duration of its stay in Al Jubail.

‘Having just come down from the trees,’ Geordie replied, ‘you’d be used to living out in the open. That’s one up to you, Sarge.’

‘You don’t like it, Geordie? Too hot for you, is it?’

‘You could obviously do with sweating off a few pounds,’ Geordie replied, tugging experimentally at the ropes of his lean-to tent to check that they were tight, ‘but me, I’m as slim as a man can go, so I don’t need melting down in this fucking heat.’

‘I’m relieved,’ Taff Burgess said, laying his M16 out carefully on his camp-bed and gazing out over the rows of tents divided by paths that led in one direction to the port and in the other to the airstrip, other accommodations and the guarded compounds containing the armoured transport and tanks. Hundreds of thousands of troops, British, American and French, crowded the spaces between the tents, eating, drinking, writing letters, taking open-air showers and going in and out of chemical latrines. Their constant movement and the ever-present desert wind created drifting clouds of sand and dust that made them look ghostlike in the shimmering light.

‘I wouldn’t fancy being in one of those huts in this fucking heat,’ Taff said. ‘It must be like a Turkish bath in there. At least we can breathe out here.’

‘All I’m breathin’ is dust,’ replied Jock. ‘That and bloody sand. I’ve got sand in my boots, in my eyes, in my mouth, and even up the eye of my fucking dick. This place is just like Oman.’

‘You’re too old to remember Oman,’ Paddy ribbed him, stretched out languidly on his camp-bed, hands folded beneath his head, acting really cool in the sweltering heat. ‘Relax, boys, you’re gonna have a good time here. Compared to what’s to come, it’s probably Paradise.’

‘I doubt that,’ Geordie said.

He was right. Their accommodations were close to the Royal Corps of Transport’s Force Maintenance Area, or FMA, and the constant noise, combined with the heat, made for irritable days and sleepless nights. Since they were there for five days, waiting for the rest of their equipment to be brought in by ship, the lack of sleep was no joke. To make matters worse, they were ordered to take NAP tablets, which were meant to reduce the damaging effects of gas in the event of a chemical attack, but also gave everyone diarrhoea.

‘My shit comes out like piss,’ Paddy informed the others. ‘And I hear these tablets also contain a lot of bromide, so say goodbye to your sex life.’

Already running non-stop to the latrines, they felt even worse after the biological vaccinations against whooping cough, which they received at the same time and which knocked most of them out for twenty-four hours.

‘Say goodbye to your fucking sanity,’ Jock said groggily, as the others moaned and groaned on their camp-beds. ‘Christ, I feel dizzy!’

Scarcely recovered, they were nevertheless made to spend a large part of each day on the Jerboa Range of the training ground at Al Fadhili, inland from Al Jubail, where they shot at targets and markers while being bellowed and spat at by the aggressive camels of passing Bedouin.

‘Those bastards on camels are straight out of Lawrence of Arabia,’ Geordie announced to all within earshot. ‘A fucking good film, that was.’

‘I never wanted to be in the movies,’ Andrew replied, ‘and those camels stink. What the hell are we doing here?’

‘Waiting for the rest of our equipment, coming in with the Navy. Need I say more?’

‘Fucking Navy!’ Taff spat.

Soon sickened by the repetitive, useless training, which they had done many times before, they were all pleased when, on the fifth day, the despised Navy finally arrived at the port with their missing supplies.

By this time, with over half a million Coalition troops and the greatest air force ever assembled in history clogging Al Jubail, the space being used by the SAS was desperately needed. The Regiment was therefore hurriedly packed up and driven back to the airstrip. From there, Hercules transports flew the relieved men to a forward operating base, or FOB, located at a Saudi airport in the desert, a day’s drive from the border of western Iraq.

‘We operate from here,’ Major Hailsham told the men the minute they stepped off the planes into another sea of flapping tents on a flat, barren plain. ‘Welcome to hell.’

It wasn’t quite hell, but it was certainly no paradise. The FOB was a dense throng of lean-to tents divided by roads filled with brightly painted ‘Pink Panther’ Land Rovers, Honda motorcycles, Challenger tanks, and other armoured vehicles and trucks, many of which were being used to support the tents and their camouflaged netting. On all sides of the makeshift camp there was nothing but desert, stretching nine hundred miles from the Red Sea to Kuwait and the Gulf, southwards to the Arabian Sea beyond Oman – more than a million square miles in all. It was a very big area to cover. Also, it was surprisingly cold, especially at night.

The first thing the SAS men learnt was that they could not phone home, their mail would be censored and normal radio transmissions were restricted. And, of course, they could not drink alcohol – not even here in the desert, for the Bedouin still often passed the camp on their camels. Similarly, the men had to respect Muslim customs and not flaunt their Western habits or religious preferences, except in the privacy of their tents.

‘Should this make you resent the fact that we’re here to defend the Kuwaitis,’ Hailsham said, ‘I would remind you that we have our own interests at heart. In fact, we’re here to safeguard Arabian oil, which furnishes over two-thirds of the world’s needs, including ours. To lose it to Saddam would have devastating consequences for the West, including Great Britain. I’d also remind you that there are approximately thirty thousand expatriates in Saudi Arabia who need our protection. To give them that, we need the trust of the Bedouin. Please don’t forget it.’

In their view, the men were not compensated for such restrictions by being treated like lords. On the contrary, their living conditions were basic, with portable showers, chemical toilets and meals consisting mainly of sausages and baked beans, sometimes curry with rice, spooned up from mess-tins as quickly as possible to stop sand or dust from getting on it, then washed down with hot tea.

The freezing nights were long – about eleven hours of darkness – and the men, stretched out beside their tanks and armoured vehicles or huddled up in their slit trenches, could do little to pass the time other than listen to the restricted programmes of Forces Broadcasting or study the brilliant stars over the flat, featureless, seemingly endless black desert.

From the BBC they learned that back in England Wing-Commander David Farquhar had lost secret documents and a laptop computer containing an outline version of the American war plan. The fact that this news was conveyed by the BBC even before it was known officially to the Coalition Forces in the Gulf caused much sardonic mirth among the men. They also learnt that the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had been replaced by John Major, whom many thought would not be as supportive of them as had been the Iron Lady.