by Peter Mercer
Everyone, now being safe-ish inside the camp, started to relax and began chatting and having a bit of a stretch. Being stuck in one of those vehicles, with some of the lads carrying so much kit with them that you barely had room to move, could cramp you up a bit sometimes or at least make you a bit stiff, and on a really long or tense mission it could become a real problem. This problem was even worse if you were in the back with the Fijian guys. I love them to bits but, as they were so huge, they easily seemed to take up as much room as two Gurkhas.
Stretches over, the team leaders then went to the ops room for a quick debrief and to find out the next detail and missions. We never knew what we would be doing next or when we could be going out again. It could be 03.00 or maybe we would have the day off to do some training. You just never knew what was in store. It wasn’t a job, it was an adventure – and a fucking dangerous one at that!
After the debrief our boss told us about an incident earlier that day. Eight Iraqi contractors had been in the thick of it and in a right mess, getting bombed and shot at. To put it simply, there had been a firefight between these Iraqi private contractors and the insurgents. After the firefight the Iraqi contractors were injured and were taken to an Iraqi hospital instead of a Coalition camp hospital, which was a big mistake. There is pretty much no way insurgents could gain access to a Coalition hospital on a camp, but in the middle of an Iraqi town this would be a piece of piss for them with unimaginable consequences. The insurgents had then broken into the hospital and killed and decapitated the contractors.
The Yanks had picked up the bodies and heads and brought them back and put them in a small tent right outside our office (I know I keep calling the American troops ‘Yanks’ but 90 per cent are a great bunch and I’ve worked with them on many occasions, so no offence is intended). Sure enough, after a gander inside the tent we could see that there were actually eight bodies in body bags with their heads lopped clean off. Later we had the grisly task of moving them.
As we approached the tent, later that day, I was feeling a bit uneasy and I thought that, unless you were a serial killer, this was going to be quite unnerving. I wouldn’t say I was scared, just really didn’t want to see them. I haven’t got a morbid streak (which is unfortunate, being a mercenary and ex-Marine). I’d rather be having a laugh outside with the lads. As a soldier you don’t have that choice, but as a mercenary, or contractor, you do.
I remembered the aftermath of the First Gulf War when I was a young Royal Marine Commando twenty years old, having to clear up some real nasty shit, so I wasn’t looking forward to this. It made the body bags feel weird to move with the heads rolling around inside. The heads eventually stopped rolling around and fell down to about the arse area, so it felt as if we were dragging their heads along the ground when we were actually carrying them. I had heard once somewhere that a head can weigh up to 2 stones and I had never believed it, but, after actually trying to pick one up by the hair (as I’d seen in so many movies), I realised that this is impossible: they’re just too heavy and you have to pick them as you would a water melon – not a nice thing. It was pretty grim, but someone had to do it. In situations this grim, you sometimes get the giggles. Don’t know if it’s because it’s so horrible or just the way your brain copes with it. But I decided I wasn’t going to lose my head over it! Pardon the sorry pun, but picking up heads was something I’d never done before; in fact it was way outside any experience I’d ever had, thank fuck!
After doing the body thing I wasn’t feeling that hungry and I considered skipping dinner and just going back to my accommodation, but I knew that I had to eat because the next day would be another long one and who knew what would happen? I went for a shower and scrubbed myself clean for ages, but I couldn’t seem to get rid of that death smell. It felt as if I had absorbed it into my very pores. Once my skin was nearly raw I stopped scrubbing and just stood under the spray with my face turned upwards, letting the water wash over my head. I wanted to stay there but I knew I couldn’t.
I got out and dried off, changed and made my way to the chow tent. I queued up and got my food and joined a couple of the guys, but nobody was feeling very talkative – we ate in silence. After scran, I went down to the gym to push some weights – I definitely needed another shower after that session. The gym was situated inside one of Saddam’s presidential buildings. Being a US military gym, it had every bit of equipment you could imagine. American logistics are second to none when it comes to warfare, and they really have their shit together when it comes to looking after their troops. After a good training session, I wanted to call home. On camp we were given a satellite phone and a mobile phone each. The reception on the mobile phone was excellent and incredibly cheap, cheaper than ringing a mobile phone in the UK, actually! It worked out at about 20p a minute.
To start off, when I rang home to speak to my parents and sister in York, I’d tell them I was in some foreign country working on oil rigs, but a careless phone call from a mate – checking I was OK because he hadn’t heard from me for a while (he knew where I was) – soon put a stop to that. My mum shat a brick. She burst into tears and begged me to come home. I said that I had an internal job at the airport that was really safe. She eventually swallowed it but I carried on lying about the location. My old man never asked me any questions. He was used to my doing dangerous work in fucked-up countries.
After the gym and my shower, I went back to my hooch – my accommodation – and started cleaning my kit and weapons. It was midsummer and really hot, so, once my weapons were as clean as it was really possible to get them, a few of the lads and I sat outside our huts and had a couple of cold beers.
The US military weren’t allowed to drink, so we became very popular by giving them the occasional beer. Because we were officially civilians, we could drink. This had been a long day and we’d had a grisly task to perform, but our team had sustained no losses or injuries – so I guess that meant it was overall a good one. How can you say what is a good day? Nobody from our company had even been injured but eight guys from another security company doing, probably, the same job as we were doing had died. But we had far better backup; those poor men had none whatsoever. Poor souls!
After a couple of tins I went and got my head down. Next morning I reported for duty at 08.00 and we had a day of weapons training and vehicle drills. Nothing special, just a typical day around camp.
It’s a very strange feeling when you look back on it. I’ve never slept so well or peacefully in my life as I did in Iraq. You are so removed from the rest of the world and I think because you use up a lot of adrenalin you end up being shattered and eventually get used to the dull thud of explosions and gunfire in the distance. Your body and mind adapt to the tone and noise and rhythms. If it’s in the distance you sleep; if it comes close you jump instantly awake.
Convoy missions were our main task but each one was different. We had to take the rough with the smooth. Some went well and were almost easy; some were risky and violent and truly very distressing. After all, when you lose a colleague it’s never nice.
Chapter 3
Big Contact
We’d been taking and getting quite a few casualties driving through all of these dangerous villages that were strongly occupied by insurgents. I think we’d had more of our guys killed on this northern mission than any other security company working in Iraq at that time. This was purely down to the intensity of the fighting up here, not down to the guys not knowing what they were doing or a lack of professionalism.
There were a lot of no-go areas for most of the private military companies in the north. However, we were often asked to actually go through some of these areas, which was always dodgy as hell. We could normally handle it because our guys were good and we had some awesome firepower. The Americans gave us pretty much whatever we wanted. Sometimes we just had to escort things and vehicles through and other times we were just asked to assess the threat level in the area for the US military. None of it, however, was a walk
in the park. Far from it. There was danger lurking around every corner.
Two weeks before I arrived up in the north to start my new job, disaster struck. One of the teams – in fact the whole patrol – were approaching Mosul. Nothing out of the ordinary there for the team – just another run-of-the-mill trip. Everything had seemed normal – well, as normal as it’s possible to get in the north. You quite often got the odd opportunist insurgent shooting at you, but unless you got hit by an IED you’d probably survive it with most of our casualties just suffering minor injuries. This day turned out to be a bad one for that particular team.
The insurgents had obviously been waiting for an American patrol to come through this particular area and were well prepared for them. When that didn’t happen they just waited to pick another target – which that day was one of our patrols! The Yanks were probably avoiding the area after getting intelligence from their spooks, who then warned their own troops. However, that sort of intelligence rarely filtered down to us, so we often had no way of knowing when an attack was due or where it might come from. That was, indeed, the case for our company’s patrol that day. I shall say our and us from now on, even though I was not personally present during this contact.
On this particular day, there were dozens of insurgents lying in wait for the guys. They were all armed to the teeth and they had planted quite a few IEDs all over the place (on this occasion they were lots of car bombs). As our teams came up the street, all the locals disappeared (which is always an indication that there’s going to be trouble). Then – boom! The first IED went off at the beginning of the road, taking out our lead vehicle. The insurgents then started firing their AK-47s and RPKs from side streets, rooftops, windows, everywhere – you name it, they were there. Gunfire was hitting our guys from all directions, then – boom again! Another IED, another car bomb, then more firing.
Apparently, by this time, the teams could hardly even drive and make it up the road because of all the rubble and destruction. Our team was getting the shit kicked out of them and it was pure carnage. Our patrol then retaliated, firing back and ended up killing quite a few insurgents. They opened up with everything they had. This was a right mess. There was nothing the lads could do; they were in a right pickle.
Any civilian approaching was also getting injured or even killed for fear of being an insurgent who might have been about to chuck a grenade. Our guys had reasoned that any innocent civilians would take cover and not try to walk through the middle of a huge firefight. In fact, as the street had been so quiet, as if the locals had known what was about to go down, there hadn’t been that many people about, although there were young men throwing things – rocks, grenades and so forth – at the guys. So any person walking out and about or throwing stuff either had a death wish or, more likely, was an insurgent. The situation was extremely bad and had deteriorated rapidly.
After eventually getting out of the kill zone, one of the trucks was fucked – blown tyres, shrapnel holes everywhere – and, worst of all, two of their Fijian comrades were dead after the initial IED. Also, one of the ex-SAS guys, who had been riding in the lead vehicle, had been shot in the head by a suspected ricochet. The Gurkha who was driving the truck carrying the ex-SAS guy must have had balls as big as an elephant because, after Justin (as I will call him) was hit in the head, he was, apparently, still alive. This brave little Gurkha had broken away from the main convoy and then he’d driven through Mosul, totally on his own, with no backup – leaving his convoy behind. Justin’s injuries were so severe that the Gurkha knew that he had to get him to a hospital as soon as possible – he had been in an obviously critical condition with this very bad head injury. As he sped through town he was fired upon repeatedly, but he wouldn’t and didn’t stop.
As the Gurkha had approached the gates of the American camp, the sentries on duty saw all the bullet holes and got the medics on standby. They’d also been made aware of the contact report, so they knew of the situation. This brave little Gurkha drove his arse off to get Justin to hospital as soon and as fast as possible, but it was all in vain: Justin was dead on arrival. His head injuries were too severe. So that had been the situation: quite a few (thirty-two) insurgents lay dead and three of our guys were dead. Not good, not good at all. It had been one hell of a firefight and one hell of a mess.
Soon after the two Fijians had arrived at the same American base for medical treatment, one guy was clearly dead on arrival but, amazingly, one was still alive – just. Unfortunately, as they were lifting him out of the back of the truck, he passed away. He’d been ripped apart by one of the car bombs and most of his legs were missing, but I was told he had been a hulk of a guy and the medics had said it was a miracle that he had survived long enough to get back to camp with the extent and severity of his wounds. Everyone had shed a tear for their colleagues.
Because quite a few civilians in the town had been killed in the crossfire, the US military wanted an explanation for what had happened. However, because we were contractors, we didn’t have to fill out contact reports. Officially, as civilians, an oral explanation would be acceptable for them. It was a nightmare of a day for our guys and, every time that kind of shit happens (someone getting injured or killed), it bangs it home to everyone how fucking dangerous that place is.
After clearing out Justin’s locker, one of our guys had resigned and some of the other guys had seriously thought about it. Apparently, seeing Justin’s pictures of his wife and kids banged it home to this guy how quickly things could go bad for anybody working here and he must have thought of his own family and said, Fuck it! It’s not worth earning all this money if you’re not going to be around to spend it with your family. It made more than a few of our guys question whether they should be out there at all. Situations like that really made everybody think about their own mortality.
It was one of the first things I was told when I first arrived, however. I was single and I must admit that I had a bit of a ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude at the time. Things weren’t good at home and I just wanted to earn some good money. Getting up there (to Mosul) had been traumatic enough, and then you get some arsehole giving you war stories and trying to scare the shit out of you. Not a tactic I’d ever employ, but it happened a lot.
As I’d put myself up for this job I fully realised that the mess I was in now was entirely of my own doing. Hell, I’d even badgered the boss in Baghdad to send me up here. The contacts we were encountering up here were very intense and you had to have your wits about you all the time. As I said, on most of our missions we were losing men at quite an alarming rate and this wasn’t including the major and minor injuries that we sustained on a regular basis.
So here I was with a bunch of guys who were constantly getting their arses shot off but, on the bright side, they were great to work for and with. This was certainly the craziest job I’d ever undertaken. Danger was everywhere.
Chapter 4
Tal Afar
The Gurkhas never ceased to amaze me. We had a mixed bunch. There were the British-trained and the Pakistani-trained Gurkhas, but apart from their training differences they had one thing in common: their unwavering loyalty. These guys would often be involved in very nasty contacts, losing comrades sometimes on a daily basis. Even when one or more of them were maimedx or killed and you told them the next detail, or job, was at, say, 04.00 the next day, they would all be there, ready and raring to go. No moaning, no complaints – just ready. These little guys were fearsome. What some of them lacked in their training they made up for in their courage. You could always train them in tactics but you could never give them balls.
I woke up that morning and did my normal routine of shaving and showering and going for a good breakfast, after which, as I walked back to the accommodation, I saw Triple Canopy drive past. They must have had a VIP with them, because in front and behind the armoured SUV that they were escorting they had their armoured Hummers with .50 cals on the turrets. These guys used to take care of all the American VI
Ps (senators, ex-presidents and what have you) who came to visit. They were a friendly bunch and we all got on well, but we didn’t discuss many missions between companies that much.
Once up at the ops room I was told we would be taking a route through Tal Afar for this mission. This wasn’t my normal patrol route, but I’d asked to go because this was a route I’d never taken before. I’d been in this job only a few months, and it’s advantageous to know as many routes around the north as possible, because you never knew what diversions or evasive routes you might have to take if you hit bad trouble. As my own personal patrol was doing weapons training that day, it would be no problem for me to miss it. The other patrol commanders could do the instruction.
After the Gurkhas had finished their breakfast they started to get the trucks ready, which always put a smile on my face. The Fijians, when they loaded their trucks, would just pass the heavy weapons up to one another as if they were toy guns. This was because of their huge size and strength. The Gurkhas, however, had to get five or six of themselves around the .50-cals to get them up. Another funny thing was the winter Gore-Tex jackets they were all issued with: they came in only two sizes and those were large and extra large. Even the extra-large jackets used to look tight on some of the Fijians, but the large jackets would swamp some of the Gurkhas, making them look as if they were wearing trench coats. The gunners on the back of the Hiluxes had to be kept warm, though, because the temperature was now very low. Plus, with the wind-chill factor, they sometimes had ice on them after a particularly long and cold run. We tried to incorporate more stops on our missions to keep them warm and make them more comfortable, without compromising our security, if it was possible. Neither the Gurkhas nor the Fijians ever moaned, though. They were professionals and hard as nails. I had a lot of respect for these men.
