by Andy McNab
Dehydration to this degree can be fatal. Stan had been wearing his thermals ever since we left the LUP. He must have lost pints of sweat.
I started to shake.
"What do we do-take his kit off?" I asked Chris.
"No, it's all he's got on, apart from his trousers, shirt, and smock. If we take it off, he'll be in a worse state."
Stan got up and started moving around. We gave him another ten minutes to get himself organized; then it became too cold to stand still any longer and we had to get moving.
We had to do our planning around the two slowest and move at their speed. I changed the order of the march. I put Chris up front, with Stan and Vince behind him. I followed them, with the others behind me.
As scout, Chris moved on the compass bearing and used the night sight to make sure that we weren't going to walk into anything nasty. We stopped every half hour instead of every hour. Each time, we had to get more water into Stan. The situation was not desperate, but he did seem to be getting worse.
The weather had become diabolical. We weren't tabbing as hard as we had been because the cold was sapping our strength. The wind was driving into our faces and we were all moving with our heads turned at half cock to try and protect ourselves.
We pushed on, our pace dictated by the two injured men in front. At one stop Vince sat down and gripped his leg.
"It's getting worse, mate," he said. It was so out of character for him to complain. The injured leg must have been agony. He apologized for the hassle he was causing us.
We had two enemies now-time and the physical condition of the two slowest men. By now the rest of us were starting to feel the effects of the night's march as well. My feet and legs were aching, and I had to keep reminding myself that it was what I got paid for.
There was total cloud cover. It was jet-black. I checked the navigation, and the rest of the patrol covered the arcs to the sides and the rear. Chris was having trouble with the NVA because there was no ambient light. This was now slowing us down as much as the two injured men.
The wind bit into every inch of exposed skin. I kept my arms tight against my sides to preserve warmth. My head was down, my shoulders shrugged. If I had to move my head, I'd rum my whole body. I didn't want the slightest bit of wind down my neck.
We started to hear aircraft coming from the north. I couldn't see a thing because of the cloud cover, but I had to make a decision. Was I going to get on the TACBE, only to find they were Iraqi?
"Fucking yeah," Mark said, reading my thoughts. "Let's do it."
I put my hand on Vince's shoulder and said, "We're going to stop and try TACBE."
He nodded and said, "Yep, Okay, yep."
I tried to open my pouch. It was easier said than done. My hands were frozen and so numb that I couldn't get my fingers to work. Mark started fumbling with my belt kit as well, but he couldn't unclench his fingers enough to undo the pouch. Finally, somehow, I had the TACBE in my hand.
The last couple of jets were still going over.
"Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. We are a ground call sign and we're in the shit. Over."
Nothing. I called again. And again.
"Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. We are a ground call sign and we're in the shit. We have a fix for you. Over."
If they did nothing else other than inform somebody of our position, we'd be laughing. Mark got out Magellan and pressed the fix button to give us longitude and latitude.
It was then that I heard the wonderful sound of an American voice, and it suddenly registered with me that these would be jets coming from Turkey to do raids around Baghdad.
"Say again, Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. You're very weak. Try again."
The signal was weak because he was screaming out of range.
"Turn back north," I said. "Turn back north. Over."
No reply.
"Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero. Over."
Nothing.
They'd gone. They wouldn't come back. Bastards!
Five minutes later, the horizon was lit by bright flashes and tracer.
The jets were obviously hosing something down near Baghdad. Their run-ins are crucial, timed to the split second. They couldn't have turned back for us even if they'd wanted to. At least he had repeated our call sign. Presumably this would get filtered through the system, and the FOB would know we were still on the ground, but in the shit-or at least, that one of us with a TACBE was.
It was all over within twenty or thirty seconds. I hunched with my back to the wind as I replaced the TACBE in my pouch. I looked at Legs and he shrugged. He was right-so what? We'd made the contact.
"Maybe they'll fly back this way and things will be good," I said to Bob.
"Let's hope."
I turned into the wind to tell Chris and the other two that we'd better press on.
"For fuck's sake," I whispered, "where's everybody else gone?"
I had told Vince we were going to try TACBE. The correct response is for the message to get passed along the line, but it can't have registered in his numbed brain. He must have just kept on walking without telling Chris and Stan.
It's each man's responsibility in the line to make sure that messages go up or down, and if you stop, you make sure that the bloke in front knows that you've stopped. You should know who's in front of you and who's behind you. It's your responsibility to make sure they're always there.
So it was my fault and Vince's that they didn't stop. We both failed in our responsibilities-Vince in not passing it on, me in not making sure that he stopped.
We couldn't do anything about it. We couldn't do a visual search because Chris was the only person with a night-viewing aid. We couldn't shout because we didn't know what was ahead of us or to either side. And we couldn't use white light-that's a big no-no. So we'd just have to keep on the bearing and hope that they'd stop at some stage and wait for us. There was a good chance that we'd meet up.
I felt terrible. We had failed, more or less, in our contact with the aircraft. And now, even worse, we'd lost three members of the patrol-two of whom were injured. I was annoyed with myself, and annoyed with the situation. How the hell had I allowed it to happen?
Bob must have guessed what I was thinking because he said, "It's done now: let's just carry on. Hopefully we'll RV."
That helped me a lot. He was right. At the end of the day they were big boys: they could sort themselves out.
We headed north again on the bearing. The freezing wind pierced our flimsy desert camouflage. After two hours of hard tabbing we came to our MSR and crossed over. The next objective now was a meta led road further to the north.
We encountered a couple of inhabited areas, but boxed around without incident. Soon after midnight we heard noise in the distance. We started our routine to box around whatever it was and came across some armored vehicles, laagered up, then a forest of antennas. The face of a squaddy was briefly illuminated as he lit a cigarette. He probably should have been on stag, but he was dos sing in the cab of a truck. It was either a military installation or a temporary position. Whatever, we had to box around again.
Chris and the others can't have gone into it, or we would have heard the contact.
We carried on for about twenty minutes. All of us were on our chin straps We'd had eight hours of head down and go for it. The stress on the legs had been immense. My feet hurt. I felt completely knackered.
I had been thinking about the aircraft. It was hours ago that we'd heard them, so the pilots would be back in their hotels now enjoying their coffee and doughnuts while the engineers sorted their aircraft out. Such a lovely way to go to war. They climb into their nice, warm cockpits and ride over to their target. Down below, as far as they are concerned, is jet-black nothingness. Then what should they hear but the old Brit voice gob bing off, moaning about being in the shit. It must have been a bit of a surprise. I hoped so much that they were concerned for us and were doing
something. I wondered if they would have reported the incident by radio as soon as it had happened, or if they'd wait until they returned to base. Probably the latter. Hours ago, and no other fast jets had come over. I didn't know what the American system was for initiating a search and rescue package. I just hoped they knew that it was really important.
I blamed myself for the split. I felt a complete knob- her and wondered if everybody else held the same opinion. I remembered a speech I had read by Field Marshal Slim. Talking about leadership, he had said something to the effect of, "When I'm in charge of a battle and everything's going well and to plan and I'm winning-I'm a great leader, a real good lad. But you find out whether you can really lead or not when everything's going to rat shit and you are to blame." I knew exactly how he felt. I could have kicked myself for not confirming that Vince had registered that we were stopping. In my mind, everything was my fault. As we tabbed north I kept thinking, what the hell did I do wrong? The E&E must go right from here on. I mustn't make any more mistakes.
It was time to think about finding somewhere to hide. We'd been going over shale and rock, and had come to an area of solid sand. Our boots were hardly making any imprint. This was fine from the point of view of leaving sign, but the ground was so hard there was no way we could scrape a hiding place. It was nearly first light, and we were still running around. Things were just starting to look a bit wriggly when Legs spotted some sand dunes a half mile to our west. We found ourselves in an area where the constant wind had made ripples and small mounds about 1530 feet high. We looked for the tallest one. We wanted to be above eye level. We did what we should never do by going for isolated cover. But there was only this small knoll on an otherwise flat surface. On top of it was a small cairn of stones. Maybe somebody was buried there.
There was a small stone wall about a foot high around the cairn. We built it up slightly and lay down behind. It was icy cold as the wind whistled through the gaps in the stones, but at least it was a relief to stop tabbing. In the course of the last twelve hours, in total darkness and atrocious weather conditions, we had traveled 50 miles, the length of two marathons. My legs were aching. Lying down and being still was wonderful, but then cramp would start. As you moved, other areas were exposed to the cold. It was incredibly uncomfortable.
Looking to our south, we saw pylons running east west. We used them to fix our position on the map. If we followed them, we would eventually hit the border. But if we used the pylons for navigation, who was to say that other people wouldn't as well?
We lay there for about half an hour, getting more and more uncomfortable. To our east about a mile away was a corrugated iron building which was probably a water-boring station. It looked very inviting, but it was even worse isolated cover. There was nothing to the north. There was no alternative but to stay where we were.
We had to keep really low. We cuddled up and tried to share body warmth. Dark clouds raced across the sky. The wind howled through the stones; I could feel it bite into me. I had known cold before, in the Arctic, but nothing like this. This was lying in a freezer cabinet, feeling your body heat slowly slip away. And we would have to stay there for the rest of the day, restricting our movement to what was possible below the height of the wall. When we got cramp, a common problem after a major tab, we had to help each other.
Legs got out the signals info from his map pocket and destroyed all the sensitive codes and other odds and bods. We lit the code sheets and burnt them one at a time to ensure that everything was destroyed, then crushed the ashes and spread them into the ground.
"I'll have a fag on while you've got your bonfire going," said Dinger.
"Got to have a gasper before the fun starts."
We resterilized ourselves, going through all our pockets to make doubly sure we had nothing left on us that would compromise the mission, ourselves, or anybody else. You might have something on you that would mean nothing to them unless you told them, but it could be something they could use as a starting point for the interrogation. "What is this? What does it do?" You can go through a lot of pain for something that's totally irrelevant.
There were vehicle sounds in the distance. Two APCs were about a half mile to the south, too far away to be an immediate danger. I hoped they didn't take it into their heads to start looking in places of obvious cover.
At about 0700 it started to rain. We couldn't believe it. We were in the middle of the desert. The last time I saw rain in the desert was in 1985 in Oman. We were drenched, and within ten minutes the rain had turned to sleet. We looked at one another in total amazement. Then it started to snow.
Bob sang, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."
We might as well have been on an exposed mountainside in winter. This could get serious. We cuddled up more. Not a single therm of body heat could be wasted now. We got out our map covers and tried to improvise little shelters. Our main concern was to conserve heat at the core of our bodies, the trunk.
Man is a "homeotherm"-that is, our bodies try to maintain a constant body temperature irrespective of the temperature of their surroundings.
The body consists of an inner hot core, surrounded by a cooler outer shell. The core consists of the brain and other vital organs contained within the skull, chest, and abdomen. The shell is what is left: the skin, fat, muscle, and limbs. It is in effect a buffer zone between the core and the outside world, protecting the organs from any catastrophic change in temperature.
The maintenance of proper internal body temperature is the most important factor in determining your survival. Even in extreme cold or heat, your core temperature will seldom vary more than two degrees either side of 98.4 F (36.8 C), with the shell just a few degrees cooler. If your core temperature rises above 109 F (42.7 C) or falls below 84 F (28.8 C), you will die. Your body generates both energy and heat as it burns fuel. When you start to shiver, your body is telling you that it is losing heat faster than it is being replaced. The shivering reflex exercises many muscles, increasing heat production by burning more fuel. If the temperature at the core of your body drops even a few degrees, you're in trouble. Shivering will not be enough to warm you again.
The body has a thermostat, located in a small piece of nerve tissue at the base of the brain, which controls the production or dissipation of heat and monitors all parts of the body in order to maintain a constant temperature. When the body starts to go into hypothermia, the body thermostat responds by ordering heat to be drawn from the extremities into the core. Your hands and feet will start to stiffen. As the core temperature drops, the body also draws heat from the -head. When this happens, circulation slows down, and the victim doesn't get the oxygen or sugar the brain needs: the sugar the brain ordinarily feeds on is being burned to produce heat. As the brain begins to slow down, the body stops shivering, and irrational behavior begins. That is a sure danger sign, but one it is hard to recognize in yourself because one of the first things hypothermia does is take away your will to help yourself. You stop shivering and you stop worrying. You are dying, in fact, and you couldn't care less. At this point, your body loses its ability to reheat itself. Even if you have a sleeping bag to crawl into, you will continue to cool off. Your pulse will get irregular; drowsiness will become semiconsciousness, which will become unconsciousness. Your only hope is to add heat from an external source-a fire, hot drinks, another body. Indeed, one of the most effective ways of rewarming a hypothermia victim is to put them in a sleeping bag with another person whose body temperature is still normal.
I was feeling quite secure, which was silly because our situation was far from secure. We were on a barren landscape and occupying one of the two pieces of obvious cover for miles around. I was happy that we'd stopped because we could rest, but unhappy because our bodies wanted to keep on moving to keep warm. But there was nothing we could do except lie there and exchange body heat and wait for dark.
The compacted sand was like hard mud. It had looked alien before; now that it was covered in snow it looked li
ke the moon. The snowfall turned into a blizzard. I tried to look on the bright side: at least it cut visibility down to about 150 feet.
Vehicles moved up and down all day, moving east and west as they followed the line of the pylons-civilian trucks, water bowsers, Land Cruisers, and armored, wheeled vehicles. The last two vehicles got us flapping because they came to within 600 feet of our position. Were they coming for us? Not that we could do much about it; we could hardly get up and run because there was nowhere to run to.
There were more vehicles than we were expecting, much more military activity, but that was not the major consideration now. Lying in the snow, lashed by a wicked wind, we were more concerned about keeping warm and keeping alive. We were physically exhausted and exposed to the wind. All the potential was here for a major drama. An already cold air temperature, combined with a strong wind, can produce an equivalent wind chill temperature that can kill. In a 30 mph wind, exposed flesh freezes in sixty seconds or less at just9 C. It was only much later that we learned that these were the worst weather conditions the region had experienced for thirty years. Diesel was freezing in vehicles.
From feeling secure I started to become seriously concerned. I'd seen people die in this sort of stuff. What a way to go, I thought, for the patrol to die of exposure rather than getting shot. I didn't think I'd be able to bear the slagging.
We couldn't sit up, because we would be silhouetted against the skyline.
We were depending for concealment on the level of view: because they would have to look up, our hope was that the small wall would afford us cover as long as we kept still and kept down.
By 1100 the situation was getting out of control. We were huddled up, cuddling one another, shivering convulsively, muttering words of encouragement, making stupid irrelevant jokes. My hands were numb, frozen, and very painful. We had a mound of snow over us. It was a case now of sod the tactics, let's try to survive. The balance was between breaking SOPs and therefore being compromised, and getting into such a bad condition that we would just die anyway. I decided that we'd have to break SOPs and get a brew on. I scraped a small hole and lit a hexy block. I filled a mug with water and held it over the flame. The heat on my hands and face was wonderful. I waved my hand to disperse the steam. I added coffee granules, sugar, and milk to the hot water and passed it around.
