by Andy McNab
"Yes, well this is where you are. You're in the land of Ali Baba, in Baghdad. The thieves of Baghdad. A very beautiful city. But no longer, because everybody's dying. You people, you are coming in and bombing our places. Children are dead. Entire families are dying. It's no more the great land of Ali Baba; it's all demolished. But when we win, we will rebuild, no problem. Fantastic place. Ali Baba."
I nodded and agreed. They turned on the radio and scanned through the stations. Every one sounded the same aggressive rhetoric or wailing Arabic songs. They were enjoying themselves, driving along with the windows open, not a care in the world.
I listened to the sounds of the city. We stopped at lights, hooted, and people gob bed off. Music blared out of shops; there was all the usual hustle and bustle of a city. The characters suddenly started laughing and chattering.
"We're just looking at your two friends in front of us," one of them said. "They are leaning against one another, sleeping. They must be very good friends."
This was great. It confirmed that Dinger and Stan were with me. It was a fantastic feeling.
The boys started smoking and were very jovial. We drove on for another 30 minutes or so.
"Yes, we're going to somewhere else in Baghdad.
You'll enjoy this place. Very good place. We were only joking about the embassy."
People reached in through the windows when we arrived at what they announced was the military prison, slapping me on the head, pulling my mustache. Nothing too serious, all very neighborly stuff.
I heard barriers being lifted, gates being opened. We drove forward a bit more and stopped. They got me out of the car and put a blanket over my head. I was led up to a door and along a wide corridor with concrete floors. There were echoes of talking, of bolts being opened and closed, the jangling of chains and keys.
This place wasn't damp, but it was freezing cold. They led me into a cell. I was made to sit on the floor, and my handcuffs and blindfold were taken off. I saw soldiers dressed in olive drab and red berets, wearing the old '37 webbing-pattern belt and gaiters, all immaculately blancoed in white. They were military policemen. I spotted an officer and a couple of blokes in civvies. They closed the door and left me.
The door to the cell was something that the sheriff would put you behind in a western. The bars were covered with a blanket to stop me seeing out. There was one fluorescent light, right in the middle of the ceiling, which was about 15 feet high. Also right at the top was a small slit window. A shaft of light beamed through. The bottom half of the walls were painted red, the top magnolia. And at first glance, that was all there was to see. Then I saw the scratchings on the wall, in Arabic. There were more pictures of doves with chains around their legs, and a drawing of a woman.
I paced out the cell. It was about 12 feet by 9.
I strained my ears and heard other doors being opened and closed. I assumed that Dinger and Stan were getting banged up as well. At least we were all in the same place. And compared with the interrogation center this was Buckingham Palace.
Had they finished with us now, or what? I wasn't too sure and I didn't really care. I loved this place. It was wonderful.
Fifteen minutes later the doors opened again. I thought I'd better start switching on and showing some respect. To turn the situation to your advantage you have to make an effort, get some sort of friendship going.
As I got slowly to my feet, wincing with the injuries, a new character came into the cell. He was wearing civilian clothes, but with a DPM combat jacket over the top. He was about 5'3" tall and had white hair.
On his face he had a pair of really thick glasses and a big happy smile.
"Would you like to be with your friends?" he beamed.
"Yes, I would, very much."
He took me by the arm and led me to another cell three doors down. It was empty.
Yeah, I thought-good fucking stitch! For a few moments there I'd been all happy that I was going to see Dinger and Stan. I sat down on the floor and tried not to show my feelings.
Two minutes later the door opened and there was Dinger. We had a big hug and a shake of hands. Then another couple of minutes later Stan came stumbling in, supported on either side by guards. In his hand he carried a tray of rice. As the guards locked us in and left us we looked at one another in disbelief, then started gob bing off.
"Chris and Vince?" I asked.
"Vince is dead," Stan said. "Exposure. I got split from Chris; I don't know what happened to him. What about the other three?"
I said that Mark was dead, and probably also Legs and Bob-despite what the Iraqis had told me.
We fell into silence and started eating. We heard the sound of footsteps and keys in the corridor and stood up again. The door opened and a major entered. He introduced himself as the prison governor.
"What happened where you were, I was not responsible for," he said in better English than mine. "I am only responsible for you now. We will feed you and we will look after you. If you are good, we will be good to you. If there is trouble, you will be punished."
Just 5'6" tall and small-framed, he was smartly dressed, well groomed, and fresh smelling. He seemed genuine. If we played the game, we should be Okay. As he spoke, however, I couldn't help noticing that the guards behind him didn't seem to have the same benign smile on their faces. They looked every bit as brutish as the people we were used to.
They were very young, and they would have things to prove to us-and to each other. I didn't doubt that when the cat was away, the guards would play.
Once the major had gone, we came to certain decisions based on experience, training, and the advice of the Marine POW.
We would remain always the gray man, never allowing ourselves to show a reaction or become overconfident. We weren't out of the woods yet, not by a long way.
We would show respect to the guards. Being young bastards, they were almost certain to tear the arse out of the situation if we were abusive or truculent. By being respectful we might also be able to get information or take some advantage, which would take us halfway towards another aim, which was to get some form of relationship going. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you don't know until you try. We didn't know how long we were going to be there for-it could be days, weeks, or years. We would try to get some sort of fraternal thing going, based on us all being soldiers together, which might bring us medicine, food, and little goodies.
We'd use this time as best we could to sort ourselves out and prepare ourselves for escape, adjusting both physically and mentally. I still had my escape map and compass, and so did Dinger. Physically we'd sort ourselves out, hopefully helped by more reasonable supplies of food, and mentally we'd spend as much time as we could doing map studies. We knew we were in Baghdad, so if we learnt the surrounding area we'd have some form of chance if we managed to escape. The escape maps were not detailed enough to show the city in street form, but they indicated the main features on the ground like rivers, salt lakes, and high ground.
All we had to do was get out of Baghdad.
The first thing to do, as ever, was just to tune in to the new environment, hoping that there was going to be some sort of routine. We didn't want to screw up the fact that we were all together. We would use the system, rather than fight against it.
During the course of the first day and night, guards were coming and going nonstop. Each time we'd stand up and face them. They were still in their teens, most of them, which made them more authoritative and overbearing. They never appeared in groups of less than three, and they always carried pistols. They were clearly very wary of us. On one of the visits our boots were taken away from us and replaced with white pumps without laces.
I asked for water. They came back with a pitcher and a cup. We drank some, and then put the pitcher back down on the floor as if it was going to stay there. They didn't question it.
"How do we go to the toilet?" Stan asked.
"You go when we say you go."
"We're su
ffering from diarrhea and stomachaches, and we're being sick.
We need a bucket or something so we can go."
A bucket turned up. They were small victories, but encouraging signs that we could manipulate our circumstances. That first night was a happy, giggly, taking the piss sort of time. We heard mumbling in the near distance and guessed that there were other prisoners. We eventually worked out that they were right next door to us. How many of them, we couldn't tell.
There was a door right at the end of the corridor, and once the guards had slammed that shut they seemed to be out of earshot. Nobody had told us that there was a no talking rule, but it was safer to assume that there was.
Tapping on the wall with our tin mug, we knocked out a simple identification code to see if the person in the next cell was an ally.
Only a Westerner would recognize the friendly pattern of knocks you would do on the front door of a friend's house: tap, tapetty, tap tap -to which the reply, of course, is: tap tap. We got the answer we were hoping for. The contact was good for our morale, and probably theirs.
It was a good feeling to have got something going on the very first night.
We started to speculate about our situation. Were the other members of the patrol here? Was this a staging post? Would we be here for the duration?
"We didn't know where the hell you guys had got to," Stan said. "Vince was babbling about aircraft and TACBE, and Chris and I remembered hearing jets. We worked out that Vince was telling us that you'd stopped and tried to make contact with them. We sat on high ground looking through the night sight, but there was no sign of you. We tried to raise you on TACBE, but no answer. In the end we decided to press on, hoping you'd keep on the bearing and we'd meet up."
They carried on for about four hours, and then it was coming to first light. Chris and Stan were worried about being caught in the open.
Vince was out of the decision making; he stood swaying in the wind and rain as the others ran around looking for somewhere to hide.
Stan found a tank berm about 6 feet deep, with tank tracks leading away from it that were about knee deep. They led Vince into one of the tracks and lay down either side of him. Throughout the night Chris and Stan took it in turns to sleep. The man who was awake kept a watchful eye on Vince.
First light came and Stan had a auick look around. To his horror, he found that the tank berm was only about 600 meters from some sort of enemy position-either a hut or a box vehicle with aerials, it was hard to tell. They were stuck there now until last light.
It started to snow. Soon the snow turned to sleet, and the tank track filled with slush. They were soaking wet. The temperature dropped.
They had very little food left, just a couple of packets of biscuits between them. Everything else had gone in the berg ens As it started to come to last light, they crawled into the berm and stood up. They'd been lying in freezing water for twelve hours. Stan had lost all feeling in his hands and feet; Chris's joints were frozen.
They moved around in circles, frog-marching Vince between them. When darkness had fallen and it was time to leave, they were so cold that the only way they could pick up their weapons was by cradling them in their arms.
Vince was soon lagging behind. He stopped in his tracks at one point and called the other two back. He complained about his hands, muttering that they had turned black. Chris looked at them and saw that he was wearing black leather gloves. "They'll soon get better if you put them in your pockets, mate," he said.
The next time they stopped, Vince was totally incoherent. Stan and Chris huddled around him, but it wasn't much use. They had to keep going or they'd freeze. They were on high ground, crossing bare rock and large patches of snow. Chris was in front with the compass, but the cold was getting to him. He was doing everything in slow motion.
The three men spread out as they climbed a gradient at their different speeds. Stan stopped to let Vince overtake him; he wanted to keep an eye on him. But Vince didn't appear. Stan turned around; Vince was nowhere to be seen. Stan called to Chris and they both went back.
Visibility was down to a few feet in the blinding blizzard as they retraced their footsteps in the snow. They got to a large area of bare rock. They couldn't find the trail the other side.
They had to make a decision. They were both going down with hypothermia. It was agony standing still; they had to get moving again.
In the end they just looked at each other, then turned and headed back up the hill.
Stan and Chris walked all that night, coming off the high ground at about 0530. They came into a shallow wadi about three feet deep and cuddled together. As first light came the weather cleared; the sun came out, and for the first time in several days they felt warmth on their faces.
The sound of goats came at about 1400, and sure enough they got compromised by an old herder. This one was wearing a tattered tweed overcoat. Stan couldn't help thinking how warm it looked and how good it would be to eat warm goat meat.
The old boy seemed quite friendly as he pointed east. Drawing pictures in the sand, he indicated food, a house, a vehicle. Chris looked at Stan. Did they kill him? It would protect their concealment, but was there anybody else about who was expecting him?
Stan was keen to investigate the vehicle. "I'll go down, bring it back, and we'll shoot off. We'll be at the border by tonight," he said.
They made their RVs, actions on, and warning arrangements, and Stan set off due east with the old boy and his goats. He left his belt kit with Chris to look less conspicuous, and wrapped his shamag around his head.
After a short while the goat herder wandered off at a tangent but again pointed east. Stan continued.
The hut was exactly where the old man had said, but there were two vehicles parked outside instead of one. Stan OP'd it for about twenty minutes. Nothing stirred. If the keys were in the vehicle, he'd just take it there and then and go. If they weren't, he'd make a room entry on the house. He'd get to the door, kick it in, and take on whatever was there.
As he started to approach the vehicles, an Iraqi soldier came out of the house. He looked as surprised as Stan was. He made for the first vehicle and tried to pull a weapon out. Stan downed him with his 203, and the body slumped over the driver's seat. The house was less than 60 feet away, and the door was open. Six or seven squad dies came flying out in confusion. Stan got three hits off, and then he had a stoppage.
It was too late for stoppage drills. He ran to the nearest vehicle, the one with the body in. The soldier was still groaning. Stan pushed him aside. No key in the ignition. He was still fumbling for it in the man's pockets when he felt the muzzle of a rifle jab into his ribs.
Stan turned around and stared at them. There were five jundies left.
They appeared very undisciplined, screaming and shouting at each other.
They fired into the air and into the ground each side of him. He wasn't expecting to survive. They came forward cautiously and then one of them summoned the courage to smash him with a rifle butt. The others piled in.
They put him into the other vehicle and took him to a military installation near the Euphrates. Stan entered the tactical questioning phase. He was interrogated for most of the night, handcuffed and blindfolded. The interrogators spoke very good English. Some had trained in the UK. A major who had trained at Sandhurst said,
"Everyone's very sad with you at the moment. They want to take your life."
Stan denied everything except the Big Four. They beat him badly and only stopped when he fell unconscious. When he came to, he started to go into the cover story. He told them he had done a medical degree in Australia and gone to London. Because of his medical experience he had got roped in through the TA to become part of a search and rescue team.
"I want to cooperate in any way I can," he said. "All I am is a doctor who dropped out."
He was questioned on medical techniques, and they brought in a doctor to confirm his story. It went well, but the rest of his story was starting to f
all apart. They searched the area in which Stan said the helicopter had crash-landed but could find no sign of wreckage. "Possibly the aircraft took off again," he said, but they looked dubious.
Two or three days later, Stan was moved to an interrogation center. The reception party beat him with batons. He was made to kneel in front of the panel of interrogators. He was thrashed with hose pipes whipped, beaten with a pole. At one stage they pulled back his head and held a red-hot poker in front of his eyes. They didn't carry out the threat to blind him, but they did use the poker elsewhere on his body.
We told Stan our stories and finally collapsed into sleep. I woke up in the night with my stomach tugging at me. We'd all had four or five liquid shits in the short time we'd been there. We were dehydrating drastically, but at least we could replenish the loss now.
It was pitch-dark. Lying on the floor, feeling relatively safe, I started to think about home.
There was another bombing raid in the distance. Flashes of light came through the high slit window. As ever the bomb blasts were rather nice, giving a sense of security, a feeling that we weren't the only ones there. And best of all, they also gave us a possible means of escape if we took direct hits.
The main gate of the block was opened after first light. We heard chains rattling and keys going into locks, and then the sound of a metal, corrugated-type door the other side of our wall being opened and people talking and walking about. We heard the base of a metal bucket clanking on the floor, followed by the sound of the metal handle hitting the side.
Then we heard, "Russell! Russell!"
There was a mumbled reply.
Further down the corridor there was the same banging of buckets. Then "David! David!"
This one was definitely American. When he heard his name called, he replied with a resounding "Yo!"
The guards were shouting at this David character. They shut his door and came down the corridor to our cell. The door opened and we got to our feet. We didn't know what to expect. There were three of them: one little bloke who said we were to call him Jeral, one big fat thing with glasses, and a really young kid with curly blond hair. Jeral carried a bucket while the others covered him, pistols drawn. They seemed keen to throw their weight around with the new blokes on the block.
