At this point, my phone rang. It was Quill Lawrence, who worked for Boston the World, a radio outfit affiliated to the BBC. Quill was one of the first on the scene. ‘Look, there’s been a bad accident,’ he began. ‘I don’t know how many are dead. They are on the road to Kifri and I can’t get hold of Jim.’
I was two hours away, having dinner with Tom Giles and John Simpson. By the end of the call, I had upped and left. Together with Oggy, I drove like a mad man towards Sulaymaniyah, in the northeast of the country, all the time talking to Quill on the phone.
He had pulled a blinder. He had spoken to a US Forces medical unit based just outside the city. Plans were underway to get the guys moved from the local facility, and an escort vehicle was on its way. He also confirmed that Kaveh was dead.
Stuart had been given a pain-killing injection and an antibiotic, with a stop at another hospital to administer glucose liquids. We met them in Sulaymaniyah. At the American base, the facilities were the business. I explained to the surgeon who Stuart was, then they asked everyone else to leave. I was to stay to facilitate his evacuation, and for support, while they operated. He was gone for hours – the drugs knocked him for six. I watched from the corner while they un-bandaged and took pictures of the remains of his foot.
‘It’s fifty–fifty whether he keeps his leg,’ I was told by American captain Jeff Joyce. ‘We’ll clean it up but that’s as far as we’ll go. We’re making arrangements to get him out on a helicopter to Germany or Cyprus. We’d like you to sit with him.’
They offered me a sleeping bag as I had no kit. It was going to be a night on the floor for me.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked Stuart.
‘A bit groggy,’ he mumbled back. ‘How’s my leg?’
‘It’ll be fine mate,’ I lied. ‘Don’t worry, it’s still there; you’ll be playing football for Wales soon.’
I thought this was the best thing to say even though I knew otherwise. There was no point stressing him any further. He had asked me if anyone had spoken to his parents and I said Oggy was through to London and they now knew. Moments later, Stuart was out for the count again. I went to check back in with Jeff, who told me London were all over it but Stuart’s family wanted to talk to me on the Sat Phone. They didn’t know me from Adam but I assured them he would be on his way tomorrow and was in good hands, and returned to sit with Stuart, rolled up in my sleeping bag …
He was in and out of sleep, and by 05.00 the Yanks were in anyway to move him. It was time for me to leave and for him to make that long journey home. My job was done and someone else would take it from here, and that was how I saw it. Nothing like this choked me – I was more concerned about getting back to Arbil. I had seen too much of war and life to get emotional. Stuart faced a long road ahead, but tomorrow was another day for me. That’s just how I was, and how I learned to deal with tragic incidents like this. I had done my part and had no personal responsibility to his section – that wasn’t my style. It would be months before I would see him again.
As I said goodbye, I had one last question to ask. ‘What were you wearing on your feet?’
‘Sandals,’ he replied.
I’d feared he would say that. ‘How many times have I told you? Why weren’t you wearing boots?’ But now wasn’t the time to criticise. I had said it before and I would say it again hundreds and hundreds of times over the years.
This was Stuart’s first big gig and even though the locals believed that these mines dated from the Iran–Iraq War of the 1970s, and the terrain was now lush and green, our guys had all learned about off-road driving into places like this on the BBC Hostile Environment Course.
I hated to say it. This was an unfortunate accident; it might not have made a difference, but we both looked at each other knowingly. Stuart shouldn’t have been in sandals.
‘How’s things?’ they asked when they saw me enter the restaurant.
I had hitched a long, precarious lift back to Arbil. I needed my single bed in this pokey little hotel, my feet dangling over the end of it. I was that exhausted I didn’t care.
‘I am fucking knackered,’ I told the boys, before filling them in on Stuart’s progress. And then we left it. That’s what we did. I told them what I knew and we moved on. A small amount of sympathy, followed by a relevant dose of information, topped off with the next briefing. It’s just how it was.
By the next morning, 4 April, Stuart was hardly mentioned. We had a war to cover and Simpson was itching to cover it. Even knocking on the door of sixty, he still had it, and couldn’t wait to get cracking. The word was that fighting had increased and, again, John was worried we weren’t near the story. Rageh Omaar was looking like a star in Baghdad. That had been John in 1991, and he wanted it to be John in 2003. He was desperate to find a way out of here but even with that mindset, there was no way he would be embedded. That, to John, said control and censorship. He wanted to roam, hunt down and sniff out the story that nobody else had. That’s why he was John Simpson.
The next day we found ourselves twenty kilometres east of Al Qasr. One of our tip-offs had come good and we found ourselves spending the night with American Special Forces. I had wandered over discreetly to introduce myself as one of their own and see if they would mind if we took some general shots. Clearly, if they were here, there was a story, as if their laser finders on the jeeps didn’t give it away.
We shook hands and they were cool, so long as we didn’t film them or specify location. I assured them that we wouldn’t. I could have sold them down the river of course, but you don’t want to get a reputation for that – you would never be allowed in again. They told me that they’d lost count of the number of times they had been here. I offered them my Sat Phone so they could call home – against their operational procedure. We shared kebabs and talked squaddie shit all night. I loved every second. As we swapped parachuting tales, for the first time since I had crossed the line from soldier to undercover beef for the BBC, I crossed it back again. I was totally at home and slightly jealous, as brilliant as my new life was. Twenty years of memories of sleeping rough under the stars, staking out the enemy and nailing good over evil came flooding back as I was mixing it with America’s finest. Despite the flea-bitten blankets and the odd bang in the sky, I could still cut it, and I still loved it.
Curiously, it wasn’t for John. The BBC drivers had taken him back to the hotel, around forty minutes away. His news radar told him there wasn’t a story here, and he wanted to head back as he didn’t have his medicine for his kidney stones. We would hook up again in the morning, and I told him to be prepared – get kit for forty-eight hours and get ready.
Sunday 6 April 2003.
None of us will forget this day.
John was back in the village early. I’d had the best night ever. Over in Tehran, Jim Muir had flown in for Kaveh’s funeral. Yes, we were sorry for him, but no, we hardly mentioned it. We had work to do and needed to crack on, and in the cutthroat world of news and war, it was the BBC’s job to send representatives. We had work to do and John wanted ‘colour pieces’. We were five hours from Baghdad.
We were heading to a village called Hawler when Abdullah called me over while John was doing a live two-way back to London. He had heard from Commander Nariman, who had been leaking info to us. The town of Dibarjan had fallen. This meant an about-turn and saying farewell to the Special Forces. It’s brutal to say it, but I was sadder at this than at the thought of Kaveh’s funeral. No disrespect but that’s the military fraternity.
We turned on our heels and chased the story, passing discarded uniforms and blown-up trucks on the way. The evidence had been clear and General Nariman’s previous information had been accurate up to this point. I drove – and fast too. I always drove. It was a poor excuse for a road. Dust, tarmac, potholes and bumps all the way made the Highways Agency look good. Vast expanses of plain flanked us on either side.
Of course, as seemed the way in these parts, I couldn’t know for sure if Nariman was t
alking to everyone. We hoped this was our story and not everyone’s but you could never know until you got there. Sadly, we never did. As we pulled up at the agreed checkpoint, the Peshmerga troops were everywhere – finding Nariman was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Abdullah, Fred and John went off to look, only to learn that a distinguished Iraqi major had been captured; and then John, being John, was pushing for an interview.
‘No film, no film, no film,’ the Peshmerga were saying.
Fred returned to our vehicle and urged me to go undercover and film on my mini DV camera at this small pen in a tiny holding by the side of the road. It was like a scene from the Middle Ages – peasants waiting to be slaughtered. I told Kameron, our translator, not to move while I checked the shot. Kam was nervous – we were starting to attract attention, even though it was hard to get close enough, and we were filming covertly. The film never got used because of what would follow, but its significance lies in the conversation I then had with Kameron.
While John was coercing Nariman for the big interview, Kameron told me had been offered a job as a Special Forces translator. He had seen his moment and gone for it, claiming he had been offered double. Oggy let me manage the fixers, drivers and translators: I told Kameron it was the wrong moment, and that as soon as the Yanks moved on, he would be forgotten. I had promised him a bonus when we got to Baghdad but this irritated me. I laid it on the line bluntly. We would always be able to find another fixer. His timing was poor.
As we were about to push off with a bad atmosphere still lingering, two land cruisers pegged it past.
‘That’s Waji Barzani,’ Abdullah said.
Barzani was the son of the Kurdish president! Unbelievably, the US Special Forces were in tow, and we all knew we had to follow. I had heard his name but knew no more. The fact that the SF were travelling with him was more than a giveaway as to his importance. Nariman and Dibarjan – despite the latter being a major crossroads to Mosel, Kirkuk, and Southern Iraq – were no longer the story. When I spotted the SF, my boys and I knew it was our lucky day – sort of.
We passed through three checkpoints in pursuit, at the last, avoiding buried mines in a huge pile of earth. We didn’t want to suffer the same fate as Stuart on the day Kaveh was being buried.
The convoy turned out to be twelve vehicles in total. This was big drama. We stayed about 100 metres to the rear. At this third checkpoint, it just looked like mounds of earth and blockades up ahead, yet there was lush green on the side. We had sufficient time to catch up and we could always spy the tail of the last car through the dust; plus we had walkie-talkies to communicate between the cars. We put Kameron in with John in case there were any problems. Ultimately that decision condemned him, but it was the right thing to do from an operational point of view.
As we drove back up a mound to our penultimate checkpoint, we came to a grinding halt. There was now a long convoy ahead and behind us.
‘I think we should put our flak jackets on.’ I don’t know why I radioed everyone but my sixth sense for danger had kicked in, and I had no idea what lay beyond the next ridge. I could hear noise in the distance. There was no way any of us were walking blindly into an ambush.
The convoy, now some twenty cars long, stopped again safely near a T-junction. The road bent up the brow of a hill – potential danger lurked round every corner. We were caught in the valley. Barzani’s car, hitting tarmac for the first time, had floored it through the middle of the pack. To the right stood a tank, Roughneck 91. This was a relic from the original Gulf War, a stark abandoned reminder two decades on of what had gone before, its barrel pointing down defeated.
I ordered our three vehicles through. John, Fred and Kameron got out to talk to the SF guys to see what the hell Barzani was doing out here. Kameron made for Barzani himself. My concern was the vehicles. Seeing plumes of smoke over the summit of the hill, there was clearly a contact further up the road – I had to make sure all the trucks were turned round to face the way we had come. We couldn’t be staring at the danger.
Fred shouted at me to get the tripod out of the back of the Land Cruiser just after I had turned the first car round. To my right was a local Peshmerga; adjacent to me Tom’s phone rang. It was his birthday and his mum had called from the UK.
‘That’s the sound of freedom,’ he told her, holding the phone to the planes in the sky. It was a stupid time to take a call unless it was for work – and we were about to go live. For a second he was caught in the moment, his guard down, and he couldn’t know how his words would resonate forever.
Still concerned to turn the cars around, I looked through the side window of the Land Cruiser.
And then I spotted it.
It wasn’t the sound of freedom at all. And it was coming towards us. I knew that distinctive red nose and grey body. I could see it falling through the air,
We were dealing in split seconds here – each of us powerless, no time for fear past my initial ‘Oh fuck’, not a second to protect myself. Then it hit.
The lights went out.
The next thing I knew, I was picking myself up off the floor, but the Peshmerga villager to my right was gone. In front of me, I saw an arm, then I heard his body shrieking for a few seconds. It didn’t last long. He died before my very eyes.
I had taken a blow to the head – my left hand and right arm were bleeding from the almighty blast. I couldn’t account for any of the team at this point. With the shock I had hit the deck. Robotically, I picked myself up again. I’d been out for seconds. Did I actually hear the noise or had the shockwaves sent me reeling into blackout? I don’t know, but even the echo of the aftermath was louder than fuck. Did I see the bomb? Yes, for that nanosecond. What made me look in that direction? I don’t know. Years of training which hones into instinct or a stroke of luck? Pass.
Thank God I was still alive. I knew immediately what had happened.
It was 1982, and I was back in San Carlos Bay. That was over so quickly, too. I heard the air-raid sirens from our ships and two to three seconds later the Argentines dropped their bombs on us.
I knew that sound. This time, I didn’t have those two to three seconds.
Special Forces on the ground had described the target. Less than a kilometre away, we had been charging towards Iraqi tanks engaging with 173rd Airborne. We had been about to wander into that. From the sky the target had become the T-junction, the mass of vehicles and the abandoned Iraqi tank. The pilot had simply got it wrong.
I dove to the side of the bank to my left and lay there. I found Tom with another Peshmerga gibbering away, blood running down his head from an intake of shrapnel. I kept asking if he was OK but he just stared at me, glazed in shock.
Tom’s mum had heard it all.
I screamed at him as he ran down the bank towards another small sand bank. He had to hit the deck now because most planes on attack come round twice.
I grabbed Tom’s phone because mine was in the car. I had to tell London. ‘There’s been an own goal.’ I had known straightaway. ‘The Americans have dropped a bomb on us. Tom, Giles and I are fine. I’ve gotta go. I’ll give you an update when I know more.’
I hung up. There was still no sign of John and the others. I had to get to work. I got up and ran to the vehicles, searching each for bodies. The impact had been less than twenty metres from our vehicle – it was like a scene from a movie, except this was very real. There were bodies everywhere – the flames and the ammunition within them stunk. Some people were burned to a crisp; others were still alive but heading that way. I’ve seen plenty of bombs and bodies over the years, but that stench never leaves you.
‘They’re fucking dead,’ I told myself. But I stayed calm and level-headed. Surely, there was no way in the world that I could find John, Fred, Dragan and Kameron alive. If that were true, so be it. I wasn’t thinking emotionally or as an undercover reporter. In my military head, and as BBC security advisor, I had to account for them in whatever state I discovered them. I would take it one
step at a time.
As I was sorting through the vehicles, I realised I was heading back the way we came. This was the wrong thing to do. If I was going to find them, the impact was behind me on the right – that’s where the American SF jeeps had been. ‘Check every body,’ I told myself repeatedly. ‘Account for everything.’ I wasn’t looking to save other lives or bury bodies. I was employed to protect John Simpson and I had no idea where he was. I began to call out for Fred. I was probably shouting too loudly because of the blast to the head. Who knew what perception of sound everyone still alive now had?
Still there was nothing. And then, in a moment as surreal as Tom’s mum tasting the sound of freedom while wishing him birthday greetings, three heads popped up comically from behind the bank. They were safe, and in one piece.
‘It’s an American own goal,’ I shouted at them.
John was livid. ‘It’s coming back’ he shouted. ‘I saw the fucking bomb. I saw the fucking bomb.’
Fred had a gash to his head; John had lost a trouser leg so he was full length on one side and wearing shorts on the other, with shrapnel hanging out of him; Dragan had a bad cut to the ankle. They were all sufficiently OK for now to continue. There was no sign of Kameron. Nobody had seen him.
‘Have you called your friends off?’ John shouted to the Americans. I had never witnessed him like this before. ‘The world has a right to know what you know,’ he told our ‘friends’.
‘Stay here, John,’ I ordered. ‘And stay together. Here’s my phone. Call London and do what you have to do. I’ve got to find Kameron.’
I don’t know if finding John meant the show had to go on or not. If he had been dead, I would still have looked for Kameron but it gave us all renewed purpose. I could hear John shouting to Fred to ‘shoot this’. He was straight back into work mode and, my God, he knew as we all did that this was one of the biggest stories of the war. As soon as we’d established we were all fine, we were in our element. I didn’t give two hoots about Abdullah – he wasn’t part of my remit. I was concerned for Kameron, but the story was unravelling before us. As I would do many times in the future, I walked that line between story first and danger second.
Bodyguard Page 5
