Authors: Peter Ratcliffe
Because our 110s and the Unimog were being almost entirely restocked, resupply also meant completely emptying out the Land Rovers and giving them a good scrape and brush down inside. It’s astonishing just how much gunk accumulates in a vehicle over a fortnight or so when three or four men are calling it home.
Later that evening, over a fresh, tailor-made cigarette, I caught up with Major Bill and with the guys of D Squadron and the other half of A Squadron. The news was mixed. King Hussein of Jordan had committed his country on Saddam’s side at the beginning of that week, but the Iraqis were still coming off worst in Kuwait and in their own country from the incessant Allied bombing. Nearer to home, it seemed that ours was the only fighting patrol not to have suffered casualties, although the Regiment appeared to have inflicted far greater damage in return.
One D Squadron unit had caught a complete Scud convoy on site, and laser-defined it for a speedily summoned-up flight of strike aircraft. The American pilots had scored heavily with a series of direct hits, which had fragmented the Scud and effectively turned its liquid fuel into napalm, vaporizing the attendant troops, technicians and all the vehicles.
It had not all been one-sided, however. Another section of D Squadron had been ambushed and, in the ensuing firefight, had suffered a number of casualties; they had left the enemy in far worse condition, though, with many Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded. Yet among all the reports of the various patrols’ engagements, it was the heroism of Barry, the A Squadron sergeant-major, which impressed me the most, especially now we were able to get the full story from the rest of his comrades in Alpha Three Zero.
He had been in a Land Rover, one of a two-vehicle recce patrol, with two NCOs, Kevin and Jack, when they found that they had strayed in too close to an Iraqi military communications station and were inside the enemy’s defensive ring. The Iraqis had let them drive past and had then opened up from behind them with everything they had. One of the 110s had managed to get clear, but Barry’s wagon, reversing at high speed with two machine-guns in play, had run up and over a small berm and plunged into a ditch on the far side.
The vehicle had ended up with its front wheels in the air, and Barry was flung out of his front seat. When the other two freed themselves from the wreckage and got to him, they found him bleeding badly from a number of gunshot wounds to the thigh and lower legs and already sliding in and out of consciousness. They also thought that some of the bones of his hips had been shattered by the hits he had taken.
Taking it in turns, the two NCOs had then half-carried, half-dragged Barry to the cover of a small mound, which sounded like an anthill similar to the ones we had seen two days earlier. While one moved Barry, the other had kept the Iraqis at a distance with single-shot fire, the two unwounded men exchanging places every fifty metres or so. Their situation had seemed hopeless, although, like the true SAS men they were, they had not given up hope. As they prepared to make their final stand a couple of hundred metres from the crashed wagon the enemy had gradually begun to close in on them. With their spare ammunition in the crashed 110, they only had what they were carrying on them, and they had realized that it was only a matter of time before they would have been badly wounded or even killed, or else forced to surrender.
Although barely conscious, Barry had been aware enough to realize that they were in a pretty dire position, and had therefore ordered them to get the hell out of there while he tried to hold off the enemy. He had added that him alone against a few dozen Iraqis was reasonably fair odds. Jack told me later that he had offered to ‘top’ Barry – put a bullet in his head to save him from possible Iraqi torture – before they made their escape, but the sergeant-major had preferred to take his chances.
Thanks to Barry, the two of them had managed to escape the enemy-occupied zone and, using their TACBEs, had made contact with an Allied aircraft. Its pilot had helped guide them to a rendezvous with the rest of their half-squadron.
As I listened to their story that evening in the wadi, I felt a tremendous admiration for these two guys, who had risked their lives trying to pull their sergeant-major out. I felt, too, an overwhelming awe and respect for Barry, whose offer to hold off the enemy while Kevin and Jack got away had called for remarkable courage. These feelings were tinged with sadness, for it seemed almost certain that Barry must have been killed in that last stand, or else have died of his wounds. I also could not help wondering if I had that kind of courage myself, and hoped that I would never be called upon to find out.
On Sunday, 17 February, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, the convoy and its escort back towards Saudi Arabia, and the four half-squadrons to their designated operational areas. To my regret, one of my unit was leaving with the convoy.
Major Peter, who had flown in with our resupply chopper on the 4th, had probably gained more ‘on-the-ground’ experience than anyone had bargained for when he was sent in. He had been in the forefront of the Regiment’s biggest mission of the Gulf War so far, and had shot his first enemy in a face-to-face encounter. It was never intended that he should stay with Alpha One Zero for more than ten days; it just happened to be his luck that he should have arrived at a pretty hectic time.
Now he was due back in the UK to attend a staff course the following week, something that had been arranged months before, as these things are. If he didn’t show up it would set back his whole career. But that was the British Army, playing it by the book, as usual. Before he pulled out, he came over to my vehicle to say good-bye. We shook hands.
‘You know I don’t want to leave,’ he said. ‘These have been the most important days in the army for me so far. I could never have known what it’s really like without doing it myself. I can’t honestly tell you I didn’t have doubts about getting out, because I did. But you got the job done and got us out of there in one piece. Thanks to you, I’ve got stories I can tell along with the best of them.’
When Peter left, technically Pat reverted to being my 2IC. In reality, however, when I wanted to confide in or consult anyone – which was, I have to say, rarely – I turned to Des. I knew I could count on him for any support if and when I needed it. It was not an officially recognized relationship, and in truth I felt no great need for a 2IC at all. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
Alpha One Zero was now tasked to head in the opposite direction from where we had first operated, north-west, to an area near the Jordanian border nicknamed the ‘Iron Triangle’. (We had been on its eastern flank when we had taken over Delta Three Zero’s task on the MSR, before returning to Wadi Tubal.) It was a tract of country covering some two hundred and fifty square kilometres of inhospitable desert wilderness, mainly hills and wadis, bordered by three main roads which formed a rough triangle. Within the vast wadi system inside the triangle there were thought to be possible Scud-launcher locations.
Our route took us across fairly flat terrain, and in broad daylight we made such good speed that we were approaching our target area less than six hours after leaving Wadi Tubal. I decided to have the patrol lie up just short of the new motorway, marked on our maps as ‘under construction’, and send in a recce team. This motorway, being built to replace MSR3 as the main Amman-to-Baghdad highway, was the same road we had negotiated on our way to blow up the Scud microwave guidance system at Victor Two, some one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north-east. There we had filled in the central culvert with sandbags. Here, if the map was accurate, I planned to make a much more stylish crossing.
Up to this point, Serious had not been given a single task that would have allowed him to demonstrate his skills or his leadership qualities. To give him a chance to show how good he was, I selected him to see us over the new motorway and into our target area. When I called him over to my vehicle, however, he immediately put on his suspicious face. He was not used to being summoned by the RSM, and probably thought I had caught him out in some misdemeanour and was about to give him a bollocking.
‘Yes, Billy?’ he asked.
I let him sweat it out for a few moments, then unfolded my map on the bonnet of the Land Rover. On it I indicated to him where the new motorway should cross in front of us, about three kilometres to the west of our LUP. As I’ve said, our maps – air charts for pilots, in fact – were not that good and lacked accurate detail, but there seemed to be some kind of a junction system there, with what appeared from the map to be a bridge. Crossing bridges and using roads is usually taboo in the Regiment – they are often guarded, and anyway you are very exposed on them – but sometimes you have to break the rules. To me, this looked like one of those times.
‘I want you to go ahead and take a look at this place,’ I told him. ‘Because I’m putting you in charge of getting us all safely across the motorway. A bridge could be the easiest way of doing it.’
‘And an easy place to get caught,’ he said, reasonably enough. ‘If they’ve built roads around this triangle it must be because there’s something important in there. And that means there are going to be troops on these roads ready to go in where they’re needed. A bridge is where they’re most likely to be hanging around.’
It may be a flaw in my character, but I have never been very good at listening to people telling me what I already know. Now my irritation began to show.
‘Look, Serious,’ I said. ‘Before you start thinking again that I’m going to get you all killed, just go and have a look at the bridge. If you can’t work out a way to get us over by that route then start looking for an alternative. But at least look at the simple way first before you start telling me that we have to drive under roads or along culverts, and all the rest of that complicated crap.’
He had the sense to keep quiet, so I told him to pick out a second vehicle to go with him and report back before midnight.
Serious was back within the time limit I had set, and with good news. The bridge and the new motorway running under it were still not operational and as a result were not lit at night. More to the point, the whole area was deserted. ‘It’s an ideal place to cross,’ he enthused, completely forgetting that using the bridge had originally been my idea and that he had opposed it. Still, he’d made a good job of the recce.
‘Well done,’ I told him. ‘We’ll pull out in thirty minutes. This is one manoeuvre, I think, which we’re better off conducting in the dark – even if Saddam’s lads do seem to be playing away at the moment. Just pretend we’re your lost sheep and shepherd us all across.’
It took less than an hour to cover the ground between our temporary LUP and the bridge, and once there I left it to Serious to organize our crossing. The big, six-lane dual carriageway passing under the bridge was completely finished, with even the lampposts in place along the central reservation. There was nothing out of place, and not a scrap of rubbish or spoil anywhere. The only thing missing was traffic, making the overall effect rather eerie, a feeling heightened by the strangeness of coming across what might have been an ordinary British motor-way deep in enemy territory and thousands of miles from home. The bridge itself, probably constructed by British engineers, was a typical motorway overpass built on giant concrete pillars. There the similarity with roads at home ended, however, for the roadway over the bridge was paved for only a hundred metres or so on either side, and then petered out into desert.
‘I wonder if they’ll put in a road here that actually goes somewhere, or will it just remain a convenience for the shepherds to get their sheep and goats across the motorway?’ I said to Mugger.
‘More money than sense, if you ask me,’ he answered, after a moment’s thought. ‘They could have run a prefab concrete tunnel underneath for a fraction of the price. But perhaps they were thinking of us when they built it.’ I saw his teeth flash in a grin. He was obviously thinking of my remark to Serious, since he’d been hovering near by when I’d briefed the latter.
It was odd, too, that Allied pilots hadn’t spotted the bridge and attacked it. The road must be very close to being finished, and with Jordan now firmly committed on Saddam’s side, it could be brought into play at any moment as a much more efficient way of bringing supplies into Iraq – now suffering severely from embargoes imposed after the invasion of Kuwait – than the old supply route. A couple of well-aimed bombs on the bridge would well and truly block the motorway beneath. I made a note to pass this on to Intel – after we had got out of the Iron Triangle, of course. No sense in knocking out such a convenient escape route until we were well clear of the area.
When we reached the short paved run-up to the bridge, Serious, in the lead wagon, signalled us to halt. Then he sent two motorcyclists and four men on foot across the bridge to make certain it was still secure and that we had free exit at the other end. When they confirmed that all was well, he waved us on to go ahead in convoy. It was a real pleasure not to have the usual rattles and bone-jarring bumps of standard desert travel, even for a few hundred metres, but it was a luxury that lasted only a couple of minutes. Then the metalled road petered out and we were back to our normal clattering progress.
Once across, I told Mugger to pull up alongside the lead 110 and called across to Serious, ‘Well done. Now take us in about five clicks and we’ll lie up until daylight. Clearing this wadi system’s going to be no job for vampires. It’s one for the sunshine boys.’
It had been apparent to me since we’d first been tasked with the mission, and after studying the air chart of the area, that the only way to clear the system of mobile, or even fixed, Scud launchers was by patrolling it in daylight. The vastness of the wadis – some of which, though shallow, were immensely wide, and most of which meandered through low hill country and then, further west, ran into an open plain or plateau – meant that we could never cover enough ground by night, and might easily overlook some vital site in such broken country.