by Andy McNab
"You are an Israeli, aren't you? Come on, admit it."
"I'm not an Israeli," I sobbed. "Look-I'm not dressed like an Israeli.
This is British uniform, and you've seen my identification tags. I'm English, this is British uniform. I don't know what you want from me.
Please, please. I want to help. You're confusing me. I'm scared."
"This is stupid."
"You've got my identification tags, you've seen that I'm English. I'm scared of what you're saying."
His tone suddenly changed. "Yes, we have your identification tags, you haven't," he exploded angrily.
"You're who we say you are, and as far as we're concerned you're an Israeli. If not, why were you so near Syria? What were you doing? Tell me, tell me, what were you doing?"
Even if I'd wanted to answer, he wasn't giving me time. He hit me with a nonstop torrent of questions and raging rhetoric. "You mean nothing to us! You're nothing, nothing!"
It must have been fun in his house. The kids wouldn't have known if he was coming or going.
What do I do now? I asked myself.
Let's get back to the Israeli thing.
A dread was creeping into my mind concerning Bob. Bob had tight, curly black hair and a large nose. If he was captured or they found his body, he could be taken as Jewish.
"I'm British."
"No, no, you're Israeli. You are dressed like commandos "Everybody in the British army wears this uniform."
"You'll die soon, Andy, for being so stupid, for not answering simple questions."
"I'm not Israeli."
It had got to the stage where I was having to remember what I'd been saying and what I had not been saying, because I knew that if these things were being written down-and I could hear the scribbling-I was going to get myself into severe shit.
Let's keep on the Israeli thing. Maybe if this character keeps on talking to me, we can get a relationship going. Him and me. He's mine.
He's my interrogator. He just might} | take pity on me.
"I'm a Christian, I'm English," I set off again. "I don't even know whereabouts in Iraq I am, let alone if I'm near Syria. I don't want to be here. Look at me, I'm scared."
"We know you're an Israeli, Andy. We just want to hear it from you.
Your friend has already told us."
I thought, Dinger looks like he could be a bit Jewish also, with his tight, wiry blond hair.
"You're commandos."
In their army only commandos wear DPM.
"We're not! We're just ordinary soldiers."
"You'll die for being so stupid. All we want is simple answers from you. I'm trying to help you. These people want to kill you. I'm trying to save you. How do you expect me to do that if you're not helping me? We want you to answer these questions. We need to hear it from you. You want to help us, don't you?"
"Yes, I want to help." I was sobbing again. "But I can't help you if I don't know anything."
"You're so stupid." The voice was aggressive, but he mixed some compassion with it. "Why aren't you helping us? Come on, I'm trying to help you. I don't want you to be in this situation any more than you do."
"I want to help you, but I'm not an Israeli."
"Just tell us and we'll stop. Come on, you're so stupid, aren't you?
What's the matter? We're civilized people. But I need you to tell me that you're an Israeli. If you can't tell me that, then tell me why you're so near Syria?"
"I don't know where I am."
"You're near Syria, aren't you, so just tell me. These people will kill you. Your friend's okay, your friend has told us. He will live, but you're going to die, for something stupid. Why die? You're stupid."
I heard his chair scrape on the floor. I was trying to take in what was going on without showing that I could focus. I was physically wrecked.
I was hoping for just the slightest hint of humanity in this man. Shit, I could always turn the waterworks on so easily as a kid, win my aunties round, and get a packet of crisps. What was wrong with these people?
I was going for an Oscar without a doubt-but a good percentage of what I was doing was for real. I was in real pain. It was a good catalyst for the reaction I wanted to portray. It was good to have this Israeli thing. Let's keep on that and hopefully they'll keep away from the other questions.
"I can't help you, I just can't help you."
I heard a big sigh, as if he was my best mate in the world and there was nothing left he could do to help me. The sigh said: I am your contact; it's only me that's keeping everybody at bay.
"Then I cannot help you, Andy."
As if on cue I heard another chair scrape and feet moving towards me.
When I smelt the waft of aftershave, I just knew that the lad who was a dab hand with the rifle butt was on his way over to give me the good news.
He was, too. He really read me my horoscope.
I must have been getting used to being blindfolded because my senses of hearing and smell seemed to be more acute. I was starting to tell these people apart by their smell. The boy who was handy with the rifle butt wore freshly laundered clothes. Another one liked pistachio nuts. He'd put them in his mouth and chew, then gob the mashed shell into my face.
The one who spoke good English smoked incessantly and had breath that smelled of coffee and stale cigarettes. When he launched into rhetoric, I got his spit all over my face. He also stank like a color supplement aftershave ad.
His chair would scrape, and I'd sense him moving around. He'd speak like a gatling gun, then he'd do the Nice Guy bit and give me lots of "Everything's quite okay, it's going to be all right."
As he was chatting very gently, I could hear him getting closer and closer until we were nose to nose. Then he'd yell in my ear.
"This is no good, Andy," he said. "We shall have to get this out of you another way."
What worse way could there possibly be of doing it? We'd had intelligence reports of interrogation centers and mass killings, and I thought, Here we go, we're going to get severely dealt with now. I had visions of concentration camps and electrodes clamped to my bollocks.
Two of the boys set to with rifle butts.
One particularly heavy blow caught me on the jaw, directly over my teeth. Only the skin of my cheek lay between the edge of the butt and two of my back molars. I felt the teeth crack and splinter, and then the pain of it hit me. I was down and screaming my head off. I tried to spit out the fragments, but my mouth was too swollen and numb. I couldn't swallow. The moment my tongue touched the sharp, tender stumps I passed out.
I came to on the floor. The blindfold had fallen off, and I watched as blood poured from my mouth into a pool on the cream lino. I felt stupid and useless. I wanted nothing more than for the handcuffs to fall off so I could get up and deal with these guys.
They carried on, giving me some good stuff around the back with the butts, twat ting my head, legs, and kidneys.
I couldn't breathe through my nose. When I screamed, I had to draw breath through my mouth, and the air hit the exposed nerve pulp of my broken teeth. I screamed again, and went on screaming.
It was getting outrageous.
They picked me up and put me back on the seat. They didn't bother putting the blindfold back on, but I kept my head down anyway. I didn't want eye contact, or to risk another filling in for looking up. I was in enough pain. I was a big, incoherent mess, honking away, sniveling to myself as I slumped on the chair.
My coordination was well and truly gone. I couldn't even keep my legs together any more. I must have looked like Dinger's double.
There was a long silence.
Everybody was shuffling around, leaving me to ponder over my fate. How long could I go like this? Was I going to get kicked to death here or what?
There was a lot more sighing and clucking.
"What are you doing this for, Andy? For your country? Your country doesn't want to know you. Your country doesn't care. The only ones who will really worry will be your
parents, your family. We don't want a war. It's Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major. They're sitting back there doing nothing. You're here. It's you that will suffer, not them.
They're not worried about you.
"We've had war for many years. All our families have suffered. We're not barbarians, it's you who are bringing in war. This is just an unfortunate situation for you. Why don't you help us? Why are you letting yourself go through all this pain? Why do we have to do this sort of thing?"
I didn't answer, I just kept my head down. My game plan was not to go into the cover story straightaway, because then they've got you. I was trying to make it look as if I was prepared to give them the Big Four and that was all. Queen and country and all that. I would go through a certain amount of tactical questioning and then break into my cover story.
They were talking between themselves in low tones, in what I took to be quite educated Arabic. Somebody was scribbling notes.
The writing was a good sign. It intimated that there wasn't just a big frenzy going on, with them getting what they could and then topping me.
It made it seem there was a reason for not shooting me. Was there some sort of preservation order on us? It gave me a sense of security, a feeling that some officialdom somewhere was directing operations. Yes, said the other side of my brain, but you're getting further and further down this chain, and the longer this goes on the less chance you have of escaping. Escaping must always be foremost in your mind. You don't know when the opportunity is going to arise, and you've got to be ready.
Carpe diem! You've got to seize that moment, but the longer you are in captivity the more difficult it becomes.
I thought about Dinger. I knew he wouldn't have substantiated any of this stuff about Tel Aviv. He would have done as much as he could, and when he decided that he'd physically had too much and was going to be kicked to death, he'd have started to break into the search and rescue story.
It occurred to me I might feel better if I could see my environment, absorb my surroundings. I looked up and opened my eyes. The Venetian blinds were down, but one or two thin shafts of light shone through.
Everything was twilighty and in semi shadow The room was quite large, maybe 40 feet by 20. I was sitting at one end of the rectangle. I couldn't see a door, so it had to be behind me. The officers were at the other end, facing me. There must have been eight or nine of them, all smoking. Smoke haze hung from the ceiling, pierced here and there by the sun coming through the blinds.
Halfway down the room, on the right hand side as I looked at it, was a large desk. On it were a couple of telephones and piles of normal office paper, books, and clutter. A big leather executive-style chair was empty. Behind it was the world's biggest picture of Saddam in his beret, all the medals on, smiling away. I guessed it was the local commander's office.
General admin notices hung on the wall. In the center of the lino floor and continuing under the desk was a large Persian carpet. On the left, facing the desk, was a large domestic-type settee. The rest of the walls were lined with stack able plastic chairs. Mine, the guest chair, appeared to be a plastic cushioned dining chair.
More tut-tut-tuts and sighs. People were talking to themselves as if I wasn't there and this was just a normal day at the office. I rolled my head, and blood and snot dribbled down my chin. I didn't know how much longer I could bear the agony in my mouth.
I worked out the options. If they started to fill me in again, I'd be dead by the end of the afternoon. The time had come to start spilling the cover story. I would wait for them to initiate it, and I'd go ahead.
When I had refused to answer their questions, I wasn't being all patriotic and brave-that's just propaganda that you see in war films.
This was real life. I couldn't come straight out with my cover story. I had to make it look as if they'd prized it out of me. It was a matter of self-preservation, not bravado. People sometimes do heroic things because the situation demands it, but there's no such thing as a hero.
The gung ho brigade are either idiots or they don't even understand what's happening. What I had to do now was give them the least amount of information to keep myself alive.
"Andy, you're just sitting there. We're trying to be friendly, but we have to get the information. Andy, this could go on and on. Your friend's outside, he's helped us and he's Okay, he's out there on the grass, he's still alive, he's in the sun. You're in here in the dark.
This is no good for you and it's no good for us. It just takes up our time.
"Just tell us what we need to know and that's it, everything's ended.
You'll be Okay, we'll look after you until the end of the war. Maybe we might be able to organize it for you to go home to your family straightaway. There's no problems, if you help us. You look bad. Are you aching? You need a doctor-we'll help you."
I wanted to appear utterly done in. "Okay," I said in a hoarse whisper,
"I can't take any more. I'll help you."
Everybody in the room looked up.
"I am a member of a search and rescue team who were sent to lift downed pilots."
The interrogator turned around and looked at the others. They all came forward and sat on tables and desks. Everything I said had to be translated for them.
"Andy, tell me more. Tell me all you know about the search and rescue."
His voice was very nice and calm. He obviously thought he'd cracked it, which was fine-that was exactly what I wanted him to think.
"We're all from different units in the British army," I said, "and we're all drawn together because of our medical experience. I don't know anybody, we were just brought together. I'm medically trained, I'm not a soldier. I'm stuck in this war and I don't want to be a part of it. I was happy working back in the UK on sick parades, and all of a sudden they've put me on one of these search and rescue teams. I haven't got a clue about any of this, I'm a medic, that's all I am."
It seemed to go down rather well. They chatted about it amongst themselves. It obviously squared with what Dinger had told them.
The trouble is, once you start there's that chink in the armor, and you've got to carry on with the story. If there's too much detail, you'll start cocking things up for the other prisoners. You have to try to keep your story nice and simple-then it's easy for you to remember as well. The best way to achieve that is to be the total bag of shit.
You can't remember because you're in such a bad physical state. Your mind just can't recollect anything; you're just a thick, bone squaddy, one of the minions, and you haven't got a clue, you don't even know what kind of helicopter it was. My mind was racing to think of the story and what I was going to say next.
They knew I was a sergeant, so I threw that one in again. In their army, sergeant is a buckshee rank. It's their officers that do everything, including the thinking.
"How many of you were there?"
"I don't know. There was lots of noise and the helicopter came down. We were told there was danger of an explosion and to run, and they just took off and left us." I played the confused bonehead, the scared, abandoned squaddy. "I just do first aid, I don't want any of this. I'm not used to all this. All I do is put plasters on wounded pilots."
"How many were on the aircraft?" he tried again.
"I'm not entirely sure. It was nighttime."
"Andy, what's going on? We gave you a chance. Do you take us for idiots? Over the last few days many people have been killed, and we want to know what's happened."
This was the first time they had mentioned casualties. I had been expecting it, but I didn't want to hear it.
"I don't know what you mean."
"We want to know who's done it. Was it you?"
"It wasn't me. I don't know what's going on."
"You must give us a chance. Look, just to show you how much we want to help you: You tell me your mother's and father's names, and we will write to them and let them know you're all right. You write them a letter and put the address on, and we'll post it."
I knew it was bollocks. There was no way they'd actually send a letter to Peckham. It was fantasy land, but I couldn't just come out with Fuck you, big nose. I had to get round this somehow.
"My father died years ago," I said. "My mother went away with an American who was working in London. She's somewhere in America now. I haven't got any parents; it's one of the reasons I'm in the army. I've got no other immediate family."
"Where did he work in London, this American?"
"Wimbledon."
Another classic. They were trying to get me to open up my heart, and everything would come rolling out. I'd been put through all this before in E&E and capture exercises.
"What did he do?"
"I don't know, I didn't live at home then. I had big family problems."
"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"No."
I wanted to base my lies on the truth. If it's something that you know and it's the truth, you stand a better chance of remembering it. And they might run a check and be able to confirm that what you're saying is true and not go any further into it. I had in my mind a friend who had been in that sort of family situation. His father died when he was 13.
His mother met an American, wanted nothing more to do with the son, and buggered off to the States. As far as I was concerned, it sounded quite convincing.
I took my time. My speech was slurred, I was still dribbling, I couldn't talk properly.
"Are you in pain, Andy? Help us and everything will be fine. We'll get you medical attention. Carry on, tell us more."
"I don't know any more."
Then another classic. He must have been working his way through the manual.
"Sign this piece of paper, Andy. All we want to do is prove to your family that you're still alive. We will make attempts to find your mother in America. We have contacts there. All we need is your signature so she knows you're Okay. And we can actually prove to the Red Cross that you're still alive, you're not dead in the desert, and the animals aren't eating you. Think of it, Andy. If we get you to sign your name and go to the Red Cross, we're not going to kill you." I couldn't believe anybody would actually come out with such a comical ploy. I tried to be noncommittal. "I don't know any addresses, I haven't got any family life."
