And then, on 19 March, the order was given.
‘We’re going to war.’
* * *
‘Shock and awe’, they called it. The vast blanket bombing of Iraq’s border posts and then Baghdad itself was so spectacular, so relentless, that the Iraqi forces had no time to regroup, recover or counter. The truth is, though, that people at home probably saw more of it on TV than we did. What we did see and hear made everyone at Camp Commando desperate to get involved. Everyone.
The massive aerial bombardment was incredible. The sky lit up with the trails of cruise missiles. We were just on the edge of the desert, about ten miles south of the Iraqi border, and could see on the horizon to the north of us absolute fury raining down from the skies. For four or five hours, all I could hear were helicopters, fast jets, missiles – immense firepower flying overhead. We were sitting and waiting for the final word about when the troops were to get on the helicopters to follow the aerial bombardment in. I remember looking at the guys boarding the helicopter as part of the advance party, some of them my really close friends. I was gutted not to be joining them.
Phil Guy’s TACP team were flying out to support 42 Commando. I desperately wanted to get involved. Again, I asked Phil if there was a chance he could squeeze me on to his mission. Again, the captain said, ‘Not this time.’
On 21 March I watched as a flight of Sea Knight helicopters set off for their various landing zones – ‘LZs’. I was proud of Phil and everyone else but, God, did I wish I was on board. They all disappeared into the distance and I went back to work. A few hours later I heard a commotion outside. I ran out and there in the distance, in the desert, I could just make out a ball of fire. Men were shouting, scrambling transport.
I stopped a junior marine. ‘Is it one of ours?’
‘We think so, Corporal.’
‘Was it shot down?’
‘Don’t know.’
The base was in turmoil. How had Saddam’s troops managed to get that near us? Patrols were despatched, defences engaged. In the meantime, first responders were reaching the crash site. When the news came on the radio my heart sank.
‘Sea Knight CH-46 down – no survivors.’
Shit!
‘Enemy fire not ruled out but unlikely.’
For the next forty-eight hours I carried on with my duties, delivering munitions to outposts in the desert, completely in the dark about the crash. That’s the way of it. Then the intel started to seep out. It was only by checking in with the other Sea Knights that HQ worked out which chopper had gone down, and how. The report said it had been hindered by a sandstorm. There was a mechanical problem and the pilot couldn’t land and so had been heading back when the aircraft hit difficulties. When it came down, all eight Royal Marines and four US troops were killed on impact, as were the crew. One of the marines was Captain Philip Guy.
I was gutted for him, for his family, his friends. He wasn’t yet thirty, and had his whole life ahead of him. As did everyone else on board. I knew each and every Brit, plus the one South African affiliated to us. I’d worked with some of them at Stonehouse and had issued kit to the rest. We were all brothers. We all thought we’d be going home together. What happened to them seemed so horribly unfair.
And one fact didn’t escape me. I had pleaded and cajoled to be active with TACP. I had begged Phil Guy to let me go with him. If he had said ‘Yes’, my name would be on that list of people whose next of kin were being contacted right then.
George 1’s words had never sounded more relevant.
Be careful what you wish for.
* * *
All those US briefings had made me desperate to kick some ass, like the American ground troops already geed up for the big invasion,. Luckily, being in charge of ammunitions, I was at least going to move when my company did.
And we were moving.
The Americans were making a charge for Baghdad, in the centre of Iraq. The British were going for Basra, which is on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, the confluence of the Tigris and Euprates rivers in the south. The military being the military, there was a race. The Brits were doing their best to get into Basra and secure it before Baghdad fell to the US forces. Which meant all of us – including stores – were going mobile.
Hundreds of troops piled into every vehicle we had and the column pushed out. My team had dozens of trucks loaded with supplies. For once I didn’t get the dull job of driving one. Six marines were given quad bikes to scout ahead and provide security with the on-bike rocket launchers. I was one of them. Obviously, one of the thousands of courses I’d taken had covered quad bikes.
We drove up through the border. I’d been close to it many times and seen it every which way through binoculars. Crossing the demilitarised zone – about 500 metres of nothing between the two countries – was eerie. Then we hit Iraq soil and suddenly we were surrounded by friendly faces. Between the giant signs reading ‘Welcome to Iraq’ Royal Marines Police waved us all through. That’s when it got really weird. Everywhere we looked, murals of Saddam Hussein covered the walls of buildings – and they’d all been defaced. The most polite ones had given him a clown’s nose. Others showed him with different bits of genitalia added.
The journey through the border towns was eerie, slow and arduous. Eerie, because the towns were deserted. Slow, just in case lone Saddam supporters were lurking in the abandoned buildings. Arduous, because the weather was shit. If all you know about deserts is that they never have any rain, you may want to rethink that. It poured down water in biblical proportions. If you had been at all superstitious you might have thought that it was a sign that what we were doing was wrong. Sandstorms clogged our vision, rain-soaked sand clogged our wheels. Suddenly the quad bike, while highly mobile, was the one vehicle no one wanted to be on.
Luckily, no one was superstitious.
Driving through a desert is everything you’d imagine. That is, if you imagine sand for 360 degrees. The road was a single straight stretch of tarmac that disappeared into the horizon. Either side were deep irrigation ditches made of concrete. For miles at a time there was nothing to see or hear but ourselves.
We were several hours inside the country when the whole convoy stopped. I assumed it was the result of radio traffic that I wasn’t privy to. Even above the noise of our idling engines, however, the reason was unmistakable.
Gunfire.
And close.
The men in the WMIKs were all standing to. The threat was real.
We waited for an hour, then the command to advance was given. Two miles further down the road we reached a small factory town. Buildings on all sides were burning. In the road and lying scattered elsewhere were the corpses of fallen Iraqis. Whatever we’d heard had been serious.
And we’d missed it all.
We were that close behind the first wave. Yet time after time, every time we reached the scene of a firefight the party was already over. Everywhere we arrived there were traces of 40 Commando’s work. But that was as close as we got.
Our final destination was another factory town about twenty miles inside the border, some thirty miles south of Basra. It had already been cleared by 40 Commando and US forces – as I was to hear later in graphic detail from some of my friends in the company. Once we had secured the site and unloaded the equipment, those of us in logistics (i.e. stores) turned around and hightailed it back to Kuwait to fetch another shipment. That might have been terrifying if we hadn’t just made the same journey. I knew the biggest threat to my safety on the way back was the weather. The first three days of my war were basically spent driving up and down that one road. After the seventh time I was willing an enemy to pop up just to keep me awake.
I decided that if the fight wouldn’t come to me, then I would hunt the fight. Once we were established in a petro-chemical plant in the township I volunteered myself for absolutely everything outside the camp. If there were any convoys going into Basra then I would get on a convoy. If someone was needed to lead a company of guy
s into an area behind us, such as the troops providing security for the gun line, I stuck up my hand. I’d been all over the area on my quad bike. There was no better tour guide.
On one such familiarisation patrol I was with a troop of marines ranging in rank from captain down to marine. The instructions were to patrol on foot and clear a local village. That doesn’t mean kill everyone there: just make sure there are no undesirables hiding out among the locals. It’s a show of force. Remembering the village elder in Afghanistan who’d lied through his teeth about the Taliban, I wasn’t exactly confident of the results.
Because I had driven through the village a couple of times and knew the ground, I was asked to lead the troop up.
‘With pleasure, sir.’
This is my time.
It was a night patrol. The invasion had seen the disappearance of the police force and all the security that had originally been in those areas, so naturally a vacuum occurred in which looting and retribution killings and other crimes were rife. Our senior guys in charge wanted to show the civilian population that, invaders or not, we could still protect the region. But the population had already taken matters into their own hands. A vigilante force was reputed to be in operation. They didn’t know us and we didn’t know them. So we needed to be alert.
We approached the town in traditional single file. From my daytime sorties I knew all the alleys and back routes. Working through these in stealth mode we spotted through our night-vision goggles a lot of people wandering around. People with guns.
Part of me was relieved.
At least it’s not goats.
There were fifty of us, and I was confident that we could handle any threat. The pressing question was: did these people constitute a threat? Would Card Alpha be tested? Would we need to fire a lethal shot? Even as invaders in a hostile country, we had to be aware of the law.
Even if our enemy wasn’t.
We were all trained for full-on combat. Coming up with a measure less extreme came less naturally. There was a moment when we weren’t entirely sure what to do. In the end the patrol leader, a young captain, decided to give away our position to see what this group of people would do. Would they engage us? Would they be curious?
A Schermuly (usually pronounced ‘schmooli’), named after its inventor, William Schermuly, is a hand-held flare that fires 1,000 metres up into the air, then comes down slowly on a parachute, lighting up some 300 square metres like a 1,000-watt firework. Firing one is a gamble. They call it ‘recce by fire’ because in illuminating your enemy you’re giving away your own position. Sometimes there is no alternative, however. We launched three Schermulys over the locals. They didn’t do anything. They just stood and watched, mouths open like kids on Bonfire Night. The captain was satisfied.
‘Move forward.’
As a precaution, the Minimis (5.56mm squad machine guns) were moved to the front of the crocodile file. That aside, we tried to advance as non-threateningly as possible.
We were in a town square, with, to our left and right, two small tower blocks on either side. As we reached the square a drunk suddenly lunged out of nowhere. That was something we had definitely not been expecting in a Muslim country. He fell onto the bloke next to me. If he had done that today we’d assume he was a suicide bomber, but in 2003 that scourge was nothing like as common as it would become. As for the rest of the village, the armed men put their weapons down and came over to us, smiling, as if to say, ‘We are not the enemy.’ Our patrol was divided into three sections, and I was in the leading one, but we had only one interpreter with us and he was with the captain in the third section. With little or no understanding the locals’ language we couldn’t let our guard down completely, and so they probably found their country’s great liberators stand-offish, at best.
Once the interpreter had joined us, we were directed to the police station, about a two-mile mile hike into town. By the time we arrived word had got round. People were gathered with their sick or injured children for the so-called saviours to heal. I was twenty-six years old and armed to the gills, yet strangers were bringing me their wounded kids. (When I’m your best bet, I thought, you know you’re in trouble.) We were even given a baby that had been abandoned by its parents. It was very emotional, but also worrying. There were a lot of moral dilemmas for the young officer to ponder.
And I mean a lot. We were there two days in the end. He called in water and food and medical supplies and we responded like people, not soldiers. We didn’t turn anyone away, even when we knew their injuries weren’t caused by anything to do with the current fighting. Ultimately, I know there were people alive when we left who never would have made it if we hadn’t shown up.
That didn’t mean everyone wanted our help. I was brought one child who in my opinion had been stabbed, although the parents said otherwise. As I treated him a gang of older teens who’d been standing near by started to get twitchy. I didn’t feel safe. The whole area was a tinderbox. Then one of the youths threw a stone. I don’t know if he was expecting twenty-plus loaded rifles to be aimed at his head, but that’s what he got. Whatever it may have looked like, we were first and foremost marines, not medics.
Knowing the village was suffering because of sanctions instigated by the West and war damage that had shattered the main water supply, it was impossible not to want to do as much as possible. But we were just tens of men. What they needed were hundreds. We were there as security, not engineers or builders or doctors. There would be other people coming after us. Or at least that’s what we told the civilians – and ourselves.
After our two days in the village I took part in several other patrols before we pushed further ahead to Basra. Once there, I was surprised to see people going about their daily business more or less normally. I didn’t encounter any hostility, although neither were the locals as friendly as they had been in the village to the south. My most vivid memory is of catching up with my mates from 40 Commando and hearing how they’d stormed the city. Under fire, and everything.
And here I was hoovering up the dregs a few days later.
For me, Iraq was a tour that promised so much, when the American command announced its mission concluded with the capture of Saddam Hussein I was actually glad. To have been so close to the action – such massive action – and yet still not to have taken any active part was the nudge I needed. When I considered that there were men in the Met who had fired their weapons – fired a lethal shot – more recently than I had, I knew once and for all that it was time to go. On my return to the UK I left the Royal Marines and, in 2004, began training with the Metropolitan Police.
* * *
You can knock on the door only so many times without being let in. It was time to stop knocking.
Within weeks on the new job I knew I’d done the right thing. I was still on probation, patrolling my patch in South London, on the famous Old Kent Road. I’m not saying it’s one of the cheapest properties on the Monopoly board for a reason, but suddenly there was a radio alert warning of a high-speed chase in our area. Even as I listened I heard – then saw – a white BMW whizz past, closely followed by two black unmarked police cars. The BMW stopped just past us and a passenger jumped out of the back and started shooting at the police cars, which also stopped. The police shot him and then another guy jumped out of the BMW and they shot him as well. It all happened right before my eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more exciting.
I only got to roll out the yellow police tape, not deal with the bodies, but that sniff of action confirmed that not only was I on the right track, but that everything I wanted was right on my doorstep. Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq – and Peckham. Who is to say where the real war zone is?
Peckham police station should have had a revolving door. You were never more than a few minutes away from a crime. I thought my first arrest as a beat cop would really stay with me but it was so closely followed by my second and third and fourth that they all blur. Fun times, I have to say.
I
n your probation years you get moved around different divisions for ten weeks at a time. I loved that, as I thrive on variety. I even enjoyed my period as a school liaison officer. Loads of little kids lapping up your stories, what’s not to like?
My favourite attachment, however, was to the rapid-response unit. The detective I was under could sniff criminality a mile away. For action, though, Bonfire Night takes some beating. We must have confiscated thousands of pounds’ worth of, basically, gunpowder from kids intent on firing them anywhere but into the sky. Case in point: towards the end of the night we were called to the North Peckham Estate, then one of the most deprived areas in Europe, let alone the borough, and since demolished. As soon as we arrived something felt off. I could hear laughing from behind a car. Then suddenly this missile came zooming at us. If I hadn’t dived to the ground I’d have lost an eye. By the time I looked up there were more fireworks coming at us, this time from all directions, like a barrage from heavy mortars. I managed to get back into the car but the bombardment continued.
This really was like Iraq.
The only downside with the job that I could see was the pervading attitude within the Met itself. As a commando you expect to be moved around like a pawn to wherever the danger is. As a police officer, it’s as though the senior command want to protect you at the expense of the public. There were loads of scenarios where I felt I was in a position to apprehend a villain or put a stop to a situation, but my mentor officer would say, ‘Hold back, wait for back-up.’ Nine times out of ten the perpetrator would get away. On one occasion we came back from a foot patrol down Peckham High Street and I noticed that the backs of our tunics were layered in spit. How many people must have been gobbing on us I hate to imagine, but I was all up for going back out to find them. My guvnor said, ‘No, it’s not worth it.’
Lethal Shot Page 10
