by Andy McNab
It might have been easy for him, but they hadn't taught me anything like this at Brize Norton or Pau. All I knew was that the more guys joined the CRW stack, the slower the forward speed became, but the faster the descent. That was why the best jumper joined last.
Nish stretched out on his camp bed. For once he wasn't smoking; standard operating procedures (SOPs) didn't allow it under canvas. He pointed at me. 'New boy goes first. Just keep on your heading and I'll come in to you.'
Harry, the Royal Marine Adonis, burst in. 'Raus! Raus! Ve hef found an escape tunnel.'
I didn't have a clue what he was on about. We followed them out to the perimeter wire, where Hillbilly was balancing a pair of upside-down jungle boots on the edge of a man-sized hole that went down about three feet. A sign above it, made out of a Figure-11 target, said, 'Eight Troop's escape tunnel.' Hillbilly was Six Troop, but he was probably the only one who could spell. We took bets on how long it would take Schwepsy to spot this and send down the Alsatians.
Harry rounded up the guys from the Mountain Troop tent. He wanted them to pose for a sign of his own that he'd hung above the main gate. It said: 'Stalag 13'.
We watched as he lined them up along the wire. They had to dangle their wrists through, and stare longingly towards the mountains. The sad thing was, the dickheads probably couldn't wait to get out and climb them.
55
Once we'd shaken out, it was time to get on with training. We were going to work first with our support weapons – the 81mm mortar, .50-calibre machine-gun and GPMG in its sustained-fire role. I knew the GPMG and .50 cal like the back of my hand after my years as a rifle-company infantryman. I also knew about the capabilities of the 81mm mortar and how to call them in for a fire mission. I'd just never fired one.
Ken sent me to join the mortar training group, and it turned out we had a bit of a head start. Nish had been in his battalion's mortar platoon back in Para Reg days, so he became No. 1 in Seven Troop's mortar team, Paul was No. 2, and I was No. 3. That meant I started off lugging the ammunition and putting my fingers in my ears when the thing went off, but I soon got to learn how to set the thing up and aim it.
The 81mm was still the backbone of fire support in any infantry battalion, lobbing as many as twelve rounds a minute about five kilometres. It could be man-packed in three loads, but mortar detachments were normally vehicle-borne. We piled everything into the Land Rover 110s, including more ammunition than my old battalion would have been allocated in about ten years, and moved out into the desert to play.
Like everything else we did, the sessions were fantastically un-army. There was nobody standing behind you insisting on safety checks and correct procedures. All we did was load a 110 with kit, drive into the desert and have a cabby.
We wasted no time keeping up the image of the Ice Cream Boys. We were in shorts, trainers and sunglasses, and out came the bronzer. 'I hate firing mortars in sand,' Paul moaned, as he brushed his arms. 'Sticks to the Ambre Solaire.'
Chris was our mortar fire controller. Each troop had one on the line, and each troop had a tube. We set the four tubes up about fifteen metres apart. The MFCs gathered in a little cluster behind us, under a bunch of old Martini parasols, and waffled away like a bunch of washerwomen. Chris had chosen well. He just barked the occasional fire-control order, then sat back with the others among the piles of ammunition and iceboxes loaded with food and drinks.
The mortar's range was set by the angle of the barrel and the amount of energy supplied by a series of explosive charges. Plastic rings of propellant a bit like horseshoes were wrapped around the stem. There were seven to start with; the more you left on, the further it flew.
What it does at the other end depends on the type of round: high explosive, smoke or illume. The HE fuse can be set for air burst, against enemy out in the open; delayed, when the round penetrates before detonating; or instantaneous, when it explodes as soon as it hits.
Nish and Paul could do all the jobs blindfolded. Even in a pair of running shorts and with a cigarette hanging from his mouth as he hunched over the optic sight, Nish didn't put a foot wrong. Then he'd laugh it off, as if none of it really mattered. His meticulousness seemed to embarrass him.
56
After three days of hosing down the desert, we were getting on-scheme and it was time for a competition. We built a series of sangars about a kilometre away. They were essentially trenches with rock protection around and above them, just like the Adoo had had. The object was to drive along in your 110, stop on command, jump out as a three-man team, assemble the mortar, fire, and score a direct hit with rounds on a delayed fuse. All the firing orders would come from your own troop MFC, ice lolly in hand, basking in the shade of his Martini parasol.
As we arrived with the mortar tube, base plate and ammunition, Chris started off with a fire mission. 'Immediate action!'
The guys waiting their turn sat back, jeered and threw rocks at us.
Paul threw the base plate to the ground, grabbed the aiming post and ran about fifteen metres towards the target while Nish married the mortar's ball joint into the socket at the centre of the plate. I held out the bipod for the barrel to rest against and closed the retaining collar around the tube. Nish attached the optic sight, lining it up with the aiming post to gauge bearing and direction.
I pulled the large green plastic cylinders of ammunition, welded together in pairs, from their metal containers, stacked them on top of each other and undid their caps.
Rocks and insults were still heading our way big-time. 'Come on, you dickheads, get on with it.'
Chris shouted the fire order: 'Direction – one six four.'
Nish adjusted the sight. 'Direction – one six four.'
Chris peered into his little handheld computer. 'Elevation – one two two eight.'
Nish spun the dials. 'Elevation – one two two eight. Number one – ready!'
There was a volley of rocks.
Chris removed the ice lolly from his mouth and checked his handheld computer. 'Two rounds, charge three – stand by!'
It was my turn to scream. 'Two rounds, charge three!'
I pulled out the first round, ripped off four rings of propellant and threw them into the empty ammunition box, passed the round to Paul and prepared the next. He removed the safety pin and put it into the plastic ammunition cap to keep tally.
I jammed my right foot onto the base plate to steady it, we threw two rounds down the tube to bed it in and Nish readjusted the sight accordingly.
'Enemy troops in trenches!' Chris was getting positively expansive.
That meant I had to twist the fuse at the point to 'Delayed'.
'Six rounds – fire!'
We loosed off one every five seconds.
There was a chorus of jeers as all six dropped around the sangar but not one went in.
I started to clean the tube as Boat Troop ran down from their 110, set up and fired their two bedding rounds.
They scored a direct hit with the second round of their six. They jumped up and down, and made sure we knew everyone outside Boat Troop was a wanker. Later, Mobility and Mountain also failed to get a hit, so Boat Troop won. Not a prize, they just won. That was what it was all about.
During the next couple of weeks, while we were playing about with the .50 cal and the GPMG, Ken managed to get hold of a Huey from the Omanis. The pilot came and picked us up whenever he could.
When you jump from an aircraft, the slipstream throws you out and you've got something to fight against. Jumping from a helicopter is the same as jumping off a building. You feel yourself gathering speed, but there's no initial resistance to work with. I found it very hard to get myself stable until Nish took me aside after the first couple of jumps. 'Just imagine you've got a big beach ball in front of you and you're trying to wrap yourself around it so you can slip it a length.' He grinned. 'Bend over it and really try and give it some. That curved shape as you hump is what gets you stable.'
Nish wandered around with
an I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude, but actually he did. He'd been extremely sharp on the mortars, and was almost godlike when it came to jumping. The weird thing was, he didn't seem to give a shit about himself. He cut his hand one day, but didn't deal with it. 'I'd better clean that up later,' was all he said, but he never did. I was gaining the impression that, as well as being embarrassed about his intelligence and education, he didn't like himself that much.
After four or five goes at shagging the giant beach ball, I was getting stable straight away, grabbing air and sorting myself out. I felt like a kid who could suddenly ride his bike without stabilizers.
We drove out into the desert on the last day to RV with the Huey. We set fire to a pile of tyres and diesel oil to give us smoke, then jumped with civilian sports rigs. The lads all had their own, and Nish had brought me his spare. They were smaller and lighter than military ones; they just had to carry a body and no equipment. As a result they were faster, and you could spin around and play about a lot more in the air.
I had to learn how to pack them. The RAF controlled military parachuting, and never let jumpers pack their own chutes. Again, Nish showed the way. He told it simply, so I learnt quickly. He wanted to bring on people like me. Nish was fascinated by flying, not just freefall. He wanted to understand the theory and mechanics of it, and the heli pilot would end up spending just as much time on the ground, explaining how the thing flew, as he did in the air.
We got a last jump in just before the sun went down, and packed the rigs again in the light of the burning tyres. Nish sorted the lines that led from the rig up to the canopy. He turned to Chris. 'You know what, mate? I miss Frank. It's fucking weird without him. What about you?'
Chris just gave a sniff. 'No, not really. He's gone. Fuck it.'
'No, mate. Feels different, feels different.' Nish shook his head. 'I miss Al even more . . .'
57
One of the scaleys slipped on some rocks and broke his ankle – either that or Ken finally got the chance for a little contact sport. Nish was unfortunate enough to be the one walking past the squadron HQ tent when the sergeant-major needed an ambulance driver for a trip to Muscat.
We got wind of it before the casualty was even in the wagon, and handed Nish a king-size shopping list. 'And try and get a cool box.' Tiny counted out some rials. 'Fill the fucker with ice cream and beer.'
A few hours later, Nish burst back into the tent. He was all smiles but empty-handed.
'Where's the cool box?'
'Get this – they pay for blood. I just gave two pints. I'm a bit dizzy, but so what? It's over thirty quid a pint.'
Tiny was already on his feet, and it wasn't to demand his rials back. 'We get tea and biscuits?'
'Even better. Chocolate digestives.'
Done.
We went to inveigle the head shed into letting us trundle into the city and do our civic duty. Nish still looked pale but nodded so hard I thought his head would fall off. 'It's organized. The doc's waiting for us . . .'
We grabbed two dusty wagons. We weren't exactly in showroom condition ourselves. Our hair was so matted it stuck up almost vertically. We might have ended up quarantined at the hospital as a health hazard, but for thirty quid a pint it was worth the risk.
We bumped across the desert to the metalled road. Schwepsy sat in the back beside me. After a moment or two I realized that he was vibrating with excitement, and not just about making a big cash withdrawal from the blood bank.
'We rigged it up, you suckers!'
He was bursting to tell us about the 81mm shoot. Boat Troop's mortar team had placed a round in the trench the night before and attached a lump of PE (plastic explosive) to it, then they'd run a command wire to the base plate area and covered it with sand. Schwepsy hadn't taken out the safety pin on their second round. He'd just counted the round down to target, then detonated the one already in the sangar. All that time and effort just to win. We all wished we'd thought of it.
Bastards . . . But it didn't take us long to get our own back.
We were lining up outside the donor room, waiting for the needles to be jammed into our arms. Schwepsy had stopped laughing as soon as he'd smelt hospital. He edged further and further back down the queue.
Nish was first in, and came out three pints lighter than he'd started the day. He clutched his arm and looked like a ghost. 'Tell you what, mate, those needles – they're big 'uns. More like six-inch nails.'
All of a sudden, Schwepsy wasn't so sun-tanned.
Everyone caught on: each of the lads moaned and groaned more vigorously than the last as they came out of the giving room.
Schwepsy swayed. But he still went in. The lure of cash far outweighed the fear.
Fast glide was next on the menu. We'd be practising both HALO (high altitude, low opening) and HAHO (high altitude, high opening).
If you were jumping HALO, you were already above the location where you were going to operate. You jumped, fell, and opened the canopy as low as possible to avoid radar and minimize time in the air.
With HAHO, you used the canopy as a means of travel. You jumped out at, say, 30,000 feet, deployed the canopy, and used the winds and thermals to take you to where you needed to be. The canopy had a natural speed of about twenty knots, so if you had a fifteen-knot wind behind you, you travelled at thirty-five. HAHO called for extreme-weather clothing and oxygen equipment to survive temperatures as low as minus 40°C, especially when a fifty-mile cross-country descent could take more than two hours.
We flew south to Rustaq. The terrain down there – mainly sand and brush – was much better to land on than a frozen field in the UK. There was a whole spectrum of experience on display, with the now not-so-new boy at one end of the spectrum and Nish at the other – but luckily for me, the troop traditionally started from scratch on a fast glide, then worked its way up.
We jumped clean fatigue – no equipment, no weapon, no oxygen gear, just the parachute – initially from 12,000 feet. The sky was filled with guys tracking, arms back in a delta, steering towards each other so they could link up and fall as a group.
Keeping together in the air wasn't just a crowd-pleaser. You avoided mid-air collisions and ensured you hit the ground together as a patrol – usually tactically, at night, and carrying your own weight in gear. Nish was the master of the art after his time in the Red Freds. The best of what I learnt, I learnt from him.
The first time we landed, he took me to one side. 'Forget what they taught you at Brize, all that rigid star-shape shit. You've got to be flexible. Bring your arms and legs in more. Use your body; don't use your arms. It'll come, mate, it'll come.'
He lay on his belly in the sand and arched his back. He was dirt-diving, something we all did as we practised our relative work. His arms weren't straight out from his sides like I'd been taught. They were bent, with his hands almost in front of him. His wrists were limp. 'You want them to sway with the wind. Use the stuff, don't fight it.'
Some days we spent hours lying on two-foot by two-foot flat trolleys, practising relative work. You'd get on, arch your back, then propel yourself around with your feet, fine-tuning the linking moves. It wasn't a free-for-all: you flew relative and waited your turn to join in. The most important man was the pin. He was the one who had to fly stable-on-heading so the others could fly to him and stand off until it was their turn to join. The pin wouldn't be the best jumper – he normally brought up the rear. Small wonder, then, that I got nominated for pin and Nish was last.
We spent a couple of days doing nothing but fun jumps. We'd somersault, flip, track, spin, experiment with different ways of grabbing each other. We even did some pin checking, flying over your victim so you were in the vortex immediately above him as he fell. That would make you drop on top of his rig, and you'd both go unstable and tumble. It all helped you to get a feel for the air.
