by Dan Mills
The first sight I saw was the happy smiles of some soldiers from the 1st Battalion, the Light Infantry, lined up to get on the plane we had just got off. They were the unit in Al Amarah we were going to replace. They were going home, and our arrival was the final confirmation of that. And the joy was plastered all over their faces.
As we filed by into the terminal building, one called out: 'Hello, lads, nice to see you.' Another asked: 'How long you boys got here then? Six months is it? Oh dear, that is a shit sandwich, isn't it. Did you know I'm flying out today?'
He got a huge laugh from his mates. It was the normal good-natured ribbing between rotating troops that happens anywhere. But the Light Infantry boys really seemed to mean it.
Before all troops arriving in theatre got to their final destinations, you had to do two weeks of acclimatization at Shaibah Logistics Base first. So we were packed on board coaches and driven to it through the desert.
I peeked out from behind the coach's blastproof curtains on the way. Iraq was pretty much exactly the shit hole I had expected it to be from what I had seen on the news. All along the route lay destroyed Iraqi tanks and armour. The desert plain looked just like a widely spaced junk yard. Endless remnants of the invasion, the first Gulf War before that, and the Iran–Iraq war even before that. Nothing had been cleared up. There was war detritus everywhere, and it's what we had all been yearning to see.
Fucking brilliant, we're here at last.
It was also still the nearest most of us had ever been to an official war.
After an open-mouthed hour with all noses pressed to the windows, our first holiday in Shaibitha began. The point of it is to get used to the heat and desert conditions of southern Iraq inside the safety of a great big base in the middle of nowhere, where nobody is going to shoot at you or try to blow you up. It's also used as a place to give soldiers in Iraq a few days off from the front line – hence the Ibiza nickname.
Shaibah is the main supply hub for the 9,000 British troops in the country. It's based on an old British barracks built in the 1920s when we first ruled Iraq. But these days, it's the nearest the British Army has ever come to going to war the American way. It was a small slice of home shoved right in the middle of miles of sand. Amid row upon row of big air-conditioned accommodation tents is everything a squaddie could ever want. Apart from beer and shagging, that is. There are fast food trailers like Pizza Hut and Burger King, a massive gym, coffee shops, hairdressers, souvenirs, a cinema and even a traditional British pub – alcohol-free of course.
After we'd found our lodgings, the three other platoon commanders and I got an update on the general picture in Iraq from the company OC (Officer Commanding), Major Justin Featherstone. He'd been out for a bit as part of the advanced party. His news was dramatic.
In the last forty-eight hours while we'd been travelling, it had all well and truly kicked off out there. Across large parts of the country, the firebrand Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had stirred up a shit storm. His fighters had seized police stations and government buildings, and attempted to storm a series of coalition forces' headquarters. The fighting was at its worst in the major southern cities of the Shia heartlands. In the city of Kut just 100 miles north of Al Amarah, a Ukrainian soldier was killed and Polish troops even had to temporarily abandon their base and pull out of the city altogether.
The trouble had been brewing for months. In September 2003, Moqtada declared his own shadow government for Iraq. He promised to rule it as a strict Islamic state and started rubbing out his rival Shia leaders. Eventually, the Americans' patience ran out. In March 2004, they closed down his newspaper and issued a warrant for his arrest for murder. In retaliation, he mobilized the Mehdi Army. On 5 April, fighting broke out. The al-Sadr uprising had begun.
Elsewhere across the south, 500 Italian troops in Nasiriyah had fought a fierce battle with militia, suffering twelve casualties of their own, but killing fifteen and wounding thirty-five enemy. Spanish soldiers were fighting on the street with Medhi Army gunmen in Najaf, and the Bulgarian base in Kerbala came under heavy grenade and machine-gun fire. An American soldier was killed by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) in the poor Shia stronghold Baghdad suburb Sadr City, recently renamed after Moqtada's father. And three Japanese civilians and seven South Koreans had been taken hostage, and the Mehdi Army were threatening to burn them alive. From what Featherstone could pick up, there had even been a bit of scrapping in Al Amarah too.
The 'good' news, Featherstone said, was that it wasn't ex-pected to last much longer. Intelligence had predicted the uprising would peter out pretty quickly after the initial outburst.
Shit. We were sitting on our hoops in Shaibitha watching everyone else have all the fun on CNN. It was the same old bloody story for the PWRR all over again. Yet again, we were going to miss the action. By the time we got up there, there would have been a settlement, or al-Sadr would be dead. The whole storm in a tea cup would be all over. Un-fucking-believable.
What was worse was there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I had to wait for the rest of the platoon to arrive and take them through acclimatization. I was sick as a parrot.
I couldn't work out whether Major Featherstone was happy or sad about the al-Sadr uprising. Probably a bit of both. It was exciting for him like it was for all of us because he was a soldier. But it also meant an increased risk to his men, and that for him was a major worry.
Major Justin Featherstone was very much a soldier's soldier. He was a very approachable and friendly guy, who always made a big effort to be liked by all the blokes. That really mattered to him, and so far he'd pretty much achieved it. Physically, he was balding prematurely for his thirty-five years, but well built and always carried a cheeky smile. And he was never afraid of getting his hands dirty and mucking in with any shitty task he'd given his men.
But if he had one flaw, it was that he was born a Boy's Own hero. He was the classic army officer amateur adventurer sort. He was always organizing adventure training trips or exciting expeditions, and the explorer's urge – which included a keen eye for the ladies – had given him a fairly lively army career.
Being given the command of Y Company, the most skilled soldiers in the unit, on an operational tour was a chance for Major Featherstone to really prove his worth to the army. He was very keen to take it. That meant keeping his nose clean doing a faultless job. Most importantly, that meant keeping all his blokes alive.
When the rest of Sniper Platoon finally did arrive over the next few days, I began the programme immediately. That meant drinking endless bottles of water, platoon runs, lots of smiling, and practising our Iraq drills. The most important one I wanted to get us good at was top cover. That's the two blokes who stand up in the back of Snatch Land Rovers to give the vehicles all round protection while it's moving. If there was any action still left to be had up in Al Amarah, I wanted the boys to be ready for it.
There were also endless lectures on hygiene. Exactly how you should wash your hands before you ate, or you'd spend the rest of the tour in the shithouse with D and V. Shaibah also has a shooting range with 100 lanes in it for blokes to zero their weapons sights. It's the biggest the British Army has anywhere, and we thought it was awesome.
But the bottom line was Shaibah was well and truly the land of the REMF – Real Echelon Mother Fucker. It was a Yank phrase from Vietnam, but it's been adopted by English-speaking military all over the world. And it was doing my head in. After four days of the place, I was chomping at the bit, so Daz and I resolved to scheme a way of getting up to Al Amarah as soon as we could. He felt exactly the same as me.
Corporal Daz Williamson was my 2i/c and, at just a year younger than me, had the seniority to be in charge of the platoon himself. But a while back he'd been demoted from sergeant for punching some gobby PT instructor in the face. We agreed on pretty much everything – just what you need from your deputy.
I had another word with Major Featherstone.
'Sir, I've got to ge
t up there. With the current crisis, it's really important Daz and I do a good and thorough handover with the Light Infantry sniper platoon commander before he goes.'
'Right.'
Lying, I went on: 'I've heard he'll be on his way down in a couple of days. Chris can stay behind and bring the boys up in two days' time.'
'Oh, I see. Well if you think you have to, you'd better go then, Dan.'
I gave Chris the good news.
Corporal Chris Mulrine, my No.3, was very popular for his sharp wit as much as his fine soldiering. He had no time for army bullshit and, as a massive Blackadder fan, did his legendary General Melchett impressions when only just out of earshot of some particularly bumbling officer.
In full Melchett impression, 'Yeees, that's the spirit. They don't like it up 'em.' He shook his head.
'You bastard. I get it, I'll stay here and be a fucking REMF and you and Daz will have a right old caper. Off you go.'
That settled it. Daz had managed to find a couple of rides on a routine road convoy up to Al Amarah. They needed a couple more armed escorts. We jumped at the chance of a lift, they jumped at the chance of getting a couple of snipers to cover their arses.
We found the convoy of six eight-tonne lorries and a couple of Snatch Land Rovers by Shaibah's main gate at 8 a.m. the next day. They were loading up and almost ready to go. The driver of our lorry had done the trip once already in the last few days. He was none too pleased about having to do it again. But thanks to him, we got our first real indication of what the situation was like on the ground in Al Amarah, in a shouted conversation over the noise of the engine as the convoy pulled out.
The Light Infantry had had two weeks of misery.
The main base in the city centre had been repeatedly surrounded by more than 3,000 demonstrators. It started as just an angry protest, but the mob – which was constantly chanting the name of Moqtada al-Sadr – had got increasingly violent. Blast bombs were now regularly coming over the base's walls and armoured Warriors had to be deployed on the streets.
Over the last two nights, troops had also fought a series of clashes with Mehdi Army gunmen after coming under small arms fire.
Six British soldiers had been injured, and they had killed at least fifteen enemy in return. It was the worst violence British-controlled southern Iraq had seen since the end of the war.
And it showed no signs of abating at all.
3
Daz and I rode shotgun up country. It should have been a three-hour journey. Our convoy did it in five because the drivers got lost. That's a hard thing to do, because it's just one road.
We didn't care. This was real Iraq.
With our SA80s in our laps, and a round in the chamber just in case, our legs dangled over the eight tonner's back tailgate all the way up. It gave us a great view of the place that we were to call home for the next seven months.
For long periods of the journey we just sat in silence staring at the scenery, if you can call it that.
'Fuck me. What a khazi,' was Daz's concerted opinion.
Most of Maysan is unpopulated wilderness. A dust-blown, heat-baked, flat and featureless wasteland. The Tigris River runs right the way through it, so it's not desert. But it's too hot and dry to be any good for farming more than a mile each side of the river.
It's the poorest of all Iraq's eighteen provinces – the true arse end of a truly arsed-up country. Maysan hates the rest of Iraq, which in turn hates it back. Nobody elsewhere gives a fuck about the place, and it couldn't give a fuck about them either.
One of the reasons why it's such a dump is the 280-kilometre border it shares with Iran. The province was the scene of a lot of the hideous trench warfare fighting between Saddam's legions and Tehran's during the 1980s. That not only destroyed what little industry there was in Maysan, but it also drove away most of its population for good.
Outside of its few towns, its only real landscape features are the hundreds of decaying tank and artillery berms built by both sides during war. Those, and the network of crumbling irrigation ditches that haven't carried any water for decades.
Almost all of the houses we passed by were made out of mud walls. And what little farming we saw was totally untouched by any modern methods. At stages, it felt like we could have been driving through a land a thousand years back in time.
Not much has changed in Maysanis' behaviour patterns from the dark ages either. Much of the province is semilawless. Its people are and always have been furiously independent. The only authority they have ever respected was tribal or religious. Extreme violence was just part of everyday life in Maysan. Human life had no great value.
On a piss stop, our lorry driver told us a story he had picked up off the Light Infantry.
A few weeks before, a dispute had broken out between two tribes over the ownership of a cow near a little town in the south of Maysan called Qalat Salih. They had settled it in the usual way. Both sides went home and got thoroughly tooled up. They met back in a field with all their heavy weaponry and opened up on each other. By the end of the day there were ten dead and forty wounded.
'Mad fuckers or what, eh?' the driver laughed.
'Yeah, but what happened to the cow?' Daz asked.
Nine miles short of Al Amarah itself, some 240 kilometres north of Basra, was Camp Abu Naji.
In Saddam's day, it had been his 4th Corps' massive headquarters – four square kilometres of barracks, training grounds and ammunition stores. Dozens of US and British bombing raids during both wars against Iraq had turned the camp into long eerie stretches of charred foundations and rubble. For all the tens of thousands of tonnes of ordnance the fly boys had dropped on it, they might as well have used a nuclear bomb. It wouldn't have looked any different.
In the ensuing chaos, the camp had been heavily looted in the two days between the Iraqi army's flight and the Paras turning up. Every home for miles around now had its own private arsenal, from AK47s to Dshke heavy machine guns, RPGs and mortars.
Only a few flat-roofed single-storey barracks blocks remained fully standing in the middle of this desert of rubble. So the Royal Engineers had built up a compound around them 800 metres long by 300 metres wide, by pushing up four great walls of earth four metres high and digging a deep defensive ditch all around them.
The previous battle groups' command centres had occupied the hard buildings, and everyone else lived in rows and rows of giant air-conditioned tents. The PWRR did the same.
Abu Naji was far enough away from Al Amarah to prevent insurgents using it as cover to put effective mortar fire down on the camp. But that didn't stop people trying.
As we were shown to our temporary digs, we passed the Light Infantry mortar teams digging themselves in for the night's activities.
Right in the middle of the camp there was a makeshift football pitch, and smack in the middle of that they were digging three mortar pits. No more football there, then. We hadn't even brought our mortar tubes. There were a few frantic phone calls back to the UK when the head shed arrived and remembered that. Last man out remember to pack the mortars.
Abu Naji had everything working soldiers needed inside it. A permanent cookhouse with three different hot meal choices per sitting, together with strawberry cheesecake and ice cream for pudding. To wash in, there were permanent, air-conditioned and tented shower blocks with hot and cold running water most of the day. And there was even a small R&R tent, rigged up with a dirty great satellite TV dish. But it was still very basic, and mind numbingly claustrophobic. You couldn't leave the compound unless you were on official military business, and even that meant taking weapons, body armour and helmets with you. Shaibitha felt a very long way away.
I tracked down my oppo, the Light Infantry's outgoing sniper platoon commander. I thought I might as well use the time before the rest of the platoon arrived to do the proper handover I promised Featherstone. It was a good job I did it then too. His name was Sid.
'Hello mate, I'm Dan. I'm here for a couple of days,
so if you've got time for a decent chinwag over a brew maybe . . .'
'Yeah, pleased to meet you. Look I'm sorry, fella, we've got an hour and then I'm out of here on the next fucking bus. So what do you want to know?'
We sat down on the floor of his accommodation tent then and there. It wasn't exactly the world's longest handover. I tried to get as much out of him about the lie of the land as I could. We went over the maps of the city. In the last three or four weeks, he and his boys had been all over the place doing observation jobs on suspected ring leaders for all the crowd trouble. They had been run ragged.
As he heaved his Bergen over his back, Sid added: 'I expect you're going to have some fun in the next couple of weeks if it stays like this. I've got to dash or I'll miss the plane. See you in another life.' And off he went.
Abu Naji wasn't to be our home. So as soon as the rest of the platoon caught up with Daz and me two days later, we would get straight into Al Amarah where Y Company was to be based.
And because it wasn't our home, in true soldier's fashion the boys started taking the piss out of the place the moment they arrived. Compared to the city where we'd hoped the real action would be, they'd decided it was just another REMF hang out.
'Eh, lads, look at this place,' said Pikey, as he jumped off the lorry and dusted himself down from the journey. 'It's fucking Slipper City here.'
'No, it's not, it's Abu Napa,' quipped Ads.
So that was it. The unsuspecting tourist resort of Aya Napa in Cyprus had just given its name to British Forces HQ, Maysan Province. From that moment onwards, nobody in the platoon called it Abu Naji ever again.
