by Andy McNab
This was the first time that the Red Cross had had any news about any of us from the Iraqis. Even then, the lists being handed over were corrupt. It was a breach of the Geneva Convention, but a rather minor one compared with the rest of our experiences as POWs.
I was keen to find out about Dinger and Stan.
"Have there been prisoners released before us?" I asked one of the women.
The Red Cross personnel appeared to range from women in their mid-twenties to men in their late fifties. They were incredibly brave and professional people. I wouldn't have done their job.
"Yes. They got out via Jordan."
"Is there any chance you can give me the names of the Brits?"
She checked a list for me and found the surnames of Dinger and Stan.
There were no other names that I recognized.
The girl confirmed that we were the last batch. So we had been the only three all along, I thought. All the stuff about wounded signals operators was a load of bollocks-a good bluff that had got me to gob off. Legs had probably been dead from the time Dinger left him.
Once the administration was done, we were given a little Red Cross ticket and a number, and the Europeans were taken upstairs to the third floor. I noticed that the fire escapes were boarded up, leaving only one way in and out through the central staircase.
Everything we needed was on the third floor. A Red Cross waiter brought us anything we asked for-if he had it. We got boiled eggs that weren't boiled properly. When we opened them they ran, but they were the best eggs I'd had in my life. The others followed theirs with croissants and chocolate, but by that time I was in the toilet, bulking up. I started again with an empty stomach and settled for a bottle of beer and some bread. We sat around talking, and I listened to everybody saying, "Well, that's it, we're away."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. After all that we'd been through, people were taking the Iraqis at their word.
It seemed the intention that we were going to be held in the hotel for a couple of hours and then taken away to an airfield. One of the Red Cross blokes asked if anybody was cold.
"Fucking right," came the reply.
Two hours later he came back with a jumper for each of us that somebody had gone and bought downtown. The patterns were weird and wonderful, but they were warm.
The main man of the Red Cross appeared and said, "Is there an Andy McNab here?"
"Yes."
"Somebody downstairs wants to see you."
As he led me down the staircase I said, "We fly out this afternoon?"
"We don't know yet because of the weather. We could also be delayed because we can't get the aircraft back from Saudi. It's very difficult to get communications -the Iraqis won't let me set up my own satellite com ms It's all third-hand information, so I'm just sitting here and waiting. It's a terrible setup: they won't give me any help at all. We brought all these Algerian medical teams to help them with the civilian victims of the bombing, but they've moved the civvies out of the hospitals in Baghdad and told them to go home, to leave hospital beds for soldiers who are coming home from the front. There's so much unrest they have to give priority to the soldiers.
"That's why you are on the third floor. We put the Algerians at the bottom because they are in no danger.
We have the Red Cross personnel next, and then you right at the top, because they are after you. They want some of you for hostages and bargaining power. If you come down these stairs, you must only come down with me or another Red Cross member.
"We can't get the badly wounded up to the third floor because the lifts do not work and we can't maneuver them around the staircases.
Unfortunately they've got to stay downstairs. It's quite possible that they'll raid the place and take people. The only defense we have is our Red Cross status."
We went into the main foyer, and I spotted two sinister-looking Arabs sitting by the reception desk.
"Secret police," he warned.
If they hadn't posed such a threat, they would have looked laughable in their big, baggy suits with turnups, white socks, and swept-back hair.
"Believe it or not," the official went on, "the soldiers out there are protecting you."
It was ironic. I saw the soldiers stop two other men in suits from coming in. You could tell by the body language that there was obviously some friction between them. Rumors were already circulating that fifty generals had been executed after a failed attempt to change the system of power.
We walked through the foyer.
"When you go into this room," the official pointed, "you must stay there. If you want to move outside, one of us must be with you."
A Red Cross girl was sitting in a chair, blocking the door. She was quietly reading a book, and on the floor by her side she had a small bottle of wine, a bit of bread, and some cheese. Brave, unbelievably brave.
Four or five people were on stretchers. I recognized Joseph Small and Troy Dunlap and waved. Then, looking along the line, I saw Mark.
"I gave them everybody's name to see if any of you were here," he grinned.
I wanted to hug him and say "Great to see you," but the words wouldn't come out. I shook his hand instead.
"What happened to you?" I said, hardly containing my amazement.
He was wearing a dish-dash. His body looked wasted, and he still bore the bruises and scars of severe beatings.
"When we had that last contact and we both went down, I went left and got caught up in fire. There were people all over the place. I ended up lying in a small drainage ditch. They were following up and were a foot away from me at one stage. Then I moved off a bit, trying to edge my way out of it. After about half an hour I saw some torches, and as they were fanning about, they caught me in the beam. There was a big cabby, and I got shot through the foot and across the elbow. Look."
He lifted the dish-dash. The round had skimmed all the way around his elbow. He was incredibly lucky. A 7.62 round could have taken his arm off.
"The foot wound fucked me up," he said. "I couldn't move. They gave me a good kicking, dragged me onto a truck, and took me to a location. It was fucking hideous. My foot was just bouncing up and down on the wagon floor because I had no control of it, and I was screaming my head off.
They thought it was hilarious. They were laughing their bollocks off."
Mark lost a lot of blood and thought he was going to die. He received no medical attention for his foot; the gaping wound was just bandaged and left to heal by itself. He was handcuffed naked to a bed all the time he was in prison, and basically left to rot. He went through the same system of interrogation as the rest of us, the only difference in his case being that the interrogation took place in his room.
"They'd dig at my foot," he said, "and shake my leg so my foot rattled around. It was grim. But one funny thing was, they'd piled my clothes on the floor by my bed. Every day I looked down at the gold, wrapped up in the masking tape, and the fuckers never found it until halfway through my capture. I still had my escape map and compass and all."
He had two blokes that used to come in and take him out for a shit. He called them Health and Hygiene because they were such dirty, minging old things. When he was on his own, he used to get the pitcher of water and try to clean his wound. The actual hole was clogged up with human skin and gunge, trying to heal itself over. His foot was swollen to the size of a marrow.
"Sometimes I'd call out that I needed a shit, and they'd come in and put a bowl under my arse and leave me for hours. Piss was going everywhere because I can't organize myself, and there was shit up to the brim of this little bowl."
He got filled in by the guards quite a few times. The blokes would come in and play with his foot and generally give him a hard time. All along, he kept up the same old story as the rest of us. During one interrogation, somebody recognized his New Zealand accent. He was accused of being a mercenary, working for the Israelis.
I told him that Dinger and Stan were away and should be in the UK soon,
and gave him our theories of what we thought had happened to the others.
As we talked about events, he reckoned he could have been in the same prison as us: it certainly took direct hits at exactly the same time.
The Red Cross were knocking out sheds of coffee for us, and then a cooked dinner turned up.
Mark had lice, like we all did, and generally stank. But his stink was something special, and he was worried that it could mean gangrene. We talked about the possible scenarios that could happen now, but kept drifting back to swapping horror stories, each of us trying to cap the other.
I was just telling Mark about the situation outside with the secret police when one of the Red Cross guys came around and said that there was a delay. We couldn't go until the next day because of the aircraft: it had gone to Saudi to pick up prisoners for an exchange, but because of adverse weather it wouldn't be coming back until the following morning.
The Red Cross people were tense. They posted sentries in the corridors and at all the entry points, and armed them with candles and food. It was obvious that they were expecting this to be a rough night.
Mark and I had a beer and then turned in. I planned to kip on the floor next to his stretcher in case of trouble. That was the plan but it didn't happen. I went back upstairs to get some food and chocolate and fell asleep in a chair. Red Cross people, awake all night, sat among us in groups of two and three.
I woke up early. An official appeared and announced with a grin that it was time to go home. Mark and I had a problem now of security, because men from the Regiment are required to keep their faces out of the press at all costs. I went up and saw the pilots, and explained my concerns to the Red Cross.
"No problem," they said. "At the same time as the coach comes to the front of the hotel, ambulances will be going to the back because we can only get the stretchers out through the service area. You can go in one of the ambulances with your friend."
The aircrew agreed to put on a diversionary show for the media, pulling their jumpers over their heads to get the cameras clicking. Footage of these camera shy "Special Forces" lads was broadcast all over the world.
We moved off in a convoy. We had two Red Cross guys in the front of our ambulance, and as we drove along, one of them said, "We'll give you a tour of Baghdad, if you like. If you look to your left," he said, adopting the voice of the typical tour guide, "this is the Ministry of Information. It was a whole system of buildings, and just one building was dropped. Talk about precision bombing. And on your right you have the Ministry of "
Posters of Saddam and the symbol of the Muslim crescent were on every street. There was devastation everywhere, but by the looks of things the precision bombing had indeed been excellent. Without a doubt they'd been hitting their military targets. Civilian buildings right next door to the ruins were relatively II unscathed.
He started talking about the Iran-Iraq prisoner exchanges that he'd been involved in. He said they'd been exchanging prisoners in their twenties who looked over forty, they'd had such a terrible time of it. Their life was gone. Some of the injuries were horrific, open wounds that had been left to fester.
"This is actually the most successful exchange yet," the bloke said. "I think that's because of pressure from the military, who probably want their manpower back. There is a lot of concern about stability. A coup seems imminent. The sooner we get you out the better."
"I'll second that one," Mark said.
I read the road signs towards Baghdad International, and as the kilometers ticked down, I felt my apprehension building. There seemed to be a lot of administrative cock-ups because we'd drive a little way, then stop, then drive on, then stop. I couldn't see any aircraft.
"We have this all the time," the driver said. "The bureaucracy is mind-boggling."
We rounded a corner and saw a convoy of buses full of Iraqi prisoners.
They didn't look very happy with themselves. The main terminal was deserted. We sat through two hours of petty administration before the call finally came for us to be put onto an aircraft.
The walking prisoners went up the steps at the front of the two Swissair 727s. The stretcher cases were maneuvered up the stairwell at the rear.
I stayed with Mark. The Swissair crew greeted us like VIPs, and straightaway the coffee came out-with cream. It was nectar.
As the aircraft lifted from the runway, we roared like a football crowd.
I looked at Mark and grinned. This time we really were going home.
13
The head boy of the American contingent, a colonel, came over the loudspeakers. He wanted to orchestrate it so that all his men were dressed only in their POW kit, to look good for the cameras. They had to bin their pullovers. He also organized them so that they came out in strict order of rank. I couldn't believe it. Five minutes out of an Iraqi jail and he gets his military head on again.
Mark and I were unaffected by this crap because we knew we wouldn't leave the aircraft until the media had dispersed. We were getting in amongst the sticky buns and coffee when the captain announced that our pair of 727s would soon be getting an escort of F15s and Tornadoes.
No sooner had he said it than two American F15s came up alongside, one flying slightly higher than the other. They maneuvered until they were flying right over the wings of our aircraft. The Yanks were up and giving it lots of "Yo!" One pilot responded by taking his mask off and giving it the old "Way to go!" arm swing in the air. He fired off chaff and banked away. It really was a fantastic sight.
Then the pilots got their acrobatic hats on. One spun off and did a victory roll and landed up over the other wing; then both F15s landed over the starboard wing.
Now it was the turn of the R.A.F Tornadoes. They came up so close that I could see the pilots' eyes. One flier took off his mask and mouthed the word "Wankers!" with, of course, the accompanying wrist action.
John Nichol, the R.A.F prisoner who had shaken my hand, went up forward and spoke to some of them on the radio. They fired off chaff and were spinning around the sky as well-and doing it all a bit better than the Yanks, I thought.
"These jet pilots think they're the only ones that can do that," said our captain. "So, fasten your seatbelts, please, and hang on tight."
With that he banked the aircraft steeply and put us into a perfect barrel roll. The other Swissair jet came up level with us, and both aircraft flew in concentric circles, meeting up again in the middle.
There was another big roar as we passed into Saudi airspace, and then all the jets came down, hoiked down the chaff, and were off, afterburners flaming in the brilliant blue sky.
We landed in Riyadh to a tumultuous welcome. Every pressman and his dog was there, and every bit of top brass-Stormin' Norman included. Mark and I peeked out from behind the blinds and saw that some of our people were there too. It was just a matter of waiting. The Saudis disembarked first, followed by the orderly exit of correctly dressed Americans. The rear door was opened and the stretcher cases were loaded into the ambulances. Our people came on board.
"We're going to throw you in the back of one of the ambulances," one of them said. "You'll then go straight around the corner into a C130.
We'll fly out, land at another airfield, and pick up a VC10 which will take you straight to Cyprus, where you're going to hospital."
We got onto the C130, and the rest of the Brits joined us. We flew for about twenty minutes, landed, and picked up our connection for Cyprus.
The interior of the aircraft had been thoughtfully rearranged so that the seats faced one another. We were each given a day sack, in which was a Walkman, spare batteries, shaving foam, a razor, underpants, soap, and a watch with both digital and analogue time.
It was dark when we landed at R.A.F Akrotiri. Again, our own people were there to meet us. Each of us was allotted a sponsor we knew. Mine was an old mate, Kenny. His first words were: "Am I ever pissed off that you're still alive. I was down to take over your job next September."
There were l
ots of handshakes, and a bottle of gin was circulating rapidly. A fellow sergeant called Mugger was in overall charge of the SAS recovery mission. He was running around Riyadh with a borrowed Warrant Officer crest on his wrist to give his requests added authority, as nobody from, the Regiment was wearing anything that showed who or what they were.
"I wish you'd been delayed even more," he honked, "because I've been running around doing the RSM bit. It's fucking great."
We were put on a bus and taken straight to a segregated secure ward at the military hospital.
The massive, hulking frame of Stan loomed out of the darkness, closely followed by Dinger, fag in hand. Stan had hepatitis and wasn't feeling too good, but Dinger was firing on all cylinders.
"I've phoned Jilly," he said. "I've got it all squared away; don't worry about the phone cards. Our blokes have rigged up a link through to the UK."
Mugger went down to the town to organize a few videos for our entertainment, and the B Squadron sergeant major turned up with a hospital trolley loaded with booze for a piss-up. We were smuggled out of the ward and down to the library, where we set about getting blitzed.
Gordon Turnbull, the R.A.F psychologist and counselor, had arrived in Cyprus to oversee the recuperative phase.
"What have you got there?" he asked Mugger as he spotted him heading for the library.
"Videos for the lads."
"Mind if I have a look?"
Turnbull nearly had a heart attack. Mugger had bought us Terminator, Driller Killer, and Nightmare on Elm Street. "You can't do this!" he shrieked. "Those blokes are all traumatized!"
"Traumatized?" said Mugger. "They're pissed out of their brains. Come and have a look."
Turnbull saw us and blew a gasket.
"Don't worry about it," Mugger said. "They were all fucking barking to start with."
I helped Mark into the bath, and a big lump of skin the size of a bath plug fell out of the hole in his foot. I then went in search of our special phone.
