by Peter Mercer
As we weaved up and down these northern mountain roads on the way to the Turkish border, I had some big nostalgia trips, for these were the roads that I had used during the First Gulf War, when we were entering Iraq via the Turkey–Syria border; if we weren’t dropped in by chopper we’d drive. I tried my best to remember exact routes and scanned my maps but it had been thirteen years since I’d been in these parts of the country.
We travelled along and at every checkpoint we came across we just went on through without stopping. Our teams didn’t stop for anyone, no one except for the US military. Upon arrival at the border we were confronted with eighty fuel tankers and one of the tanker drivers taking a crap right there out in the open! These people have no shame! Our boss then went to do the paperwork that enabled us to proceed to carry out the protection for the convoy we were assigned to escort. This time, instead of the one hundred, it was going to be around eighty articulated fuel tankers (which was twenty fewer than we had been led to expect).
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that, if an insurgent were to fire a rocket or detonate a bomb near one of these things, you will have one hell of a bang and it would be blown to bits, and, if we were too close, probably some of us as well! Our job had just got a lot more interesting. Eighty tankers packed with highly flammable petroleum to be escorted and protected through probably one of the most dangerous places in the world. People thought we were fucking mad, and at that time we probably were. However, because of the geography of northern Iraq, the only routes past these hotspots meant we had to go right through the middle of them. Anyway, more often than not, the only decent routes were the main roads, which took you through the centre of these places.
We had a ruthless professional reputation that preceded us and we knew that, although it was fucking dangerous, we would get the job done. Most of the tanker drivers were Turkish, but there were quite a few Kurds as well. Upon inspection, we found that some of the tankers were in a shocking condition and, looking at them, we thought that there was no way they’d make it all the way to Baghdad without breaking down somewhere along the way. The convoy drivers and their bosses had their brief, which was basically this: don’t fuck around; keep up and keep together; if you break down, you have only a few minutes to try to fix the thing; if you can’t fix them quickly, you’ll have to leave the tanker by the roadside and jump in with one of the other drivers – it’s that or face certain capture by the insurgents. After a quick chin-wag with the leading guys we were off.
As we got closer and closer to Mosul (right up in the north of Iraq) the level of potential danger increased and everyone became a lot more focused, as this situation we were in was very, very serious. You have to make difficult decisions on your own sometimes and often right on the spot – how far to go and what risks to take, etc. You also have to accept the embarrassment of being wrong sometimes and the responsibility for any mistakes you make because in our situation you have nobody to hide behind – the buck stopped with us, the team leaders! You are always trying to second-guess the insurgents, since it’s not only your life on the line, but you have the lives of your team and the tanker drivers lives in your hands, too. You learn how to read situations and you have to be disciplined to do this job. Most normal company employees are used to operating under strict rules and regulations. In Iraq there are none; you make your own rules and hope you’ve got it right. Most people go to work in a tie and jacket; we went to work in flak jackets and carrying guns – big guns.
As we got closer to town I flicked on the bomb-jamming equipment. The reason the bomb-jamming equipment wasn’t left on all the time was that it often interfered with some of the communication equipment. As we got nearer, I tightened my hand on the pistol grip of my M16. I then popped a 40mm grenade into the launcher attached below and cocked it. It was time to earn our cash again. We had two vehicles at the front of the convoy, two more trucks travelling at the back and another two travelling up and down the length of the convoy. Everything was going according to plan so far, and then, out of the blue, a truck pulled over sharpish. One of our call signs stopped with it – it was inconveniently breaking down (apparently, an air leak in the brake system) and it couldn’t go on; it was knackered. The driver was adamant he was staying with his lorry.
Now this was dodgy as fuck. If the insurgents were to pass him they’d get his fuel and probably – no, make that definitely – execute him, more than likely by lopping off his head, though only after a good bit of torture! Our guys heatedly explained this to him and he finally jumped into another tanker and then we were off again. The convoy hadn’t stopped – we would never, ever stop, not for anybody. The tanker that picked up the, now redundant, driver just dropped to the back of the convoy. We couldn’t afford to stop; we had to keep the momentum.
As we were settling into our well-practised routine of keeping these trucks as safe as we could, we came under fire. Bang! Bang! Bang! in quick succession. Then more rounds came down. They weren’t that effective. The insurgents were just having pot shots at the drivers of the tankers, not us in the gun trucks. My team were frantically trying to identify the source of the gunfire, but I was just waiting for the insurgents to let rip with a bloody RPG, which would be just our luck.
My gunner, in the back of the truck, was frantically spinning around, itching to blow the crap out of the arseholes shooting at us, but his discipline was great. He could easily have just opened up at anything that moved. However, by this time my gunner had been in Iraq for nearly two years and he was a great shot, and if he had located the fire point he would have had ’em big time. We thought it was only going to be small-arms fire because, surely, if they had an RPG they would have fired it by now. Looking behind us, I saw a tanker break file and screech to a halt so violently it almost jackknifed. We dropped back to see what had happened to it.
As soon as we pulled up I could hear the driver screaming. He’d been shot through the hand. It looked a bit messy and no doubt it hurt like hell, but it looked like he was going to be OK. I jumped up and dragged him out of the cab and told him to stop screaming like a baby; but, then again, if you’ve never been shot through the hand I don’t suppose you know how painful it actually is. You could actually see straight through his hand (it brought to mind that scene in from the movie From Dusk Till Dawn when Quentin Tarantino’s character, Richard Gecko, gets shot through the hand!).
Our medic wrapped a dressing around his wounded hand and taped it up tight with some electrical tape. We then bundled him into another tanker and we put our foot down to catch up with the rest of the convoy, which hadn’t waited for us – that was our standard operating procedure, up to a point.
As we came to the outskirts of the town, my adrenalin was pumping and I kept my thumb on my safety catch. We all carried a different selection of weapons for a reason: it was because we were getting into unconventional situations and no one knew what we would need. Having to go up against all kinds of things that could be difficult, most of us carried the standard American M16s but a few of our guys carried the HKG3 (Heckler & Koch G3) because of its heavier calibre (7.62 mm) – it was a lot more effective at stopping vehicles that got too close. A 5.56mm round would bounce off an engine block sometimes but a 7.62mm would penetrate it and stop it dead (hopefully). A few of the veterans, who’d worked in Bosnia and Somalia and had been working as contractors for years, still favoured the AK-47, which I personally think was pretty inaccurate but was deadly effective and had a lot more stopping power. The 5.56mm round was brought into service years and years ago because it was so much lighter than the 7.62mm, and you could carry a lot more ammunition; so, although it was still quite capable of killing people, it couldn’t quite hack taking out engine blocks. For this reason we needed the 7.62mm.
We came off the main road and started making steady progress through the town. The two vehicles that roamed up and down the convoy sped ahead and set up roadblocks. Nothing stopped us – nothing. We gave clear and precise war
nings and had signs written in Arabic on the vehicles warning anyone to stay at least 20 metres away from us. If they came any closer, they’d become a target. If a vehicle came too close a few rounds were fired in front of it. If that didn’t stop it, then we would shoot out the tyres. If it still came onto us, the engine was shot up, then the driver and, most likely, any passengers! We couldn’t afford to mess about taking unnecessary risks in these situations. A lot of the time it was a case of kill or be killed. It was a simple fact that you couldn’t let unfamiliar cars get too close.
If we did somehow manage to get stuck in traffic – some big traffic jam through a town, for instance – we would all jump out and mingle between the Iraqi traffic. Even most of the insurgents didn’t want to kill their own, so we always took cover in between the Iraqis. However, that said, the things we saw did make us wonder sometimes.
We were doing quite well so far on this convoy. We’d lost only two of the tankers out of the eighty we were escorting and we’d had only one minor contact and one minor injury. We tanked on through the town with everyone getting out of the way. Because of the way we’d handled previous firefights, with total aggression and a huge amount of returned fire, a lot of the insurgents knew we would unleash hell on them were we to come under attack. American intelligence (probably our CIA mates) had told us that most of the insurgents would rather take on the US military than us. We were now nicknamed ‘the Black Death’ by the insurgents. Apparently, this was down to the colour of the Fijians and Gurkhas’ dark skin. On a typical run we would usually lose about 15 per cent of our tankers, mainly due to breakdowns but often enough due to IEDs and RPGs.
We had now, at this time, travelled into the thick of it with our convoy, right into the centre of Mosul, and were nearing our final destination: an American airbase on the outskirts of the city. This is where we would drop the tankers off and the Americans would take over. We were on our last hurdle and only just around the corner from the base. By this time it was around midday and everything, so far, had gone really smoothly; but, as we were to find out, we had worse to come, worse than we could possibly have imagined.
We slowly approached the turning to get onto the main road that led up to the airbase. We slalomed in and out of the, now familiar, concrete bollards until all of the tankers were safely inside. You could actually see the relief on the faces of most of the drivers. Once parked up in files of ten in the huge lorry and fuel park, most of the drivers got out of their cabs, unrolled their prayer mats, then knelt down and started praying, no doubt in thanks that they had arrived in one piece – this time. Once their prayers were finished, they all then got their pots of tea going – very sugary and sweet. The drivers, because they could be on the road for days at a time, had compartments built onto the sides of the lorries that contained little stoves, food, kettles, cups, tea and sugar, so they were basically self-sufficient on the road.
Now that the mission had been safely completed, our medic went over to the driver who had been shot through the hand. He was still whinging but our medic tended to him. Each of our patrols had a fully qualified paramedic who carried everything needed to stabilise a casualty – big time. Our medics were of the highest standard – they had to be. Most were either ex-soldiers who had done a paramedics course after the military, or were patrol medics in the armed forces, but they had to be military-trained as well and they also had to be able to fight. Indeed, when I had been in the mob I had been trained as a medic and had spent 16 weeks training in an NHS hospital. However, my skills were not required here. I did have the skills and knowledge to help in an emergency but I had other responsibilities in this job, which took precedence here.
Our medics certainly earned their money and they saved a lot of lives. They really were shit hot, of the highest standard. Once the injured Turkish driver was patched up I drove him to the American hospital on base. He’d had a good dose of morphine when he’d arrived on base and now he’d stopping whinging – which was a relief (the Turks whinge like hell when they are not even injured – that is normal for them – so you can imagine what they’re like when they are hurt). He had been irritating me with his constant whinging – even after the morphine. This thought made me feel slightly ashamed but that was how I felt. He had, after all, had a big hole, the size of a plum, clean through his hand and, when I asked for a look at it, I could clearly see the ground through his hand, so maybe I was being a little harsh on him.
Once I’d dropped him off I drove back to pick up the rest of my team and, surprise, surprise, they were eating – tucking right into the emergency rations. We carried loads, so it was no problem, but, with those Fijian guys making up a large part of our team, it was just as well we did. But at least now our truck was faster and lighter.
After our feed and once we’d made sure all our big Fijian guys were happy, we refuelled our Toyotas at the Yanks’ fuel point, checked the oil and water, and then prepared for our dash back across town and back to our base for a nice warm shower and some more scran. It was 17.30-ish now and soon it would be getting dark. This made it even more dodgy for us, as it was obviously far easier for the insurgents to attack us and get away with it at night.
All our vehicles lined up at the gate; we gave a wave at the American sentries then our drivers gunned the throttles. We tore out of the gate, then back onto the main road, hitting 70 m.p.h. as quickly as we could. Cars could see us coming and were trying to get out of the way as quickly as possible. The thing is, the insurgents can be extremely effective. If they want to get you they will try whatever they think will work, all different tactics. All you can do is react with disciplined professionalism, give them all you’ve got and, should you get hit, do as much damage limitation as possible. Then take them out. Period. If they know this they are more likely to go for an easier target, maybe some sectarian murder or something similar.
The way 90 per cent of attacks happened was that first there would be an improvised explosive device (IED), which could be anything from a dead dog packed with explosives on the side of the road to a similarly packed parked car. The insurgents had even started removing kerbstones on the side of the road, putting 105mm high explosive shells behind them and packing in nails, bits of metal (basically any sharp object that could maim or kill) and replacing them so that you couldn’t tell they’d been tampered with. You must admit, it’s pretty ingenious. Then, after the IEDs exploded, the insurgents would follow up the ambush with RPK machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles. Mayhem. So if you were caught in a blast you had to be on your toes – if you survived it, and a lot of our guys didn’t – because the blast was so powerful. And that was normally just the start of an attack. The insurgents ran their operation like a military campaign, they would have people spotting for them on the edge of town, giving them exact locations of Coalition forces, so they knew to be at just the right place at the right time. This was the reason we drove so fast through town: our company’s policy was that (hopefully), because we drove as fast as we did, by the time the insurgents had seen us and been able to trigger their device, we’d have already gone past it and they would miss us. This often worked, but sometimes they saw us coming too soon – as they often posted lookouts – and sometimes it didn’t.
If we had to stop for any reason we would debus (get out of the vehicles) and get behind cover. If there were other local cars around, we would get in between them and crouch down. Even the insurgents were reluctant to kill their own, so you were pretty safe mingling in crowds. Once we were under attack and had identified our targets, we would try to blow the crap out of them, if possible. If it was in town our gunners were disciplined: we opened up only with M16s, M240s and M249s. If we’d opened up with the M19 grenade launcher or the .50-calibre we would have blown houses away and taken towns apart, but our guys were professionals and none of us wanted to harm innocent civilians – none of us.
I know some people will think it is wrong but we weren’t arsed about taking prisoners. We were just looking after ou
r own butts. If you don’t agree with this philosophy I’d put this book down now. I was just looking out for my lads and comrades. It was a deterrent, one of the main reasons for the insurgency not to take us on. The insurgents would rather take on the US military than us because they knew that we were unable to take them prisoner. Not for one minute am I suggesting that we would ever have executed them, but they would be disarmed and maybe get a beating and then be told to fuck off. If we could hand them over to the Iraqi police we would always try to do that, but this was not always possible, as it would mean going static in a potentially hostile situation, which was something we would always try to avoid.
As we drove through towns we could hear gunshots a lot of the time, some far away, some close, some hitting us and our men. I could see scorch marks and craters everywhere where IEDs had gone off, and sometimes you couldn’t help wincing when you were coming up to a position that was renowned for IEDs – but we always tried to avoid those locations if we could. Every time we came through towns, we tried to take a different route but, unfortunately, coming up to our camp there were only two roads and two entrances, so you were limited when it came to this point. As we approached our base camp on this occasion, the sentries gave us a wave and dropped the wires and chains, so we were able to charge on through. Once inside, we pulled over, all got out and unloaded and cleared our weapons, and then raised our left arms in the air to show we were clear, meaning that we had no round up the spout.
This may sound stupid and obvious, but it was vitally important, because nobody wants to have a stupid and completely avoidable accident on camp (someone getting accidentally shot) because some arsehole on your team forgot to clear his weapon properly. Mistakes can happen, people forget, so we had to implement seemingly obvious procedures. It is the same as being in the UK armed forces: you have procedures you have to follow even if you think they are idiotically obvious. Better safe than sorry. Even now, over ten years since I left the forces, I check and double-check everything – to the annoyance of some of those close to me.
